(Brangelina)

I don't wanna write about Brangelina.

After a few violent edits, and some not-doing, this is alls I have—

Last weekend, I got a chance to look at this picture again:

Brad and Jen's winter 2005 divorce vacation to Anguilla. I am incredibly moved by his t-shirt. I'd forgotten all about it.

Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, and Angelina Jolie are Blockbuster Video stars; I see them and I think about that blue and yellow awning and that smell like astronaut ice-cream and cheese and short-pile carpet and that drop box with a padlock that folks always disposed of their weapons in. And Friends and The Object of My Affection. And Legends of the Fall and Meet Joe Black. And Gia and Foxfire.

From 2005 to the present, the years through which the narrative of jilted Jennifer and the Phoenix Brangelina was crafted and retold and retold, Blockbuster Video stores were in decline. And movies and moviestars were something other than they had been...films packed up and shipped off at a startling rate, DVDs released mere weeks after cautious, impotent theatrical runs, actors beholden to their publicists, to a total, stranger-than-ever(-with-strangers) media apparatus.

Three grown-up Gen-Xers, one (Jolie) a bit younger than the others--all rather corny, all suffering their dignity (and raking in millions) due to popular imaginings.

Brad Pitt is not so interesting to me.
He does something mealy-mouthed that I cannot comprehend or enjoy.

handily eased himself into the role/roles of "respectable artist" via, mostly, his ease and handiness.