Tiger

Sunday with Colonial golf in Texas, an afternoon Diamondback game, maybe a little NBA action this evening. I wonder how many Sunday hours I’ve spent in my life watching Sunday sports. Too many even to guess at. Tiger’s not playing this weekend, so I watch the action with one eye only. Boo Weekly seems bound to win, but he has a lot of pursuers. Matt Kuchar is near the top and he seems likeable, though the boys in the tower say he has a volcanic temper. How can anyone with such a cherubic smile be prone to anger? Which lead me back to Tiger. So many people (both PGA players as well as a bunch of old farts here in Sun City West) are now saying he’s a bad person and no one likes him. He’s too withdrawn, they say, too unfriendly. He spits all the time on camera and should be penalized for it. He shows fits of anger and swears on camera. He plays mind games on fellow competitors (hear that, Sergio?). He cheats and tourney officials let him get by with it (for example, the cheatful drop on 15 in this year’s Masters, the cheatful drop after hitting into the water on 15 in this year’s Players). He gets too much on-and off-camera coverage. He’s a lecherous womanizer. Let me speak to those charges. Hogan was called “the wee icemon” because he never acknowledges the people he was playing with. Tommy Bolt (Lightning Bolt) would often wrap a club around a tree when anything went wrong. Sergio has been seen to slam a club into the ground after a bad shot. Nearly every golfer, pro or amateur, has dropped a few F-bombs during the course of a round at this infernal game. Many of the young players spit during around but the camera doesn’t see them because the cameras are always on Tiger. Sam Snead, according to those who knew him, was a notorious golf shark who not only player mind games but would also cheat a bit when he was playing with buddies. The omnipresent camera that follows Tiger, the many many articles written about Tiger aren’t of Tiger’s doing. It’s just that I and most other golf addicts want to see him and read about him. As for the womanizing, I wonder how many tour players, on the road for much of each year, have dallied with some sexy golf groupie. I’ve heard rumors that the hallowed and haloed Arnold Palmer dallied a bit in his youth. I realize I’ve sometimes (often) been too ardent in my admiration for Tiger. I know that admiration took a big hit on that fateful November night a few years ago. But I still admire him for the golf marvels he produces. And I hope I live long enough to see him win that 19th major.

Movie Chatter

A word or two about movies. I haven’t yet seen Gatsby and I’m not sure I want to. I’d hate to have this glitzy 3-D version spoil one of my favorite novels. I love Leonardo DiCaprio and I’m sure he makes an admirable Jay, but from what I’ve seen of the previews, there seems to be a too Dolbyish score and too much confetti flying at the viewer. That’s too much emphasis on the effects than on The Great Gatsy I know. And speaking of ear-shattering Dolby sound (which seems to be the case with every action flick that comes out), I just saw Star Trek, Into Darkness and felt like my head was exploding along with the exploding cities and space ships, the smashing of fists into faces (and no one seemed to be very seriously injured by these gargantuan blows). For Trekies, this was a wonderful film for renewing our acquaintance with the young Captain Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Bones, Uhura, and Sulu. Even an aging Leonard Nimoy made a brief appearance. And the futuristic gadgetry on the Enterprise and the smaller ships was wonderful, as were the digitized views of 23rd century cities. But the story was too confusing with too many unanswered questions, the sound effects too deafening, too much hand-to-hand combat. I’d give it 3½ stars instead of the 5 most other critics are giving it. Now, I guess I’ll go see what Iron Man 3 is doing, compare its special effects to Star Trek, watch Gweneth Paltro do her stuff. Hell, I’d go just to watch her whether it was sci-fi or country or a little Shakespeare stuff.

Teeth & Time

It's been nearly two years now that I've been fighting the good (or bad) fight with my teeth. Somewhere in mid-2011 I had three Mexican crowns (no, not Mexican monarchs, Mexican dental crowns) all decide to break off at the gum line, all in one month. Instead of implants I decided to go with a partial upper plate. Didn't work but it cost a bundle. Went to a different dentist who went "tsk tsk" and told me it was a bad decision. So he had an oral surrgeon pull five uppers for an exorbitant $1250. Then a six month wait for the gums to settle for a more complete upper plate and a final partial upper plate for aother exorbitant amount. Hated the plate. Went to Midwestern Dental University to see what they could do: extract the remaining upper teeth and five lower teeth and build two temporary plates, a complete upper and a partial lower. Then another six months for the gums to recede. All this time I have two temporary plates that bounced all over in my mouth when I chewed. And now, finally, I have only three more weeks until my permanent plates come back from the lab. Then I should have a mouthful of teeth that actually work. And all for a mere $4,000. Yikes! I've put over $12,000 into a reconstructed chew. The bad news? The twelve grand. The good news? I've lost about 25 pounds because I had to chew so slowly that I was always full after half a meal. What a way to lose weight.

Thomas Wolfe said you can't go home again. I say you can go home again as long as you're not looking for what was once there, like youth and youthful dreams and old romances.

Back Yard News

It’s a lovely Sunday morning in the Valley. The day is clear with a slight breeze, temps in the mid-seventies. The dumb doves seem to be everywhere, who-who-who-whooing to each other, wings slapping loudly as they fight for position in the arbor vitae or engage in their seemingly endless sexual activities. The other morning I watched a female browsing for juuust the right sticks for a hastily made nest. I wonder how many nestings and egg layings they do in the course of a year. Apparently , with all the sexual activity, they just go from one hatch to another. Judging from the many doves we have in our neighborhood they must raise thirty or forty a year. A seldom seen road runner came skulking through our yard a bit ago, but no Wile E. Coyote giving chase. Curious how few coyotes come through our yard anymore. We used to have three large siblings browse through every week or so, but I haven’t seen them for several months. I read an article about a coyote pup that ran headlong into a jumping cholla. Oh, what a mess he found. Jumping cholla, or teddy bear cholla, are an infernal cactus that look as innocent as a teddy bear, but when you inadvertently brush up against one, its little arms seem to jump out at you and attach to foot or leg, and when you try to detach it with hand, it then sinks its little innocent barbs into the hand. And then the other hand when you try to rid yourself of it. The coyote pup would have died a painful death if not for two workers at the golf course that found him. They held him down and used a pair of pliers to extricate the pup, then gave him back to a wary mom. One lucky lad. The other thing curiously absent are the quail families coming and going. We used to see countless parents with as many as twenty little acorn babies scurrying by. But so far, none this year. The road runner couldn’t possibly account for their absence, although they can eat baby quail like popcorn. I haven’t seen the cardinal for a while, but I still hear him sing now and then. And the yellow monarch that hung around for several weeks is now gone. They usually migrate in great social clouds, but this one seemed to be too independent for that. She finally flew the coop north to join her fellow kings and queens, in time to lay her eggs that will hatch and become caterpillars that munch on milkweed before chrysalising to repeat the whole process. Such a nice circle of life. We should all be as lucky as monarchs (both kings and queens as well as flutterbys).

Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson again, simply because she’s such a fascinating read. In a front cover blurb for When Will There Be Good News? Stephen King says it succinctly and accurately: “As a reader I was charmed. As a novelist, I was staggered by Atkinson’s narrative wizardry.” That’s high praise from the king of horror, who himself often engages in narrative sleight of hand. Yes, her narrative wizardry, her legerdemain, her “now you see it, now you don’t.” She keeps the reader on his toes as she leads him back and forth in time, holding up an event and then examining it from different points of view, showing it to us before and after, then snatching it away to begin another chapter in another time with a new set of characters. She tends to rely too much on coincidence, but as Jackson Brodie says, “A coincidence is just an explanation waiting to happen.” She coincidentally hooks diverse characters into her plots, not finalizing their connections until the very end, and though the reader notices the unlikeliness of the connections, he doesn’t care because of the serendipitous plot endings. She inserts little mental asides in parentheses, sometimes in brackets, some just bare, some in italics and some in quote marks. I’ve quit trying to figure out what the different methods signify. But the real skill, the real charm, lies in the characters. They think and say and do things that knock me out with their unexpectedness. Reggie, a tough little sixteen-year-old, is a good example. She remembers waving goodbye to her “mum,” who was going on holiday, tragically drowning in a hotel pool. The memory of that farewell was “murky, half made-up, with the missing bits filled in. Really, every time a person said goodbye to another person, they should pay attention, just in case it was the last time. First things were good, last things not so much.” She describes her Latin tutor: “Ms. MacDonald was in her fifties, but she had never been young. When she was a teacher at the school, she looked as if she ironed herself every morning and had never betrayed a trace of irrational behavior (quite the opposite), but now not only had she embraced a crazy religion but she dressed as if she were one step away from being a bag lady, and her house was two steps beyond squalid.” Later, she’s considering death and God’s involvement: “Was there a kind of lottery (Reggie imagined a raffle) where God picked out your chosen method of going—‘Heart attack for him, cancer for her, let’s see, have we had a terrible car crash yet this month?’ Not that Reggie believed in God, but it was interesting sometimes to imagine. Did God get out of bed one morning and draw back the curtains (Reggie’s imaginary God led a very domesticated life) and think, ‘A drowning in a hotel swimming pool today, I fancy. We haven’t had that one in a while.’ ” Dr. Joanna Hunter also considers God, and says something so true to my heart, so much as I’ve always believed, I have to mention it. “Joanna didn’t believe in God, how could she, but she believed in the existence of the soul, believed indeed in the transference of the soul, and although she wouldn’t have stood up at a scientific conference and declared it, she also believed that she carried the souls of her dead family inside her and one day the baby would do the same for her. Just because you were a rational and skeptical atheist didn’t mean that you didn’t have to get through every day the best way you could.” Louise Monroe, a detective who is attracted to the ex-cop Jackson Brodie, is one tough cookie, and considers this about criminals and the death penalty: “Sometimes Louise hankered after the days when prisoners were made to walk endlessly on treadmills or turn crank handles. Pedophiles, murderers, rapists, should they really be making books ? If it were up to Louise, she would put the lot of them down.” As I’ve said, nearly everything is quotable. I hope I live long enough to read everything Kate Atkinson writes, long enough to continue quoting her.

The Bates Motel

The finale of The Bates Motel next week, and what an odd but fascinating series it’s been so far. That dreadful (in all meanings of the word) house on the hill, the seedy motel below, Norma Bates and Norman Bates sharing the house (and also the bed), blood and pot just everywhere. The viewer is seeing these people with the plot of Psycho in the back of his mind, seeing the traces of madness in young Norman, remembering the desiccated body of Norma in that rocking chair, the “shriek shriek” of the screaming violins as Norman pulls the shower curtain aside to reveal a wet and screaming Janet Leigh just before Norman’s knife gets her. And now we’re seeing how it all began. Vera Farmiga, as Norma, will be nominated for an Emma for what she does with this character. And she deserves to win it. She’s sexy, tormented, obsessive, possessive, and strong enough and brutal enough to kill anyone who gets in her way. Then there’s Freddie Highmore as Norman, a sweet young teenager who sometimes blacks out in times of crisis, like when he bops his abusive father in the head with a heavy blender receptacle as the father was knocking Norma around the kitchen, or when he bops Keith Summers in the head when Summers (the former owner of the motel) is about to rape Norma, who then stabs and kills Summers when he comes to. Norman has the face of an angel with a hint evil lurking in the eyes. He loves his mother . . . maybe too much. She loves her son . . . maybe too much. His school chum Emma Decody trails after Norman like a dog, hauling along with her the oxygen tank she needs to stay alive (and we can see that somewhere in the future she’ll lose the tank or have it taken from her). Her father teaches Norman the art of taxidermy. And what does that suggest about Norma when she dies? Right. Yikes! All this against the background of White Pine Bay, Oregon, with secrets everywhere—an unidentified drug lord, a huge field of marijuana, a sex ring and captive Oriental girls, a nasty man who rents room 9 but is there really to find money left behind by Keith Summers. It would be just another horror series except for Vera Farmiga. She makes it much more than that.

Final Idol & Mud

Down to the final two on American Idol, Kree and Candice. Either one would be a deserving winner. Even Angie, who was voted off on Wednesday, would have been an acceptable choice. When the final three sang their third song, Candice got a huge advantage over the other two when she was given “Somewhere” from West Side Story. Any of the three would have received a standing O with that song. I hate most of the songs that get selected. Just too much peripheral noise—audience hooting, too many backup singers, too many whanging guitars. And unless you’re familiar with the song, know the lyrics, you can’t understand what they’re singing. Somewhere along the way, especially in the last three or four weeks, the contestants should all be required to sing the same song, a cappella—same song, no backup singers, no orchestra, nada. Just their voices with nowhere to hide. I’d like to see what they’d do with “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?”, Alan and Marilyn Bergman’s wonderful, understandable lyrics. That would separate the men from the boys, the women from the girls, the real singers from the pretenders.
A few words about Mud. It’s gray, tan, or black, sometimes orange, like the stuff we used to call gumbo in my South Dakota youth—slippery as a bed of eels, sticky as super glue, sometimes deep enough to capture a loose shoe, deep enough on some back-country prairie road after a summer shower to bring my dad’s car to a tire-spinning halt until a service truck could winch it free. Ah, those were the days. But enough of the muck of my early years. My father never forgave me for my indiscretion, “borrowing” his car for an ill advised country excursion. No, the Mud I’m referring to is the film starring Matthew McConaughey as Mud, an Arkansas down-and-outer who has taken refuge in a boat that got hung up in the trees after a Mississippi River flood. Two teenage boys (Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland), Ellis and Neckbone (Where but in Arkansas would someone name a boy “Neckbone”?) discover the boat and claim it as their own. Then they meet Mud, who sets them straight about ownership. The three become friends with Ellis and Neckbone bringing provisions for Mud, mostly cans of Beanie Weenies. Mud is there on the island waiting to hear from the Love of His Life, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), trying to evade a band of bounty hunters hired by King (Joe Don Baker) because Mud has killed one of his sons, killed the man because he was beating on Juniper. Now Mud is waiting for Juniper to join him. He, with help from Ellis and Neckbone, bring the boat down and make it seaworthy again. Simple plot, fairly forgettable movie. But McConaughey makes it worth seeing. And Tye Sheridan makes it worth seeing. We’ll be seeing a lot more of young Mr. Sheridan.

Doves

When I was young and growing up in South Dakota, one of the most delightfully mournful summer sounds was the early morning, late evening cooing of doves. It was a soothing balm in the evening after the excitement of all-day youthful games, in the morning a sound to draw me up from the deep sleep of innocence. Yes, I was an innocent. What else could one be in mid-twentieth century South Dakota with parents who paid attention to my comings and goings, who loved me enough to keep me morally straight?

Now I’m old and living in Arizona, surrounded by thousands (what seems like millions) of white wing doves, all of which coo their little dove hearts out morning noon and night. Their omniaudience goes on from dawn to well after sundown—“Who who kuh whooo, who who kuh whooo,” saying to each other something about their sexual availability. And they seem to engage in that activity all day long, humping and whomping their wings in their frenzy to continue the species. The females then build their little stick nests in whatever tree is available, the male long gone after he’s fulfilled his coital duty. Yesterday we watched a female sitting on our neighbor’s fence, alternately fanning her wings upward, then lifting her butt in the air with tail feathers spread out, seeming to say in dove fashion, “Here I am, boys. Come and take me.” She did this for three or four minutes with no takers. She finally gave up and flew away, looking for more fertile territory. What was once a soothing sound is now enough to drive us crazy.

But we also noticed a rare visitor to our tall arbor vitae, a pair of cardinals, bright red against the green of the trees, with songs that took us back to upstate New York and younger, doveless times.

Kate Atkinson

I’ve recently discovered the joy of reading Kate Atkinson. I don’t quite know what to say about her, but here goes. I’ve never read anyone who could so capture a reader. No one. Not Fitzgerald, not Hemingway, not any of my favorite mystery writers, not Ed McBain or Lawrence Block. Nearly everything she writes is quotable. And any writer who reads her would probably like to smack her in the chops because they’re so jealous of her ability with words. I know I would. Like to smack her, that is. I just finished Case Histories, the first in a series of mysteries set in the English countryside, and am now in the middle of the second, One Good Turn. Her style is agonizingly difficult, but well worth the effort. She includes so many characters, each of which gets her full attention both past and present, with lots of tiny flashbacks in the middle of a character’s ruminations, with little parenthetical thoughts sprinkled in, and events seen from multiple viewpoints. Somehow, she manages to bring these countless threads together by novel’s end, and we breathe a sigh of relief that we can now see the entire fabric.

