Baumbach buries his knives in the city’s hairline. He did, anyway, before experiencing the poor absorption of a love-life switcheroo, one of these mass aortic yields to whichever linens he’s grown cute and tired on, much to the granulating enamel of his former, and to my rank affections missed (I’m stepping into in her rage for him because I know a tabloid genius in our air makes space congenial for any synchronously beheaded men who drop their inkless selves against her wonder), darling Jennifer Jason Leigh. An actress who knows pain and ain’t fucking around. I miss her for his art. Margot at the Wedding is devastating. It is pursed-lips mean. You can’t measure its parsimony on heart. There never was a genuine world for that movie to expel. His character study achieved such a pendulous hopelessness Cassavetes was needing a separate casket for his balls. Bottomless about how we mince through the futility of any relationship, it shows most drama as, at best, another agitated gameplay walkthrough recorded on YouTube for Duck Tales fans. He abandoned us at the bakery with Margot. All we were was sweet. We were so beforehand about the minimal diet this film embarrassed us with. Is he now our yearly Woody doing still applaud-worthy mid-morning brunches? A friendly snuggle-visit with undeniable expertise and no more scream to scream? Less of your skull’s on view, bro. I enjoy Gerwig. Mistress is funny. Oh yeah, she’s his mistress. Being in your twenties is funny. Are we gainfully employed and approaching thirty by the tickle? Have you lived well at the expense of your art? Money doesn’t have to stop you counting your blood, motherfucker. Sieve that shit through an electric billfold tally machine and write me into some pain again! I don’t like a city where everyone glues their hair together. No street can renovate its sewer away. Streets festoon their sewer. You don’t have to hold your new lover up by her peers and get away with it. You’re of an age when teeth existed. People’s fustian sense of legality wasn’t palm-sized. You know art’s complicit beyond look who held my hand. I fear you never had a guardian to fear or who feared you. Perhaps your intellect was nurtured beyond the potential to inherit crime. And the meanness you happened upon was really a tour you took against the formality of your maturing skill, a phase a good life and middle age found the solution to? If so, I have every purpose above envy to deploy germ warfare up your goddamn sinus. No, no, no. No. I’m never calling sellout. I’m just quite often ready to die by annoying volumes. It’s okay if you’re not. But when you scoff at the idea and you have an art to your name the quality of your underwear improves to nondigestive proportions, if you ask me. And no one should. Want to tell a tale without leaving a stain? Okay. Try on this particular garment. I’ll wait for it to itch because I like you.