In Old Fantasy Scotland

Dry. That's the best way to describe northern Illinois at the moment. I don't ever think I've seen my yard so brown, just to take one very small sample. Little rain is forecast for the days ahead. Cracks are appearing in patches of ground not covered with brown grass. Wind blows clouds of dust from the baseball field in the park behind our back yard.

At least the temps have cooled down. But back when it was still hot, on Friday, we ducked into a movie theater, a time-honored way to escape the heat (we have air conditioning, but never mind). Ann wanted to see Brave, so we all went. Even when not at their best, Pixar movies are usually worth seeing in the theater, and so it was with this one. Better than most animations that I've seen, but not as good as most of the other Pixar animations I've seen.

Still, I was taken with the way the Fantasy Medieval Highland forests were drawn. Gorgeous backdrops. The story, I could take or leave. Not quite enough drunken brawling and bloodletting, if you asked me. We're talking about medieval Scotland, after all.

But I did entertain myself dreaming up sequels that will never be made. The story involves an independent-minded daughter of the king of Scotland, who ultimately refuses, in a very modern way, not to marry into any of the powerful neighboring clans to keep the peace. The king also has three young sons, triplets apparently, whose main function is to make chaos. Add to the mix a bit of drunken brawling, archery, a comic witch, magic spells, an angry bear, an anachronistic theme of mother-adolescent daughter conflict, and a happy ending, and there you have it.

Anyway, I imagined that a few years later, the princess did marry, and according to her wishes, not to a Scotsman. Instead she married one of the younger sons of the king of France. The purpose, of course, was to cement an alliance against England. She comes to like the court of France but, alas, dies in childbirth. As for her brothers, as soon as the old king is dead, they immediately make bloody war on each other.

July Blows In

One question I asked myself this weekend was, "Haven't there been enough Spiderman movies?" That's because marketing for the latest such movie finally got my attention, for all of a few seconds. My answer is, yes, there have been. I can't take Spiderman seriously anyway, because of lasting first impressions. As far as I'm concerned, Spiderman is pretty much this (which has had a remarkable 23+ million views). Just as Batman is this. .

Today during the early afternoon, the sky darkened as if a thunderstorm were getting ready to hit. The wind picked up and it got even darker. A classic pre-thunderstorm sky. Except that it didn't start raining. Instead, the wind grew stronger. Ann was so worried about a "tornado," she asked me to look out the back door.

It was a wicked wind, all right. A couple of loose items were moving across the back yard and the all the trees within sight were shaking. But I assured her that this wasn't a tornado. I wasn't quite sure that some major tree part wouldn't fall, however.

It was over in about 20 minutes. No rain, just dark clouds and high wind. At about 4, I took Lilly to a bookstore a couple of miles south of where we live. By then, the clouds were mostly gone and the summer heat had returned. Along the way, we discovered that starting about half a mile away, every traffic light along our route was out of order -- making for some tricky eight-lane, four-way stops. Tree branches were scattered in the street in spots, and a handful of trees along the way had been split in half or knocked over, though none directly into the street. Parts of fences were down in places, too. We'd had a wind event.

Small potatoes compared to a real tornado, say, or the storms that pummeled the eastern U.S. on Friday. But enough to remind you that the atmosphere has the potential to knock you around when it feels like it.

Footprint on the Square

Woodstock, Ill., has a pleasant town square, with greenery, walkways, benches and a statue memorializing the fallen originally erected by the GAR. Unlike some small towns, the business district surrounding the square seems fairly healthy, or at least without a lot of empty properties. Fixed to the sidewalk near I forget which business is this plaque.

Groundhog Day was largely filmed in Woodstock, and that spot is where Phil Connors (Bill Murray) stepped in an icy puddle a few times. If I remember right, he quickly learned to avoid stepping in it, once he understood he was trapped in a time loop. Chuck Peterson and family must have been mightily entertained by the scene.

The Wrong Box

The movie The Wrong Box (1966) is a fun farce. I saw it more than once on TV when I was a kid. Or saw parts of it different times, but in any case it was one of those childhood movies that stuck with me. Especially the montage near the beginning, when members of the tontine — bold Victorians, all — are shown embarking on adventures in distant lands and dying in comic ways, such as the fellow who reaches a mountain peak and is swallowed by the mountain the moment he plants the Union Jack on it.