Jackson Brodie, a private investigator, is the main character in this series of mysteries—mid-forties, a bit glum, but very likeable The following quotation is typical Jackson Brodie, this from Case Histories:

Jackson started to worry about being late. On the way back to the car park he had to fight his way against a herd of foreign-language students, all entirely oblivious to the existence of anyone else on the planet except other adolescents. Cambridge in summer, invaded by a combination of tourists and foreign teenagers, all of whom were put on earth to loiter, was Jackson’s idea of hell. The language students all seemed to be dressed in combats, in khaki and camouflage, as if there were a war going on and they were the troops (God help us if that were the case). And the bikes, why did people think bikes were a good thing? Why were cyclists so smug? Why did cyclists ride on pavements when there were perfectly good cycle lanes? And who thought it was a good idea to rent bicycles to Italian adolescent language students? If hell did exist, which Jackson was sure it did, it would be governed by a committee of fifteen-year-old Italian boys on bikes.

Another, from One Good Turn. Gloria’s husband Graham has had a massive stroke during a bit of S-M with a hooker and is now lying comatose in a hospital bed. Gloria is there, not so much to comfort him as to hurry him on his way.

Gloria didn’t believe in heaven, although she did occasionally worry that it was a place that existed only if you did believe in it. She wondered if people would be so keen on the idea of the next life if it was, say, underground. Or full of people like Pam. And relentlessly, tediously boring, like an everlasting Baptist service but without the occasional excitement of a full immersion. . . . He thought he was invincible, but he’d been tagged by death. Graham thought he could buy his way out of anything, but the grim reaper wasn’t going to be paid off with Graham’s baksheesh. The Grim Reaper, Gloria corrected herself. If anyone deserved capital letters it was surely Death. Gloria would rather like to be the Grim Reaper. She wouldn’t necessarily be grim, she suspected she would be quite cheerful (“Come along now, don’t make such a fuss”).

Gloria remembers a time when Graham had been stopped for speeding, drunk, speaking on his cell phone while eating a double cheeseburger.

Gloria could imagine him only too well, one hand on the wheel, his phone tucked into the crook of his neck, the grease from the meat dripping down his chin, his breath rank with whiskey. At the time, Gloria had thought that the only thing lacking in this sordid scenario was a woman in the passenger seat fellating him. Now she thought that that was probably going on as well. Gloria hated the term “blow job” but she rather liked the word “fellatio,” it sounded like an Italian musical term—contralto, alto, fellatio—although she found the act itself to be distasteful, in all senses of the word.

Is she good or what? I can’t wait to immerse myself in the rest of her novels.

Eether or Eyether and Hair

The Gershwins, in their “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” brought up the old pronunciation debate—potayto or potahto, tomayto or tomahto, eether or eyether, neether or neyether. It must be my Midwestern upbringing, but whenever I hear an actor coming out with “eyether,” I consider “eether” the actor or the director to be too stupid to realize how phony it sounds. I don’t know anyone from anywhere in this country who would normally say eyether, neyether, potahto, or tomahto. The English may do so, but any American who does so is simply affecting an English accent or trying to sound sophisticated. The other night on one of the many crime shows we watch, one scuzbag says to another, “I don’t do heroin,” and the other responds, “Neyether do I.” Oh, come on, guys, get real.
Throughout most of my later adult life (like since I was 40), I’ve fought a running battle with body hair. Not necessarily the hair on my arms, legs, chest, and back, although that too has been conducting skirmishes on me when I’m not looking. I’m talking about nostril hair, ear hair, and eyebrows. Way back when I was in Korea, one of my army buddies had hair growing so far out of his nostrils he might have considered braiding it. Disgusting image, isn’t it? Wouldn’t he notice how long they were? Wouldn’t they tickle? I don’t know. But I know he never did a thing about it. And I’ve seen old men here in Sun City West with dark hair growing out of their ears in such abundance I would think it would affect their hearing. They must even ask their barbers not to trim it. Why? In New York when I was there as a youngster just out of the army, I worked with a man in the Bulova Watch Company who had a hair growing out of the top of his nose that must have been at least as inch long. Wouldn’t he have noticed it whenever he looked in a mirror? Did he think it was too attractive to pull? I don’t know. And recently, in the Jackie Robinson movie 42, Harrison Ford in his role as Branch Ricky had luxuriant eyebrows, sort of like the ones John L. Lewis sported, brows like two wooly bears arranged above each eye, or Larry Hagman throughout his late career. Jeannie should have told him to trim them or made them magically disappear. His mother, Mary Martin, should have told him to trim them. But he never did. Did he think these hair bushes above his eyes were manly things to have? He always looked so proud of them whenever he glowered at anyone in Dallas. Maybe I should just throw in the towel and let the damned hair sprout wherever it wants. Maybe I’d have to beat off all the women who think such hair is manly. Or not.

Oblivion

I’m an old-school fan of science fiction, cutting my baby teeth on the sci-fi pulp magazines of the 40’s and 50’s like “Amazing Stories” and “Astounding Stories,” Edgar Rice Burroughs’ series about Mars and Venus and the Earth’s core. I passed by the stuff from those considered to be the fathers of sci-fi—Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Then later I whetted my growing appetite on the futurist visions of Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, the fantasies and horrors of Ray Bradbury, then graduated to the more literary works of Arthur C. Clarke, George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, Herbert’s Dune, Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar, and too many others to mention. It goes without saying, then, that I was also a fan of sci-fi series on television and the many great sci-fi films—2001, a Space Odyssey, Star Trek, Star Wars, The Hunger Games, Cloud Atlas, Looper, The Matrix, WALL-E, Alien, Planet of the Apes, Contact, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Soylent Green, and The Thing (although I’ve always been partial to the old 1951 Thing with James Arness instead of the more recent versions).

And so I was pulled to the theatre for Tom Cruise’s Oblivion. I’d give it three out of five sci-fi stars, and the movie’s title may be an indicator of where it will end up on a list of great science fiction films. I was a little disappointed in the plot, but the visual imagery made it worthwhile. Cruise and his partner Victoria have been assigned to a nearly lifeless Earth to patrol and maintain the huge vacuums that hover above the diminished oceans and suck up the water to be used for fuel on Jupiter’s moon Titan, where the remnants of earth’s population have emigrated after our planet had been nearly destroyed and made uninhabitable by an alien race that had come to take over the earth. In the ensuing war, the aliens blew up the moon, causing a cataclysmic disaster on earth—earthquakes, tsunamis, and radiation. We won the war but lost our planet, with only a few aliens, called Scavs, roaming the surface, trying to destroy the drones, small, round cyber policemen there to protect the water vacuums. And John Harper was there to protect and service the drones. He and his partner live in a Jetsons-like sky villa, complete with swimming pool and landing pad for the small ship Harper flies to conduct his business. As I said earlier, the gadgetry and scenes of a desolated earth were more intriguing to me than the plot, which included a small group of humans led by Beech (Morgan Freeman) and Sally (Melissa Leo), whom we see only as an out-of-focus black and white face giving Harper and Victoria their orders from the far away Titan. The plot evoked memories of past sci-fi flicks—Memento, Looper, Back to the Future, and Terminator—with their juggling of time and replication of people. I enjoyed the movie, but my wife Rosalie would have hated it. Must be a guy thing.

