"Coffee is for closers."

The Movie: Glengarry Glen Ross, 1992 (David Mamet, screenwriter; James Foley, dir.)
Who says it: Alec Baldwin as Blake, the aggressive new manager of a real estate sales office
The context: Blake is denying coffee to his struggling sales force.
How to use it: To hold someone -- or yourself -- to an unreasonable standard.

One of the signs of addiction is that the substance no longer makes the addict feel better, it just makes her feel normal. If that's the standard, I've been addicted to coffee for an embarrassingly long time. I miss those ads that used to run in the 1980s... scenes of people doing gymnastics, roller-skating, and otherwise racing around, with ELO singing, "Hold on tight to your dreams," and a voice promising that coffee was "the calm moment... that gives you the serenity to imagine it, and the vitality to do it."

It's probably too late to sue those people for false advertising.

Lots of work to finish today, in part because I did very little yesterday afternoon but watch The Princess Bride again on cable and read most of Peter Ackroyd's latest novel. I considered using another quotation from The Princess Bride today, and I probably will within the next few days -- without much effort, this whole blog could be nothing but quotes from The Princess Bride, The Wizard of Oz, and the complete works of Christopher Guest.

If I get everything done today, though, it leaves the rest of the week free for Christmas shopping... or I could just buy everything from my cousin Sheila's website. She has some art prints up on EBay, too, if anyone needs something for their walls -- go to "advanced search," and look for items from the seller "Hollywoodkit."