Selling My Books on the Streets of Brooklyn 11/2

The beautiful weather did not help sales today, but the floating bookshop did get visits from several of its friends, and one scary drunk. The guy, who one minute said he was 50 and another 47, was in prison for 25 years. He worked as a roofer yesterday, his first day on the job, and called in sick today, sore from head to foot. He once owned his own business but drank it all away. He spoke of two fights he'd had that very morning. His conversation was sprinkled with colloquialisms: bro', weed, whack, and the most common profanity. He referred to himself as Ant', short for Anthony to those of you outside NYC. His girlfriend passed away a year to the day. She was considerably older than him. He'd met her in rehab. Although he didn't say how she died, I imagined the worst. He's mad at his sister, who evicted him from the basement apartment in her home in Gerritsen Beach, where he grew up, for a single incidence of drunkenness, he claimed. He's fed up with her "tough love." Imagine how she must feel. He kept sipping from a large can of beer and told me all about jet skiing, pulling his pants up and showing the scar across his patella, which he'd torn completely loose when he crashed into a wave and banged his knee against one of the handle bars. He went on for at least a half hour. I said as little as possible, hoping he'd get tired of talking. I hope he doesn't become a regular, and I hope he gets his stuff together. It was similar to talking with Jack, who is busy with the Occupy Wall Street movement these days, in that nothing of what is being said may be true, only Jack is not remotely scary. He was wearing an FDR button yesterday, placard in hand. Ant', on the other hand, seems an accident waiting to happen. Good luck, sir.
I caught up to Unknown (2011) last night, courtesy of Netflix. It stars Liam Neeson, January Jones, Diane Kruger, Aidan Quinn and Frank Langella. It was as effective as thrillers get. I am always leery of how mystery is resolved. Too often it is ludicrous. This time it was as intelligent as could be. I was clueless, although in retrospect there was at least one hint. The only drawbacks were the far-fetched participation in action by one of the characters, and the question of another's conversion.  Kudos to director Jaume Collett-Serra, a Spaniard, and screenwriters Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell. On a scale of five, four.
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