By The Way

Didactic, padded, a snoozer. It was 90 minutes long and could have been 40. Interestingly, it was directed by Robert Wise who directed The Sound of Music (good movie) and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (movie that gives people intestinal cramps.) Wise clearly had a long and varied career.

Mark Brown revealed

Last Saturday, the Brown ladies and I had a wonderful time with the Vos family at the family swimming pool in Plymouth. Jennifer Vos is smart and funny and has such a killer deadpan delivery that she makes me laugh on a regular basis. Chris is one of the best husband/father combos I know. Their kids are sort of superhumanly loving and kind. They're a pleasure to spend time with.

Anyway, the problem was that Suzanne and I didn't bring bathing suits. We're both kind of shy and kind of self-conscious about certain things and so neither of us came prepared to swim. The girls had a great time splashing and jumping in and all of that. But there was a distinct sense of disappointment from Chris and Jennifer. Mainly, it was probably compassion for our vanity - "Oh, that's so sad that can't even have fun with friends. Too bad."

Well, I've felt bad about it ever since. Chris teased me throughout the night that I wasn't ready to "take our friendship to the next level" by being shirtless in his company.

I'm over it.

I'm prepared fully to reveal myself and put myself out there. I want to swim with the Vos family and I'm willing to pay the price. So here goes. This one's for you Chris:



Happy now? (I'm so embarrassed.)

McCain Has A Stroke (Of Genius)

Alright, I promise I'm not going to turn this blog into a political forum but I do have to give credit where credit is due:

McCain's choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is a stroke of genius. I was certain that choosing Romney would have been his death sentence. Not only would the Mormon thing have stood in his way, it would have been like wearing a t-shirt that said, "I only care about rich, white men like me." By choosing a 44 year old woman from a far-off state who likes to snowmobile and used to work as a commercial fisherman (fisherwoman?), his campaign suddenly seems a lot less out of touch and exclusionary. Suddenly, he is fighting Obama's youth, unusual-but-still-blue-collar upbringing, and physical charm with some of the very same things.



There are questions, of course, about the fact that she's been governor for less than two years and before that she was mayor of a town with less than 6000 people and after that she was some kind of county official. I mean, if McCain was grousing about Obama's experience, this is probably not the smartest choice. But we're not talking about that right now. We are simply acknowledging a masterful strategic choice.

Well played, cranky old man, well played.

Viva La Veda

Last night, Suzanne and I watched Mildred Pierce, the 1945 Joan Crawford film. It's about Mildred, a middle-class single mother unhealthily driven to spoil and impress her oldest daughter, Veda. It's a combination of film noir and melodrama - lots of moody, shadowy rooms with people smoking; lots of clipped, clever dialogue COMBINED WITH a central female character who worries about "making it" in a man's world, lots of tears glistening, mothers and daughters slapping each other across the face, etc.


(Mildred with the spoiled and, ultimately, sociopathic Veda.)

All in all, it was pretty awesome. Joan Crawford is interesting and she can shift her face from being open and attractive to stern and menacing on a dime. Jack Carson is super cool as the fast-talking, always-looking-for-an-angle Wally Fay and Eve Arden (who later played the principal in Grease) was terrific as Joan's wise-cracking assistant.

On the schedule tonight is The Day The Earth Stood Still. I can't go wrong with any movie that looks like this:



Right?

How About Vegans?

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