Up at 6. Went out for coffee at 7, finished The New Jim Crow (the last chapter goes pretty far on a limb in criticizing affirmative action as a “racial bribe”), caught up in poetry daybook. Got back in bed for an hr, went out w/ Bree at 10 to see an Italian company’s shadow puppet play, A Sky For the Bears, at the New Victory Theater with a bunch of 4-7 year-olds and their parents. Charming, well-performed, intriguing techniques. Went closer to MoMa for lunch, had time before movies to spend an hr. in the Is Fashion Modern? Learned a fair bit about, e.g., guayabera shirts and cheongsam dresses. Also poked around the museum stores. Saw The Vampire Bat (Frank Strayer 1933) and The Crime of Dr. Crespi (John Auer 1935), worth it for the respective creepy-doctor-with-God-complex performances of Lionel Atwill and Erich von Stroheim. Walked Bree to train, finished the George Starbuck collection while waiting for the next movie. Careful writer, but I read this w/ such gaps that I probably missed the book’s thematic movement – registered the different tones created by straight and slant/off-rhyme as much as anything. Watched White Zombie (Victor Halperin 1932), which, despite Lugosi, is more effective visually than dramatically (though the explicit reference to Haitian zombies as, in effect, slaves created to “work in the sugar mills and fields at night” was interesting; does this aspect of the colonialist subtext show up in Lewton?) Back in JH by 9, looked in at E77 – crowd for a band that actually bills itself as “dad rock,” couldn’t hack that, got a bottle of water in Starbucks instead and read first 50 p. of Ingrid Monson, Saying Something (started on train). Came home, lights out around midnight, put on You Must Remember This but fell asleep quickly.