I saw it again recently and appreciated it in a way I didn't 40+ years ago. Back then I had no idea how much British comedic talent was on screen: Michael Caine as the main character, but also John Mills, Ralph Richardson, Peter Sellers, and especially Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. The following, which I'm quoting from memory, wouldn't have been so funny in the hands of lesser comedians, but these two make it work:

John Finsbury (Moore): Why do I get all the dirty work?

Morris Finsbury (Cook): Because you're incredibly stupid.

And then there was character actor Wilfred Lawson as Peacock the Butler, who stole nearly every scene he appeared in. Apparently Lawson was a long-time alcoholic and by the time he was in The Wrong Box, the condition was about to kill him. He died about three months after the movie was released. His premature decrepitude suited the character, which imdb describes as the "hilariously pixillated, decrepit butler Peacock."

Michael Finsbury: [examining a Classical Greek statue] Is it a fraud, Peacock?

Peacock: Life is a fraud, Master Michael.

I think he meant it.

21st-Century Stooges

I promised Ann a while ago I would take her to a movie -- it's been a while for both of us -- and she picked The Three Stooges. I went with some trepidation yesterday. A movie like that can be awful in so many ways, even (especially) for those of us who enjoyed the originals long ago, or not so long ago.

But I'm happy to report that the movie was better than I thought it would be. Much (but not all) of it was true to the spirit of the originals, and the three actors who recreated the Stooges had clearly studied very carefully for their parts, since many (but not all) of their re-creations were spot-on. A lot of the time they had the hits, slaps, pokes, pummeling and other Stooge-abuse down pat, but also the patter: Moe's violent insults, Larry's whining, Curly's moron schtick.

Like in the originals, the story was not remotely important, nor very interesting. The main thing was to get the boys into situations in which they can ply their trademark chaos to anything and everything around them, including each other, and the movie delivered that with some regularity. Also true to the spirit of the originals, the rest of the cast was one-dimensional, especially the villains.

The only other cast member who stood any chance of upstaging the Stooges was a sour, sadistic Larry David in drag, dressed as stereotypical nun. In fact there were a lot of stereotypical nuns in this movie, including a nearly naked Kate Upton for all of about three seconds -- which I understand annoyed the easily annoyed Bill Donohue. But mainly the other characters were gag-fodder. Expecting anything more is a serious misunderstanding of the Stooge universe.

There were some missed opportunities. At one point, the Stooges crash a swank party, just the kind of set-up the boys of old needed to destroy the joint. Or at least get into a pie fight at the expense of the swells. They caused some damage, but not up to Stooge standards. Also, when the villains threatened to bump the Stooges off, there could have been a more extended, Stooge-type chase, which would be true to the originals.

One thing the movie did not need were any appearances by the cast of Jersey Shore. Maybe someone in the studio decided that the movie had to have something to attract the MTV demographic, but Jersey Shore features the wrong kind of morons, who don't mesh well Stooge dimwittedness. Fortunately their appearances were short.

The main thing, though, was that I laughed sometimes. So did Ann and the rest of the audience. That's more than I get from a lot of comedy, low or otherwise.

John Carter of Mars

It was warm enough to eat lunch on my deck. This is my idea of how spring should begin -- in March. But there's probably some kind of cold blast still in the works. It might have been a mild winter, but it isn't going to give up that easily.

When I read absurd things involving large sums of money, I go to the World Bank table of national GDPs for a sense of just how insane the sum is. The recent Disney bomb John Carter, I'm told, cost about $250 million to make, plus $100 million more or so in marketing costs. So -- are there any small nations with a GDP of about $350 million? Yes. Roughly speaking, Tonga, in 2010.

And to think, $100 million in marketing, which even reached the likes of me, didn't boost its prospects. A month or so ago, I saw a commercial for the movie. My reaction was entirely, "where's the of Mars in the title? Does it really have anything to do with Edgar Rice Burroughs?"

Interestingly, the Los Angeles Times said on Monday -- on its business page -- that "based on a century-old character created by author Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter was meant to appeal to young males. But a surprisingly older crowd turned up to see the movie this weekend, as 59% of the audience was over age 25."

