Ever More Random Thoughts, November 2014 Edition

My GPS got lost sending me to Walgreen’s the other day.  It turns out it isn’t really on the corner of Happy and Healthy.

Why is it that every time I have an appointment with the eye doctor that requires that my pupils be dilated, that day is the brightest, sunniest day of the week?  I exit the office nearly blinded by the light and proceed to attempt to drive home.  I guess this question is the converse of why it always seems to rain when I put out massive amounts of newspaper and junk mail for recycling.  Speaking of which, here is the rule:  If you put out the recycling the night before the pick-up, it will be picked up late in the day.  But if you forget to put it out the night before and drag your recycling can out on the morning of the pick-up, you will have missed it because the truck came early.  Am I right?

Isn’t it ironic that when you go to the doctor you become the patient, but when they leave you in the examination room in that flimsy paper gown for 30 minutes with magazines from 1997 to read you become impatient?

They used to refer to James Brown as the hardest-working person in show business.  I think the title now belongs to Flo for all those Progressive Insurance commercials.  That woman is everywhere!

I am so tired of making my bed.  I mean, I do it every day (the only exception being when I am sick enough to stay in it all day), but it is the same routine every day.  I wouldn’t think of NOT making it, but I am tired of the routine.  Just saying.

I saw a sign on the corner the other day advertising a garage sale.  It occurred to me that GARAGE and GARBAGE are the same except for the addition of the letter B.  Ironic, considering how much GARBAGE you see at GARAGE sales.

I am available to star in a sequel to the movie “This Is 40” and call it “This Is 64.”  I wonder if Hollywood would be interested.

So I see that big butts are all the rage in music and videos.  This couldn’t have been the case before I lost 80 pounds? 

Do you put something on your To Do List after you have done it just so you can cross it off?  I thought so.

We all have the best of intentions.  When we designate a special, cozy spot for a chair and a lamp so we can read and quietly enjoy a cup of tea, we actually think we will find time to do that, but how rarely does that happen — if ever?

As women, we will come up with whatever excuse we find necessary to justify buying a new handbag or pair of shoes, but, if you are like me, you probably continue to use those old, stained potholders you have had for 20 years.  Come on, they are potholders.  You can replace them without feeling guilty about spending the money after, say, maybe 10 years.

I am sure you clean up before the cleaning lady arrives — like I do — but I also stomp around the living room so she has to vacuum it and doesn’t think I never go in there because you can still see the marks from the last time she vacuumed.

What happens when a woman with a hyphenated last name marries a man with a hyphenated last name and she wants to use her name with his?  Sarah White-Jones Baxter-Burnside?  Good luck to THEIR kids.

I’ve reached the point in life where, when I find a sock with a hole in it, I toss it out and save the other sock, which then gets paired with another solo sock, whether or not they match.  Caution, this practice works best with white, athletic socks.

Speaking of sox, I’m always perplexed when I spot one gnarly-looking sock lying in the street.  I picture the sock’s journey to this escape from the washer or dryer into the sewer system and wonder, is this what happens to a missing sock?  Do they really go all Andy Dufraine and find a way out to “freedom?”

Don’t you hate it when you cannot find something and you keep looking where you just KNOW it will be and it still isn’t there, but you keep telling yourself, “It will turn up,” because that’s what your mother always said, and it is still missing?  This is my way of saying that the hydrocortisone cream I had in the pocket of my sweatpants escaped and remains a fugitive in this house.  Someday, when I move, I KNOW it will be located, but by then it will be too late.  You have been replaced, relieved of your duties, Mr. Hydrocortisone.  But I still think if I look under the chair for the 38^th time you will be lying there in wait. 

I watch a lot of HGTV programs where people are renovating houses.  On “House Hunters Renovation,” the people who have just bought a house end up completely redoing it.  There are “Bath Crashers” and “Kitchen Crashers,” where the hosts lurk in the aisles of Lowe’s until they find someone willing (and smart enough) to agree to have their bathroom or kitchen renovated for free by professionals — in what they claim to be three days.  Who would be stupid enough to turn down such an offer?  And now I note a plethora of celebrity renovation shows.  Vanilla Ice renovates homes for Amish people.  As unlikely as that seems, “Beverly Hills 90210” alum Jennie Garth is renovating her own home on her own TV show.  William Shatner has a renovation show — renovating the Starship Enterprise?  And Daryl Hall of the duo Hall & Oates seems to have a lot of experience in rebuilding old homes.  Even Olympic ice skater Brian Boitano is a designer.  Or is his a cooking show?  I’m getting confused with the Food Network now.  The point is that it seems anyone can have a chop saw, a nail gun and a TV show these days, and you don’t have to be the Property Brothers.