American Idol Again

Okay, I’m back on Idol (or should that be “back on idle?”). Last night we watched the four final ladies sing and strut their stuff, and oh how they all did sing and strut. Angie, Kree, Amber, and Candice—the four ladies—are undoubtedly the best final four ever, and any one of them would be a fitting winner. Not once has Randy felt obliged to mention any of them being “pitchy.” Nicki Minaj loves them all dearly. Mariah Carey thinks they’re all star quality. And Keith Urban gives his usual on-target comments about all of them. What’s odd to me about the judges this year? They all seem to be so much better than judges past. Sorry, Simon Cowell, I don’t miss your acerbic attitude. Odd that I hated Nicki at the beginning, with her perfectly cut hair styles and her meticulous eye makeup. I assumed she was stupid. And now I like her for her honesty and intelligence. Never thought I’d say that about Nicki Minaj. Randy has finally—thank God— given up on his “Yo, Dog” opening to most of his comments. Mariah is still stumbling with words, and last night, when the show began, she was showing a whole lot of cleavage that she covered by bringing a bunch of hair around front. Someone in production must have mentioned the boob thing to her during the first commercial break. And Keith Urban seems to know more about music than I first would have believed. So much for the judges. How about the singers? Amber looks and sounds more and more like a young Natalie Cole. Angie is drop-dead gorgeous and accompanies herself on piano like she owns it. Kree is also drop-dead gorgeous and, when she begins touring and recording, will lose forty pounds and be even more drop-dead gorgeous. And Candice, who will also lose about forty pounds, can sing anything, but I wish she’d stop relying on so many runs like too many young singers now use. Can’t singers these days sustain a note without escaping into the safety runs? I can’t wait to see who will be voted out tonight. And I know that whoever it is will be saved by the judges and we’ll see all four of them again next week. I hope the winner will be Kree, but I’d be happy with any of the four. If you’re not an Idol watcher, you should tune in for these last three weeks to see what a talented group of singers we have this season.

Antique Furniture

We got our chairs back from Sit Well Upholstery this afternoon, and are we ever happy with the results. Good story behind these particular chairs (plus one loveseat). In 1972 or ‘73, right after we’d moved into our very first house in Lakewood, NY(lots of years in mobile homes), we were trying to furnish it with whatever household sale stuff we could find, and my wife and my mother found these three pieces in someone’s basement—dirty, tattered, covered with black paint and a few coats of other colors beneath the black. The sellers asked for $75 (this at a time when $75 meant a bunch to us) and we bought them. Both wife and mother thought they could probably take the paint off and see what was underneath. Besides, the wooden frames were interesting. They brought them home, took them to our basement, stripped them of way too many coats of stuff, and found what was underneath. Then they bought a green and yellow floral material to use for the backs and seats. And we had them for years and years before they were refinished and reupholstered in a green and red plaid material. And they made the trip from New York to Arizona with us, and after years and years of changes in humidity, the glue holding them together sort of dried up. First we had the loveseat reupholstered. Gorgeous. And now we have the two companion pieces done—one straight chair and one rocker. Reglued, restriped, refinshed, reupholstered in an antiquiy blue/green/cream material. And they look beautiful. And they feel wonderful when I sit in them. I have no idea what they may be worth, but as far as we’re concerned, they’re family heirlooms, and we’re going to get it in writing that none of our children will ever ever sell them at some garage sale. Here they are. Aren't they handsome?

42

We saw 42 last week and were moved by this portrayal of Jackie Robinson and his difficult breaking of the color barrier in major league baseball in 1947. Chadwick Boseman does well in his role as Robinson, but for most viewers, the noteworthy thing about the film was Harrison Ford’s recreation of Branch Rickey, with his bushy eyebrows, gruff demeanor, cigar firmly in place, spouting wisdom to Jackie and to the many white racists on the Dodgers and the other teams they had to play. The movie was shown in one of the largest venues at Harkins, about half filled, including some thirty or forty high schoolers who had been bused in for the film, probably as part of a social studies class project. The movie was sort of hokey Disney, in that everyone, blacks and whites, seemed to be Disney-like attractive, too good and too good-looking to be true, giving me nearly the same reaction I had to seeing The Help. But it was the story of a real person, one who suffered through taunts and death threats to him as well as his wife and child. If it had been a fictional story about race relations in 1947, it would have been viewed as simply that—a Disney evocation of ugly times past. But it was about a real person. Jackie Robinson, at the urgent request of Branch Rickey, agreed to sign a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers to be the first black player in a milk-white sport. Rickey exhorted Robinson to demonstrate his courage by never, ever, giving in to his anger, no matter how ugly the provocations became, and did they ever become provocative, from the “Nigger, nigger, nigger, get your monkey face outta here!” from Ben Chapman, the Phillies manager, to the death threats mailed in to Rickey's office. It took Robinson a full year to win over his teammates. And he did it with his bat, his fielding, and his ability to run the bases and discombobulate opposing pitchers. The movie ended and many of us in the audience felt compelled to applaud. What a nice feeling, to have shared with several hundred people the belief that we had finally rounded a corner in our nation’s race relations. How awful it must have been—nearly a century after the Emancipation Proclamation—to be looked upon as third- or fourth-class citizens. To be spit at, insulted, beaten, even killed by torch-bearing, white cloaked KKKers. To be restricted from public water fountains, swimming pools, restrooms, theatres, hotels, restaurants, public transportation, assuming their skin color would contaminate the whiteness of the water or the air. How could rational human beings have treated an entire racial segment of our society as we did? How good it is to see the advances we’ve made in our social attitudes. We’re now on the brink of accepting gay marriage, racial equality, women’s rights, and reproductive choice. I hope I live long enough to see the total acceptance of the above issues as well as the end of the religious differences that now threaten us. One or two more generations need to die before we can get to those lofty social goals.

The Masters Redux

It’s been almost a week since the conclusion of the 2013 Masters. Congrats to Adam Scott for a fine and exciting end to this most widely watched golf tournament in the world. Aside from winners and losers, though, I have a few Masters impressions I’d like to share. Every spring I look forward to this tournament, as do millions of other golf fans around the world. I know most of the holes intimately from nearly sixty years of watching the shots made or missed by the various competitors over those six decades. I remember strange Curtis Strange’s errors on the back nine on Sunday in 1985 when he hit into Ray’s Creek in front of the par-5 thirteenth and then into the pond fronting the par-5 fifteenth, shots that cost him a green jacket that year. I can still see Fred Couples’ shot on the par-3 twelfth that hit just below the green and should have rolled back into the pond but instead somehow hung up on that slope and allowed him to get his par and go on to win the 1992 Masters. I remember the dance Larry Mize did in 1987 after holing that impossible pitch from the wrong side of number eleven, the second playoff hole against poor Greg Norman. In 1986 I remember weeping as Jack Nicklaus eagled fifteen and then nearly hit it into the hole on sixteen to win that improbable sixth green jacket at the age of 46. All of us have now seen over and over again Tiger’s chip on sixteen that went up the slope and then back down to hang on the lip and then topple in for a birdie that let him win in 2005. How could I forget Scott Hoch’s disastrous miss of that two-footer to win the 1989 Masters, instead allowing Nick Faldo to beat him on the second playoff hole. Will any of us ever forget "the drop?"

I thought it would be entertaining to use my translating app to put what I wrote above into German. Here it is: Es ist schon fast eine Woche her, seit dem Abschluss der 2013 Masters. Herzlichen Glückwunsch an Adam Scott für eine feine und spannende Ende dieser meistbeachteten Golfturnier der Welt. Abgesehen von Gewinnern und Verlierern, obwohl, ich habe ein paar Eindrücke Masters Ich mag zu teilen würde. Jedes Frühjahr freue ich mich auf dieses Turnier, wie Millionen von anderen Golf-Fans auf der ganzen Welt zu tun. Ich weiß, die meisten Löcher innig von fast sechzig Jahren beobachten die Aufnahmen gemacht oder von den verschiedenen Wettbewerbern über diesen sechs Jahrzehnten verpasst. Ich erinnere mich seltsam Curtis Strange Fehler auf der Rückseite neun am Sonntag im Jahr 1985, als er in Rays Creek treffen vor dem Par-5 dreizehnten und dann in den Teich Frontmann der Par-5 fünfzehnten, Schüsse, die ihn kosten eine grüne Jacke in diesem Jahr. Ich sehe noch Fred Couples 'Schuss auf dem Par-3 zwölfte, die knapp unterhalb der grünen getroffen und sollte wieder in den Teich gerollt haben, sondern irgendwie auf diesem Hang hing und erlaubte ihm, seine par bekommen und gehen auf die 1992 zu gewinnen Masters. Ich erinnere mich an den Tanz Larry Mize im Jahr 1987 tat, nachdem holing das unmöglich Tonhöhe von der falschen Seite der Nummer elf, die zweite Playoff-Loch gegen schlechte Greg Norman. 1986 Ich erinnere mich weinend wie Jack Nicklaus eagled fünfzehn und dann traf es fast in das Loch auf sechzehn, dass unwahrscheinlich sechsten grünen Jacke im Alter von 46 zu gewinnen. Alle von uns haben jetzt immer und immer wieder Tiger-Chip auf sechzehn, die aufgestiegen den Hang und dann wieder nach unten, um auf die Lippe hängen und dann stürzen in ein Birdie, das ihn im Jahr 2005 gewinnen wir gesehen. Wie konnte ich das vergessen Scott Hoch desaströsen Miss dieser zwei-footer, die 1989 Meister zu gewinnen, so dass Nick Faldo statt, um ihn auf der zweiten Playoff-Loch schlagen. Will keiner von uns je vergessen "das Dropdown?"