Not so surprising, since I'm sure that the current crop of adolescent boys have little familiarity with John Carter of Mars. Former adolescent boys, such as me, are much more likely to have heard of the character, even read some of the books, as I did in early adolescence -- just about the right time for it -- starting with A Princess of Mars.

But I Think They'll Remember HAL

"Is this Planet of the Apes?"

"This is weird, Daddy."

"I don't get this movie."

"This music is creepy."

"Wait, what planet is he on?"

Recently I decided it was time for my nth viewing of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's been a number of years since the last time. So I rented a disk and watched it yesterday evening. I didn't ask any of the rest of my family to watch it with me.

But they hung around in the living room anyway, mostly doing other things with their electronic gizmos, but apparently with one eye on the seemingly incomprehensible doings on the screen. Lilly and Ann provided the comments above as the movie progressed.

Ant Stories

In August 2001, I drove to St. Louis with Lilly, who wasn't quite four years old, to visit my brother Jay and nephew Sam, as Sam moved into his dorm for his freshman year at Washington University. Lilly and I spent the first night at a motel en route, and it so happened that Them! was on TV that night. We watched most of it. Lilly was frightened and much more recently -- last year, in fact -- claimed that she actually remembered how scared the giant ants made her, which was the only thing she remembered about that trip.

It had been years since I'd seen the movie. What I remember from the 2001 viewing, besides Lilly's reaction, was that I hadn't realized that a pre-Matt Dillon James Arness was in it. Thinking about Them! now, I'm surprised some producer somewhere hasn't managed to remake it into a CGI travesty in which the ants are created by genetic engineering, rather than atomic testing. Give it time.

In the summer of 2006, we came home from Canada to discover that ants were busy trying to take over our house. Or least set up shop and live in it. I called in professional help and the bugs were dispatched. They were large black ants, and they've never returned.

I bring this up because I discovered a trail of very small ants this morning across the floor of the room in between my office and the kitchen. We'd seen these little black ants here and there during recent weeks, and even some in the upstairs bathroom, which I discouraged with a few squirts of bug spray. But I guess their numbers increase if they're aren't dealt with more systematically.

Most of the ants were following one of the grooves in the floor created by the grid-like pattern of tiles. The groove is a straight shot across the floor -- an ant highway -- all the way from the trash bin in the kitchen to a small hole in the baseboard. Their lair must be in there. Well, nest. But that always sounded too pleasant for ants, which have some nightmarish features if you think about it. (Or see movies in which giant ant mandibles kill people.)

So I picked up some ant traps today, the kind that promise that the ants will enter, pick up a load of poisoned food and take it home to the nest. The first time I ever used such a thing was in Japan, during the first year I lived there. Ants invaded; somehow I found the ant traps in a store, though I had no idea what to ask for; and they worked very well. During the 2006 ant invasion, ant traps didn't work. So we'll see if these little ants take the bait of doom.

New Year Entertainments

The stretch of days between Christmas and New Year's proved to be brown and dry, at least around here, except for the rain and dank drizzle on Friday, and a weak spot of snow on New Year's Day. It's like November never ended -- the least-white December I've seen since '94 in London, which, a native told us, was a strangely warm month as well. Suits me.

Unlike last year, we didn't happen to see any of the holiday movies showing at theaters, such as We Bought a Cemetery for Christmas, Who Cares About the Adventures of Tintin? or The Girl Regretting Her Dragon Tattoo. I did manage to see Duck Soup on television on New Year's Eve.

That was my nth viewing of that movie at intervals of once every two or three years since the mid-70s. I know all the gags but laughed again all the same, and saw some details I'd never noticed before (or had forgotten). I paid particular close attention this time to Margaret Dumont, whose face was remarkably expressive. I've come to doubt the story that she didn't get most of the brothers' jokes, which sounds like something Groucho would make up.

I also paid closer attention to Edgar Kennedy, the lemonade vendor tormented by Chico and Harpo. Turns out he had quite a career and, if Duck Soup is anything to go by, a fitting sobriquet in "Master of the Slow Burn."

Over the holidays I also chewed at some of the books I've been reading lately, such as The Warm Bucket Brigade: The Story of the American Vice Presidency (Jeremy Lott, 2007), an entertaining read that (among many other things) makes a good case for regarding President Tyler more highly. Still, I didn't find myself in the grip of an intensely good book, as I did with True Grit this time last year.