At Weight Watchers recently we discussed posture, and how maintaining the correct posture helps keep your core muscles strong.  Good luck to the next generation, I say.  The only strong muscles they will have are their hand muscles, as they walk slumped over, clutching their smartphones and rarely looking up to see if cars are coming.  I’m no better, by the way.  I slouch, though I try to remind myself to walk erect, but my excuse is I have to keep my head down so the brim of my hat keeps the sun out of my eyes.  This excuse does not work for me on a cloudy day, I must admit.

I recently had a long-delayed reunion with a dear friend with whom I worked back in the 1970s.  We have always stayed in touch but have only seen each other sporadically.  It is amazing to me how it does not matter how much time has passed between visits, because we pick up the conversation as if we just spoke 10 minutes ago.  If you have people in your life like this, you are lucky.  You know who you are.

I have acquired the (well-deserved) reputation of being a grammar freak, as evidenced by the number of posts on Facebook that point out errors and mention my name (not for making the errors, but because these folks know I will be in full-on twitch mode when I see them).  That reputation is not to say I don’t make the occasional error myself (though it is more likely to be a typo than a grammar mistake).  My sister thought it was odd that after I retired I bought several new grammar books.  After all, she reasoned, I wasn’t working anymore, so I wouldn’t need them.  But I’m still writing, I explained, and I still want to do it right. 

Lately, I’ve been going through old pictures — actual photographs and even slides —  weeding out the thousands of pictures I have taken of trees and flowers and ducks on a pond, and especially going through the wedding pictures of people whom I no longer see and who aren’t even married to each other anymore.  In the process, I have come across plenty of pictures of myself that made me say out loud, “What could you have been thinking when you picked THAT outfit?”  I hope I don’t do that in the next picture purge, looking at today’s clothes with the same degree of disdain in 20 years.  Assuming I’m still around in 20 years and know how to purge, that is.

A friend told me a story about buying something recently at Kohl’s for $55 that was on sale for half price, AND she had Kohl’s cash, AND she had a coupon, AND she had some other promo, so, when the cashier rang her up, the item was down to $6.30, AND she still asked the cashier for a scratch off coupon, all while her daughter looked on in total embarrassment.  My hero!

It is deer season here in Hillsborough, so you never know when you might — God forbid — literally run into a deer on the road.  I have noticed that they seldom look before bolting across the street. They also seem illiterate, since they rarely read the signs that say “Deer Crossing” and just cross anywhere they choose.

My superstitions have become “stupid”stitions.  Last year I designated certain pairs of socks, certain underwear and certain shirts to wear to Rutgers Women’s Basketball games.  If they won, I kept these items in the rotation, but if they lost the game, the garments were banned.  When I hit the road for the WNIT Championship, I had to keep washing the shirt I wore to the games since the team kept winning, even though there was barely time to get home and throw in a load.  So I showed up at the Championship game in the winning shirt only to see the team wearing black uniforms for the first time all season.  I guess their uniform color didn’t matter, and I’m hoping this year my choice of the aforementioned items won’t either.  Then, maybe, I can tackle my issue of parking in the same location so as not to jinx the team.

One of my sister Douglass alumnae contributed this random thought for this month’s blog, and I have to say I am with her 100%:  She says she dislikes being in a store and being rung up at the register while the cashier carries on a full conversation with one of the other nearby cashiers.  What is the proper response to this situation?  I don’t like when that happens to me, any more than I like the fact that the cashiers can barely make change on those rare occasions when they confronted with actual cash.  Any suggestions for a proper (or improper) response to the former situation will be graciously accepted for future use.

I turned on the Hallmark Channel the other day to watch an episode of “The Golden Girls,” only to find that the network has already begun airing those truly insipid holiday movies, most of which were made for TV and few of which are worth watching.  It wasn’t even the 1^st of November.  This morning I heard two Christmas songs on the Love station on Sirius radio, which I hope doesn’t mean that the station is converting to all-holiday, all of the time, already.  I’ll be sticking with ESPN radio or my iPod instead.

Happy Holidays to you…

Tina's October 2014 Movies

I tried to see as many movies as I could in October, before basketball season begins to occupy my time.  Here are the 15 that made the cut.  Numbering picks up from previous months and movies marked with an * are those I have not seen previously.  Movies are rated on a scale of 1-5 cans of tuna fish, with 5 being the top grade.

