A very happy birthday to darling daughter #1 whom we will be toasting tonight! I hope she has a donut this morning. We won’t be able to celebrate all together until the weekend after this one, but we’ll be thinking of her all day today.
Happy birthday, cupcake of love!
It rained most of the weekend and I stayed in and recuperated from a hectic week and the flu. Indeed, I have no pictures of semi-exciting adventures and/or adorable wee babes since they stayed home and did the same. Instead I read the new Longmire book which arrived in the mail on Friday.
It did not disappoint.
I did get out of the house long enough to go to church on Sunday and it was nice to get back into the old routine. The OM and I went to Steak ‘N Shake for lunch afterwards. I picked up the house and did laundry. Since the temperature had fallen into the 70s I tried to do some yard work, but after 15 minutes I had strained my back, so I quit and retreated to Longmire.
We watched a good movie, which I found scrounging around on Amazon Prime, called Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing & Charm School (2005). Directed by Randall Miller, it stars Robert Carlyle and John Goodman and features a host of semi-has-been actors like Melissa Tomei, Mary Steenburgen, Sean Astin, Sonia Braga, Donnie Wahlberg, Ernie Hudson, etc., who were all excellent.
I really liked it!
“Dance is a very powerful drug, if embraced judiciously; to reap its rewards, one must shoulder its challenges with intrepid countenance.” Frank Keene, a grieving baker in a near catatonic state, happens on a car accident. The loquacious and insightful victim, Steve Mills, is on his way to an appointment in Pasadena with a years-ago acquaintance; he asks Frank to go in his place. It’s a dance class. Frank goes, to find Steve’s friend. The story moves back and forth [between] Steve’s childhood, the scene of the accident, and the aftermath of Frank’s first Lindy hop. (IMDB)
It is rare these days to see a movie devoid of vulgarity, violence and political statements. It is just a good, uplifting story about real people. Give it a try–you’ll be glad you did!
*Isaiah 35:6
No post today. I have fought with this monstrous machine for the last three hours. It has pushed me to the screaming edge of madness and I concede defeat — at least for now. I’ll be back next week.
Did you hear that Burt Reynolds died? He was 82. We forget what a huge star he was back in the day. In 1977, for instance, Smokey and the Bandit was second only to Star Wars on the list of top-grossing movies.
It was hard not to like him. And check out those guns, man.
What is your favorite Burt Reynolds movie? Personally I was always a fan of 100 Rifles (1969) starring the unbeatable trio of James Brown, Raquel Welsh and BR.
I also liked W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975) and The Longest Yard (1974). Maybe we can dig one up and watch tonight. Of course, there’s also the classic Don Williams song called “If Hollywood Don’t Need You” that mentions ol’ Burt in the chorus:
Oh, and if you see Burt Reynolds would you shake his hand for me
And tell ol’ Burt I’ve seen all his movies
Well, I hope you make for big time, I hope your dreams come true
But if Hollywood don’t need you, honey, I still do
Listen to it and toast ol’ Burt, won’t you?
Into paradise may the angels lead thee; and at thy coming
may the martyrs receive thee, and bring thee into the holy
city Jerusalem.
*Bandit, Smokey and the Bandit
Not fair! I got the flu (or something) and had to stay home yesterday. I never take sick days–especially when I have a super busy week with a big project due on Friday–but sometimes you have no choice.
We are all sick in my family and I guess we have to point the finger at the wee babes and their new daycare lives. C’est la vie. Ironically, next week I get my flu shot!
Well, here’s to staying hydrated and washing your hands!
Thank you, Denzel Washington! Well said.
Watch the whole thing, but try not to be distracted by the woman to the left of Denzel, who is looking at her phone throughout his speech. Can you imagine not paying attention to Denzel Washington giving the commencement address? I mean really.
Denzel made this speech at Dillard University, a private, historically black, liberal arts college in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2015.
Daughter #1 breezed in on Friday night and stayed until Monday morning–such a treat! Per Friday’s blogpost, we watched The Odd Couple and enjoyed it thoroughly. Later in the weekend we watched McClintock! (1963) which I had not seen in forever, due to it usually only being available in terrible pirated form. But you can see it on Amazon Prime now in all its widescreen glory and it is worth it. One of the top-grossing films of 1963, it is John Wayne as John Wayne surrounded by familiar faces. Everyone has a lot of fun and there is a fight in a mud pit. Maureen O’Hara is on hand to be willful and stubborn and ultimately she gets spanked (as does Stephanie Powers on an earlier occasion) and everyone cheers.
We also did some estate sale-ing…
Needlepoint rescue of the week
…and local shopping and had lunch at the Women’s Exchange. We searched the house for some lost counted cross-stitch pattern books and never found what we were looking for, but we unearthed a few gems. We also made a spontaneous trip to the STL Zoo to see the new-ish bear pits. It was probably not a great idea considering it was the Labor Day weekend, but we battled the crowds and found a place to park (a mile away) and visited said pits. Sorry, I don’t have a picture of the new Grizzly bears. They were large and scary, but not as scary as the polar bear who is huge…
We rode our beloved zoo train around…
and even took an obligatory selfie…which I will not share because it is truly heinous.
The wee babes and their parents came over on Sunday and even though they were sniffly and a bit under-the-weather, they ran us ragged.
Lottie loves this little chair…
…but the stairs are just the right size for sitting and thinking and taking a moment…
(I wasn’t kidding about the runny nose)
The OM stayed out of the fray per usual…
And we did have a dance party!
Dance Party!
