Seems a Bit Familiar

Last night Chris and I watched the movie American Splendor. It was a great, quirky, true-story film starring Paul Giamatti as Harvey Pekar, a guy working as a file clerk who makes a name (though little money) for himself as a comic-book writer. Throughout the film, you see scenes of Harvey’s life played out by the actors and then commented on by this guy, the real Harvey Pekar.




In the late 70s this man turned his little daily-life moments into a comic book, much like many of us now turn our little daily lives into blogs. (So in the spirit of Harvey and a daily-ness kind of moment . . . ) I was amused and caught by surprise at how much the real Harvey’s appearance closely resembles that of my neighbor, who sits outside his apartment door in a green plastic lawnchair approximately sixteen times a day to smoke a cigarette while conducting some combination of the following actions: hacking, coughing, commenting and/or complaining about life to whoever walks by, dragging his chair back and forth from the railing, sliding his slippered feet along the crack in the floor, and muttering and/or yelling at his girlfriend through the closed door. Being right across the hall from him, I am lucky enough to hear this strange little montage on a regular basis. Sometimes it really annoys me, sometimes I don’t even notice it, sometimes it sends me into a tailspin of wonderment about the human condition and the psychology of our actions, and sometimes it just leaves me bemused at this strange little place where I live.