127.  The Rule* (2014) — I don’t know anything about Benedictine monks or private schools in Newark, New Jersey, so this documentary about St. Benedict’s was eye-opening.  I knew the reputations of St. Benedict’s accomplished athletic teams, but the school provides so much more — a safe, nurturing environment where kids can learn academics and self-worth, even while they navigate the sometimes scary streets of Newark.  The monks follow the principles of St. Benedict himself, which focus on community, trust, connectedness and other qualities that are foreign to many of the students.  The monks are a dedicated but realistic lot, ceding responsibility to the students to police themselves and giving them leadership responsibilities that they can use later in life.  Any educational institution that can claim a high graduation rate and where most of the students go on to college is a successful one in these turbulent urban areas, and St. Benedicts has achieved that record.  I was impressed.  3½ cans.  

128.  Love Is Strange* (2014) — There actually is nothing strange about this love story between George (Alfred Molina) and Ben (John Lithgow).  The couple has been together for 39 years when they decide to get married.  Immediately, George loses his job as a music teacher at a New York Catholic high school because his marriage defies the teachings of the church.  He and Ben are forced to sell their beloved New York City apartment and, because their friends and relatives live in small places of their own, they have to split up, George living with hard-partying friends and Ben bunking —literally — in the bottom bunk in the room of his teenaged great nephew.  Both feel displaced and in the way, interfering in the lives of their new landlords and missing their private time together.  This is a poignant story that illustrates the complications of life together and apart — and of living in the city.  Molina and Lithgow underplay to perfection.  While I did not agree with the title, I was captivated by the Chopin music used liberally throughout the score.  I haven’t liked non-musical movie music this much since the soundtrack from “Cinema Paradiso.”  It made me want to find Chopin on my iPod once again.  3½ cans.

129.  My Old Lady* (2014) — I think THIS movie should have been called “Love Is Strange,” because in this movie, it sure is.  Kevin Kline plays Mathieus Gold, who has inherited an apartment in France from his late father.  When he goes to claim it so he can sell it, he finds the formidable 92-year old Madame G. (Maggie Smith) living there.  Apparently there is an odd practice in France where one buys an apartment but cannot take ownership of the property until the present owner dies.  While Smith may not be buying green bananas, she nonetheless is destined to outlive us all.  This sounds like a comedy, but it isn’t.  Mathieus learns things about the father he hardly knew and meets Smith’s daughter Chloe (Kristin Scott Thomas), while we wonder about whether they may be related since her mother had a long affair with his father.  Kline’s Mathieus is a sad sack, bereft of money, friends and self-esteem.  Normally I find Kevin Kline so charming and engaging that I kept picturing a more appropriately sardonic Bill Murray in this role.   Love may be strange here after all, but I didn’t find this movie either uplifting or compelling despite the presence of Maggie Smith in the title role.  2½ cans. 

130.  Driving Miss Daisy (1989) — An old Jewish woman falls in love with an old black man.  OK, that’s not how this story is billed, but the bond that develops between the persnickety Miss Daisy (Jessica Tandy) and her obliging chauffeur Hoke (Morgan Freeman, in my second favorite Morgan Freeman movie, after “The Shawshank Redemption”) is a special friendship.  Miss Daisy is a southern lady living in a large house by herself, getting by with the help of her son (Dan Ackroyd) and staff.  She doesn’t want to give up driving herself to the Piggly Wiggly, but after she crashes the car one too many times, her son hires Hoke to drive her around.  At first she won’t give him anything to do and won’t even get in the car, but, over time, the ice melts and she comes to trust and appreciate him.  This story is about love and respect that is hard-won.  I love this movie.  4 cans.

131.  Young Victoria (2010) — It’s not easy being queen.  Just ask 18-year old Victoria, who ascends to the throne in England as the only descendent of her uncle the king and his brothers.  But Victoria (Emily Blunt) is pushed and pulled by her mother the duchess and her advisor, both of whom want her to turn over her powers until she is older.  The poor young woman is like a prisoner in a very lavish jail where she is not permitted to attend school or even to descend a staircase without a helping hand.  But Victoria is stronger than she looks, and she’s not about to give it all up for her self-centered mother and her power-hungry advisor.  Besides, she is in love with Albert (Rupert Friend), a distant cousin from Germany who may have his own aspirations.  Lavish sets and costumes make this a dazzling vision of royalty at its best and worst.  3½ cans.

