Eat, drink and be merry–in keeping with the situation

by chuckofish

Thursday again and another weekend approaches. Two weeks until Christmas and the wee twins turn five on Saturday!

(Social distancing with Santa in 2021–good grief!)

We do not have a particularly busy holiday schedule. Gone are the days of multiple Christmas parties to attend and work festivities and school events. And that’s okay with me.

TCM showed They Were Expendable (1945) on December 7 and I watched it even though I had seen it on Memorial Day. It is such a great movie and one of the very best war movies, in part because it is not about winning and glory, but about losing and going on, about learning to be part of a team and making sacrifices for the team. (For the record, there are brave women in this movie, but they are not the ones getting their ankles blown off.)

There is a lot of talk these days about “toxic masculinity” and frequently John Wayne’s name is bandied about as an example of that, probably by morons who have never seen one of his movies. This is a real trigger for me, and this movie exemplifies exactly what is not toxic about masculinity and Robert Montgomery and John Wayne are perfect as the heroes of the film.

Author William L. White based his novel “They Were Expendable” on the experience of Squadron 3 in the Philippines, who, among other things, evacuated Gen. Douglas MacArthur, his family and staff by night from the island of Corregidor, where U.S. forces were trapped by the Japanese army, to Mindanao, the southernmost of the Philippine Islands, on March 11, 1942. John Wayne played the part of Capt. John Kelly (Rusty Ryan in the movie). Robert Montgomery played the part of Lt. John D. Bulkeley (John Brickley in the movie), who won a Medal of Honor for his service as commander of the squadron. By the way, William L. White was the son of the famous William Allen White, long-time Editor/Publisher of the Emporia (Kansas) Gazette, whom he succeeded from 1944-1973.

I also watched Damn Yankees (1958) which is available on Prime now. I had not seen it in forever (if indeed ever.) I was curious to see the Bob Fosse choreography and his muse Gwen Verdon, who did not make many movies. As musicals go, it is pretty thin, but I enjoyed “You Gotta Have Heart,” which transported me back to my senior year in high school when I had to sing it in Class Day. I was in key about half the time.

This is an interesting perspective. “For what it’s worth (and, to be clear, I’m not saying you have to do as I do), Christmas is effectively a secular festival for me. It has nothing to do with the church and isn’t demanded of Christian people in the Bible. But it is fun and I like it. What is more, I am always glad to have an opportunity to think more about Jesus.”

John Piper is so right, as usual. “I risk a generalization to warn you: people who are exercised and preoccupied with such things, as how the star worked and how the Red Sea split and how the manna fell and how Jonah survived the fish and how the moon turns to blood, are generally people who have what I call a mentality for the marginal.”

And I have been wondering about this for a long time, haven’t you?

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:

The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:

The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

–Numbers 6: 24-26