No sign of the stalker tonight. That’s a good thing. More on him later, but having him around is sort of intense. There are a couple people who argue that he’s capable of getting violent. I’m not one of them. But as Mark so stridently said, “Dahmer didn’t fit the profile…”

Philippe Mora spoke at Rocket tonight. Last week sometime, Mark and I watched his film The Beast Within . It was beautifully bad. A completely nonsensical movie with an elaborate (and grotesque) makeup effect at it’s end. Naturally, we got a kick out of watching it. Another of his films is Communion. I picked up a copy of The Howling III for him to sign. If I get around to it, I’ll scan the thing.

Mark and I didn’t get much of a chance to listen in on the event, however. We were, in fact, too busy dealing with a thief. She was a slender woman, a little unsteady on her feet, who decided to help herselves to a couple of flims from our Spike Lee display. Actually, we didn’t see her take them, but she did think to grab the Spike Lee flyer we had there advertising the section. And when we stopped her to get the flyer back (“That’s our sign. you can’t take our sign!”) we realized she had set off the alarm. After a bit of back and forth, during which she said, “Come on, man, don’t be prejudiced!” we noticed that she had a decidedly square bulge in the pocket of her coat. Mark pointed it out. She denied it was there. She must have had a hole in her pocket because, as if on command, the movie just slipped right out of her jacket. It was Malcolm X. “Busted,” she said, laughing. She also turned over a copy of Mo’ Better Blues. “I’m busted.” But she was in high spirits as we confiscated the movies from her, even offereing to take Mark out to dinner. Uh, right. Like Mark was gonna take her up on that. Anyway, we got her out of there and laughed about that one for a good hour.

It’s late. I gotta go to bed.

Seriously.