Took my eldest and youngest to see Marvel's The Avengers last night (Fri., 1 June). About thirty kids ("kids" here meaning youths varying from roughly 16 to their early 20s) came in in clusters of four or more about five or ten minutes before the movie started, arousing my trepidation that they would drown out the Joss Whedon-scribed dialogue once ( Read more... )

Something that I forgot to mention in my review of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited that really bugged me: Waugh's repeated description of Julia Flyte, the eventual inamorata of the narrator, Charles Ryder, as "spidery-limbed" -- and Waugh's expectation that this denoted her attractiveness and desirability ( Read more... )

From Monday, 5 March to Wednesday, 4 April, I read Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1945 [portions of the novel were previously published in abbreviated form in Town and Country]; 351 pps.); this is the original version, not the revised edition ( Read more... )

From Friday, 9 March to Saturday, 10 March, I read Lynn Barber's memoir, An Education (NY: Atlas & Co. Publishers [distributed by W.W. Norton & Company], 2009 [first published in the UK by the Penguin Group]; 173 pps.); this was an expansion of the article she'd had published in Granta, which was the basis of the eponymous 2009 film (which I've yet ( Read more... )

Yesterday (Wed., 4 Jan.) I parked next to a green Chevy Blazer at work with the following messages spelled out in white neo-Gothic letters:

On the rear side window behind the drivers seat: "Team Edward / Team Jacob / Team 3 Some!"

On the rear window: "Edward Cullen is a VILF."

Obviously one of my co-workers reeeeeally likes the Twilight ( Read more... )

Thanksgiving 2011 gave me good reason to be thankful for the movie theatres in my exurban area being open on that day, so I could cheaply and pleasantly escape an especially AWK-ward familial brouhaha. (I'm also thankful -- I guess -- for McDonald's and Sonic being open so I could get calories from somewhere other than a 7-11; but neither ( Read more... )

From Monday, 23 May to Friday, 27 May, I read Horace McCoy's Kiss Tomorrow Good-bye (NY: Random House, 1948 [1st ed., hardcover]; 372 pps.), thanks to an inter-library loan (via MeLCat [Michigan eLibrary]; the copy that I read came from Michigan Technological University [formerly Michigan College of Mining and Technology] in Houghton, MI); McCoy is ( Read more... )

Yesterday (Friday, 24 September) at work, I overheard a woman in the department next to mine say, "I hope I can get a date night tomorrow; but maybe it's better if I don't, 'cause I worry about my sheets ( Read more... )

Thanks to Netflix, I recently caught up on a couple of previously unwatched Paul Schrader movies; so let's see what Your Correspondent thought of 'em, shall we?

( Little Girl Lost / Little Boy Blue )

I've finally been getting some mileage out of my Netflix subscription after letting discs sit unwatched for far too long. Here's what I saw over the weekend:

( Here be some ugly Americans )