I did spend some time reading the entertaining blog Lifetime, Wow! which consists of reviews of movies shown on the Lifetime Movie Channel. I'm not particularly familiar with Lifetime, but apparently it shows a lot of risible movies, and the bloggers at Lifetime, Wow! shoot those fish in that barrel with glee. The blog's plot synopses are probably more fun than most of the movies themselves.

Quomodo Invidiosulus Nomine Grinchus Christi Natalem Abrogaverit

I saw about five minutes of the feature-length abomination known as Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas on TV this evening. That's all I've ever seen of it at any one sitting over the decade or so since it was new, and I've never formed a better opinion of it. An alternate title might have been, Dr. Seuss’ Heirs Eager to Cash In, No Questions Asked.

But at least it reminded me that I own this book, which goes by the fine title Quomodo Invidiosulus Nomine Grinchus Christi Natalem Abrogaverit. It's a translation by the husband-and-wife team Terence and Jennifer Tunburg, unless that's a ruse, and the original was actually on a fourth-century Greek/Latin codex rediscovered at Mount Athos in the 19th century (and updated a bit in modern versions, to exclude such details as the Grinch's heresy trial for following Arianism).

It was one of the better Christmas presents I've received over the years -- I think it was the Christmas after Lilly was born -- from some old high school friends of mine. Now that's an adaptation of a classic children's tale we call all get behind.

Synchronized Electric Holiday Cheer

While visiting a drug store this weekend, I noticed that A Christmas Story has become a cottage industry -- a fairly major cottage industry, I'd say, to get a whole endcap display of its themed merchandise at this particular large chain. Maybe this year I'll get around to seeing that movie, since somehow or other I've missed it over the years. I'd never even heard of it until some years ago, when I read that the house in Cleveland used for exteriors had been converted into a museum devoted to the movie. Or I could just read about the movie, so that I'll understand the significance of a female leg table lamp in the story.

Until this weekend, I'd also never seen home Christmas lights synchronized to flash in time to a musical score, though I'd been vaguely aware of such displays, which are still fairly new. An early example of synchronized Christmas lights "was the work of Carson Williams, a Mason, Ohio, electrical engineer who spent about three hours sequencing the BB Light-O-Rama channels that controlled the 16,000 Christmas lights in the 2004 version of his annual holiday spectacular," says Snopes. "His 2005 display included over 25,000 lights that he spent nearly two months and $10,000 to hook up. So that Williams' neighbors wouldn't be disturbed by constant noise, viewers driving by the house were informed by signs to tune into a signal broadcast over a low-power FM radio station to hear the musical accompaniment."

Another source says that Williams spent three hours sequencing each minute of his display, but whatever the total, I'm sure it was a lot of work. Now, in the holiday season of 2011, either the techniques involved in creating this kind of light show are being defused to the benefit of Christmas-display enthusiasts, or Christmas-display specialists have learned Mr. William's strategies and are finding a market for their services. Or both. But when you chance across an elaborate synchronized display in the heart of the northwest suburbs, you know the thing's got some legs, at least among homeowners for whom static Christmas lights just aren't enough.

One of Lilly's friends told us about a synchronized display a block from her house, and when Lilly and I were in the area on Saturday evening, we stopped in front of the house for a few minutes and watched. It's exactly as described above: thousands of lights and a hand-lettered sign advising us to tune into a certain unoccupied FM frequency. As we watched, the lights flashed in artful on/off patterns to "Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairies" and a few other songs. A remarkable sight. I plan to take Yuriko and Ann to see it soon.

Rajaratnam, Roddenberry & Redshirts

I can't say that I've been following the case of Raj Rajaratnam very closely, but I did note that he was sentenced today for insider trading -- 11 years. I read a NYT article about the sentencing, and it said: "Prosecutors accused Mr. Rajaratnam of using a corrupt network of well-placed tipsters — including former executives of Intel, IBM and the consulting firm McKinsey & Company — to illicitly gain about $70 million."

Rajaratnam is a hedge-fund billionaire, as recently as 2009 the 559th richest person in the world or some such. His elaborate scheme netted him all of $70 million, vast money to almost anyone else, but only about 5 percent of his net worth. What's the psychology of that? He did it for sport? Because he was bored? Because he was absolutely sure the government would never make an example of him? Guess he miscalculated on that score.