After daughter #1 went home to COMO, I did laundry and picked up the house and caught up on the phone with daughter #2 and ordered my Christmas cards online. Don’t kid yourself–it’ll be here before we know it!
Today I am back at the salt mine for a busy and stressful week. I’m taking it one day at a time.
Hope you all are enjoying your Labor Day holiday with dance parties and the like. The wee babes had runny noses last night so they were slowed down enough for us to keep up. The wee laddie does enjoy burning down the house, as you know, and little Lottie knows the best thing about being a woman/Is the prerogative to have a little fun.
Make good choices! (I’ll have more tomorrow.)
*”Chattahoochee” by Jim McBride/Alan Jackson
Well, I tiptoed through the first week of classes without disturbing anyone’s lingering summer reverie. I kept up with my paperwork and even managed to read Amor Towles’ The Rules of Civility, a witty and sometimes sad trip to 1938 Manhatten, in which Katey, our female protagonist, attempts to secure a place among society’s movers and shakers.
1938 Vogue cover
The book was hard to put down, and I hated to see it end. If you want a plot summary, you can read the NYT review , though in my view the article is pretty superficial. Suffice it to say that Towles writes lovingly of his fully realized characters. The Rules of Civility is not the too clever, too knowing depiction of despicable rich people that we have come to expect from modern literature.
Walter Evans photograph
There are no real villains in this book, only imperfect but fundamentally decent people making their way in the world. That some of them are rich and privileged does not prevent them from having character or depth. How refreshing.
Like his second book, A Gentleman in Moscow, Towles’s first novel offers both insight into human nature and plenty of good advice. Take, for example, this passage in which our heroine reminisces about what her father told her as as he lay dying:
“Whatever setbacks he had faced in his life, he said, however daunting or dispiriting the unfolding of events, he always knew that he would make it through, as long as when he woke in the morning he was looking forward to his first cup of coffee. Only decades later would I realize that he had been giving me a piece of advice. Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high-minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane—in the cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap in the bath—she has probably put herself in unnecessary danger. What my father was trying to tell me, as he neared the conclusion of his own course, was that this risk should not be treated lightly: One must be prepared to fight for one’s simple pleasures and to defend them against elegance and erudition and all manner of glamorous enticements.”
Yep, it’s those simple pleasures that really make life worth living. Remember that! One also has to love a heroine who reacts this way to her first experience target-shooting (another of life’s simple pleasures!):
“If only someone had told me about the confidence-boosting nature of guns, I’d have been shooting them all my life.”
1937 skeet shooting champion — looks as if she’s been shooting all her life.
And this passage reminded me of another dear Katie…
“Katey’s the hottest bookworm you’ll ever meet. If you took all the books that she’s read and piled them in a stack, you could climb to the Milky Way.”
1930s BLOND WOMAN SITTING BY WINDOW READING MAGAZINE PROFILE VIEW PLANTS IN BACKGROUND WINDOW SEAT
Oh, yes. There’s nothing quite like a good book to boost morale when the turkeys are getting you down. Try Amor Towles — you won’t regret it.
*Johnny Burke, “Pennies from Heaven”
Woohoo, three-day weekend coming up!
I have no Big Plans but daughter #1 will be driving in from mid-MO.
We’ll barbecue, because…
Maybe we’ll have a dance party…hopefully with the wee babes!
No doubt we’ll watch a movie…
Maybe we should watch a Neil Simon movie and toast him since he died this week at 91. The Odd Couple (1968) is always a solid choice and funnier than you remember.
I can’t take it anymore, Felix, I’m cracking up. Everything you do irritates me. And when you’re not here, the things I know you’re gonna do when you come in irritate me. You leave me little notes on my pillow. Told you 158 times I can’t stand little notes on my pillow. “We’re all out of cornflakes. F.U.” Took me three hours to figure out F.U. was Felix Ungar!
Murder By Death (1976) is also quite funny–a satire of all those Agatha Christie-type mysteries featuring all the famous detectives you can think of. As I recall, David Niven and Maggie Smith steal the show as “Dick and Dora Charleston”.
We can all relate to Truman Capote’s character, Lionel Twain, when he says:
You’ve tricked and fooled your readers for years. You’ve tortured us all with surprise endings that made no sense. You’ve introduced characters in the last five pages that were never in the book before. You’ve withheld clues and information that made it impossible for us to guess who did it. But now, the tables are turned. Millions of angry mystery readers are now getting their revenge. When the world learns I’ve outsmarted you, they’ll be selling your $1.95 books for twelve cents.
[Here’s an interesting article about Neil Simon and his influence on American society.]
Well, whatever you choose to do this long weekend, I hope you have a good one! Take a real break from your work and remember:
When we start being too impressed by the results of our work, we slowly come to the erroneous conviction that life is one large scoreboard where someone is listing the points to measure our worth. And before we are fully aware of it, we have sold our soul to the many grade-givers. That means we are not only in the world, but also of the world. Then we become what the world makes us. We are intelligent because someone gives us a high grade. We are helpful because someone says thanks. We are likable because someone likes us. And we are important because someone considers us indispensable. In short, we are worthwhile because we have successes. And the more we allow our accomplishments — the results of our actions — to become the criteria of our self-esteem, the more we are going to walk on our mental and spiritual toes, never sure if we will be able to live up to the expectations which we created by our last successes. In many people’s lives, there is a nearly diabolic chain in which their anxieties grow according to their successes. This dark power has driven many of the greatest artists into self-destruction.”
―
*Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple
