Aurora Shooting & Open III

Why does anyone need a rifle designed to fire 100 rounds per minute? Why do we still allow people to buy such a weapon? What are the NRA gun nuts thinking? Do they really feel the need to go hunting with this thing and what kind of game would require that sort of firepower? Or do they feel the need to have one for self-defense? If the latter, then please don't let me get anywhere near such a self-defensive crackpot. Why don't our laws prevent anyone from buying 6,000 rounds of amunition? Or at least have such a purchase send out a red flag to law enforcement? Too many questions, too few answers.

Saturday at the Open. Tiger looked like he was going to have a repeat of what he did in the third round of the U.S. Open, blow it bigtime. He bogeyed two of his first four holes, but then righted the ship to finish five back of Adam Scott, still within range, especially if the wind gets up on Sunday. His putter is just not Tiger-like. He missed at least three putts that he'd have made in the old days. But that's what happens when the years start piling up: the hands just aren't as confident as they were in our optimistic youth. I hope he can still win it, but he's never come back from five behind and I doubt he'll do it this time either.

People & Open II

My apologies to anyone who may have read any of my movie reviews that included spoilers, especially to Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, who let me know my error right between the eyes. In the case of People Like Us, there really wasn’t a spoiler about the two main characters being half-siblings. That was revealed almost from the beginning of the movie. It was only I and my hopeless romanticism that wanted them somehow to find a romantic connection. The film would have been worth it if only for the Six Rules that Sam had gotten from his father and then passed on to Josh, Frankie’s son. And without spoiling anything, the way it was all resolved was special, and jerked a tear or two. Two aspects of the plot bother me, though: Can a recovering alcoholic work as a bar tender without falling off the wagon over and over? And why is it that so many young actors have a perennial two-day beard? Do women actually find that attractive? In my youth, girls were always complaining about whisker burn after some serious necking. Yet today, nearly all leading men and nearly all male sports figures have that same two-day beard. They must all shave with an electric razor set for that length. Please, someone, enlighten me. Enough about People Like Us. Go see it

Day Two of the Open. Tiger shot another tactically efficient round, a 67 highlighted by his hole-out from the bunker on 18. None of the announcers has even mentioned that of the four par-5’s he’s played, he’s birdied one, parred two, and bogeyed the par-5 eleventh in his round today. That’s most unusual. He’ll get back on his par-5 track tomorrow. He’ll be in the penultimate group with a young man from Denmark, Thorbjorn Olesen, who’ll get a taste of Tiger heat and Tiger gallery feeding frenzy. Good luck with that, young Mr. Olesen. Brandt Snedeker is leading at minus 10 with Adam Scott right behind at minus 9. But Tiger is there, waiting to pounce. And if the wind picks up as is forecast, almost anything can happen to scores on the weekend. Here’s a list of prominent players who didn’t make the cut: Sergio Garcia, Justin Rose, Charl Schwartzel, Stewart Cink, Martin Kaymer, Robert Allenby, Darren Clarke, Lucas Glover Angel Cabrera, and Phil Mickleson. And just look at who made the cut: a 62-year-old Tom Watson. Take that, all you young guns.

People Like Us & The Open

We decided to see People Like Us despite the luke-warm reviews, and we both liked it, just as we so often do when we see films with critically luke-warm reviews. Most reviewers took issue with the sort of sleazy character Chris Pine portrayed for the first half of the movie, sort of a fast-talking loser who didn’t want to return to California for his father’s funeral. But he turned it around by the end. I, like a lot of viewers, were wondering how they could possibly resolve the seeming romantic attachment Sam (Chris Pine) had with someone he knew to be his half-sister. I kept thinking that somehow it would be revealed that Frankie (Elizabeth Banks) wasn’t really Jerry Harper’s daughter, that they would surprisingly come together like Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant in An Affair to Remember. Not to be. But that would have been too trite a solution anyway. We both thought it was quite a bit better than Roger Ebert and others had suggested.

Eleven hours of British Open coverage, beginning at 1:30 a.m. That’s early. And that’s a lot of coverage. So I had my dvr record the first four hours, than got up at 5:30 to watch what I’d saved. Good. Tiger was just teeing off when I started watching. And the day was much better than any forecasters were predicting. Tiger played a workmanlike round, following a game plan to the letter, shooting a three under 67 in an almost robotically technical round. As he said in the post interview, he just wanted to be in position, that there was a lot of golf to go, that the typical links wind would probably start blowing and the greens would speed up in the next three days. I think he’s right. And I think he’ll probably shoot three more technically good rounds to win by three.

The Klein Museum

A week in South Dakota, although a nice annual trip we make, a necessary trip, can be a tad too long . . . like three or four days too long. Time certainly is relative because the year between last year's visit and this year's seemed like only six months. But this week seemed like an eternity. One of the highlights was our annual visit to the Klein Museum.

Every year when we go back to our South Dakota hometown to visit relatives or engage in one class reunion or another, we make it a point to go to the Klein Museum, and every year we see more and more exhibits, more and more artifacts and memorabilia donated by Mobridge residents. This time we explored the Arikara Earth Lodge and teepee that had been recently added. Remarkable, especially the lodge. It didn’t look as large from the outside as it was after we entered it. Cool in the heat of the summer day and probably quite warm even on the coldest of South Dakota winter days. Three Sioux men built it in eleven days. It was constructed of timber from Montana, vertical logs set in the earth, then brought together without the use of nails. The sides were then made of timber slats placed side by side at a 45° angles, leaning on the interior logs. Then willow branches covered all before laying sod on sides and top. Inside, there were log seats, packed earth floor, a central fire pit beneath an open smoke hole in the ceiling. It looked like it could easily house a family of four or five. We’re assuming that a buffalo skin could be used as a door to keep out heat or cold and any pesky flies that might be around.

This museum is quite remarkable for the amount and diversity of the exhibits, all of which are devoted to the history of the town and surrounding area from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Included are a complete dentist office, doctor’s office, telephone office, beauty shop, grocery, millinery shop, barber shop, law office, optometrist office, a trapper’s shack, a large section devoted to saddles and horse gear, a central room with photos and information about Sitting Bull and other Sioux leaders, Sioux artifacts like head dresses, beaded jackets and shoes, peace pipes and tomahawks. Outside the main building visitors can find a complete furnished house dating back to 1919, a tiny post office built around 1920, a schoolhouse complete with desks, books, maps, pot bellied stove—all the furnishings of a country one-room school, a building devoted to early machinery and tools, a log cabin housing farm toys and scale models of farm machinery. For a town the size of Mobridge, this is a place of which they can be especially proud.

Korean Golf

I watched the USGA’s U.S. Women’s Open this weekend at Black Wolf Run golf course in Wisconsin, and was again impressed with the beauty and athleticism of most of the players. Obviously, I was more interested in their golf sots than in their looks. Obviously. The other thing that was noteworthy: the number of South Koreans who play so well. There are forty ladies from South Korea who play regularly on the American tour, many of them ranking in the top twenty. I find it remarkable that this tiny nation I visited in 1953 could become an industrial giant and the home of some of the best golfers in the world, women as well as men. In 1953 I remember looking out over a Korean valley green with rice paddies, dreaming about the chocolate shake I’d have when I got back home, imagining the golf holes I could create in that Korean valley. Nearly sixty years ago, the South Korea I experienced was war-torn and impoverished—most of the hills brown and desolated from the nearly constant shelling. And just look at it now. There very well might be a golf course right there where I envisioned it almost sixty years ago. Two Korean ladies, Amy Yang and Na Yeon Choi, battled down the back nine at Black Wolf Run, both well ahead of the rest of the field, although Na Yeon Choi easily won the battle with great shot after great shot to win by four over Yang, by eight over the third-place finisher Sandra Gal. Na Yeon Choi is twenty-four but looks fifteen, cute as a soaking-wet hundred-pound bug. I look forward to seeing more of her in the future.

