Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

The Novel: Chapter 10

Well, I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly the hero is dating plucky waitress Mary. They appear to have been dating a while. Their relationship may have blossomed in Chapter 9, which has been lost to the ages.

Chapter 10 opens with a rodeo and a ballgame, which is refreshing because So far the only recreation has been eating flapjacks and snorting coke. But now there’s bear-wrestling and a freak show and a new woman who rides horses. A bronco-busting wumman with a personality. 

I think he’s leading up to an obligatory sex scene. He’s got enough characters for an orgy, and it would be so well-described you feel like you’re there, but it would not advance the plot even if we had one.

Review: The Winter’s Tale

Othello / Tempest mashup: Winter’s Tale.

Like Shakespeare must have used up lines he cut.

The end’s a lot to swallow. Not a fan.

It’s famed for bear pursuits, yet no bears shown!

Still Judi Dench is worth admission price.

.. and I have to give up on the iambic pentameter to talk about a new word I learned: “bed-swerver.” How do you fit “bed-swerver” into iambic pentameter? He has:

But with her most vile principal, that she's
A bed-swerver, even as bad as those
That vulgars give bold'st titles, ay, and privy
To this their late escape.

So that must be “a BED swerVER.” I don’t know. If I were Shakespeare I would bend the rules for “bed-swerver.”

(And technically, they waved a sheet with an image of a bear on it, but I was looking forward to a full-on bear costume for the “exit, pursued by a bear.”)

Review: Last Christmas

I think I started seeing the trailer for this movie back in September. If you’ve seen the trailer for this movie, you’ve seen all the high points.

I spent most of the movie waiting for the Scenes I Saw in the Trailer When Emma Thompson says X or when Emilia Clarke does Y. 

It was just what you’d expect: a sweet little rom-com. No surprises. Lots of George Michael music. Sweet.

Weekly Paint Progress: 12/5

This week the dog went from this:

to this:

I didn't look at the actual dog and pitcher one time, I just focused on the painting. I don't know. I don't think I'm making any progress with this one. I might just ignore the cast shadow behind the dog, slap some highlights on it and call it a day.

The Novel: Chapter 7 and 8 and 9, Kind Of

(There is no chapter 9, technically. Chapter 8 is extra long, though.)

In Chapter 7, the villain goes on errands to further his villainy. This chapter could have been dispatched with a paragraph. (“Silvertop bought off what passed for the law in town and placed a call to an old friend.”) Oh, and the love interest is further intimidated.

If I were an editor I would have written PLOT? in large red letters at the end of Chapter 7.

At the end of chapter 7 I thought, ”I KNOW I must have met all the characters by now. I have met them, they have all met each other, and if there are any more I will need an insert like I had for War and Peace.”

In Chapter 8, there is a massive flashback to how the main characters met, and then there’s a flash-forward to present day. I would have spilt the chapter and put the present day narrative in Chapter 9.  (I’ve found that it’s important to keep track of if they are in Arkansas or Oklahoma, that seems to mark the time period.)

Strangely, Jerry the journalist is best at writing descriptions of the technicalities of drilling for oil. There is also a page devoted to how to snort coke, clearly written in the eighties before the movies taught us all how to snort coke. 

In the last two pages of Chapter 8, we meet ... a new character. A sympathetic plucky character. Thank God for her. I’m calling those two pages Chapter 9.5.

 

Review: Doctor Sleep

Well, it was creepy.

Not as creepy as the Shining, at all, even remotely.

I preferred the subtly creepy way that in The Shining they made the antagonist be the hotel, as opposed to the heavy-handed creepy way in Doctor Sleep that they made the antagonist be ... be ... be ... well, it’s revealed in the opening scene, so I don’t suppose it would count as a spoiler, but still I won’t share. It isn’t subtle. 

Personally, I didn’t like it. There were some nice callbacks to the old movie, and while most were pleasant, some just took iconic images and cheapened them by overuse. 

 

Review: The Irishman (Cryptic Spoilers)

I really enjoyed Goodfellas, Casino, The Wolf of Wall Street, and The Age of Innocence. 

Some of Scorsese’s other movies I only enjoyed because I watched them on devices where there was a fast-forward button to use when the violence slowed down the plot. If you ask me, not much happened during the shootout in Taxi Driver, and that was a good chunk of that movie.  When I watched Gangs of New York I was so impatient with the boring violence and — endless — pauses — that I fast forwarded through the entire last quarter of the movie. 

