The following is a work of fiction.

Not Nick Nolte's Diary, Malibu, California
February 28, 2005

Tire

I had lunch with Johnny Reilly today. It's amazing how much can happen when we don't talk for a month. He's playing a cyclist who comes out of retirement in his new picture so he was wearing a full get up. He told me a weird story about the original ending of a movie he made last year. Yet another film that test audiences change with their petty response cards. Democracy in action, Diary. I gave him a small piece of driftwood I found sailing a few weeks ago. At the time it seemed the perfect gift. But sitting, not comfortably, on the patio table, a few feet from Robertson Blvd, with an even gray sky as canopy to a supple post-millenial day free of anything resembling history, it felt like quite a poor choice. I ordered a caesar salad and moved on.