Tomorrow we leave for our annual trip to South Dakota. We hope the upper tier heat wave will have passed by the time we get there. I'll try to keep this post going with whatever strikes my fancy while we're there.

Love & Lust

Let’s talk about love. It’s our strongest emotion, stronger than fear or hunger, stronger than hate. But it’s a two-pronged beast made up of emotional love and physical lust, and too often people misunderstand one for the other. How many couples engage in sex and then assume that what they feel is love, feel it enough to spend the rest of their lives together, only to discover soon or late that lust wasn’t enough to bind them. Some live with it; some go separate ways. Otherwise, how can we explain that two out of three marriages end in divorce? That number would be even higher if we added in those who wanted to split but couldn’t, ether because of religion or moral upbringing. Lust is the physical drive to satisfy our sexual appetites. It feels so good at the time, but what follows may not be love or even affection. The simplest solution is to find a fuck buddy: momentary satisfaction, then separation. In marriage, after the sex tapers off or even disappears, we find two people who don’t really know each other or care for each other. They split or they stay together, unhappy. For a lifetime. Then there are extra-marital affairs, lust again. Real love doesn’t require sex. Sex may be part of it, but not necessarily. Real love involves affection for the person, with or without the sex. Real love can be between good friends, parents, siblings, or offspring. Real love can exist with many others, not just the one we live with. It’s important not to mistake lust for love.

The Fourth of July

July Fourth, two hundred and thirty-six years after our first Fourth. What will we be doing on this day? Thinking about what it means to be an American, to be living in freedom, safety, and prosperity; having a steak and potato dinner; watching the fireworks as the Boston Pops plays in Boston Harbor; waiting out the days before our impending trip to South Dakota. “Impending” is such a dark word to describe our trip. Sounds like someone dying, or a dark storm cloud on the horizon. But we’ll go and it will be all right, but I’ll be anxious to return after only two or three days. Need to get back to see the kids, Squeakie and Charlie, need to get back to watch all the Olympic drama in London, need to see if Tiger can win the Open. So much to do, so little time.

Sentence Exams II

James Lee Burke is one of the finest writers of the past forty or fifty years, often following the tradition among Southern writers of emulating Faulknerian prose. In one of the Dave Robicheaux novels he writes:

"The truth was, he could not rise in the morning from his bed surrounded by the things she had touched, the wind blowing the curtains, pressurizing the emptiness of the house, stressing the joists and studs and crossbeams and plaster walls against one another, filling the house with a level of silence that was like someone clapping cupped palms violently on his eardrums. He could not wake to these things and Rie's absence and the absence of his children, whom he still saw in his mind's eye as little boys, without concluding that a terrible theft had been perpetrated upon him and that it had left a lesion in his heart that would never heal."

If I were explaining this to one of my English classes, I'd start with the structure, the way he builds on a very simple main clause and then drips the images thereafter. "The truth was . . . something." That's just a basic S-V-S pattern with the second S a noun s-v-o that forgot it's signal word "that." The structure of that noun s-v-o begins with "he could not rise" and then two adverbial 1-o's (prepositional phrases), the 4, "surrounded" (past participle), working with both the subject "he" as well as the verb "could not rise", then the "surrounded" modified by the adverb 1-o-o "by the things," with the "things" modified by the adjective s-v-o "she had touched" with the signal word "that" left out because it was acting simply as the object of the verb "had touched," then the very complicated set of words acting as the second object of "by." All right, we're now up to the sets of words led off by the "wind," which is acting as the s of the 3 (present particple) "blowing" and the object of "blowing" "the curtains." Then another 3 "pressurizing" and its object "emptiness" and the 1-o "of the house" modifying "emptiness." Then another 3 "stressing" and its objects "joists," "studs," crossbeams," and "walls" with the 1-o "against one another" working adverbially with "stressing." Then the final 3 in the series of 3's, all with the subject "wind," "filling" and its object "house," followed by the adverbial 1-o "with a level," then another 1-o "of silence" acting as an adjective to describe "level." And finally, the adjective s-v-o working with "silence" "that was like someone clapping cupped palms violently on his eardrums." Now how to explain the structure of this last thing? I guess I need to create a similar sentence to show it: The silence was similar to (or "like") someone clapping cupped palms on his eardrums. The structure of that sentence is an S-V-S (the silence was similar) and then a 1-o (to someone clapping palms), the object of the 1 being an s-3-o (a gerund with its own subject and its own o), and finally a 1-o "on his eardrums" adverbially modifying "clapping." Whew! Almost no one except for some of my very advanced English students would have any idea what I just said. I'm not sure Burke knew what he was doing when he wrote that sentence, but his ear told him how to do it without needing to know if it was right or wrong. It's very very right.

I’ll demonstrate the structure of the second sentence using my system of symbols. “He could not wake to these things and Rie's absence and the absence of his children, whom he still saw in his mind's eye as little boys, without concluding that a terrible theft had been perpetrated upon him and that it had left a lesion in his heart that would never heal.”

All the words below the top line are working adverbially with the main V (“could not wake”), the first set of 1-0's being "to things, absence, and absence"), the second set a 1 with the object a gerund 3 "concluding" followed by two noun s-v-o's acting as objects of the 3, introduced by the signal words "that" and a final adjective s-v "that would never heal" modifying "lesion." There. Simple, right?

Sentence Exams

Forgive me for going back to sentence examination. I can’t help myself. And I must once again demonstrate how much simpler my system is than a traditional grammatical explanation. One of my main regrets is that when I die, my system will be lost forever except for the few students who understood it and may still be using it in their writing. It's still all available at lulu.com as an e-book.

Here’s a sentence described in my system:

“Few places are more charming than a quiet cocktail lounge in the middle of the day with the ice tinkling in the glasses and the starched look of a bartender’s white shirt and the clarity of the beer in the glass with the bubbles drifting up.” (A Savage Place, Robert B. Parker, p. 125)

See, a simple S - V - S pattern (with the 3 "charming" acting as a predicate adjective, followed by nine prepositional phrases all acting together to modify "charming."

And here’s a sentence explained in traditional terms:

“When the wind was in the north you could hear them, the horses and the breath of the horses and the horses’ hooves that were shod in rawhide and the rattle of lances and the constant drag of the travois poles in the sand like the passing of some enormous serpent and the young boys naked on wild horses jaunty as circus riders and hazing wild horses before them and the dogs trotting with their tongues aloll and foot-slaves following half naked and sorely burdened and above all the low chant of their traveling song which the riders sang as they rode, nation and ghost of nation passing in a soft chorale across that mineral waste to darkness bearing lost to all history and all remembrance like a grail the sum of their secular and transitory and violent lives.” (All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy)

It begins with an adverb clause of time, then a simple S-V-O, then a long series of nine nouns and noun clusters in apposition with “them,” all the things you could hear “when the wind was in the north.” Faulkner used this kind of sentence quite often. It is long, but can be untangled if the eye realizes what it is seeing. The only appositive that needs serious examination is the last one, beginning with “the low chant.” The real confusion centers on the present participle “bearing” (which modifies “nation and ghost of nation"). It should be a transitive verbal requiring some object, but what follows are ten words, none of which can act as that object. Then the reader picks up “the sum,” and now he realizes it really reads, “bearing like a grail the sum of their secular and transitory and violent lives, lost to all history and all remembrance.” There are just too many phrases competing for proximity to bearing. The past participle lost and its prepositional phrase “to all history and all remembrance” is modifying sum as is the prepositional phrase “of their secular and transitory and violent lives.” Maybe it would be clearer if it read, “bearing like a grail, lost to all history and all remembrance, the sum of their secular and transitory and violent lives.” McCarthy chose to make the reader fight for his meaning, either purposely or accidentally. One always wonders the same about Faulkner: How much confusion did he intend and how much was just poor writing?