Lots of images, lots of memories. Until about the last twenty years, none of us tv viewers were able to (allowed to?) see any of the front nine. I know, I know, they weren’t then set up to televise those holes. But I always felt that the Augusta National bigwigs didn’t really want to share with the riffraff all of its secrets, didn’t want us to see any more than the last nine of their hallowed eighteen holes. This is a very elitist bunch who run the club. Even the CBS commentators all seem to reverentially bow and scrape as they report the play—Jim Nantz in honey tones regaling us with the many Augustan traditions, showing us numerous slow pans of flowerbeds bursting with Georgia flora, giving us gorgeous views of hand-trimmed fairways and greens, putting us to sleep with too many interviews of past and present players, too many flashback examinations of Masters memorabilia. And, oh my, if any of you CBS people have the audacity to laugh, even chuckle, at any of the Augusta National elements, beware. Jack Whitaker, in 1966, found out the hard way that one must not refer to the people surrounding a green as a “mob scene.” Goodbye, Jack. Gary McCord, in 1994, got his boot from the grounds by saying the Augusta greens looked “bikini waxed.” So long, Gary. It’s been good to know ya. Both were instructed never again to darken the hallowed halls of Augustan ivy. I’ll go on every year watching every minute of the coverage, every stroke of every player they choose to show. I’ll still thrill with the drama that takes place on that famous back nine on every concluding Sunday. But I’ll also still feel that pompous air exuding from this exclusionist band of men in green as they “allow” us to watch their tournament.

Sunday at the Masters

What a strange turn of events at the Masters, and the strange reaction to what happened to Tiger in Saturday’s round. Tiger, on that interesting but daunting fifteenth hole, took an improper drop after his third shot into the green struck the flagstick and rebounded into the water. Some (mostly Tiger haters) would say it was only just after all the lucky breaks Tiger has gotten over the years. Some (mostly Tiger haters) would say he purposely cheated and should have been disqualified from further play, and even if there was a rule that allowed him to continue without disqualification, he should have manned up and withdrawn. How to explain why he purposely dropped his ball about six feet in back of where he’d hit the previous shot into the water. He’s just seen what very likely would have been a birdie turn into what very easily could have been a double bogey. He, without thinking it through, took a drop two paces directly behind his previous shot, thinking, without really thinking it through, that he could have if he’d wanted gone as far back on that line as he wanted. Who knows what thoughts would be stirring around in his head after that awful break when his shot hit the flagstick. In any case, it wasn’t as though he purposely cheated to gain an advantage. I mean, what advantage did he gain by dropping two steps back? None. Did he purposely cheat like the unethical duffer who uses his foot to kick his ball out of a bush? No. Did he gracefully accept his two-stroke penalty? Yes. Should he have been disqualified because he signed his card for a wrong score when he didn’t even hear about the penalty until way past the card-signing? No. That would be taking the rules to a stupid level, and many of the game’s rules are already at the stupid level. Should tv viewers be arbiters of rules violations? I remember Craig Stadler’s “building a stance” infraction when he put a towel on the ground for a shot he took from his knees. Stupid. I remember when Paul Azinger, standing in a water hazard, unconsciously pushed a rock aside as he prepared for a shot, two stroke penalty. Stupid. I remember when Roberto De Vincenzo in the 1968 Masters signed a card that was one stroke higher than he’d actually shot, denying him a spot in a playoff with Bob Goalby, and this at a time when television and all the talking heads in the announcers booths were keeping track of his score. Nope, sorry, Roberto. And Roberto said, “What a stupid I am to be wrong here.” Yep, that’s the key word here—“stupid.” How about a sports analogy: a baseball player in the bottom of the ninth slides into home plate with the winning run. Later, the umpires , in reviewing the video, see that he never touched the plate. So they take away the run and award the victory to the other team and tell the player that he’s being disqualified from playing in the next game. There you go: STUPID. I can’t wait to hear what the talking heads have to say on this, the eve of the final day at the 2013 Masters.

Dentistry & American Idol

The Masters

I just watched the tv coverage of the par-3 tournament at the Masters, a nice prelude to the real tournament that begins tomorrow. The course looked magnificent, the Georgia weather looked ideal, the greens looked impossibly fast—good omens for the four days ahead. It was fun to see some of the young players having a pre-tourney ball alongside some of the oldsters there—Jack Fleck, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer. Even Ben Crenshaw. But Ben isn’t really an oldster. His snaggly teeth simply make him look like one. Surely he’s made enough money from golf to get those teeth fixed. Then there are the bellies on Jack and Arnold as they sort of tottered from tee to green. It saddened me to see them wearing their ages so obviously. Jack Fleck could hardly walk, let alone swing a golf club. Gary Player was still as slim as ever but his swing was suspect. Jack had a hitch or two in his swing he never used to have. And Arnold, who hit practically every pond on the course, must have nearly run out of golf balls, and his walk to the ninth green was a study in slow-motion wobbles. It saddens me to realize that I’m six years older than Jack, two years older than Gary, eighteen years older than Ben, and only five years younger than Arnold. I look in the mirror and see myself in their old visages. Then there’s Augusta National to make me forget my age. What a place that is, one of the most carefully pristine and beautiful spots on earth. And most of the people there, either competing in the tourney or just observing it, are the most carefully pristine and beautiful people on earth. I’ve yearned for a chance to be there for one of these contests, but I never made it and never will. It’s one of the toughest tickets in the world of sports. Every year I submit my name for the lottery drawing for two tickets and every year I lose. So I’ve resigned myself to the television coverage, as have nearly every other golf fan in the world. I can hardly wait to see what sort of magic will unfold. This tournament has more viewers world-wide than any other, and not just golfers. Everyone seems to be interested in what goes on there. It may be the beauty of Augusta National, with its birdsong and floral bounty. It may be the tradition involved and the fact that it’s played on this and only this course, unlike the other majors. It may be the drama that builds for four days up to that dramatic final nine holes we all know so well. Will one of the old guys actually pull it out just as Jack, with putter raised high and tongue between front teeth, did in 1986? Will Rory win his third leg of the grand slam? Will Bubba repeat his out-of-the-woods magic? Will Phil make good use of his new 3-metal driver and win his fourth jacket? How will Guan Tianlang, the 14-year-old from China, fare? Will one of the Europeans pull it out—Charl Schwartzel, Graeme McDowell, Louis Oosthuizen, or Lee Westwood? Will it be an Asian such as K.J. Choi or Y. E. Yang or the young Japanese phenom, Ryo Ishikawa? One of the peculiarities of this tournament and its tradition is that it’s a very limited field, only some forty or so of the field of ninety-three with any kind of chance to win it. Drop the old guys who get to play because they’re past winners—Watson, Crenshaw, Stadler, Lyle, Mize, Woosnam, O’Meara, Langer, Couples; drop several others who may not yet be old but whose current play says they can’t win it—Mike Weir and Jose Maria Olazabal; drop the four amateurs. What you have left are the ones I mentioned above and one other—yeah, right, Tiger. Will Tiger’s sterling play so far this year let him win his fifth Masters, his fifteenth major? Is he really back and is he really the number one player in the world? Against this very limited field, I’m guessing the answer to all these last questions is . . . YES!