132.  Good Morning, Miss Dove (1955) — Jennifer Jones plays the title character, a taciturn school teacher who we can disparagingly call an “old maid.”  She is devoted to her students and her craft, as we see through a series of flashbacks that show her first as an active young woman who is forced into a life of work that was unplanned.  Along the way, her students become police officers, doctors and mothers.  I remember first seeing this movie when I was a teenager and admiring Miss Dove’s devotion, but I have to admit that now it seems so stiff and outdated.  Still, there is always room for movies about characters who behave with honor as they try to elevate the standards of those around them.  2½ cans.

133.  Gone Girl* (2014) — This review will be very short so I don’t spoil the story for you.  Ben Affleck and Rosamind Pike are Nick and Amy Dunne, an attractive young couple seemingly in love with each other and living a comfortable and happy life in the Midwest.  Suffice to say that things are not always as they seem.  If you have read the book, you’ll find this movie to be a faithful rendering the Gilliam Flynn’s story (since she wrote the screenplay), complete with twists and turns.  Don’t try to figure it out, just go along for the ride.  Well worth seeing.  4 cans.

134.  Up in the Air (2009) — Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a man with almost no baggage.  Even the suitcase he carries on his nearly daily business flights is exceedingly well thought out.  He leaves no room for ambiguity in his life, which revolves around his job, working for a firm that specializes in firing people for companies who cannot or will not pull the trigger.  He has virtually no personal life, which suits him just fine.  His big aspiration is to get to 10 million flight miles and get a special gold card from the airline.  All that is fine until he meets Alex, the female version of himself (Vera Farmiga) and suddenly he has to juggle his schedule to spend time with her.  Meanwhile, he is training a young woman (Anna Kendrick, looking too young to work at anything other than a lemonade stand) to be as detached as he is as they deliver life-changing news to emotionally overwrought soon-to-be former employees.  The social commentary in this is stunning, as the diminished value of people and their work is at the forefront.  Oh, the humanity — or lack thereof.  Clooney is perfect as Bingham, charming with Alex, unyielding as the executioner.  And many of the people depicted being fired are real victims of unemployment, so their presence lends an air of authenticity.  4 cans.

135.  Stakeout (1987) — It is probably not a good idea for a police officer to fall in love with the person he/she is supposed to be staking out, but that’s what happens with Chris (Richard Dreyfus) and Maria (Madeliene Stowe).  Maria’s ex (Aidan Quinn) has just escaped prison and the cops are assigned to keep an eye on her lest the bad guy show up.  So Chris and his partner Bill (Emilio Estevez) hole up in the house across the street to check her out.  This film is part buddy movie (and Dreyfus and Estevez have great chemistry), part action movie (check out the sequence near the beginning at a fish processing plant) and part inadvertent love story.  Stowe and Dreyfus are charming together, and Dreyfus’ Chris is a clever guy.  This movie came out around the same time as two similar ones that I also liked very much: “Running Scared” with Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines and “Midnight Run” with Robert DeNiro as a bounty hunter and Charles Grodin as his prey, who almost drives the hunter crazy.  Three fun films, fans.  3½ cans.

136.  Hoosiers (1986) — With basketball season about to start, what better movie to enjoy than this quintessential sports classic about the disgraced coach who leads the small-town underdog team to the state championship game?  Gene Hackman is a memorable Norman Dale, a tough coach whom the townsfolk don’t appreciate at first.  In the beginning Coach Dale barely has enough players to take the court, and the best player in school won’t even come out for the team.  Yes, the story is riddled with the usual sports clichés, but this tale, based on the true story of an Indiana team in the early 1950s, will win your heart as much as they win their games.  And from a basketball standpoint, these guys look like they can actually play.  4 hoops and a holler.

137.  When the Garden Was Eden* (2014) — Speaking of basketball, this documentary from ESPN’s “30 for 30” series examines the rise of not only the new Madison Square Garden in the 1960s-1970s, but also its inhabitants, primarily the New York Knicks.  Until the NBA really began rolling nationally, it seemed that only the Boston Celtics won the Championship each year, often at the hands of the Los Angeles Lakers.  But in the late 60s and early 70s, the Knicks moved into the new Garden at Penn Station and, with the move, came the such unique players as Walt “Clyde” Frazier, Dave Debusschere, Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, Jerry Lucas, Cassie Russell, Phil Jackson, future Senator Bill Bradley — who deferred his basketball career for two years so he could be a Rhodes Scholar — and Willis Reed, whose walk onto the floor for the 7^th game of the 1970 Championship, despite what seemed like a devastating injury, became the stuff of legend.  Before the rise of the Knicks, the Garden was the raucous home of college basketball and the cigar-smoking, betting men who followed the game.  But the Knicks brought glamour and winning and attracted the stars to courtside.  The team that emphasized teamwork won championships in 1970 and 1973 and hasn’t won since.  But it was great while it lasted.  This film was a labor of love for actor/director Michael Rapaport, a native New Yorker who wasn’t even alive back in the Knicks heyday but grew up steeped in their lore.  If you know anything about pro basketball, you probably know this story, but to relive it was a real treat.  4 hoops.

