August, 1978: Ocean City, NJ
I saw THE ODYSSEY again. This time on an IMAX screen and enjoyed it even more. The night before I attended a lecture on the film, which made certain things stand out. Also saw THE END OF OAK STREET, which didn't do much for me. Hard to understand why Anne Hathaway chose this one.
Finished WHISTLER by Ann Patchett, which was likable it not as good as TOM LAKE or DUTCH HOUSE. Reading JOHN OF JOHN (Stuart) which seems very good.
The Dream Cruise took place this Saturday. The 30th year and a bigger crowd than ever lining Woodward Avenue. Over a million people attended to see the classic cars race up and down a sixteen mile stretch that spans nine communities.
TV-not too much. Hoping LANTERN on HBO will be good. Starting MY BRILLIANT CAREER on Netflix.
How about you?
16 comments:
I'm glad you enjoyed The Odyssey, Patti. I've heard it's very, very good. And you reminded me I need to read some Patchett...
Not a fan of doing remakes of things done well the first time around, so no interest in My Brilliant Career. Waiting on Lanterns until we have a few episodes to watch, as with Reacher.
Watching a show on Starz we missed when it was first on, DUBLIN MURDERS, based on the first two in Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad books. It's dark enough for you. Also watching the Canadian FAMILY LAW, set in Vancouver. Victor Garber was married three times and had one child from each, leaving the wife when the child was young. Now all three work for his law firm. Also re-watching As Time Goes By.
Weather has been typical for August, mid-80s, with more than average rainfall. Reading short stories by Robert Boswell and Ruth Ozeki.
Glad to see the NYT agreed with us on the Wendy Wasserstein revival. Hard to understand what they were thinking with that casting.
This past week saw the annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota; compared to that, your Dream Cruise must have been relatively uneventful.
It's been a birthday week here. Last Monday was marked father's 110th birthday; hard to believe that he's been gone for nearly half century. Saturday was Jessie's birthday; we celebrated with donuts on the beach -- warm sun, gentle breezes, clear water, very few jellyfish (but some of the donuts were filled with jelly), no dolphins (but a possible shark sighting), one big hyperactive crab near us, and carbohydrates galore -- a great way to celebrate a birthday and to start the weekend.
Jack's first week of school went well -- time will tell if he gets the whole high school thing; he seems surprising more mature (or, as mature as a fourteen-year-old boy can be). Because it is a new school and they have not truly gotten their act together, both Jack and the school will probably be adjusting at a slow, steady pace.
Everyone -- people and animals alike -- are doing well. Gavin got a new job as an accounting specialist at the county jail and starts this week. Walt is traveling for work the entire week, which puts a strain on Christina between her own job and Jack. Walt Senior and Ellen may be moving in at the end of the month -- another burden for Christina, but this time shared with Walt. (Walt had been originally scheduled for a three-week work trip, which would have put the entire burden on the move on Christina, but, thankfully, he managed to cut it down to just one week. Ellen's dementia is getting worse, and she alternates between believing Christina is the best thing that ever happened to the world and thinking that Christina is about to steal all her money; having them live with us will be an interesting experience but it is the right thing to do for them.
Jack is headed off to St. Augustine to do something with the gators at the Alligator Farm there. Amy and Gavin will be going with him because, alligators! And there is a capybara cafe there. Amy and Gavin may or may not ride the zip line over the gators, but Mark surely will.
My local limits Interlibrary Loans to just five every 60 days (cursed budget cuts!) but I was surprised when they had SIX books on hold for me, including one I had requested four months ago. All six were Hard Case Crime Graphioc novels: three in Charles Ardai's GUN HONEY series, Enrico Morini's NOIR BURLESQUE, Carlos Trillo's THE BIG HOAX, and (my FFB this week) Will Eisner's THE COLLECTED WILL EISNER's JOHN LAW -- all six were enjoyable and recommended. Other books read this week were Preston & Child's Pendergast novel THE WHEEL OF DARKNESS, Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache latest novel THE GREY WOLF, the seventh in J. R. Robb's Eve Dallas series HOLIDAY IN DEATH (still an awful lot to go in that series for me), Benjamin Stevenson's latest Ernest Cunningham "fair play" mystery EVERYBODY IN THIS BANK IS A THIEF, and a Michael Crichton novel that flew under my radar juts when I thought I had read all of his books -- A MURDER IN HOLLYWOOD, a 1973 trunk novel by "John Lange" that was published for the first time this past May. Currently still reading John D. McDonald's CLEMMIE, which I keep in the car to read while waiting in line to pick Jack up from school (I should finish that today), and Stuart O'Nan and Stephen King's paeon to the 2004 Red Sox, FAITHFUL. That last is a slog for me because I have not been a baseball (or Red Sox) fan since 1967 and I know nothing about the game. The book is interesting because of the enthusiasm of the authors, but gets bogged down in the minutia of players, tactics, and strategy. I may be a tad OCD but I'm nothing on the level of O'Nan who seems to dwell on EVERY single play of EVERY single game. I can only read about 20 pages at a time and may not even finish the book this week.
Here's hoping you don't get bogged down in the minutia of the coming week and that you enjoy every single moment of it. Stay safe. Stay healthy. Perhaps go see THE ODYSSEY for a third time.
Brain fog. Mark is headed off the St. Augustine, not Jack. Jack does not drive, or, if he does, he's not telling us.
Katie's JetBlue flight was delayed so we had to drop her off at the Buffalo Airport at 10 P.M. I haven't driven around at that hour in a long time. Thankfully, no rain!