He didn't testify, but I doubt that his thinking involved anything as grand as shaping the future (how could it?), as the rich villain Noah Cross told Jake Gittes in Chinatown, when Jake was able to ask him why he'd perpetrated his land grab.

Jake Gittes: How much are you worth?

Noah Cross: I have no idea. How much do you want?

Jake Gittes: I just wanna know what you're worth. More than 10 million?

Noah Cross: Oh my, yes!

Jake Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?

Noah Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future.

I didn't have much time to waste today, but what little I did I spent watching a trio of videos on YouTube posted by one "led4acs." They're fun watching for anyone familiar with the original Star Trek. The videos keep a running track of all the deaths on the show, and illustrate them with well-edited clips and occasional funny comments. The dead include crew members, guest stars, assorted extras, aliens and even the sentient computers that Capt. Kirk manages to destroy.

Some 26 redshirts bite the dust, in case you're wondering. Joining Star Fleet is clearly going to be a lot like shipping out with the Dutch East India Company in the 17th century -- a third or a half of the recruits aren't coming back. Sure, Gene Roddenberry imagined a more rational future for mankind, but Star Trek is also a carnival of death.

This is Part One, followed by Part Two and then Part Three.

Thursday Scraps

Windy night out there. Not a dark and stormy night, particularly, just dark and windy enough to knock more leaves off the trees, along with small branches. Green's still the majority foliage, but yellow and brown are expanding aggressively. The tree across the street from my front yard -- which I see daily from my window, here at the word mill -- has gone flush yellow in a matter of days.

The other day Ann said that she participated in a school assembly about bullying. I think this is something that pedagogues have cooked up recently, since I don't remember Lilly attending such an event five or so years ago, but then again that's the kind of thing I forget. Anyway, it was all I could do not to say something along the lines of, "You mean an assembly to help bullies improve their techniques?"

Mocking aside, I doubt that such well-intentioned anti-bullying assemblies have much effect, at least on bullies. Who among the kids will think, "Ah, I've been such a bully. Think I'll turn over a new leaf." Who considers himself a bully?

On the other hand, I remember a low-intensity bully in elementary school, a strapping fellow named David who wasn't consistently a jerk but who had his ugly moments. One day in the fourth or fifth grade, he said -- using that exact phrase above -- "I'm turning over a new leaf. I'm going to be nice." And he did it. A pretty rare transformation, now that I think about it. But I don't think his inspiration was a school assembly.

I watched part of The Big Chill on TV the other day, first time I'd seen it since I caught it at a dollar (two-dollar?) second-run theater in Memphis in late 1983. Before watching it this week, I vaguely remembered thinking it was an entertaining ensemble movie that had been lacquered with an irritating and Hollywood-contrived social message pandering to the vanities of people born right after World War II. After seeing it again, I still agree with my 1983 assessment.

Maybe I should see The Return of the Secaucus 7 again. I don't remember much about it either, except that it was an entertaining ensemble movie without much of an irritating social message, or characters who were ridiculously successful in their mid-30s.

I also saw Secretariat recently. It's a well-made, feel-good horse movie, and a good example of Disney craftsmanship. The movie also reminded me of Secretariat's intense fame in 1973. Like a lot of people without much previous interest in thoroughbred racing, I watched him on television as he won the Belmont and thus the Triple Crown. The movie encourages you to cheer for Secretariat and his plucky owner, of course, but I felt a little bad for Sham, the horse Secretariat famously bested. Clearly a great three-year-old, but one completely overshadowed by an even better horse.

Yuriko's birthday was earlier this month. She didn't want a cake, but custard-and-fruit creations from a bakery in Arlington Heights.

Boy, were they good.

Summertime Salmagundi

Back again on Tuesday. Time for meat, beer and colorful explosions.

Finally it feels like we're at the doorstep of high summer. Professional weather-watchers say it'll be pushing 100° F. here in northern Illinois tomorrow, and I say it's about time. Naturally, it won't last. This isn't South Texas.

What's the collective for dragonflies? Swarm, maybe, but that isn't very interesting. Other insects get collectives such as army, cloud, flutter, intrusion (cockroaches), plague and scourge, among others. One source suggests a "dazzle" or "levitation" of dragonflies. Not bad. The question comes to mind because dragonflies are in force now, seemingly more than in other years. Dragonflies arc and dive by day; fireflies make their traces in the twilight.