The Irishman was the longest movie I have seen in my life, short of Gone With the Wind, and it was very interesting until I realized what it was about, and then it hit the wall. I wasn’t familiar with the real plots of Goodfellas and Casino, so those endings were interesting. An hour into this new movie they introduced a familiar name, and when I saw the sign, and then the house, even, from an article in People a decade ago, I was just waiting for a climax that was no longer a surprise.

When you know the ending, that’s not good, and then when you’ve waited three and a half hours for an ending you know, that’s not an improvement.

I think it will be a good movie for people in about fifty years, when everyone has forgotten about the sign and the house and the characters.

A Return to An Outstanding Question From 2006

You know, if you just hang on, all the nagging questions (Deep Throat, Kenneth and his frequency) will be answered. 

Well, thirteen years after 2006, an answer has arrived for the question posed in this post: why is there a reference to "Scary Ghost Stories" in The Christmas Song?

There'll be scary ghost stories
And tales of the glories of
Christmases long, long ago

I was so obsessed with finding the answer that I even contacted the composer's grandson via his blog, but he could only say that his grandfather was the composer, not the lyricist.

Facebook's algorithm must have looking in the blog archives, because FB posted Smithsonian Magazine's  Plea to Resurrect the Christmas Tradition of Telling Ghost Stories, which led to Smithsonian’s Why Do People Tell Ghost Stories at Christmas (which even references the song) and evidently the real question is, "Why Don't Middle Class Americans (Like Ellen) Tell Ghost Stories at Christmas,” because evidently Christmas ghost stories are a real thing people do. Or did. Or at least they did it for "much of the 19th century."

Long, long ago indeed.

 

Weekly Paint Progress: 11/28

This week the dog and pitcher went from this:

to this:

I knew there would be contrast problems with this.  I like the pitcher even less now, if that's possible.  The dog bank's still okay, though. What's left is the background-- all cast shadows, my least favorite thing.

and, happy Thanksgiving!

Review: The Good Liar

We didn’t expect to see this one — Dr. Sleep was on the docket, but it didn’t start until 9 at night.

If you haven’t seen any of the commercials for The Good Liar, you are better off, and if you intend to see it, avoid the commercials. 

I feel I will appreciate Helen Mirren as an actress when she begins to show her age, but right now I find myself distracted by how gorgeous she is. Her jawline at 74 is tighter than mine was in junior high.

Ian McClellan looks his age, however. Both put in fine performances.

Generally, I think the word I would use to describe this movie is satisfying.

The Novel: Chapter 25

I know. Chapter 25. The first chapters are numbered 1, 2, 25, 7. 

Chronologically, chapter 25 occurs before chapter 1. It’s out of place in the narrative. 

Most of it is a lesson on how an oil rig works. Five solid pages are devoted to a description of a 90-second oil strike. 

The main character doesn’t appear at all. Two new characters appear, one is an ass and the other ... is an ass, but he contributes to the only pleasant scene in the chapter. 

Problematic. It needs some dreamy harp music, or narration. “Y’all remember when we struck oil?”

Review: Ford vs Ferrari

Ford vs Ferrari is a mildly entertaining bromance. I’d watch it if it came on TV and I had nothing else to do. In addition, Matt Damon has a very cute nose. Those are the pros. There are no particular cons.

It taught me a lot about endurance sportscar races. (I would not advise studying up on the Le Mans race before you go, because the Wikipedia page has spoilers.)

It was okay, but if Jojo Rabbit was a ten, this was a four. I laughed at FvF three times, and I almost produced a tiny tear once, whereas with JoJo I laughed, I cried, I soiled myself.

All further movies this year shall be judged on the Jojo scale. FvF gets four Jojos. (Four rabbits? Four Heils up?)

The Novel: Chapter Two

I make fun of Gary over his rule that all TV shows must have an upstanding, moral person you can root for. I think someone needs to be sympathetic, but they don’t have to be a good person. Don Draper isn’t moral, but he’s sympathetic enough to watch as he makes his way. Same for Walter White or Nucky Thompson or Tommy Gavin.

