The Dream of a Rom-Com Museum

Plus: Haruki Murakami, baby

The Moonstruck house in Brooklyn Heights is up for sale. I don’t know who has $12.85 million to spend on a place because it was featured in one of the truly most perfect films ever, but I got to thinking about how I could honestly see a Rom-Com Museum opening up in this space. It’s hard to dispute New York City’s claim as the rom-com capital of the U.S., and Moonstruck is a massive part of that. Think about the iconic stuff that could go in there: A Fox & Sons Books sign, Amy Irving’s hat from Crossing Delancey, the yellow Walkman Julia Roberts listens to Prince on in Pretty Woman, the diary Bridget Jones wrote in, the outfit Grace Jones wore in Boomerang:

Obviously this isn’t going to happen, but I really have a hard time imagining with somebody who has that much money to blow isn’t like some Russian oligarch who is going to let his mistresses stay there on weekends or whatever.

While the asking price is a bit ridiculous, I did find this part from the Gothamist article interesting in terms of what a freak show New York City real estate really is:

back in 2008, it was sold for nearly $4 million by architect Edwards Rullman, who had owned the home for over 50 years before that. “We got 100 times what we paid for it back in 1961,” Rullman told the NY Times at the time.

Anyway. International Rom-Com Museum. You guys give it some thought. I’ll start a Kickstarter for it and we’ll see what happens.

Haruki Murakami, so hot right now. Haruki Murakami

A funny thing about me is that I hate t-shirts with book covers on them. Yet I absolutely would 100% wear one of these Haruki Murakami x Uniqlo shirts with the first edition cover of Pinball, 1973 on it because technically it’s just the illustration from the book cover and doesn’t say his name or the title on the shirt so I wouldn’t feel like I’m trying to be Mr. Smart Guy showing off that he’s “down” with Murakami. The bad news is I think it’s only available in Japan.

Old HBO

I truly forgot who sent this to me, but if you want to be both blown away by how much more work people had to do to make things before we had computers to help us out and also very chilled out, then I suggest watching this short documentary on the HBO intro that 1980s kids will remember.