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Brass Cojones

This December first will be the 18th anniversary of our arrival in Sun City West. How can that be? Those eighteen years have fled like they were pursued by a band of howling banshees. Eighteen years. When we got here, Sun City West was surrounded by empty desert, the small community of Surprise to our south, the original Sun City seven miles to the east. It was a safe haven compared to too many communities in the country, virtually no crime, a place whre it was safe to walk the streets alone at any hour. Eighteen years later, Sun City West is surrounded by housing developments, and sleepy little Surprise has mushroomed to nearly 200,000 residents. And it’s no longer safe to walk alone after dark. We have no police presence here, only our sheriff’s posse, a group of residents who patrol our streets and maintain a nearly instantaneous connection to the sheriff and his deputies. But for thieves and vandals our city must appear like a defenseless golden egg. We now have too many breakins at local business, too many incidents of house burglaries, from open garages too many daylight thefts of golf clubs and golf carts or anything else of value. It no longer feels safe here. The thieves all seem so brazen, so little profit from the thefts, so much to lose in prison time. Every day we have many landscaping crews in town, and how easy it would be to case houses, looking for empties after the snow birds fly home. How easy it would be to knock on a front door to make sure no one is home, then go to the rear of the house as though to do some tree trimming, then force a patio door and into the house. A quick search for jewelry or gold coins or cash, a quick unhooking of television sets and computers to be left for a nighttime pickup. Then out again, all innocent smiles as they climb into their truck and away. The garage thefts are even more brazen. Most garages are always closed, but I’ve heard people tell me they had gone shopping and were carrying their groceries in. Within minutes they come back to the garage to find their golf clubs gone. That takes brass cojones as large as bowling balls. So far we haven’t had any home invasions or physical assaults, but they might not be far off. Are we still happy to be living here? Yes. Do we still feel as safe as we used to? No.

Seeking a Friend at the End of the World

My admiration for Steve Carell went up a couple notches after I saw him in Seeking a Friend at the End of the World. I’d always liked him for his off-the-wall humor, never overplayed or reliant on toilet gags. I loved him in Crazy, Stupid Love, and here he is again, only this time more dramatically serious than comedic. In fact, I can’t figure out why this movie was labeled a comedy. That may be the only criticism I have, that the few places near the beginning where humor was intended didn’t need to be there, or at least not for the sake of comedy. The bit when Dodge is still at work selling insurance, quoting the cost of an Armageddon policy, could have been played straighter just to indicate how nonsensical it would be to keep going to work even though science has shown that the world will come to an end in three weeks, that Matilda the asteroid was really going to strike the earth and kill us all. The salacious comments at the house party weren’t really necessary except to show how hedonists might act with only a short time to live. The question I and everyone else who sees this movie would ask: What would I do if I knew I had only twenty-one days left? Would I go to work every day like some of his fellow insurance salesmen or Dodge’s housekeeper Elsa? Would I leap from a tall building like some of the Wall Streeters on Black Thursday in 1929. Would I hire a hitman to take me out? Would I join the rabble who loot and burn just for the thrill of looting and burning? Would I stay at the party at “Friendsies,” drinking, drugging, kissing everyone is sight, screwing everyone in sight? Would I be one of those being baptized at the beach? Would I be like Speck, who built himself a well-provisioned bomb shelter for the day after? Or would I, like Dodge, try to find the love of my life, try to find God, try to find some meaning in a life about to end? After he pulls the weeping Penny (Keira Knightley) into his apartment from the fire escape, they both set out to do the one thing they most want to do, Dodge to find his one true love, his high school sweetheart; Penny to get back to England to see her family for the last time. Along the way they encounter people doing their thing, a trucker (Bill Peterson) who has hired a hit on himself (But why would the hitter need a fee?), Speck with his titanium-walled hideaway, Dodge’s estranged father (Martin Sheen). They also, despite their age difference, find their own true loves—each other. I loved the quiet romance between them. Keira Knightly, whom I fell in love with in Pride and Prejudice for her beauty and sexily pursed mouth, wasn’t that same beauty, here rather squinty-eyed and with unattractive hair style. But Steve fell in love with her as did I all over again.

Moonrise Kingdom

Coastal New England, summer of 1965, the island of New Penzance, a never-never land for two young people considered odd by adults. That’s the premise of Moonrise Kingdom, and in such a strange way it works. The words “delightful,” “charming,” and “wryly humorous” come to mind. It’s the kind of humor that’s kept inside the viewers with an occasional outward chuckle, not the spastic hilarity of one of Adam Sandler’s questionable comedies. It’s filmed as a sort of fairy tale, with sets and people that might have come from one of the fantasy books Suzy carries with her. The opening segment shows us a house much like a dollhouse, with one side cut away to present all the rooms as though there were no fourth wall. The Bishops (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand) have three small boys and an older girl named Suzy (Kara Hayward), who spends much of her time viewing the world around her through the binoculars she’s never without. The scene shifts to Camp Ivanhoe and the Khaki Scout troop, led by troop leader Edward Norton. Sam (Jared Gilman) is an orphan who has a plan to run away with Suzy, following a trail to the far end of the island. Suzy meets him in a meadow, carrying with her a suitcase and a picnic basket holding her kitten. In the suitcase she has three overdue library books and a battery-operated record player she’s borrowed from one of her brothers. Sam is carrying a backpack with everything he needs to set up camp, including an air rifle and a small pup tent. The two are in love, and show their love innocently with lip-to-lip kisses, graduating to French kisses. The rest of the story has to do with their innocence and their flight from various groups—the scout troop and town adults led by the police chief (Bruce Willis). All this while a hurricane rushes toward the island. Half a century ago, and we see the semi-innocence of those times: people smoke cigarettes but never seem to inhale; McDormand and Willis are having an affair but never seem to touch except for sharing a cigarette; one of the boy scouts, with a white patch over his left eye, is referred to as “Lazy Eye”; Sam catches a turtle with “Albert” written on the bottom of the shell; Suzy catches a fish which Sam cleans and cooks, the fish coming out of the pan looking like something from Wendy’s. I think I’d like to see this movie again, just to see if I’ve missed something. You go see it too, and let me know what you think.

Summer & News (or Olds)

June 21, 2012, the day after the first day of summer, and summer in the Valley is really summer. I grew up believing the first day of any season was the 21st. But somewhere along the way it got switched to the 20th. And I don’t know what happened to the first six months—like an F35 breaking the time barrier. I’d better start preparing my Christmas letter or the season will hit me before I’m ready.

Nothing much noteworthy in the news. Romney and Obama haven’t yet brought out the big guns but will soon. The Zimmerman/Martin case is still going back and forth. Jerry Sandusky will be found guilty of something but probably not on all charges. Somewhere between the two sides, accusers and accused, the truth must lie, but not entirely on either side. I just can’t understand what dark compulsion drives a sex offender. Somewhere in the future, through genetic engineering or chemical advances, such behavior will be a thing of the past. I hope so. The chaos in Egypt is disturbing, frightening. I would have hoped for some form of democracy to rise from the ashes, but it looks like it won’t. I fear any group that promotes Islamic law. We’ve come too far in human rights to go that far back into barbarism.

All right, summer, have your way with me.

Cole Porter & "Why Shouldn't I?"

A few months ago I wrote about the decline of song intros today. How could I have overlooked this one by Cole Porter from his 1935 musical Jubilee? There were two other songs from that musical that have gotten much play: “Begin the Beguine” and “Just One of Those Things.” But they’re without intros, whereas this one has a long and intricately rhymed beginning. It’s a song that isn’t around much now, but back then it was wonderful. And it still is. Here’s “Why Shouldn’t I?”