North Korea & A Few Reviews

Disturbing images on the news these past few days—knee-locked fanatics stomping along the streets in Pyongyang. I was reminded of German troops in 1940 similarly marching in Berlin, goose-stepping past their mad leader. I recently referred to Kim Jong-un as a stupid young man embarked on a stupid course that could ignite the entire world in that conflagration we have imagined in our worst dreams for more than sixty years. But I now realize he’s more than just stupid. He’s an egomaniac who cares only that the world recognize him as a great leader, doesn’t care a whit that most of his people live in poverty on the edge of starvation. The entire world should be alarmed by Jong-un’s reckless behavior, his bellicose words. We should send Dennis Rodman back to him to offer the young man his vast wisdom. No maybe not. If we did we’d have two cuckoo birds in Pyongyang instead of one.

How about a few comments on recent television shows and one movie? I began watching Top of the Lake, Sundance channel's new drama set in New Zealand. My, but that's an interesting premise and plot, interesting and disconcertingly confusing. Elisabeth Moss plays a young detective who, on a short visit to her ailing mother, signs on to find a missing girl, a pregnant twelve-year-old. I remember Elisabeth Moss from West Wing as the president's daughter Zoe. Then she made a big splash on Mad Men, a series I didn't care enough about to watch. My mistake, I guess. Then there's Holly Hunter as GJ, a really strange leader of a battered women's group. But then, Holly Hunter has always gone for strange roles: Ada McGrath, the mute in The Piano; Edwina McDunnough in the Coen brothers' Raising Arizona; Penny in the Coen brothers' Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?; and Grace in that oddball tv series Saving Grace. Top of the Lake is set in backcountry New Zealand, beautiful scenery, complex relationships between the characters, all sorts of plot strands and conflicts. I'll continue to watch it, hoping the confusion will pass, the connections between people and times become clear. Then there's that other series I wrote about a week or so ago, The Americans. I can't figure out who to root for, the spy family, the bad guys, or the FBI agents trying to deal with Russia and the cold war, the good guys. But then, the bad guys don't always seem so bad and the good guys don't always seem so good. I guess I'll just keep watching to see how it's all resolved. Now, the movie, Admission, with Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, and Lily Tomlin. I guess I'd go see anything Tina Few was in. She's a really funny person. And I wasn't disappointed with Admission. The comedy was subdued but funny, the laughs relying more on the interaction between Fey, who works in the Princeton admissions office, and Rudd, who is head of an experimental high school, than on the sophomoric sexual and toilet humor of too many comedies these days. Rudd is trying to get Princeton to accept a really bright boy from his school, an autodidact with extemely high test scores but a lousy resume. And mix in Ringydingy Lily Tomlin as Fey's oddball mother and you have a proper mix for an interesting two hours at the theatre.

Ho Hum Easter Sunday

No, I’m not dead. No, I’m not sick. No, I didn’t break both arms. I just haven’t had anything to say lately. None of the news stories appeals to me. There are so many stupid things going on in the world that I can’t decide which to comment on. That truly stupid young man in North Korea deserves a paragraph or two, but I’ll wait on that to see how much stupider he can act in the next week. All in all, this is writer’s block to the tenth power. It's Easter Sunday and we're observing it in the cathedral of our home. The Catholics down the street held up traffic from both directions for over ten minutes while they poured out of the church parking lot. Charlie is out on the patio enjoying his new furniture. I recently bought him a five-foot cat tree: half-barrel crouch on top, full open-ended barrel below with a diamond cutout in the side, another half-barrel at the bottom. Right now, he’s sleeping in the full barrel, enjoying the 85° day, listening to the grackles squawking in the yard. I just finished watching the Houston Open golf, but they got rained out before conclusion. Ho hum. Quite a few no-names contending. Phil stumbled again and Rory was never even close. Two more weeks until the Masters. Can’t wait to see what the big boys do with that layout. I still pick Tiger to win his fifth jacket. Oh, yes, and a few days ago we had new carpet laid in our two bedrooms and the Arizona room. It’s a tight weave gray and looks very nice. But oh what a job it was to move all the small stuff out of the three rooms. And, of course, I had to break down my computer. It’s always touch and go to see if I can put it back together again. And the million books and knickknacks had to be boxed and moved out onto the patio. The installers moved all the big stuff in the bedrooms. It took them six hours, six hours of us sort of sitting around until they got finished. Rosalie chose to sit with the cats in the laundry room. Charlie has become such a scardy cat when anyone he doesn’t know comes around. We think Squeakie taught him that. But it was finally completed and we could then begin the job of putting everything back where it belonged. I found a lot of stuff I no longer needed, so out it went. Life at the far edge is a slow process of getting rid of the stuff we once thought was so important.

Kristen Chenoweth & The Call

Kristen Chenoweth appeared on PBS’s series “Live from Lincoln Center” in an hour-long set of great songs from great Broadway musicals. It was called The Dames of Broadway . . . All of ‘Em!!! and she tried her best to include every dame ever. Kristen Chenoweth is a tiny blonde package who just explodes on stage. She’s forty-four but you’d never know it to look at her, and she’s got a voice that belies her tiny frame—4’ 11”, just under a hundred pounds. With the help mainly of her musical director on the piano and a trio that came in midway through the performance, she sang a bunch of songs most of which I wasn’t familiar with. And I’m a lifetime lover of and follower of Broadway musicals. The songs weren’t your usual singalong songs, the ones that make it on the singles charts, like “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” “Some Enchanted Evening,” “The Impossible Dream,” or “My Funny Valentine.” These were “My White Knight” as sung by Marian the librarian in The Music Man, “Green Finch and Linnet Bird” from Sweeney Todd, “My Lord and Master” as sing by Tiptum in The King and I, “It’s a Quiet Thing” from Flora the Red Menace, “When I Marry Mr. Snow” sung by Carrie Pipperridge in Carousel, “Old Maid” from 110 in the Shade, and Mary Martin singing “Moonshine Lullaby” from Annie Get Your Gun. Wow, what a dramatically musical evening. I was especially struck by "It's a Quiet Thing." I remember first encountering this song when I heard it fifty years ago recorded by Morgana king in her oh so quiet voice. If you’d like to see Kristen's show, go to www.pbs.org and check in with the Live from Lincoln Center performances. Watch her here as she does a dame she didn't include in the PBS show, "Glitter and Be Gay."


And if you want to see a thriller that really thrills, go see Halle Berry in The Call. Hell, even if it doesn't thrill you, it's worth it just to see Halle Berry. She may just be the most beautiful woman in the world. She plays a 911 operator with the LAPD, but loses her nerve after she loses a girl to a killer who takes her from her bedroom while she's speaking to Jordan Turner (Berry), the killer saying to the operator when she pleads with him not to kill this little girl, "It's already done." Six months later, after Berry has given up her job on the phone and taken up teaching new 911 recruits, another girl is taken and calls 911 from the trunk of the car she's in. The girl, Casey Wilson (Abigail Breslin) is a young blonde with a hauntingly familiar face that finally came to me after we left the theatre--little Miss Sunshine from that movie nearly a decade ago. It's never made very clear what motivated the bad guy in his taking young blonde women, but he's one spooky dude. And at the end of the movie, the phrase "It's already done" takes on a whole new meaning. Go see it. You'll know what I mean.

Kitty Fixing

Rosalie has been volunteering one day a week at a nearby no-kill small animal rescue shelter called “4-Paws.” It’s almost entirely devoted to cats and kittens, all of which get spayed or neutered when they take them in, and the shelter’s struggle is to adopt as many out as they take in.. It seems to me that all cats and kittens should be “fixed” as soon as possible, but there are still too many people who just love those cute little cuddle buns . . . for a while. Then they sort of misplace some of them outdoors, turning cute little cuddle buns into feral cat factories. And then any number have to be caught and euthanized lest we get up to our asses in cats. The same might be said of our six billion residents of the planet. Too many people are either too ignorant of the child-producing process or think they just have to have six or eight or ten or more cute little cuddle buns. I’m reminded of Octomom Nadya Suleman who, with the help of Dr. Michael Kamrava, her fertility doctor, gave birth to eight children by in vitro fertilization to go with her previous six children. That’s right, fourteen children. She is now being charged with welfare fraud. Dr. Kamrava in 2009 was expelled from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and lost his California medical license in July, 2011. Oh, yes, and Nadya also has a prescription for marijuana, probably written for her by the good Dr. Kamrava. Her story wouldn’t so much fall in the stupid or cuddling categories, but in the selfish, money-loving, fame-grabbing category. China’s one-child per family rule may seem cruel to some, but in a world of six billion it makes some sense to me.