I wonder what those characters have that makes them sympathetic. It it a sense of humor? Is it that they are more resigned than angry? I ask because Chapter Two of The Inheritance Novel introduces seven characters, all but a few are very unsympathetic. 

Two are physically violent, one is verbally violent, one is a drunk, one is a drunk addict, and there are two side characters who bring the funny. I have seven people and I don’t relate to any of them.

One is clearly the villain. He’s clearly an ass, but his backstory was probably the most relatable and detailed. Perhaps the villain is actually an anti-hero and I’ve read it wrong so far. 

So far I can say I am glad to have never worked with roughnecks on an oil rig.  I'll keep going, but I haven't latched on to anyone, and that connection's what I look for in a novel.

Peculiar Neighbors

We have neighbors who have a note by their doorbell that essentially says, “we don’t answer the door.” It isn’t the typical “no solicitors” sign. It makes it clear that they don’t respond for any reason, even if they are home.

One time some friends came for a party and knocked at the wrong door. (I suppose they felt the “we don’t answer” sign was in keeping with my personality.) And then, seeing people inside, they let themselves in. When my friends realized there was no menopause celebration at that address, they apologized and backed out.

I didn’t think of that for six years, until last night when a florist rang our bell. There was a bouquet for the neighbors, who were not answering, and it was too cold to leave the flowers on the porch. Gary took on the task of getting the flowers to the neighbors.

He peered into their empty front room, knocked, called out, no response. He left the flowers for a moment on their porch while he got their full names off an envelope in their mailbox. He came back home to google a phone number, and discovered that all the names on the mail were all aliases. 

The alias thing creeped him out. I pointed out it might be something innocent, like someone changed their name after a marriage. “Their first name?” he asked.

He went back to just leave a note and discovered they’d darted out to get the flowers off the porch.

I don’t know, man, it’s odd. And now, in retrospect, everything they do is odd. Every day they hose off their hubcaps. Why? They don’t put their car in their garage even though there’s room. Why?

I’d say they were quiet and kept to themselves like your typical serial killers, but they aren’t. I’ve had conversations with “Pam” the one I know as “Pam,” and I’ve discussed snowblowers with the older gentleman who lives there. So, not serial killers. Evading the law? Subpoenas? Witness protection?

Really really shy?

Bad Ramps

There are two highway ramps in the Saint Louis area that I hate to take.

One is the ramp I take home if I have been south, and that is the ramp from 270 North to Page Ave West. It takes you on what feels like a 360 degree loop, and it's a bit elevated. I'm always conscious that one moment of inattention and I will be launched into the sky, and I will not be treated to instant death, but will hurtle down for three regret-filled seconds before I stick the landing.

So, that's a bad ramp, but it is not the worst ramp.

The worst is South on the Innerbelt to Highway 40 West. St.Louisans, you know the one I mean. The one that takes you on a gradual 90 degree turn ...

... from, what, two stories up?

You know how bad it is? Google Maps doesn't have a street view image of the vista from that ramp, I suppose because you see nothing but sky anyway. I tried to get an image but could not: after one click the image would just fragment and then another click would put me on Highway 40 at a normal elevation.

I think I've got another five years of driving this ramp before I take Mom's tactic and plan my routes on side streets making only right turns.

Meteor

I was dozing off Monday night when a huge boom woke me up. For an instant I assumed it was one of my nodding-off dreams, until Gary said, “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?”

”Frost boom!” said I.

”Fireworks!” said Gary.

”METEOR STRIKE!” said the Internet.

According to the dozens of Ring doorbell video systems that caught the image, a meteor flamed out about 65 miles to the northwest of my house and 38 miles above, because evidently that’s how low a meteor has to be to earth's surface to create the boom. I can’t say it landed, because it quite clearly burns up (There are several videos here on the local news.)

It certainly sounded like it landed, but per NASA that’s because at was moving at 33,500 mph, faster than the speed of sound, and created a sonic boom.

NASA called it “Event: 20191112-025148” - and it was only the size of a basketball and it came from “an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.”

It was quite exciting. And, it has spoiled all meteor showers, because they are so quiet and far away.

Review: Kathleen Madigan

So even though Gary bailed on me, Kathleen Madigan made me laugh. Her jokes about her parents still land, even though they’re a little sadder (her aging parents are covered with band-aids now instead of popping unlabeled purse mystery pills). 

