The ice cream truck around here plays "The Entertainer" by Scott Joplin, just the main melody over and over, pitilessly and without conscience, so naturally I think about The Sting, which that tune figures in prominently, and which stars the wonderful Miss Eileen Brennan (Robert Redford and Paul Newman were also in it somewhere I think), and that makes me think about Marvin Hamlisch, which makes me think about the song "Nobody Does It Better," which Marvin Hamlisch composed the music for and which was sung by Carly Simon in that James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me (which I remember because it's in the lyrics), and the title song for The Way We Were, which he also composed and which was sung by Barbra Streisand, which makes me think about What's Up, Doc?, the Peter Bogdanovich screwball comedy Barbra starred in with Ryan O'Neal, who was also in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, which I recently watched (great movie), which was based on the novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, which I've never read, but I have read Thackeray's Vanity Fair, which I enjoyed immensely, even though my happy memory of that book is tainted because right after I finished it I went on this job interview at a new bookshop that was opening in San Francisco, where I lived at that time, a new independent bookstore with "a literary bent," ostensibly, and right near my apartment too, perfect for me, except the owner/manager who interviewed me hated me right from hello, this much was obvious, and he asked me some standard questions, one of which was What are you reading, which prospective bookstore employers always ask, and I said well I just finished Vanity Fair by Thackeray, and he shot me a look like Oh come off it, don't try so hard to impress me, and he said Oh really did you like it, rather archly I thought, and I said Oh yes it was really marvelous, I loved the Becky Sharp character, and the narrative is so spirited and ribald, I used the word ribald, and he said What, it was what? and I repeated that it was ribald, speaking up a little since clearly he hadn't heard me, and he gave me this look like he'd never heard this word before in his whole bent independent literary life and by looking at his expression I could discern the exact moment he decided to blame this little fact on me and that's when I knew he'd never hire me in a million years and of course he didn't.