Paul Newman's Eyes
Back when AMC was worth a damn there was a summer where Long Hot Summer was on constant rotation. And my dad got cable so on the weekends we would spend with him every time it played he, my sister, and I would watch it. They're doing a fiftieth anniversary showing of the film and Dad invited me over to dinner to watch it. It'll feel like I'm fifteen all over again, cube steak sandwiches and being helplessly in love with Paul Newman. Wall-E was superb, easily Pixar's best work to date and with a generosity of spirit to all its characters mechanical and otherwise. The preceding short set the tone of the evening and was a worthy successor to some of the more antic Looney Tunes shorts. It speaks well to taking a bit of the film's anti consumerist, but non preachy, message to heart when after I raved that this would finally push me to get a bluray player and and hdtv I realized that I should just try to catch it on the screen once or twice more as that will be the acme of the presentation of its breathtaking space set pieces and just get the regular dvd which will play crisp and bright on my computer monitor. And after a typically abominable, chicken grease splattered day at work I bought a little fern plant. I always want something alive in my room. My orchid plant didn't die, they're remarkably hardy, but that's it for it for a while until it decides to bloom again. The fern will tide me over until I can get to the nifty greenhouse in Etowah run by a very cool couple who specialize in orchids. They're another bit of extraordinary in the grey ordinary that I snatch and file away for my stories. I dig anybody who does their own thing without apology and without hurting anyone.