There was a good chunk devoted to ridiculing the Democratic candidates for being old and another good chunk ridiculing millennials for being young. She’s four years younger than I am, so I was not offended by either. 

I laughed steadily though her act (and also the opener, another Saint Louis native who has issues with farmers - constantly with the callbacks to farmers, so he got bonus points with our city crowd).

Just in case you think I was only amused because I share the comics’ views on daylight saving time and parents and politicians, at one point Kathleen Madigan took down a shark victim and then turned to eviscerate the sharks. I truly could not breathe during that part.

Pre-Concert BS by the Traitorous Husband

Months ago we both tickets to see Kathleen Madigan downtown on 11/9.

Evening of of 11/8: Gary said, “I feel bad.” I began organizing my list of friends I could call upon to step in when Gary flakes.

Morning of 11/9: Gary said, “I feel pretty good.”

Late morning of 11/9, Gary said, “I don’t feel good.” 

I contacted two friends, but neither of them could take Gary’s ticket. As I was calling my third friend, Gary said, “I can go. I’ll be fine.”

Thirty years of this made me reply, “No, you’re just jacking me around,” and I kept dialing the next friend in my list.

“No. Stop,” he said. “Really, I’ll be fine. I want to go.”

Five minutes before we were going to leave, he said, and does this shock you, “I can’t go. I’m too sick.” 

There was some screaming, and the one friend I contacted right after that call could probably report how disgusted I sounded, but of course she had plans as well. There was no time, of course, so I just put out a call on Facebook that if anyone wanted to meet me downtown before the concert I had a free ticket, which of course went to waste, because the only taker saw it too late. This caused me to waste the pre-paid parking ticket as well, because I didn’t want to hike three blocks alone downtown at night, but I made it into the next-door Blues hockey parking garage before it closed.

Once in my seat, I offered Gary’s seat to the woman on the other side of it. It turns out she was there alone because HER worthless ticket-wasting husband did the same thing, only his excuse was, “I just don’t feel like going,” and he had pulled the same stunt before with Elton John tickets. We bonded, obviously. (Her husband didn’t waste cruise tickets by forgetting his passport, but he did waste a shore excursion because he went back for his hat and missed the boat.)

I was very fortunate to encounter a fellow sufferer. (I am a little surprised she spoke to me, given that he betrayed me while my hair was still un-fixed, which means I stomped out of the house and I hadn’t done anything but dry the roots, so it was just chunks of splayed hair.)

Later, during the act, I noticed there were other empty seats in our row. How many seats belonged to other seat-wasting dogs-in-the-manger who jacked their wives around? Live and learn. In the future, I will not believe the “No, really, I’m fine,” mid-morning dodge, and just go ahead and get another date.

Opera Sale

Every few years the Opera company will sell off old costumes from old productions.

I nabbed a fez from The Magic Flute and a skull mask from Orfeo & Euridice.

I was doing some research to find out who Ms Thelwell is, and it turns out I have seen her as Gilda's nurse in Rigoletto, and as the paramour Ruby in Fire Shut Up in My Bones.

I have a fez and a skull. I am prepared to star in an opera about dead Shriners. I might have to write one about the Maine Pumpkinfest Shriner go-cart crash.

The Novel: Chapter One

Okay - I have read Chapter One of the PaterNovel.

It really isn’t that bad. He was a journalist, so he knows how to hook you in with a good lead. All the exposition is knocked out in Chapter One, but it was still pretty readable.

Our hero is in Oklahoma looking to rescue a lost love named Aggie. I’d say this was another example of his poor name choices (her full name is Aggie Lawless), but Aggie is a good Texan name. Texas A&M students are called “Aggies” (the A stands for Agriculture). I’m sure that’s where he got the name.

Only, of course, Mom’s name was Margaret. From Margaret to Maggie to Aggie isn’t that much of a stretch. But it is a stretch, and it’s sad and silly that I’m stretching. I will be doing this all through the novel; I am certain of it. Searching for connections that are not there.

In Which I Am Surprised by the Electoral College

I remember our amazement in Social Studies class when we learned that one job of the electoral college is to step up and protect the public from voting in an unfit tyrant. 

I had no idea, but it turns out some of the electors took their Social Studies seriously and there was an organized effort to change votes in 2016. Here’s the Wikipedia article on it. It would have been nice had they searched their hearts and then all voted for Clinton, but they were not that generous. They only needed enough Trump votes to change to take away his majority, and the decision would go to the Republican-run House of Representatives. 