All my life I’ve been so secluded,
Love has eluded me.
But from knowing second hand what I do of it
I feel certain I could stand a closer view of it.
Till today I studied love discretely,
But now that I’m completely free,
I must find some kind persona grata
To give me data personally.

Why shouldn’t I take a chance when romance passes by?
Why shouldn’t I know of love?
Why wait around when each age has a sage who has found
That upon this earth, love is all that is really worth thinking of?
It must be fun, lots of fun,
To be sure when day is done,
That the hour is coming when
You’ll be kissed and then
You’ll be kissed again.
All debutantes say it’s good,
And every star out in far Hollywood
Seems to give it a try,
So why shouldn’t I?

Comics & The Cove

Today’s newspaper had two comics I couldn’t resist.
The Garfield is funny even though it’s about a medical condition that isn’t at all funny—Alzheimer’s and it’s loss of memory as well as the eventual loss of all bodily functions. But if we can’t laugh a bit at life’s ironies and dark corners, then life wouldn’t be worth living.

The Non Sequitur points humorously at the premise in Prometheus that life on earth originated in an alien sprinkling of dna into our oceans. I’m a great believer in the existence of countless life forms in the universe besides our own. So why couldn’t the idea in Prometheus be as valid as any of the many religious theories that people now bow down to?

I just finished a most unusual novel by Ron Rash, The Cove. It’s set during the American involvement in WWI in backwoods North Carolina. It’s both a romance and a mystery. But it also points out the terrible treatment of citizens of German descent during that time, even worse than the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. The cove is a dark place with a huge granite ledge overhanging a scrabbly farm where Hank and Laurel live. The place is shunned by people from the nearby town of Mars Hill, believing it to be bewitched, that the purple birthmark on Laurel marks her as a witch. Hank has lost an arm in the war and finds it difficult to do farm chores. And into this mix stumbles a German musician who had been part of the orchestra aboard the huge German liner Vaterland that was docked in New York. When the U.S. entered the war, he and the crew had been taken into custody and put in an internment camp in North Carolina. He escapes and finds his way to the cove, where he pretends to be mute and illiterate. He stays to help Hank tend to the farm until the war ends when he can be free again. Most unusual, and I recommend it to any readers out there.

Open & Childhood

I’m watching U.S. Open coverage and it almost hurts my eyes to see what Tiger is doing—two rounds like the old Tiger and the last two rounds like some alien pussy cat. He has just gone +4 on the first three holes, and it looks like he could shoot eighty or ninety today. Ugly. So, instead, I’ll try not to look at him and watch the others, especially young Hoestler, who just made a miraculous par on the first hole. Amusing that this pairing, Jason Dufner and Bo Hossler, should have such obvious nicknames: Dufner, The Duffer, and Hossler, The Hustler. And does young Bo Hossler ever look like a potential hustler. And there will be the excitement of the final pairing with Graeme McDowell and Jim Furyk. Bring it on home, Jim.

I just found this in Peter Straub’s The Throat, and thought it too good not to pass on: “Either childhood is a lot more painful the second time around, or it’s just less bearable. None of us are as strong or as brave as the children we used to be.” I like that, but I’m not sure why I like it. Maybe it’s because when I look back at my childhood, live it a second time, it's painful with a pain I didn’t notice when I was living it. Or something like that.

Happy Fathers' Day, everyone.

Odds & Ends

Saturday and another full day of golf. Tiger and Jim Furyk and David Toms leading at minus one. It will be interesting to see which one blinks first. I’m guessing that Tiger will shoot another 69, and Jim and David probably two or three over. Will anyone else in the field make a move? I don’t think so. Can’t wait to see.

Republicans, those who are elected and those who elect them, all seem to be carping about Obama’s latest decree. Undoubtedly a political move, it allows Hispanic immigrants who were brought here young to remain. But it was also a humane move. The GOPers hate that they weren’t able to do it before Obama. Take that, Mitt.

The world economy has us all worried. What happens in Greece next week will have an enormous effect on the European economy, and next in that pyramid is the U.S. economy. As the value of the dollar shrinks, the value of gold goes up. Here we are, with the Canadian dollar way stronger than ours, with any number of other nations stronger in gross domestic product than the U.S. We’re still the best place to live, with the best living conditions of any other nation. But we’re slipping.

It’s Fathers’ Day tomorrow. So, tonight we’re going out to Red Lobster with son Mike and Staci. We’ll probably have a long wait for a table, but who cares. Time is the one commodity I can spend and spend, even though the spending gets quicker and quicker. I’ve still got a bunch in the bank. Happy Fathers’ Day to any father who might be reading this.

Tiger & Tonys

Wednesday morning and the sun is shining and the dumb doves are screwing in our arbor vitae trees. Get a room, I say.

We’re on the eve of the U.S. Open and look who Vegas has at 6-1 to win. Ah, the bandwagon. I’m guessing that the tv coverage will spike if Tiger can shoot a decent round on Thursday. Should be interesting to see how Phil and Bubba hold up under the pressure of their being together with the gallery of thousands following their every shot. The Olympic Club is without any ponds or out-of-bounds, but will have such ugly rough and cantilevered fairways. I’m betting that Tiger leaves the driver in the bag, maybe even in the trunk of his car, and hits 2-irons and 5-woods on almost every hole. He’s still the best with long irons, so he won’t care if he’s got 200 or more into every par-4 as long as he’s on the short grass. I remember the British Open in 2006 at Royal Liverpool when he hit driver only once and managed to win by two over Chris DiMarco, thirteen over Phil. He was the only player in the field who was never in a bunker. I can hardly wait for the first round even though he and Phil and Bubba will be well into their round before tv coverage.

Last Sunday, we watched three hours of the Tony Awards and enjoyed it a bunch. Neil Patrick Harris mc-ed for the third time and was very good. He was funny without being overbearing, and his opening number, “What If Life Were More Like Theater,” demonstrated his abilities as a singer and dancer, and his hanging upside down like Spider Man was hilarious. I was happy to see that The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess won for best musical revival. I still have the old 3-record album of the original Porgy and Bess I bought almost sixty years ago. I wonder what it would be worth to some old Gershwin memorabiliaist? How would one even find an old Gershwin memorabiliaist? But back to the Tonys. The three hours flew by. I especially liked the five or six musical numbers from the nominees for best musical. That’s classy. And the acceptance speeches were all brief and classy. The Oscars could learn a lot from the Tonys. For starters, they could hire Neil Patrick Harris to mc.

Prometheus

As an old science fiction fan, I was looking forward to seeing Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. And I wasn’t disappointed. Well, maybe a little disappointed in the plot but not the special effects. The plot seemed to ask more questions than it answered. The ship, though, was glorious. The opening five minutes showed a strange world of rushing water and alien crags and peaks. Then we see an albino humanoid standing on a ledge. He’s huge and muscularly sculpted. He opens a circular vial and drinks, then dies as his body is torn apart. He falls into the rushing water, his blood sending out what looks like dna spirals. The next scene is in Scotland, where a scientific team discovers a cave with drawings remarkably similar to other caves and cave drawings around the world, a tall figure pointing up to five circles above him. The scene shifts to the interior of the Prometheus, with David (Michael Fassbender), an android tending to the ship. As they approach their destination, he “wakes” the crew members from their suspended animation pods. David’s appearance is a copy of his hero, Albert Finney from Lawrence of Arabia. His voice is a soft caress as he speaks to the crew after they awaken from their two-year slumber. Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), tight-lipped and very square-shouldered, is in charge of the ship and crew. I had assumed that she was the one who battled the slimy creatures from Scott’s earlier work, Alien, the parallel to Sigourney Weaver’s character. Instead, it was Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) who is the pre-Weaver character. She and her partner/lover Dr. Charles Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) are the two who found the Scotland cave dwellings and who are driven to find answers to the origin of human life. Thus, the reason for Prometheus’ two-year voyage. They discover on the moon of an earth-like planet a huge dome which contains remnants of humanoids like the one in the opening scene as well as containers that seem to ooze when touched. We all want to shout, “Don’t touch it!” It’s all so science fictionally strange but so confusing. Are the humanoids responsible for the beginning of life on earth or are they planning to destroy the earth? Why is David apparently trying to thwart the efforts of the explorers? The ending left so many questions unanswered that you know we’re being set up for at least one sequel, maybe more. Good science fiction, weak story.

Beer & Dumb Doves

Miller Lite’s tv commercials make it sound like some brand new method for pouring its beer, a pop top can, the pop made with anything sharp and metallic to any part of the top of the can. Wow. What an innovation. We were doing the same thing over sixty years ago with a church key. And we didn’t need a beer company telling us how to do it.

After more than a month, our coyotes are back, three huge beasties, probably a mom and dad and a son or daughter. We watched one of them jump into the orange tree on our back neighbor’s yard. It wasn’t much of a jump since the trunk has branches within three or four feet of the ground, but a dove came screaming out with the coyote right behind. Dumb dove. Instead of flying up, it stayed low and that was all mister or misses coyote needed. A quick chomp to dispatch it. No more than half a minute later it was all gone, the whole dove--feet and feathers and all. And he/she didn’t share with his/her traveling companions. Life in the wild in Sun City West.

Glee

The final episode of this season’s Glee was called “Goodbye,” and it was as painful as that time we had to say goodbye to friends as we were leaving out nests, our schools, our hometowns to move on to other chapters of our lives. We all swear we’ll keep in touch, we’ll return for visits and reunions, we’ll call and correspond often. But we almost never do. On Glee, we have to say goodbye to the seniors—Rachel and Finn, Quinn, Kurt, Mercedes, Santana and Brittany, Mike, even Puckerman, who got a second chance to pass his geography final. All of them are going separate ways. Wow! Will I ever miss them, especially Rachel and Finn. Glee is an odd anomaly—a musical fairy tale that would seem doomed in a society most of whom scorn musicals. I call it a fairly tale because nowhere in the universe are there glee clubs with voices and dance moves like we see at McKinley High or at the regional and national competitions. I’m a Gleek because I love the characters and the music. I’m a Gleek because I admire the way this show has tackled social issues that need tackling—homosexuality, bullying, spousal abuse. This show has opened a lot of minds and changed a lot of opinions. In season one, the bullying of the glee club members was seen in the slushy cups the football team always threw in their faces. Kurt was especially the victim of homophobic bullies. But in “Goodbye,” the slushy cups contained red and white confetti as the school welcomed them back from winning the nationals. And Kurt was no longer a victim, as the school, his classmates, his father, and nearly all the Glee audience now accept him as he is. He tells Blaine, a junior, that he’ll always love him. When she’s asked if she’s gay, Brittany says she doesn’t know for sure, but she’s sure she loves Santana. And coach Shannon Bieste finally has the courage to leave her abusive husband. What a really good show this is, what a good way to overturn outdated attitudes. I’ll miss the graduating glee club members, but I’ll still have Artie and Blaine and Tina and others coming up, and Sue Sylvester and Coach Bieste and Will Schuster to make next season a musical feast. If you're not already a Gleek, you should tune in next season and get gleeful.

Snow White & the Huntsman

I’ll never again consider Disney’s Snow White as just another cute, animated tale of a beautiful young woman and her seven saviors. No. Hollywood’s Snow White and the Hunstman is now lodged in my mind like a popcorn husk. I’d hoped for much more from this latest version of the classic tale of good versus evil, but I was sadly disappointed. The sets were lavish and lovely—the nastiness of the Dark Forest, the sunset beauty of the fisher village, the cleverness of the Enchanted Forest with its tiny white nymphs and butterfly flowers, the darkness of Ravenna’s castle, and the muddy bleakness of the village nearby. But the story didn’t make much sense, Snow and the huntsman fleeing, Ravenna’s brother pursuing, the violence of the battle scenes with Snow riding forward like a second Joan of Arc. Charlize Theron, the lovely but wicked witch, kept screaming like a banshee, but she’d have been better off as the Monster for which she won an Oscar. They even had to screw with the mirror, having something gold drip down to form a thing standing before the queen, telling her she was no longer the fairest of them all. And Dopey, Sneezy, Sleepy, Bashful, Grumpy, Happy, and Doc, although dwarf-short, were nothing like the originals. No “Hi ho, Hi ho, it’s off to work we go.” When they had Snow and the huntsman strung up by their heels, it was instead, “Let’s leave ‘em and let ‘em die.” That should be the film's label, "Let's leave it and let it die." Most of the reviews were more positive than this one, but trust me, Snow and company aren’t worth going to see.

A cell phone joke from Larry (KarKnock2):

After a very busy day, a commuter settled down in her seat and closed her eyes as the train departed Grand Central Station for Connecticut. As the train rolled out of the station, the guy sitting next to her pulled out his cell phone and started talking in a loud voice: “Hi, sweetheart, it’s Eric, I’m on the train – yes, I know it’s the six-thirty and not the four-thirty but I had a long meeting – no, honey, not with that floozie from the accounts office, with the boss. No sweetheart, you’re the only one in my life – yes, I’m sure, cross my heart,” etc., etc. Fifteen minutes later, he was still talking loudly, when the young woman sitting next to him, who was obviously angered by his continuous diatribe, yelled at the top of her voice: “Hey, Eric, turn that stupid phone off and come back to bed!” Eric no longer uses his cell phone in public.

Time & Tiger

I read in this week’s Time Magazine that David Simon, CEO of Simon Property Group, made $44,000 an hour. That’s $733.33 a minute. That’s $12.22 a second. How can that be and, more importantly, why should that be? David Simon, don’t you feel a little silly? Shouldn’t you feel a little silly? With over 8% unemployment, with poverty all around, with children living without a home or proper nourishment, how can David Simon justify a salary of $137 million a year? And how can the GOP continue to say the top 1% shouldn’t have a tax increase? Come on, Tea Partiers and Mitt Romney, let’s get real.

Tiger had another magic moment Sunday afternoon, what Jack Nicklaus said was one of the greatest shots he’d ever seen. I think later Jack amended that to “the greatest shot he’d ever seen.” A dangerous pitch from deep rough to a downhill pin on the par-3 sixteenth, with water just past the pin . . . and it died into the cup for a most unlikely birdie to give him a one shot lead. Another Tiger moment to go with all the others. Now, he’s the favorite to win the U.S. Open in two weeks. And poor Rickie Fowler, who shot an 84 final round, now knows what it’s like to be in the eye of the Tiger.

The Memorial

We have a new brand of golf idiot on the PGA. Spectator, that is, not player. In the past, these fifteen-seconds-of-fame idiots would scream “You da man!” or “Get inna hole!” after a tee shot. Didn’t matter if it was on a par-3 or par-4. They just wanted to hear themselves when they replayed the coverage on their dvr. Can’t you just see them pridefully pointing out to friends, “That’s me right there. Yeah, that’s me.” On Saturday at the Memorial, on the par-3 16th, just after Levin’s tee shot, we heard a distinctive “W!” and after Sabbatini’s tee shot, “Mashed Potatoes!” See, they just had to distinguish themselves from the other idiots with their personalized shouts. What better way than “W!” and “Mashed potatoes!” I think such bumpkins should be escorted off the course. That would probably shut them up. Or not. After all, they’re idiots.

