Weekend | dual personalities

September 22, 2014

“Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm.”*

by chuckofish

I spent a good deal of my weekend thinking about what I had been doing last weekend, but you know how that goes. Luckily we had a semi-surprise visit from our niece Ellen who was driving down to Houston from Detroit. She stopped in our flyover city to spend the night and it was, indeed, a treat to see her. The boy came over and had dinner with us.

Not fair to take a picture after a 10 hour drive, but oh well.

Ellen is a Ph.D student in geology at Penn State. She’s interning at some big oil company for the semester. She thinks nothing of camping on site in Utah all summer and then driving across country in her pickup truck. She is awesome.

We watched Ninotchka (1939).

After Ellen left bright and early on Saturday morning, I finished the Irish mystery I was reading–In the Woods by Tana French–and I went to some estate sales. I also worked in the yard. It was a glorious fall weekend and a treat to be outside. On Sunday I went to church where the OT reading was from Jonah–which is kind of a hilarious book if you haven’t read it lately–followed by some Philippians and a gospel message on self-righteousness. It all fit together really well. We were reminded that God is not fair, he is generous. The last will be first, and the first will be last. It was good to hear.

Also it was St. Matthew’s Day, so we had a big party–a picnic complete with bagpiper inside

and outside,

a bouncy house,

good food,

and a snow cone machine!

Good times! I’m not sure why we had a bagpiper, except that they always add a festive note–but it was cool.

Hope your weekend was good too. Have a great week!

(The photos of the picnic are from the Grace Church Facebook page.)

*Jonah 1:15

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August 29, 2014

When the light is changing

by chuckofish

I deserved a treat, so I ordered Mary Chapin Carpenter’s 2010 CD The Age of Miracles.

I am one of her oldest fans (and I mean that both ways)–although we are contemporaries after all, so never mind. Anyway, she never disappoints. It is a very good album and there is one song which really spoke to me. Listen, fellow introverts, and enjoy!

And, oh boy, the weekend is upon us once again! The painting in my bathroom is finished (thank you, Gary!) and so my project is to put the room back together.

I will also be readying the house for daughter # 1 who arrives home in a week for a birthday visit. Lots to do–but all fun stuff.

Hope your weekend is full of fun stuff too!

P.S. Today is Joseph Cotton day on TCM–so nothing thrilling to report there. He was in some classic movies, including Citizen Kane and The Third Man, but I am not a big fan of his. With a few notable exceptions like Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943), he made a career of playing the second lead, the good guy who is kind of boring and makes the lead look sexy and dangerous in comparison. In that genre, TCM will be showing Duel in the Sun (1947) which, even though it stars a hot young Gregory Peck playing Cotton’s bad younger brother, is a pretty terrible movie. I liked it as a child though, mostly because of the ethereal Lillian Gish who plays the aging southern belle who had a thing a long time ago for her reckless creole cousin and so takes in his half-breed daughter, played by the terrible actress Jennifer Jones. Whenever Gish is in a scene, “Beautiful Dreamer” plays in the background and follows her around eerily. I’m sure I had no idea what was actually going on, i.e. rape, wreckage and ruin. King Vidor directed it all with a heavy hand, but it does have a rousing musical score by Dimitri Tiomkin.

So watch it if you’re in the mood for a bad melodramatic western–and I’ll admit, sometimes I am. But I really don’t like Gregory Peck as a bad guy.

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June 30, 2014

And that’s my opinion from the blue, blue sky

by chuckofish

At church last week we were exhorted to “Bring your smartphones, tablets, laptops, cameras… any electronic communications device…” to church yesterday as we joined a nationwide effort to “make the Good News go viral.”

O gee. No thanks. Call me old-fashioned, but I wanted no part of this:

Use your smartphone, tablet or other electronic devices to share comments, prayers or pictures on your favorite social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
Use #Episcopal and #GraceKirkwood.
Text questions or comments to Fr. Todd during the service.
Post a selfie with people around you during the time of the Peace, in the Narthex, during coffee hour, etc.
(please ask permission before taking anyone’s picture).
Use #Episcopal and #GraceKirkwood.
Keep an eye on the monitor next to the pulpit to see what other people are posting (yes, there will be a TV in the sanctuary — just for today!).
Come to our Sunday Forum at 9 a.m. in LaVielle Conference Room (all ages welcome).

I suppose this was supposed to appeal to young people, motivating them to come back to the new hipster Episcopal Church. See, we are with it! We’re still where it’s at, man.

The rector takes a selfie

Passing the peace

Yes, a picture speaks 1000 words. (These were on Facebook.) Now all doubt has been erased concerning whether or not we are all huge nerds at Grace.

Anyway, I stayed home. Because–zut alors!– I think church should be a haven away from cell phones and monitors.

That was what I didn’t do this weekend. As for what I did do–it was the usual: estate sale-ing, house cleaning, yard work, a little shopping, reading, and movie watching. I watched The Magnificent Seven (as I said I would) and Blackthorn, as my dual personality suggested. I am proud to say, I figured out how to turn on the subtitles (on Netflix). Go me.