Buddy Holly & Jack the Giant Slayer

Freecell Frenzy

I’ve been playing Freecell on my computer, and I find it distressingly addictive. “Distressing” because it takes me away from reality for much too long each time I get hooked. I love the symmetry of the cards. I love to sit and ponder eight or nine or more moves before I ever commit to a move. I find that all games are winnable if one just takes time before jumping off the deep end. I also remember when I was first introduced to the game. We had little to do in Korea when we were assigned to sit in a bunker and keep track of enemy movement—chow on K-rations, smoke (oh, lots and lots of smoking), read whatever books or magazines parents sent to us, play cards. One of my bunker mates showed me Freecell. With real cards the game is a little different than the computer version. Shuffle, then lay out nine columns of cards in descending order, from nine on the left, to eight, then seven, etc. until the last column of only one card. Cards are moved as in other standard solitaire game, red jack on black queen, etc. The player always hoped for an ace in that first or second column or something that could be moved to free up a space or two. The seven extra cards were freebies that could be used at any time. The trick was to get enough free spaces to be able to move multiple cards. And, like the computer version, nearly every layout could be solved if one were patient enough. The computer version, my present addiction, is a fun challenge, and whenever a game is won, the cards all fly up to the aces and then come crashing down to computer bottom, breaking up into colorful card pieces. And now that I’ve written this, I guess I’ll play another game . . . or two. If you've never tried it, you can do a search using "Freecell" and find a number of free downloads of the game. You, too, can become addicted.

Robert Crais & Golf

I seem to be stuck in a holding pattern, sort of up there waiting for landing instructions, and sort of running out of fuel. I guess I’ll get down one way or the other, either safe and smooth, or headfirst. I haven't written any blogs for almost a week now. I haven’t seen any movies for a while, and we’re going to the Arizona Broadway Theatre tomorrow. I’ve slowed down on the reading, my last one the latest by Robert Crais called Suspect. It was good but not nearly as good as his Elvis Cole/Joe Pike series. This one was about a severely wounded cop who lost his female partner, with whom he was in love, in a shootout in a late-night back alley. He’s a mess physically and mentally, blaming himself for the death of his partner. He recovers enough to be assigned to the K9 unit, where he’s teamed with Maggie, a police dog severely wounded, both physically and mentally, in a shootout in Afghanistan where she loses her beloved pack brother. Talk about two of a kind. The plot focuses on their bonding, these two wounded creatures, and their search for the people who killed his partner as well as a carload of victims of the night assault. Good but not great. But especially good for anyone who’s a dog lover. I’d bring Maggie home to live with us in a heartbeat. Charlie and Squeakie might complain, but they’d learn to live with her.

My golf is getting better (but then I don’t see how it could have gotten any worse). Today I came within one stroke of shooting my age. I got my first age-shoot at 70. Then, when I got to be 74, I thought I’d be doing it every third or fourth time out. Whoa! Was I ever wrong. I managed it about a dozen times after the first time, but then the health problems set in and I couldn’t get even close. See, the Catch-22 in golf is that as you get older and older, it should get easier and easier to shoot one’s age, but instead the scores keep getting higher and higher. I enjoyed watching Stacy Lewis win the LPGA tournament last weekend in Phoenix. What an extraordinary story hers is, eleven years in a back brace, multiple surgeries on her spine, lots of pins and rods holding her together. It was a courageous win and one she justly deserved. I did feel sorry for poor Ai Miyazato, though. One bad swing with her pitching wedge and she came undone on the sixteenth hole. And next weekend, at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, we get to see if this Tiger is for real or is just a pussy cat. I’m hoping he’s for real. I’m betting he is.

3D

More on three-dimensional movies and television. The last time we watched anything in 3D at the theatre was Alice in Wonderland and we weren’t very impressed with that one. But there we were again with Oz, the odd little glasses we had to don, the on-screen advice to put on our glasses to better appreciate the 3D previews of coming attractions, especially the latest remake of The Great Gatsby. Apparently there will soon be a time when all films will be in 3D, and soon thereafter they’ll have figured out how to get the 3D effect without the cheesy glasses. And someday young people will chuckle at the way we used to view movies. Even the word “movies” is odd, harking back to that long ago time when silent films were introduced, with pictures that “moved.” And then silents became talkies in black and white, then Technicolor, then in Dolby Surround Sound, then 3D. What lies in the future? Probably holographic stories told right in front of us like stage plays, seen in theatres or in our living rooms. Or maybe even in our laps. Who know what wonders await us.

Another step into the future that’s happening even as I speak—the effect that DVR’s now have on television and will have in the future. How will television be funded if commercial revenues dry up because viewers are now “saving” shows on their DVR’s and fast-forwarding through all the commercial garbage Will all channels become like PBS, pleading for donations? Or will we see an end to the many many channels like History, Lifetime, Bravo, Discovery, and Hallmark that can’t continue without commercial revenue?

This morning I was greeted on the front page of the Arizona Republic with a picture of our governor Jan Brewer, telling us of her plan for expanding Medicaid in Arizona. She seems to be seen on the tube or in the news more often than she should be. The woman tries to look like she’s an attractive forty-year-old when she really would have been perfectly cast as the wicked witch in this latest Oz. Her face has been lifted so often she now has nipple cheeks and a belly button in the middle of her chin. I guess you could say I’m not a fan of Jan Brewer.

Oz the Great and Powerful

We saw Oz the Great and Powerful today, and were both enchanted by this enchanting tale of a place everyone knows from the original 1939 film. I first became an Oz fan when I was a wee lad and discovered the L. Frank Baum series of books. They were my keys to the kingdom of books, and I’ve been an omnivorous reader ever since. I think I was more enchanted by the special effects of the 3D than by the story or acting. In fact, if I’d seen it in regular vision instead of 3D, I’m not sure I’d have been so positive in this review. James Franco just didn’t seem right as the somewhat sleazy Oscar Diggs. I can’t put a finger on it—his smile? his delivery of lines? Just something that wasn’t quite right. Or maybe I was remembering fat Frank Morgan as the original Wizard, gray and flustered by Dorothy, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion. And Mila Kunis wouldn’t have been my first choice as witch Theodora, nor my second or third or fourth. She’s eerily beautiful with those huge brown eyes but I don’t see her as a Baum witch. Maybe I’m just put off by her role in Black Swan. Didn’t care much for that movie or her role in it. But Michelle Williams was perfect as Glinda. She has to be the sweetest female in Hollywood right now. She’d probably love to have an evil role someday but I don’t think she could pull it off. Just too sweet. The story of Oscar’s tornado ride to Oz and what followed was all right, but a bit thin. The film paid homage to the original by showing the first scenes in Kansas in black and white, expanding to color when Oscar first views Oz. And what color and effects he and the viewer sees—flowers opening in his path, multi-colored birds flitting around his head and right up to us in the audience, cascading waterfalls, clouds of butterflies. And Mila Kunis coming through the underbrush to find Oscar, looking like a fashion model in her red hat and dress. Two of the most delightful characters in the movie are his little monkey buddy Finley and the tiny China Girl. I guess what I’m saying is that the 3D version of Oz the G & P is well worth seeing, but maybe not the regular version.

No News, Good News

No news is good news, but since I don’t have anything else to write about, I guess it will have to be about recent news. Sorry.

A new pope will be elected soon, maybe as soon as next Tuesday. And the cardinals will use the old smoke signal to let us know yes or no—white for yes, black for no. That sounds just silly in this high-tech age. Why not just let the world know via television?