Tiger looked all right, although he apparently has either a case of flu or serious allergies. He just ran out of gas on the back nine. But it wasn’t his long game that let him down. He just isn’t putting the way he used to. I’ve noticed that his putting stance is slightly open where it used to be absolutely square. Thus, he’s missing short putts that were once automatic. Should be interesting today. I predict that Spencer Levin will fold like a cheap lawn chair. His swing is just too herky-jerky to hold up in the wind and Tiger’s shadow right in front of him. That leaves Sabbatini and Fowler as Tiger’s main competition. I see Tiger winning by two.

A friend sent me this charming video on You Tube. Thanks, Linda.

Saturday Sports

Another Saturday, another day of confinement, another day of tv sports to make the confinement bearable. First, the confinement. My medical issues, especially the unhealable leg, keeps me close to home. I used to wonder how any Arizonan could avoid sun tanning. Now I know. One simply stays indoors and never sees the sun. That’s me, the pale one. Second, the tv sports. Today I can feast on French Open tennis until 11:30, then a little LPGA until the Memorial comes on a noon I don’t have anyone to root for in the French Open. I just enjoy the instinctive, balletic moves of the players, especially Roger Federer. The ladies on the LPGA are fun to watch, especially Natalie Gulbis . . . for her golf swing. Then there’s Lexi Thompson with her youthful exuberance as she gallops around the course. I’m amazed by the distance these ladies hit the ball, no longer any Nancy Lopez slow finesse shots on tour, just high-speed smashes similar to the guys on the PGA. I still can figure out why Michelle Wie continues to disappoint. She should be like Tiger in his heyday, winning nearly everything she enters. That’s what Yani Tseng is doing. I was surprised when I looked back over my blog posts at how many times I’ve talked about Tiger and his on-again, off-again affair with golf, the media, and his public image. I love watching him play golf, just like so many of the viewing public, even the Tiger haters. The tv coverage spikes every time he plays. We all keep watching to see if he’ll ever regain his confidence enough to give Jack’s eighteen majors a run. I once admired him more than any other sports figure, and then he blew it. I think he may be the greatest athlete ever, not just in golf but in anything else he may have chosen. He’d have made a great wide receiver in the NFL, a great point guard in the NBA. And today, at the Memorial, he’s contending. I can’t wait to see what he’ll do today.

Milk Toast

For some reason last night, just before sleep, I thought about making French toast for breakfast. We haven’t had any French toast for decades, but there it was in my pre-sleep thoughts. Rosalie didn’t think we had any syrup but I assured her we must have. We did. The expiration date was July, 2005. Now I ask you, how can maple syrup ever expire? So we had French toast with really old syrup, and we haven’t yet expired from using it.

I find that the more blogs I write, the more likely I’ll repeat myself. I’ve written about meals in my youth before. So forgive my repetition. This breakfast of French toast reminded me of my youth, when nearly everyone in town had a waffle iron, and we all breakfasted on waffles or pancakes or French toast. That thought led me to the meal we all got whenever we were sick—milk toast, hot buttered milk poured over slices of toast. I remember it as being so good it was almost worth it to get sick. And the treatments for such maladies: the steam tents our mothers used to drape over the bed, held up by chair backs next to the bed, the Vicks Vaporub, the spoons of Castoria, the awful taste of Castor Oil. I remember a time when I was very young, only five or six, and my mother insisted I swallow a Castor Oil pill. I remember the pills as huge gelatin, squishy things, and I fought her tooth and nail, wailing and spitting it out time after time after time. I don’t remember who won but I suspect I did.

All these memories welling up in me. I remember my dad breaking up a slice of bread and putting it in a glass of milk. I remember how much he liked his steak with lots of suet. No wonder he died of a heart attack. I remember how he never complained about having to eat the chicken back while the rest of us dined on the good parts. I remember the June bugs that would attach themselves to the screen outside my bedroom window, how I’d take such pleasure in flicking them off with my finger. My youth seems to have been filled with summer insects—clouds of mosquitoes, the home-invading millers we’d catch in soapy pans, the crunchy black beetles that swarmed around the Mascot Theatre marquee. Those days of beetles and mosquitoes seem to be gone forever. Did that happen because of the DDT we used back then? Or was the air cleared by clouds of bats?

TV Update

We have to say goodbye to some shows, hello to a few others.

Harry’s Law got the boot after two seasons. I’m going to miss Kathy Bates and her crew. Some weeks were better than others, and I can understand just another lawyer show going under with viewers. We’ve had almost too many in the past forty years. And Harry was just another. The ratings were good, at least with the older set, but not good enough with the 18-49 crowd for NBC to continue it Harry defended a few that were intriguing and timely—the animal rights case where she tried to win “personhood” for the gorilla; the civil suit against the school to ban football because of the danger of concussion; the right to buy body parts instead of waiting on a list; spousal abuse; parental rights in the case of the Chinese couple who had lost their child to adoption. But on the negative side, there was far too much unrealistic banter between Harry and the district attorney, Roseanna Remmick (Jean Smart). No judge in the country would have allowed all the back and forth dissing between the two antagonists.

Most of the other cancelled shows I don’t really care about. I’m not going to miss Ashley Judd’s Missing. I don’t know how she thought that one-trick pony plot could survive more than one season. Awake put me to sleep because I didn’t want to work that hard figuring out the dual existence bit. Bye bye, Alcatraz. You should never have begun. Bye bye, River, and good riddance. Terra Nova is gone probably because of the production costs. Not even Spielberg’s money and influence could save it, and oh, those hokey dinosaurs. We sort of liked Unforgettable, but it too will soon be forgotten. I read somewhere that TNT might pick it up for renewal. I hope so. I enjoy watching Poppy Montgomery rushing around in those tight T’s.

Then there’s Brenda Leigh Johnson. She and The Closer will conclude after six more episodes. I’ll really miss her. The Closer may just be my all-time favorite show. Kyra Sedgwick is more Brenda Leigh than Kyra. I wonder how much of the character was written and how much was simply Kyra. I guess I won’t know until I see Kyra Sedgwick in some other role. She’s in the same boat as Ray Romano, who will always be remembered as the Ray we all loved. But then, he became a different Romano for his role on Men of a Certain Age.

Hooray for the return of So You Think You Can Dance. They’re still auditioning, but even their auditions are far better and classier than what we get from its fellow talent show, American Idol. The permanent judges, Nigel Lythgoe and Mary Murphy, are so much more knowledgeable about dance than the Idol judges are about music. And they don’t showcase stupid audition performances like we see too often on Idol. The background stories about auditioners are interesting, the dance is often unusual even though many don’t make the cut to Las Vegas, and the selection process allows talented dancers to show what they can do in the choreography session. Last night, two twin brothers had their fifteen minutes of fame but were let go because they were over the age limit. But that fifteen minutes will win them dance jobs somewhere. And the circus performer who danced with the huge aluminum hoop was fabulous but had to be let go because he didn’t demonstrate enough dance technique. The brother and sister who had only six weeks earlier suffered a near-fatal auto accident both made it to Vegas. Amazing. The brother was pronounced dead when he arrived at the hospital. But he survived, and only six weeks later he won a ticket to the big show. Amazing. And who would I rather watch and listen to—Ryan Seacrest or Cat Deeley? No contest.