I also watched Murder My Sweet (1944), which is the best film version of a Raymond Chandler novel (Farewell, My Lovely). Dick Powell is, in my estimation, better than Humphrey Bogart. I know that’s sacrilegious to some, but it’s what I think.

Wasn’t it swell of the boy to drop it by for me? It is a really good movie, full of wonderful Chandler lines like “I caught the blackjack right behind my ear. A black pool opened up at my feet. I dived in. It had no bottom. I felt pretty good – like an amputated leg.”

I also had a big work event on Saturday which went very well. Now I have two work days and then the OM and I are heading up to Michigan to celebrate the 4th of July and my brother’s birthday with my siblings and their better halves. Go team.

8 Comments

June 20, 2014

Friday movie pick: “DOUBLE NEGATIVE! Right?”*

by chuckofish

Perhaps you can tell from my relatively short blog posts this week that I have had a super busy one. Phew. TGIF.

When the highlight of one’s week is a dental appointment–because I always get high fives all around for my spectacular dental hygiene–you know you are in trouble.

Anyway, I am really looking forward to my weekend!

My movie pick for this weekend is Born Yesterday (1950) starring Judy Holliday as the scatter-brained Billie Dawn.

Garson Kanin wrote the play for Jean Arthur who played the role of Billie out-of-town but left the role for personal reasons. Kanin then selected Holliday, 20 years younger than Arthur, as her replacement. Judy was a big hit on Broadway in the play, and in one of those Hollywood success stories where everything falls into place, she actually managed to reprise her part in the movie. It was practically unheard of that an unknown should get a big part like this! Then she won the Oscar, beating Bette Davis in All About Eve and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. And Judy deserved it.

Judy Holliday is perfect as Billie Dawn, the ex-showgirl mistress of the loudmouthed, uncouth crook played by Broderick Crawford, who arrives in Washington D.C. planning to bribe a congressman. He hires a journalist (William Holden’s character) to smooth the rough edges of his girlfriend–you know, teach her some manners and how to make small talk with classy capitol types. His plan backfires, of course, as Billie–reading books on U.S. history–realizes how corrupt her boyfriend is. Hilarity ensues.

Holliday’s career was set to take off, but her career–and her life–were cut short by cancer. She died in 1965 at 43.

So let us toast Judy Holliday (born Judith Tuvim in Sunnyside, Queens, New York) tomorrow on her birthday and watch Born Yesterday.

*Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday

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March 28, 2014

The weekend approacheth

by chuckofish

Well, this time last week I was going out to dinner with cute boys and hanging out with daughter #2. This week it has been back to the salt mines for me as usual. Work, work, work.

One bright spot was going to my first lacrosse game of the season.

The boy’s Varsity Hounds creamed his old high school team 15-3.

It was kind of weird sitting in the KHS football stadium cheering for the “visitors”. It was also quite cold! Once it started to get dark, I had to bail and go home even with my winter coat and a Bean’s wool blanket to sit on.

At home I am keeping my spirits up with these pretty flowers–and, yes, the Christmas Cactus is blooming again.

On the reading front, having finished Peter Carey’s wonderful Olivier and Parrot, I started reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt and I am hooked. The book, which took more than 10 years to write, is narrated by Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New York boy whose world is violently disrupted during a routine visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his mother. A terrorist bomb explodes, killing Theo’s mother and other innocents, including a man who, just before dying, implores Theo to take “The Goldfinch” out of the smoking wreckage of the museum. I have not read Tartt’s other two books, but I am impressed. We’ll see if she holds me for 700 pages. I plan to find out this weekend.

Have a great weekend!

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August 12, 2013

I know a hawk from a handsaw.

by chuckofish

I probably sound like a broken record, but, gee, the weather has been great this summer in our flyover state! We are used to hot summers and really hot Augusts. Last year our summer was just the pitts–weeks of over 100-degree temperatures and no rain.

But this summer the flowers are still blooming.

In front of the local P.O.

The crepe myrtle shrubs, always a hardy and long-lasting perennial around here, have been stupendous.

I was able to take a walk in the middle of the afternoon to take these pictures–unheard of!

I walked past this house up the street from ours, which my children affectionately dubbed the “Adams Family House” years ago.

Unfortunately it is going to be torn down now and 4 mini-mansions will be built on its grounds. They are in the process of clearing out all the landscaping now. “Progress” can be so sad.

Anyway, the coolest thing that happened this weekend was that a red-tailed hawk landed outside my window on a low hanging branch of the tree in front of our house. I did not have my camera or cell phone on hand. Bah humbug. But it was cool indeed.

Someone else’s photo of a red-tailed hawk

I am a big fan of raptors and to see one up close and personal is a real treat. Red-tailed hawks are great-looking birds and they do their job keeping the rodent population down around here. Also they look like they wear little pants.

How was your weekend?

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