138.  The Fault In Our Stars* (2014) — Any movie that starts off with the protagonists meeting in a cancer support group for teenagers cannot end well, but we are willing to come along for the all-too-brief ride because the characters of Hazel Grace (Shailene Woodley) and Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort) are just so appealing.  Hazel is going to die someday from lung cancer that has almost killed her once, but Gus, who has already lost his lower leg to cancer, looks healthy and recovered.  The two share witty texts, become fast friends and head out to Amsterdam to catch up with her favorite author (Willem Dafoe) to find out what happened to the characters in the book she loves.  They enjoy a romantic dinner and imbibe in champagne as they fall in love.  Gus is cute as can be, and Hazel, sporting a cannula for oxygen, reluctantly falls for him since she knows one of them will end up alone.  This movie is a good example of the book being better than the screen adaptation.  Something about the dialog just made it pop off the page, where, when delivered by the characters on screen, it seems contrived.  It is little corny, a little sad, and probably intended as “Love Story” for a generation 40 years younger than me.  Read the book instead.  3 cans.

139.   The Judge* (2014) — Smug Chicago lawyer Hank Palmer (Robert Downey, Jr.) has a challenging client, an irascible, elderly judge who is being tried for murder in a small Indiana town.  The client, Joseph Palmer (Robert Duvall) doesn’t want to take his attorney’s advice, and, in fact, treats him such disdain that it hamper’s Hank’s trial strategy.  Add the fact that Hank is his son, and the matter becomes that much more complicated.  Long-festering emotions spill out even as Hank is forced to care for his father in ways he never imagined.  As you can imagine, father and son begin to look at each other with new respect and less venom.  I’ve never been a big RDJ fan, but he holds his own against crusty Duvall.  Vera Farmiga plays Hank’s former high school sweetheart and adds a twist to the story.  I suspect that when Oscar time rolls around, at least Duvall will hear people say, “Here comes the Judge.”  4 cans.

140.  The Best of Me* (2014) — The Nicholas Sparks formula is getting a tad too familiar:  Young, attractive, star-crossed lovers get together, break apart, reunite years later, something BIG happens, etc.  I don’t want to give away the plot, but I did find this outing better than the other Sparks movies I’ve seen, at least since the classic tearjerker, “The Notebook,” which I love.  I really enjoyed this one, too, with a very handsome James Marsden as Dawson Cole, the boy from the wrong side of the tracks (played as a young man by a very handsome Luke Bracey, with echoes of Ryan Gosling in “The Notebook”) and Michelle Monaghan as Amanda (younger version by Liana Liberato), the rich girl who doesn’t care about Dawson’s trashy and dangerous family.  The knight in shining armor is Gerald McRaney as Tuck, the local man who takes in young Dawson and becomes a surrogate father to the troubled teen.  When Tuck dies, Dawson and Amanda are summoned by his lawyer to dispose of his ashes and his things, reuniting after 21 years and many unhappy memories.  But do you ever really get over your first love?   And is love alone enough to make the relationship endure despite obstacles?  This is probably not a movie to which to drag the man in your life, but it is one I can imagine myself binge watching when it hits TV and someone airs it incessantly.  It wasn’t the best of Sparks, but it was close enough.  4 cans.

141.  The Departed (2006) — Moles, rats, mobs and tons of blood populate this suspenseful drama by Martin Scorsese.  Billy (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a young state trooper recruited by police (Mark Wahlberg and Martin Sheen) to go undercover with the mob in Boston, which is led by Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson, looking a bit demented, like the character in “The Shining”).  His counterpart is Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), raised and planted in the police department to be the rat by Costello.  Each man knows someone on the other side has infiltrated their respective organizations, and each scene draws them closer to figuring out who is whom.  Just when you think one of them will be unmasked, there is a twist.  The tension stays at a high level throughout the story, and, by the end, you don’t know who is legit and who has sold his loyalties to the highest bidder.  This film is also my third with Vera Farmila this month, as she plays a police psychologist involved with both Billy and Sullivan.  4 handguns.