Saw an ad for the new Captain America movie recently, which was the first I'd heard of it. At least he seems to be fighting cartoon Nazis, his proper function, but it made me wonder: haven't there been enough movie adaptations of super-hero yarns already? Haven't they all been done? Guess not. This cartoon still offers the possibility of a gritty, live-action reboot. Or this one.

Received ten dollar coins from a bank teller not long ago. I was glad to see that the presidential series has gotten around to Andrew Johnson and U.S. Grant. I can't find a citation for it right now, but I seem to remember that, when asked why he'd run for president, he said, "I needed a job." Apocryphal, maybe, but a likable quote.

Somehow I'm in possession of a little pamphlet produced by a well-known sect -- known for their aversion to blood transfusions, for one thing -- entitled "All Suffering SOON TO END!" I can't say that I've actually read all of it, but I did note a money quote: "Soon God will intervene in human affairs by destroying this entire unsatisfactory system of things," meaning, it seems, all the works of man.

But that's not why I like it. The cover features a painting of a happy man and woman in the foreground, sitting next to a collection of pumpkins and big apples in a field of flowers. In background is a mountain, some pine trees, some fall-foliage trees, a house and a couple of horses, one with a rider. Right behind the man and woman is a moose. A huge bull moose with huge antlers.

Look at the painting long enough and it seems that the moose, not the happy couple, is the focus of the image. What's going on here? Does the moose have some significance in this religion that most of us don't know about? If so, I'd think more highly of them for it.

The Return of Jake and Elwood

Not long ago we all sat down and watched The Blues Brothers -- the 1980 movie -- on DVD, which I hadn't seen since it was new. Thirty-one years is a fair chunk of time, so it's no wonder I'd forgotten how strange it was. Then again, maybe Princess Leia blowing up an entire hotel, after which Jake and Elwood emerge from under a pile of rubble and nonchalantly wander off; or speeding cops chasing a speeding car through a crowded mall, but missing everyone; or Illinois Nazis driving off a bridge and falling 100 stories or so into Wacker Drive didn't seem so strange to moviegoers of the time, including a 19-year-old version of me.

Of course it's a musical, and musicals only have to have a nodding acquaintance with reality. But in this case the musical format wasn't just a license for characters to break into song and passing strangers to dance tightly choreographed routines, though those things do happen in The Blues Brothers. It's also a license to defy the laws of physics, blow things up, and wreck a lot of cars. Man, it's fun. Even if you're not 19 any more.

Still, it wouldn't be worth a damn without the music, and there's no quibbling about the soundtrack. I liked it when it was new, but not as much as now. Especially Cab Calloway singing "Minnie the Moocher." That alone was worth the price of admission in 1980 and the price of rental in 2011, though I didn't appreciate that in 1980.

According to director John Landis, Cab Calloway wanted to do a disco version of the song for the movie, and was upset when Landis insisted on '30s style. That's probably not as strange as it sounds, since Cab the au courant showman had recorded a number of versions across the decades in various popular-at-the-time styles, but I'm glad Landis had his way.

Item From the Past: Some Admirable Lateral Thinking

I've posted before about Kanchanaburi, Thailand, but not the view from the Bridge on the River Kwai.

Fiction has a way, of course, of fictionalizing things. According to the remarkable web site the Man in Seat Sixty-One, "there is a small technical problem with the Bridge on the River Kwai: It crosses a river all right, but not the River Kwai! Pierre Boulle, who wrote the original book, had never been there. He knew that the 'death railway' ran parallel to the River Kwae for many miles, and assumed that it was the Kwae which it crossed just north of Kanchanaburi. He was wrong -- it actually crosses the Mae Khlung.

"When David Lean's blockbuster came out, the Thais faced something of a problem. Thousands of tourists flocked to see the bridge over the River Kwae, and they hadn't got one; all they had was a bridge over the Mae Khlung. So, with admirable lateral thinking, they renamed the river. The Mae Khlung is now the Kwae Yai ('Big Kwae') for several miles north of the confluence with the Kwae Noi ('Little Kwae'), including the bit under the bridge."

Finally, any time is a good time to watch this clip.