What to Expect

What to Expect When You’re Expecting, second half funny, first half not so. I don’t know what I expected when we went to see this movie, probably another bodily-function comedy, this time centered on breast feeding and pregnancy instead of the usual anal/penile wit. Well, it was that in a lot of ways related to pregnancy and childbearing/rearing—hurling, farting, water-breaking, hemorrhoids, boob aches, wetting oneself, circumcision pros and cons. But it wound up being more than just that, genuinely funny here and there. And we weren’t subjected to any of the headboard banging and butt pumping of so many recent flicks. There were six loosely connected storylines, five couples and the group of baby-walking men led by Chris Rock with his four little ones which included the funniest little stumbler named Shannon. Jennifer Lopez and her husband couldn’t conceive, so they adopted a boy from Ethiopia. Jules (Cameron Diaz) and Evan (Matthew Morrison), she a weight-loss tv guru and he a dance show partner of Jules, get pregnant but argue about circumcision, she yes, he no. Cooper senior (Dennis Quaid), a famous ex-race car driver, and his perfect young wife (Brooklyn Decker) are having twins, once again one-upping Cooper junior and his wife Wendy (Elizabeth Banks). Wendy owns a shop promoting breast feeding and Gary (Ben Falcone) starred in Jules’ Biggest Loser show. The fifth plot strand has Rosie (Anna Kendrick) and Marco (Chace Crawford), competing food truck operators, accidentally conceiving after a one-time bang on the hood of her Beetle. They stay together until she has a miscarriage, then go their separate ways until the inevitable reunion at show’s end. All in all, a rather forgettable flick, cliché-filled and totally unrealistic, but with enough chuckles and outright laughs to fill out an otherwise empty afternoon.

Memorial Day

Memorial Day, 2012. This is the day to honor our war dead as well as all those people we knew and loved who went before us. we should really honor our war dead on more than one day a year. Three hundred and sixty-five would be better. When I was growing up, I think it was much more a day to remember the dead, any dead regardless of whether it was from military service or natural causes. Back then, our little town had only two wars on which to look back, WWI and II, and we must not have had many who died in either war, at least none that I remember. And what will we be doing this Memorial Day? Seeing a movie and a D-Backs baseball game. I don’t much believe in visiting cemeteries and examining granite headstones. Not that that’s a bad thing. I just don’t believe any of the dead hang around their gravesites. They’re simply not there. I believe the dead live on in their closest living relatives. Not exactly reincarnation, but something like that. If there’s a psychic connection between the living and the dead, then it would have to be with a relative, a son or daughter, most likely, but any other relative if no son or daughter is around. Whitman echoed Emerson’s belief in the Over-soul and envisioned a vast spiritual sea from which we are taken at birth for our brief stay here, then returned to that Over-soul when we die. All of life is connected. Sort of a spiritual Facebook.

Blogging, Rat Tail, and Charlie

I’ve been tinkering with this blog, and it just keeps getting more and more complicated. I wanted to change my profile photo to something closer to my present self. The one I’d been using was me from nearly twenty-five years ago. The one I switched to is only five years ago—me a little fatter, a lot grayer, and much older. I don’t have anything more recent that I’d care to share with my viewers. That would be scary old. I finally figured out how to update the photo, but it took forever. And I’ve switched the blog template to this darker background with white text. I like it a lot better than the one I started with. Since my medical problems have kept me from golfing, I now have way too many hours to kill. I now realize how much of my life was spent on golf courses. If I didn’t have this blog to play with, I’d go crazy. Rosalie thinks I’m crazy because I spend so much time playing with it, the blog, that is. I’m too old to play with anything else.

Here’s an updated picture of the Rat Tail cactus that’s taken over our back patio. This has to be the oddest plant I’ve ever seen. It looks like Medusa’s head hanging down over the edges of the pot. It’s also known as a valladia squamulosa.

Yesterday, I went to 4-Paws to see if Charlie’s sibling was still there. He was. And on closer inspection he looked like an absolute twin of Charlie, same long body, small head, exact same coloring. I think if I’d had a pet carrier with me I might have brought him home with me. But the lady there told me someone was picking him up later in the day. Ah well, another male might have been more than Charlie could take, even if he was his twin.

Valley Delight

Today in Sun City West was truly wonderful, 87° with a light breeze. That’s twelve degrees below normal, and we compared nicely ro those summer havens up north—in the nineties across most of the northern tier, 91° in Minneapolis, 96° in Chicago. I hope they’re all cooking. All those snow birds who are compelled to fly “home” to plant their gardens don’t know what they’re missing. But it’s nice to have them gone. Our streets are relatively safe now and we can actually get seated at Red Lobster or Outback without a thirty minute delay.

This morning I saw my first quail family in our backyard, mom and dad and about a dozen little walnuts scurrying along behind. This is really late for my first sighting. In the past, the families started trouping through in mid-April. I wonder what’s going on. Maybe they’re practicing birth control, or maybe all the males, like their human counterparts, are suffering from ED. Or maybe I just haven’t been as observant as I once was. Ever since we had our arbor vitae trees trimmed up we’ve had less wildlife. Much fewer quail and rabbits, no lizards to be found, and I haven’t seen a coyote for more than a month. But the doves are still plentiful, cooing and screwing like crazy.

I just finished reading C.J. Box’s latest Joe Pickett novel, Force of Nature. This one was more about his old falconer friend, Nate Romanowski, than Joe, and it was more violent than any of the previous in the series. Nate is being pursued by an old colleague, a truly vicious man who’s killing off any of his Special Forces team who might know a terrible secret from 1999. And Nate is hunting him down to keep him from killing Joe and his family. And it was much too brutal for my taste. I hope the author decides to go back to Joe Pickett and his battles with one crooked sheriff or another.

Medical Update

My medical woes continue, but I’m still on the right side of the grass. It’s like I’m trying to set some sort of record for the most and most diverse medical conditions. Three weeks ago I woke up with a backache on my left side, a little painful but livable. After two days it had migrated upward to my left shoulder, then to the center of my back and up to my neck. Migrating. What’s that all about? Then last Sunday it had moved to the left side of my neck right where neck and shoulder connect. It was painful enough that I had to get up in the middle of the night and sit upright till morning. Pain. So I went to the Same Day Care clinic to see what they could do. I was told after a brief examination that it was probably tense muscles. Well, yeah, tense because I couldn’t move my head in any direction, right or left, up or down. The doctor gave me a prescription for a muscle relaxant. I took a pill that night, woke up like a drunk and stumbled into the bathroom dizzy as a tornado. The next day I took another and went with Rosalie to a movie. She almost had to carry me from the car I was so dizzy and unsteady. That was the last muscle relaxant I took. I tried Icy Hot stuff, I tried a heating pad. Neither had any effect. The neck pain decided to slide to the right and occupy the right side of my neck, even more painful than before. Two hydrocodons later, the pain was manageable until morning. At which time, I remembered my episode with fibromyalgia in both shoulders a year or two ago. So I did a web search and found that the muscle pain of fibromyalgia tends to come and go and can move to ever more exciting locations in the body. Ah ha. And I found that there’s no explanation for fibromyalgia and no cure, just treat it with pain pills and wait for it to exit, sort of like an episode of gout, another pain I’ve had in my catalogue of ills. All right. Back to my record-breaking list. In the last nine years, I’ve had approximately thirty surgical excisions of squamous-cell cancer on my two calves, from knees to ankles. An abdominal aortic aneurism was discovered when we went to an annual health checkup, a condition I have checked twice a year. Sometime about six years ago, my blood showed an abnormality in the red corpuscles. So I went to a hematologist to see what the problem was. She took a bone marrow sample from my hip and told me I had a condition called myelodisplasia, a kind of mini-leukemia. Okay. So now I have my blood drawn and examined twice a year to see that it’s not getting worse. Now for the skin conditions. About four years ago, I was visited by psoriasis on my calves, from just below the knees to the ankles. And my dermatologist also told me I had seborrheic dermatitis on scalp, forehead, ears, and nose. Wonderful. And rosacia on my left cheek. Wonderful. All right, now, the list: squamous cancer, gout, abdominal aortic aneurism, myelodisplasia, Valley fever, blocked renal artery requiring a stent, a radiation wound which is still not healed after two and a half years of visits to the wound center, fibromyalgia, seborrheic dermatitis, psoriasis, and rosacia. That’s my list. Do I win? I guess I should ask, do I lose?