North Korea, like a feisty Pekinese, is growling about a nuclear attack on the U.S. What silliness. They’re a small nation just north of their sister nation South Korea. Can’t they see how much better life is to the south of them? Life in North Korea is, at best, difficult for most of its citizens. Life in South Korea is, most certainly, very good and prosperous for most of its citizens. Has Kim Jung Un, North Korea’s young leader, lost his mind? Has he convinced his citizenry that they’re starving because the hated U.S. is responsible for their sorry state? Does he really think his imperial army could compete with U.S. forces in an all-out war? Does he think we’re all as weird and crazy and stupid as Dennis Rodman?

We watched a segment on the news about the effect of global warming on the South Polar ice cover. The global warming expert reported that if all the South Polar ice were to melt, the depth of all oceans would increase by about two football fields. Wow, that’s a lot of water. He failed to tell us what that would do to the world’s coastlines, but I can only imagine we’d all be crammed together onto a lot less land than we now have.

The panelists on the Chris Matthews Show were speculating about the 2016 presidential candidates, that it would be amusing to see another Clinton-Bush battle—Hillary and Jed, that is. I’m more than ready for Hillary, but do we really need to see another Bush?

The Crying Game

Love and marriage, what we used to think of as a binding relationship between a man and a woman, is today all mixed up in about as many relationships as one could imagine. And films and television are now no longer afraid to show two women kissing, or two men kissing. People are now coming out of the closet as fast as the closet doors can fly open. Love is now more complicated than it ever was. I’m reminded of a film I saw over twenty years ago, a film that impressed me not just for the surprise ending, but for the honest questions it raised about the nature of love . . . between two people regardless of their sexual orientation. I guess I needn’t worry about any spoilers in this one since most everyone around at the time this movie came out would know the surprise ending.

The Crying Game is the story of the Irish terrorists who seize a black English soldier as a bargaining piece for one of their captured buddies. The soldier, Jody (Forest Whitaker in a very early role), who is supposed to be shot by one of his captors, is accidentally killed trying to escape, and Fergie, the terrorist who had befriended Jody, goes to England to try to make it up to him by seeing if the soldier’s girl friend, Dil, is getting along all right. What an off-the-wall love story. But what a good film. Dil turns out to be a man in drag, but only after the Irishman, who now goes by the name Jimmy, has fallen in love with her/him. It just goes to show that love can come in many forms. For all of us who assume that homosexuality is somehow deviant, this film may have prompted us to look at the relationships between men and women in a somewhat different light. Is Jimmy, now in love with a man who he first assumed was a woman (and a very attractive woman she/he was), a homosexual? Or is he just a person who fell in love with another person, regardless of physical genders? Very confusing, because the viewer is totally sympathetic to both characters; they’re easily the most likable people in the movie. Ten years after I first saw this movie, I rented it and saw it again. I noticed things about the film I hadn’t seen the first time. They opened with a rendition of “When a Man Loves a Woman” and concluded with “Stand by Your Man” as Dil is seen visiting Jimmy in prison, where he still has about seven years to go on his sentence. She will wait for him and they will be together thereafter. Or maybe not. Also, I saw the irony of the bound Jody’s comments to Fergie when Jody had to urinate and Fergie had to open his pants for him and take out his “piece of meat” as Jody called it, and then reinsert it after Jody was finished. It’s all very complicated, but I’m so glad we’re now approaching a time when we can accept the complexities of love and marriage and sexual relationships.

One-Eyed Jacks & Zero Tolerance

Netflix again, this time with an old Western I think I liked a long time ago--One-Eyed Jacks directed by and starring Marlon Brando and Karl Malden. Despite the washed out color and the all-too intrusive musical score, this was as I remembered it, one of the all-time best Westerns. And most of the credit for that lies with Brando. He was one of the best actors ever and he was up to the task here as the "kid," Rio the bank robber partnered with Dad Longworth (Karl Malden). The plot was simple enough, with betrayal and vengeance right out of Greek tragedy. Malden is the betrayer, leaving Rio and taking off with the gold from their last bank job in Sonora, Mexico, leaving Rio to his capture and 5-year imprisonment in the prison at Sonora. He and a buddy manage to escape, and all Rio wants is to find Malden and kill him. He runs into Bob Amory (Ben Johnson) who is planning to rob a bank and wants Rio and his friend to join him, with the added incentive that Amory knows where Dad Longworth is--now a wealthy sheriff in Monterey, California. The scenery along the coast is as breathtaking in this 1960 film as it is now when I see it at the Pebble Beach golf tournament. Longworth is married to Maria (Katy Jurado)and has taken her daughter Louisa as his own. Rio, when the sheriff sees him, assures "Dad" that there were no hard feelings about their parting in Mexico. But the viewer knows better. The rest of it involves the inevitable coming together of Rio and Louisa, Rio's shooting and killing a bad guy, Malden's whipping Rio and crushing his hand, then throwing him into jail to await a trial and his hanging. But Rio, with Louisa's help, manages to escape and flee north with Amory and the others to heal and plan his revenge. Good flick, Brando at his best (much younger and slimmer and more handsome than in his Godfather days. Malden was also much younger and slimmer than is his Streets of San Francisco days. And his nose hadn't yet grown to the grand proboscis he would have later on.

A comment on the zero tolerance policies in some schools recently, relating to students who bring in guns or knoves. Okay, so there must be a policy forbidding students to bring in stuff that could be harmful or even lethal to other students. Right. But when schools also expel kids in kindergarten or first or second grades who point a thing made out of lego blocks and go "Kachoo! Kachoo!" or who have a bubble-blowing gun, or who, god forbid, point a finger at a classmate and go "Bang!" they've taken Zero back to about negative 100. There should be some rational adjustment behind zero tolerance. I remember when I grew up (yes, a long time ago) we had cap guns we could use to play Cops & Robbers, or in the summer we could have elaborate war games in the park with our rubber guns (homemade wooden guns and rifles with Mom's clothespin attached to hold a stretched piece of innertube) and hardly anyone thought we really meant any harm when we pointed an index finger at someone and went "Bang!" Beebee guns were a little more dangerous, but never lethal. And slingshots, although potentially dangerous, were never, in my memory, used to shoot at another human being. Come on, schools and school administrators, use your heads.

Quartet & The Pope

We just saw the most delightful film, Quartet, about aging and the old people who live in Beecham House, a retirement community for old musicians in lovely English countryside. I think if I couldn’t live in Sun City West, Arizona, I’d like to live out my days in Beecham House, especially if I could live there with this cast of delightfully wacky and talented musicians. Dustin Hoffman directed. Thank you, Dustin, for giving us this funny and moving film. Every October 10th, the residents of Beecham House put on a show to celebrate Verdi’s birthday and to generate enough money to keep the place running for at least another year. When prima donna diva Jean Horton (Dame Maggie Smith) moves in, just knowing she’ll hate living like any other old person without much money, the three other people with whom she once sang Verdi’s “Quartet” from Rigoletto try to convince her to sing it again with them, she violently tells them no.. Reggie Paget (Tom Courtney) is one of the four, an ex-husband of Horton’s who has never gotten over their breakup. The other two are splendidly funny—Wilf Bond (Billy Connolly) as the handsome, lecherous old devil who propositions every female in sight, even though he probably wouldn’t know what to do with any of them if they should take him up on his propisition; and Cissy Robson (Pauline Collins), a forgetful lady with, as Wilf, describes her, the best tits in the UK. The acting is all top rate, the English scenery breathtaking, the music throughout excellent . . . and the humor is to die for. This isn’t a movie that would have a lot of appeal for anyone under fifty, but for anyone over fifty it’s a must see.

Pope Benedict is now officially out of office, having abdicated his “throne” because of ill health. I don’t know why this should have been such a big deal to so many Catholics. I don’t know why he should have been the first to step down in almost seven hundred years. Is any pope a leader or is he just a human symbol to those in the Catholic faith? If he is, indeed, a leader, then he or any other pope before him should have stepped down when age and failing health make it impossible for him to lead. If he’s just a symbol, then I guess he can continue his popedom until he dies, even if he’s lying in a coma in Vatican City. I guess, not being a Catholic, I just don’t understand all the popish pomp and circumstance of the Vatican nor of the Catholic service.