Thor’s Hammer

This has been the summer of thunder. Many nights we have been wakened by blasts that send the cats scurrying under the bed. Up to a point they trust us and look to us for protection but give them a good enough thunderclap and it is adios muchachos, you’re on your own! The measured amounts of rainfall haven’t been that impressive but each drop flies out of a brilliant soundscape.

I like the thunder, personally. it’s almost mythical. Think about it, if you were reading a book about a planet where electricity became visible and could snake down from the sky to seek out a single person’s life and take it. All of this accompanied by a dark crescendo that the victim never hears, but all of the spectators do. Wouldn’t that seem fantastic? Not necessarily “good” fantastic, but still …

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There have been periods of my life where there were significant bursts of knowledge acquisition, followed then by decades of embarrassingly flat learning curves. One such burst of positive cortical activity came during my divorce. First of all, the fact that I was becoming divorced at all was a learning experience, since I thought this only happened to people who forgot their wedding anniversaries, or were guilty of poor personal hygiene.

But more shocks were to come. I discovered that when I put my worn clothes in the hamper that they did not clean themselves and put themselves back in the closet. Some agency had obviously been responsible for doing that, and after several days of reflection I came to the conclusion that my former wife had been that agent, and that now it was apparently up to me.

It took me only a day or two to locate the laundry area and choose which large white metal object was the washing machine and which was the dryer. There were some problems I had in learning that if one cup of detergent did a good job, three cups didn’t do a better one, as I choked up the washer and foamed the laundry room floor . But eventually these things smoothed themselves out.

The dryer posed new challenges. It turned out that putting certain items into the machine, cranking the temperature up to good and hot, and then walking away for an hour or two converted them into a brand new size more appropriate to toddlers. This was especially grievous in one instance where a Pendleton woolen shirt that I had treasured for years was now as shrunken and withered as a plaid prune.

I could hear the gods snickering as I plucked everything down and re-hung them indoors on some collapsible racks. The world is like that. Sometimes good intentions and hard work are rewarded with a swift kick.

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Robin and I had friend Rod over for supper and a movie the other night. The food part went well, but the film left something to be desired.

Since this had been a markedly political week, I thought it might be fun to watch an older movie with a political theme. The classic “All The King’s Men”of 1949 came to mind, and I proposed it to our group. While looking for a streaming source I came across something interesting. There was a much newer version available (2006), with a great cast, which included Sean Penn, Jude Law, Anthony Hopkins, Kate Winslet, Patricia Clarkson, James Gandolfini, and Mark Ruffalo. How could it miss? We decided to go for the new one.

Bad choice. Abysmal, actually.

So bad that at the end when I asked everyone what they had thought about the movie, the general consensus was that we had collectively wasted six hours of human life. In order to waste a minute or two more, I went to Rotten Tomatoes to see what the movie’s score had been, and the number was 12%. Twelve percent is an awful score, for those of you who don’t use this service. The kind of movie that you don’t go to see unless you are desperately trying to escape a hailstorm of life-threatening softball-sized stones and need to duck in somewhere.

And then, just to hurt myself further, I checked the RT score of the original film starring Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, and Mercedes McCambridge and found that it was 97%.

More insult was later added to the injury.

Released by Columbia Pictures on November 8, 1949, the film received widespread acclaim from critics, and was a commercial success. At the 22nd Academy Awards the film was nominated for seven Oscars and won three; Best Picture, Best Actor for Crawford, and Best Supporting Actress for McCambridge, making an impressive film debut. The film also won five Golden Globes, and was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

In 2001, All the King’s Men was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Wikipedia

Can I pick ’em or what?

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I found this disturbing photograph on CNN this morning. The caption read: People in Warsaw, Poland, enjoy Dinner in the Sky, a special dining experience where a crane holds their dinner party in midair, on Saturday, August 17. To an acrophobe like myself, that someone would voluntarily subject themselves to this is not to be believed.

To put me in one of those chairs would require general anesthesia, and when I came out of it my screaming would ruin the meal for everybody within earshot, which, as I study the photo, would be everybody. Even if I eventually dropped down to a level below hysteria, I would still need four-point restraints requiring someone to be appointed to feed me my gourmet meal.

Also, the floor of the contrivance appears to be transparent … I can’t go on.

To the “normal” people, however, there would still be some questions I might pose. What happens if you drop your napkin? Or a knife?

The odd bat flying past would certainly send some diners into major tizzies. And how much do you tip your waiter at 1000 feet in the air?

So many questions … so little time.

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