American Idol

Another Idol has come and gone. Good. In the past I’ve complained about AI, about the waving hands in the front row, the inane and repetitive comments from the judges, the audience screams during a performance, Ryan Seacrest’s phony bologna smile, the tasteless outfits worn by the judges (especially Randy’s), and Randy’s constant “Yo, dog” and “He/she could sing the phone book.” Let’s see, that just about covers it. Last night, the Season 11 winner was announced, PROCLAIMED! (in caps): Phillip Phillips, he of the Sting vocalizing. And Jessica Sanchez was runner-up. Either would have been a deserving winner; both are extremely talented, probably more so than nearly all other contestants from eleven seasons except for Carrie Underwood, Adam Lambert, or Jennifer Hudson. Jessica took on Whitney Houston again last night with her rendition of “I Will Always Love You,” and she did herself proud. Hard to believe she’s only sixteen. What’s different about Idol now compared to Idol then: the sets and costumes. The production details for performances has evolved from simple to mind-boggling light shows; the wardrobes for performers have gone from torn jeans and T-shirts to Pierre Cardin and Georgio Armani gowns and suits. Seacrest informed us that 132 millions votes were cast to decide this year’s winner. Amazing. Can’t you just imagine about a million little girls out there in tv land, dialing and dialing and dialing up to a hundred times apiece? Amazing. But I’m certainly glad it’s over for another year.

Best Exotic Hotel

We just saw The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and are happy we did. The humor was charming and genuine. We joined the audience in laughing at silly jokes and situations, but it was refreshing compared to the frozen-smile humor of too many current comedies like Bridesmaids, The 5-Year Engagement and The Sitter, movies that rely too much on bodily functions. I’m not suggesting that these movies are bad. Just too raunchy for my taste. It’s the same with tv’s Two-and-a-Half Men, the humor of which is based almost entirely on masturbation, orgasms, flatulence, and defecation. In other words, toilet humor. I’m no prude, but surely there must be other things about the human condition that are funny. Graham tells a really interested Madge that he’s gay. She looks at him, pauses, then, “You don’t mean . . . happy?” Madge asks Norman, “Aren’t you afraid of having sex at your age?” He thinks about it, then replies, “If she dies, she dies.” Norman fears he’ll be unable to perform for his date with Judith. He buys some Viagra at a local apothecary. Judith later tells Madge after a very successful tryst, “I switched his pills to aspirin without him knowing it.” Norman is later seen dancing happily in the shower. Dev Patel (yes, the same as the Dev Patel who starred in Slumdog Millionaire) owns a run-down, dying hotel in Jaipur, India. He builds a website to lure retirees to his hotel, collecting seven disparate men and women from England looking for an economical retirement location. What they find is something less than what was promised. Graham tells his fellows that what he most likes about India is the assault on the senses—the smells, colors, tastes, sounds. And we get all that except for the smells. This is a Disney Land India, more beautiful, friendly, happy, and progressive than it really is. Its poverty and despair are never seen here. But who cares? As Sonny says, “Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, then it’s not the end.” And who could ever pass up a film with Dame Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Tom Willkinson, and Bill Nighy? The story is simple and predictable, but that doesn’t prevent the audience from feeling good at the closing credits.

Benefit of the Doubt

The eighth Jesse Stone movie, Benefit of the Doubt, was on the tube last night. I loved the first seven in the series but was disappointed in this one. Tom Selleck and Michael Brandman co-wrote it, with Brandman probably supplying the plot and Selleck the character. Just as Robert Urich became Spenser, Selleck has become Jesse Stone, the laconic, dark drinker of black coffee and Johnny Walker Red. This time, though, I got the feeling they were stretching for the Parker style and not quite reaching it. For example, after the new chief and one of his deputies are killed in an auto explosion, everyone keeps saying, “You didn’t like him, did you, Jesse?” to which Jesse replies, “I don’t believe I ever said that.” Four times he’s asked and four times he replies with the same words. Parker might have gone for two times, but never four. In fact, almost all the dialog is short and repetitive, but not quite up to Parker’s standards. What can I say about the plot? Well, there wasn’t much plot and much of what there was didn’t make any sense. After the double killing, Jesse is temporarily made chief again. He goes to the police station but has to break in because they’ve changed the locks and the security code. He discovers a day-calendar sheet for April 24 with a cryptic series of letters and numbers. Why did he assume it was a clue into the death of the chief? Neither the viewer nor anyone else in Paradise knows. Rose and Suit have resigned from the force and both make only brief appearances. And Jesse seems to be the only one on the force. Paradise is a large enough city that there would be at least fifteen officers serving, but not a single one is ever seen after Jesse takes over as chief. Someone has been following Jesse for several days, following in a car almost riding Jesse’s bumper. Jesse pulls him over and tells him not to follow him anymore. In the final scene, it’s revealed that the man was a hit man with a contract on Jesse. Hasty Hathaway, the obnoxious auto dealer who had originally hired Jesse, is really the boss of Gino Fish, one of the biggest fish in the Boston racketeering pool. When Jesse seems to be getting close to the truth, Hasty takes his ill-gotten gains, what looks like nearly a million, and flees by speedboat. Jesse kills the hit man and is about to take Hasty, but Hasty gets away. End of movie. It felt too much like a series cliff-hanger looking forward to the next episode. I don’t think there’ll be another episode, and if there is, it had better be better than this one.

The good news about Benefit of the Doubt is that ex-wife Jen is nowhere around and that Reggie, the sad-eyed retriever, is still trying to win Jesse’s love.

Mockingjay

My Stories (Anyone interested in reading any of my stories, click here.)

I just finished Mockingjay, the third in the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. I don't think I've ever read anything quite like this trilogy, especially Mockingjay. I'm an old science fiction fan, and I've read nearly every dystopian novel out there. But not even Orwell's 1984 is as dark as this Panem world Collins has created. She portrays the citizens of the Capitol as pampered, self-centered, and thoughtless; the leaders, especially President Snow, as cruel and power-hungry and insensitive. And all the action scenes during the games and the battles in Mockingjay are so very bloody and awful. I don't know why so many young adult readers have been so captivated by these books, but they certainly have been. I guess they admire the few who are admirable--Katniss and Peeta and Gale--and in them they find hope for the future of the United States as well as the future of the fictional Panem. If you haven't yet read this trilogy, you should. It's a remarkable story.

Obesity

My Stories (Anyone interested in reading any of my stories, click here.)

How appropriate is this Non Sequitur?




I keep thinking about all the airline seats that won’t accommodate today’s fat butts.

Or the disabled licenses given out to people too fat to walk. Or this guy in his fat guy boat.

I remember that old bully taunt from my youth, “Fatty Fatty, two-by-four, couldn’t get through the kitchen door!” A variation was “bathroom door.” I guess “bathroom door” would be more appropriate than “kitchen door,” since a fat person who couldn’t get through the kitchen door would probably lose weight, whereas one who couldn’t get through the bathroom door would probably gain, maybe not fat but something I’d rather not even think about. I know it’s not fair, but every time I see a really obese person riding in a motorized shopping cart or sitting in a restaurant stuffing a fat face, I get angry. I’m mad that they let it happen because of laziness or gluttony. I know, I know, it’s not that simple. There are socio-economic factors involved. Poor people tend to consume cheaper, fattier foods. But then I see way too many people, both poor and rich, just salivating over Big Macs and their ilk, burgers that keep getting bigger and bigger, so big now that I don’t see how anyone can get a mouth around one. We’re becoming a nation of out-of-shape fatties, sedentarily slouched in front of the tube, munching on chips and dip, order-in pizza, burgers and fries and shakes, and anything else that strikes our salivating fancy. And if we don’t somehow stem this epidemic, we could someday be a fat fallen nation.