Message 969

Yesterday I finished reading The Economist. I went to San Mateo for dinner. Julian fixed spaghetti, which is my favorite. In the evening I watched Episode 4 of Downton Abbey on PBS. This is the last episode for this season, but I was glad to see the message that Season 2 is now in production, so their will be more to come.

Message 968

I forgot to mention in yesterday’s message that on Friday I felt well enough to write some more on my memoirs for the first time in several weeks. I mentioned in Thursday’s message the Vanessa and I swapped cars so that she could drive more kids to Chinatown in San Francisco on their field trip. When I got home I parked her van in the outside parking lot here at Menlo Commons about noon. She had planned to be back from the field trip and to come here to swap cars about 1 PM, but she was delayed, so we arranged to meet at Starbucks to swap Saturday morning. When I went out to go to Starbucks I found that the driver-side window had been smashed, with shattered glass on the driver’s seat and on the floor plus on the outside of the car in the parking lot. So far as I could see, nothing was missing, but she discovered later that they had stolen her GPS device out of the glove box. I called the Menlo Park police, but was told that there was nothing they could do if we did not have the serial number of the device, which we didn’t have. Anyway, in the afternoon I swept up the glass from the parking lot.

Yesterday I reading half of The Economist. I also watched a DVD of the 1993 movie The Vanishing, in which Jeff Bridges plays a a psychopathic kidnapper and murderer. I considered it too bizarre to be taken seriously. I give it 2.2 stars. In the evening I watched the PBS Saturday night movie Charade, with Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. Audrey Hepburn was delightful to watch, as always, but the movie was mostly a silly farce, so I give it only 2.5 stars.

Message 967

I am late today because I just got back from filling my antibiotic prescription at PAMF. This morning I met Helen and Jim, Joan and David, and Vanessa at Starbucks. Afterward I did my weekly Safeway shopping. Last night after the Friday night PBS shows I watched a DVD of the movie The Last Picture Show. I had seen it before in about 1970 when it first came out, but I had forgotten almost all of it. It was the movie that made Peter Bogdanovich famous. It had an all star cast, virtually all of which were unknown at the time, including Jeff Bridges, Tim Bottoms and his brother, Cybil Shepard, Ellen Burstyn, Randy Quaid, and Ben Johnson, among others. None of these people were known to me when I first saw it. Also it was based on a book by Larry McMurtry, whom I also had not heard of at the time. I agree with the opinion that it is now a classic. I give it five stars.

Message 966

Yesterday I went to PAMF and met with my urologist. It was nice to see him again, and he reassured me that I was doing as well as could be expected given all I have been through. He thought I looked good and said he thought I would continue to manage to get along. I finished reading The Shock Doctrine; The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein on my Kindle. The last quarter of the book was references and footnotes, so I finished sooner than I expected.

In the evening I watched a DVD of the old black and white movie The Night of the Hunter. I had never seen the whole thing but when I lived in Alaska it was shown often on TV. I did not have a TV, but I occasionally saw parts of it at other peoples houses. It was directed by Charles Laughton in 1956, and it had a great cast, including Robert Mitchum as the mass murdering preacher who marries Shelly Winters, the widow of a man who was hung for murder and robbery. He kills her and tries to get her two kids to tell him where their father hid the money he stole. The boy and girl escape down the river in their father’s old boat, where Lillian Gish eventually takes them in to join the other orphaned and abandoned children she cares for. Mitchum shows up in relentless pursuit and tries to get the children, but she calls the police, so he eventually get lynched by the enraged townspeople. It is a quaint and old-fashioned movie by modern standards, but it is very powerful. I give it five stars.

Message 965

I just got back from Heidi’s Pies having breakfast with Annie, Reggie, and Henry. Vanessa and I switched cars so she could take more kids from Beech’s class on a field trip in my bigger car (van). I dropped Annie at Maureen’s afterward. Last night we had a great birthday dinner for Beech at Ten Fu. We had 18 people, including Jason, Caroline, and Ellie, Jamie, Chelsea, Audrey, and Jack, Julian, Vanessa, Annie, and Beech, Vanessa’s brother’s wife Liz and her two kids (Vivian and Jessie), Maureen and Gary, and Joshua. Maureen brought a cake for everyone with trick candles that would not blow out so Julian eventually had to dunk them in a glass of water. Beech was thrilled with all of his presents. After dinner I got home in time to watch the third period of the Sharks game against LA. The Sharks were ahead 2-1 at the start of period 3, but the ended up losing in an overtime shootout.

Message 964

I forgot to mention in yesterday’s message that I watched a PBS documentary about building the Panama Canal. It was very interesting. Yesterday I watched Obama’s State of the Union speech. As usual, I thought he did a great job. Afterward I watched a DVD of the movie Inception. Julian had watched this movie on his flight to Tokyo a few weeks ago and asked what I thought about it. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page (of Juno fame), and was well made. It was a very complex thriller, but it mostly was about dreams and the question of what is reality and how do you tell the difference between dreams (or fantasies) and reality. It gets so convoluted that it is hard to follow at times, but it is entertaining. I give it three stars. I also read Science yesterday. It had an interesting article about analyzing all the words in the millions of books that Google has scanned to give a quantitative measure of cultural trends.

Message 963

Last night I watched a DVD of the movie Quicksand. It was a thriller set in southern France. It was a little different because it did not have much violence, and it had a good cast, including Michael Keaton and Michael Caine. I give it three stars. I also read a lot on my Kindle.