The temps this week will be in the 70s. Diane has her Book Club meeting today in Gasport (in the middle of Nowhere). I have to take my Rogue in for new front brakes on Wednesday. The Capitol Heat guys are coming out on Thursday for the yearly checkup on our GENERAC natural gas generator.
SPIDER-MAN has already made over $2 billion. Big Summer for movies! Stay safe!
It' been so long since I saw MY BRILLIANT CAREER, I have little memory. Jerry, you must read almost all day long to have that many books stacked up.
I bet Kevin saw SPIDERMAN but it's not for me. Megan's flying in for her birthday on American Eagle. Hope that works out because she's only here for two days.
I watched the 2017 version of MUMMY with Tom Cruise. This is the second time I saw it, because it was so unremarkable that I forgot I saw it already. Cruise is regularly made fun of, but he is a fine actor and movie maker. MUMMY may not be memorable but they were going for a goofy, fun, action/horror flick and succeeded.
The entire weekend was spent moving Boy #2 into his apartment. How does it take two full days to move into an efficiency apartment? I don't know.
The humidity was awful.
Parking was the expected hassle.
I cleaned the bathroom.
We made extra trips to Menard's, CostCo, grocery store, Spectrum's modem and.WiFi store, and furniture store.
I did get to walk over to a coffee joint for a cappuccino on Saturday.
Heard a Bernard Cornwell novel and it was meh. I tried out a BBC audio production of Robert Graves's I, CLAUDIUS and quit it.
Started listening to ADULTHOOD RITES by Octavia E Butler. The second novel in a trilogy where aliens rescue a relative handful of humans after a nuclear war and help them to repopulate the world. I read the first book, DAWN, in 1992 as part of a popular literature class during my single semester at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia. I remember a fair amount of DAWN.
Been watching FALL AND RISE OF REGGIE DINKINS on Peacock with Tracie Morgan and Daniel Radcliffe. Fun show.
I don't think they are taking Kevin to Madison until the end of the month.
Mostly watching PBS programming and catching the commercial network series episodes I missed online...going through all the seasons of the UK HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU (quite a few short seasons) while keeping up with the US HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOUR EARS podcast among many other humorous/satirical podcasts, while waiting for the new seasons of both the UK and US HIGNFY. Hoping the scales are dropping from the eyes of those who have wasted votes on Drumpf and his ilk as much as they seem to be, and we might even be rid of some of them in the next go-'round, which will of course mean he will attempt martial law. I hope both his contempt of the military (and nearly everyone else) and their sense of actual duty will stymie that, of course. We'll see, if we aren't randomly attacked debilitatingly before then. Yes, Mr. Merry Sunshine, here.
I had been missing the formulaic but amusing GRANTCHESTER among others.
It was Judy Davis in her star- making role and Sam Neill. It was 47 years ago, so yeah, quite a while.
Jerry, best of luck on getting the relatives moved in. Glad to hear you're all able to bring relatives into the home. Not an easy thing to do and I'm glad to hear when people are able to work it out.
Patti, May Kevin's parents have low humidity and clear skies for the Madison move. And a minimum number of trips to the hardware store.
Late again, but not because we went out shopping. I went outside and worked on pulling weeds early before the front "yard" got sunny and too hot to work in. Luckily the front area is shady in the morning all year, but in the back this year there has more sun (we trimmed some trees). Soon we will start losing the sun in the back (late August) and it will be easier to work back there.
Again this weekend, we watched some fun movies. First we watched INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, which was only so so but still fun, with Harrison Ford (of course) and Kate Capshaw. It was the second movie in the series and had a different feel than the first one, going back to 1935 and set in India. The second movie was FLASH GORDON, released in 1980, the year Glen and I got married. With Sam J. Jones, Max von Sydow, Brian Blessed, and Timothy Dalton.
Glen is reading THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER by Tom Clancy. He is enjoying it and says it has much more detail and characters than the film adaptation, which is not surprising. We have watched the film many times and now we want to watch it again. Doug has a copy and I read it years ago and liked it.
I finished reading MORTMAIN HALL by Martin Edwards a couple of days ago. Very complex and I was puzzled about what was going on the whole time, as I was in the first book in the Rachel Savernake series. She is an unusual protagonist. In the end it all came together well. It is definitely in the style of a Golden Age mystery (and is set in the 1930s), with a list of the clues in the book (called a Clue Finder) added following the end of the book. Edwards notes that this was used by some authors of that time.
I am now reading THE CYCLIST by Tim Sullivan. Second in the DS George Cross series; I am pretty sure that Jeff is a fan of this series. I have only just started reading this book, but I have the third one in house and hope to read it before the end of the year too.
Patti, I liked TOM LAKE by Ann Patchett and have not yet read DUTCH HOUSE, but I do have a copy. So it is interesting to hear that you did not like WHISTLER as well as those two. I plan to read it sometime, but not sure when I will get a copy.
Very fond of Grantchester despite its predictability. Good characters and it never rains.
That was my least favorite Indiana Jones. Kids in jeopardy makes me nervous. Glad I don't have weeds to pull but I wish I had yard or even a patio.
Tracy, I am a fan of the Tim Sullivan series and I am waiting for the new one.
Patti, You have a point about the kids in jeopardy. I guess it bothers me more to read about that, and I don't know why. We had not watched that one in a long time and we had some problems with the disc initially. Patios are nice. Ours is not in good shape now but even so, it is nice to sit on and watch the birds and butterflies.
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