Guns as Big as Steers & Shells as Big as Trees

Back again after Memorial Day weekend. This year, as it happens, the Monday holiday also falls on the actual holiday, which is May 30. It's fitting to remember the war dead of this country, of course, but also spare a moment for the servicemen of allied nations, such as the sailors on the HMS Hood, lost 70 years ago this week.

With that in mind, here's an unusual version of "Sink the Bismarck." I didn't know the Blues Brothers did a cover of the song, a bit of folk history originally written by Johnny Horton and Tillman Franks, but they did. Apparently the Blues Brothers' version was to have been in the movie The Blues Brothers, but it didn't make the cut.

Also, a scene from the 1960 movie Sink the Bismarck!, depicting the loss of the Hood. No CGI, but better for it. If you hear your inner Patsy whisper, "They're only models," the right thing to do is say shhhh!

Groundhog Day Again

Turns out there's a fair amount of rumination on the subject of how long Phil Connors (Bill Murray) spends in a February 2 time-loop in Groundhog Day. That came to mind because we watched it the other day. Not February 2, as it happened, but Sunday, February 6. Close enough.

The only time I'd seen the movie before was a few years after it was released, so long ago that it was on videotape. It's more remarkable than I remembered, though I remembered liking it 15 years ago. "Bloody brilliant," as the fellow at Obsessed With Film puts it, who also says "normal people should be happy to just watch, and accept that Phil Connors is stuck repeating his one day endlessly over and over until he finds himself."

I'll go along with that. But I was also interested to learn that Woodstock, Ill., not far northwest of where I live, is passed off as Punxsutawney, Pa., for the most part. A couple of sources tell me that there's a plaque on the Woodstock main square marking the place where Phil Connors had his encounter with insurance salesman Ned "the Head" Reyerson and stepped in a cold puddle. Next time I'm in Woodstock, and we go now and then, I'm going to look for that. That's my kind of landmark.

True Grit Holidays

New Year's Eve 2010: the Great Melt here in northern Illinois. Three or so week's worth of snow started melting in earnest with overnight above-freezing temps early on the 30th. By the 31st, all except the hardiest of snow islands were gone and the air pleasant, like a lost day of spring. A parting gift from the year 2010, which will not be remembered fondly for a while, and then forgotten in its particulars, except by historians and other eccentrics.

I finished True Grit, the Charles Portis novel, on Christmas Day; and saw True Grit, the movie now playing, on New Year's Day. Like a lot of people, I hadn't ever read the book, but had seen and enjoyed the famed earlier movie version, though it's been a good many years now.

The prospect of seeing the new movie led me to the book first, and I was rewarded with the best novel I've read in years. Guess I'm a sucker for books about tough yet sympathetic characters on harrowing journeys as opposed to, say, books about unhappy academics who commit adultery and struggle to write books about unhappy academics who commit adultery.

The Coen brothers' movie hews pretty close to the book, which helped make it satisfying, though they usually make satisfying movies in a lot of other ways, such as by hiring a talented cast and paying close attention to the details of time and place, as they did with True Grit. The arresting visuals, with Texas passing for Oklahoma, greatly added to the effect.

I dragged Lilly, protesting, to see the movie. She's old enough now to see an occasional movie that hasn't been dumbed down for an adolescent audience, male or female. She was one of the youngest members of the New Year's Day audience at the suburban multiplex we visited, a fact she pointed out. But after it was over, she said it was "not bad." High praise indeed for something her dad likes.

It Looks Like a Big Tylenol, Shirley

Heavy rain most of the evening, but at least no ice. Right now the entire U.S. east of the Mississippi, except for the tips of Maine and Florida, are painted "it's raining" green on the Weather Channel web site. All of Minnesota is getting snow. Over the weekend, I met a fellow who lives in Minneapolis, and was reminded again that Minnesota is the place Chicagoans believe is too cold to live.

Thousands of people are probably linking to this clip today. I'm not one to go against the tide, not in this case. I even met people in Japan -- Commonwealth citizens, not Japanese -- who knew "don't call me Shirley." The gag has traveled far.

It also must have occurred to other people that Leslie Nielsen's death makes two from the cast of Airplane! this year (Peter Graves died in March). Robert Stack and Lloyd Bridges are already dead, and so is the fellow who played Johnny, one Stephen Stucker, who stole every scene he was in. So who gets to be the third?