Stitches! Dougnuts! Movies!

Saturday night. It's been a heck of a week. Tuesday night we got a call from Avery's Activity Days leader saying she'd had "a little bit of an accident" on a bike riding jaunt the girls took. We got there in time to see the paramedics loading Ave onto a stretcher so she could be transported to the hospital. Four hours and twenty two stitches later, she emerged from the emergency room with a leg brace and crutches. We're super grateful that things were not worse, but at the same time, I think Ave would agree when I say, the whole situation kind of blows. Ah well, we'll focus on our blessings and not the suckiness of the situation.

We've all been homebound for a couple of days, but today, we decided to get out of the house and went to Clare, MI to visit the famous Cops and Doughnuts bakery. It's about thirty miles away, which is a long way to drive for a doughnut or a cookie, but the drive is nice and the baked goods really are top notch. A visit to C and D was on our summer to-do list as is swimming at the Delta College pool (check), visiting Lake Michigan and Mackinac Island (not yet), and making Jell-o (the girls' idea - no idea why or why they haven't done it yet since it takes five minutes to do). We've made a concerted effort to do stuff in and around the area and to make the most of each day. Suzy and I decided together that we didn't want summer to slip away and for us to feel like we hadn't actually done anything. Winter really did a number on us, and we feel like we need to get the most summeriness out of summer that we can. So it's lakes, ice cream parlors, and bike rides for us until September at least.

My Art of the American Film class starts on Tuesday. I'm organizing it by genre, so we'll spend a week on westerns, a week on crime films (film noirs to be specific), musicals, melodramas, comedy, horror, and sci fi. We'll watch a classic example of the genre on Tuesday and discuss an element of film (mis en scene, cinematography, screenwriting, editing, etc.) and then on Thursday, we'll watch a more contemporary or somehow alternate version of the genre. So, for instance, this Tuesday, we'll watch John Ford's Stagecoach - perhaps the most prototypical western of all time. Directed by John Ford? Yep. Starring John Wayne? Oh yeah. Monument Valley? Duh. Then on Thursday, we'll watch John Sayles' meditation on borders and the image of the Western Lawman in 1996's Lone Star. For musicals, we'll do Singin' In The Rain on Tuesday and Moulin Rouge! and Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog on Thursday. Should be fun.

I'm keeping my expectations very low for this class. I'm not anticipating a bunch of rabid cinephiles. Delta has consistently disappointed me in that regard. I expect a bunch of bored, pretty lazy people who are taking the class because they need three more credits to graduate and then move on to Central or Saginaw Valley to major in business administration or something like that. I figure if I keep my expectations low, I may be pleasantly surprised rather than bitterly disappointed.

Speaking of movies and Clare, Michigan, I am suddenly obsessed with the Ideal movie theater. It's basically just across the street from Cops and Doughnuts and looks like this:

 Or, a little more realistically, this:

But look how long it's been around:

(This movie came out in 1954, but the theater has been open since 1930.)

I think this is the inside of the theater itself. It looks like the church I went to with my grandparents in Pleasantview, Idaho. Or maybe a set piece from Hoosiers or something.

Anyway, it just looks original and untouched, and I think there's something cool and charming about that. Who knows what the actual movie going experience is like? I'd like to find out. The theater is two doors down from this place:

It's tiny and looks greasy, but I think it would feel very summery to grab a burger and Coke at The Whitehouse Restaurant around sixish and then mosey over to the Ideal for an early show of something fun. At the moment, Transformers 4 is playing there. This means I won't be visiting the Ideal until this time passes. Like a kidney stone, like a fever, like a case of the runs, Transformers 4 must also pass. It's three hours long and directed by Michael Bay. As the comedienne Rita Rudner once said, "I don't even want to do anything that feels good for that long." A three hour Michael Bay film is like an seven course meal prepared by Oscar the Grouch. It's a lot but not of anything good, you know? Anyway, I'd definitely like to make one more trip to Clare before summer is over. It will be like going on a date to 1954.

What else is on our list? Plenty. As we get to it, I'll post about it here.