They failed, but I wonder if next time there will be enough “faithless” electors to spark a coup. It’s happened before - Andrew Jackson, the man on the twenty, didn’t win the presidency in 1824 because there wasn’t a majority in the six-way election. 

I think my Social Studies class was placated by the teacher telling us we’d probably never see that particular check and balance actually happen. She didn’t realize how much quirky political stuff I’d witness later in life. Of course nothing has yet  surpassed President Ford, the President no one voted for. The 2000 election came close: the motorcade turning around, Bill Hemmer going to Pluto, Al Gore certifying his loss with protesting Senators. That was the same election in which I happily cast my vote for a dead man. I’ve been around for three of the four impeachments too. What’s left? I haven’t seen the Speaker of the House ascend to the presidency, or the designated survivor, and I haven’t seen a military coup. Short of a fistfight in the Senate, that’s about all that’s left to surprise me.

A Novel to Wrinkle Your Nose

After sorting the two copies of Jerry’s novel by page number, I set off to divvy it into chapters. My plan was to read it a chapter at a time. 

Of course, I immediately discovered entire chapters are missing. I hope that they were useless exposition that he threw out in disgust. He seems to edit himself somewhat: in a script he wrote for a city promotion piece, after he wrote the part that covers the city’s beginnings he boldly scrawled “FUCK THE PAST” and then scratched out that page.

Sorting the chapters required that I look at the top of every page, and somehow that meant I read more than when I was looking for every page number at the bottom. Some things became clear:

1. Someone, a child I believe, is threatened.
2. In the final chapter, someone (perhaps a woman) is murdered.
3. A few pages later there is a trial, and then it abruptly ends. The pacing of the plot might have issues.
4. There’s a lot of dialect (like, a Huckleberry Finn level of dialect) in the dialog between the oil roughnecks. It isn’t bad. Colorful.
5. What he’s bad at? Names. Men are named “Tex” and “Pardner” and I swear, there is one man known only by his last name, which is “Lawless.” Perhaps he meant to add some subtlety in the next draft.

I didn’t want spoilers, so I tried to see as little of the novel as possible. Unfortunately, I couldn’t avoid smelling it. Who could guess a man could smoke so much that his novel would still stink of cigarettes decades later?

Review: Motherless Brooklyn

Here’s what was wrong with this movie: it was not Jojo Rabbit. Motherless Brooklyn was a good movie, but I saw a great movie a few days earlier. In comparison to the  laughfest/sobfest  that was Jojo, this one left me flat. 

It was also not Boardwalk Empire, though two prominent BE actors were cast in it.

It was also not a Martin Scorsese movie. I had attributed it to Scorsese based on the lead narration. I forgot that 1950s detective movies also have narration.

It was also not Trump: the Art of the Deal. Terry Gross on NPR said, essentially, oh, come on, a power-hungry New York developer, played by Alec Baldwin, are you saying that character isn’t Trump? The director snapped out “Nope” so fast I thought, well, he must be lying. 

Gary loved it, though, and he’s usually a harsh critic.

Review: Jojo Rabbit (Absolutely No Spoilers)

I truly don’t want to talk about the plot of this movie, because it’s just so ideal, and so tightly woven that every throwaway image  is going to come back and either punch you in the gut or make you laugh. Seriously, don’t even watch the commercials. Well, perhaps you can, because there was a genius in this movie in the way it would make you forget something until the moment you needed to laugh or cry.

Well ... it made ME laugh. The young man in front of us laughed exactly once. Don’t be that guy. (Don’t be stupid. Be a smartie. Come and join the Nazi party.) 

No doubt he was judging me, even though all I did was laugh at the points I was meant to (and gasp in horror to pay for it, believe me).

Comparisons to The Producers are pointless. That was half the movie this was. I’m sure no one sobbed hard through the last fifteen minutes of The Producers.

 

Review: The Current War (Exactly One Spoiler Regarding a Circus Animal)

I initially wanted to see Motherless Brooklyn because I was convinced it was a Martin Scorsese movie. It's about crime and it's narrated and it has Bobby Cannavale in it. Understandable.

I don't like gangsters, but I like it when Martin Scorsese has them explain themselves.

Instead, we got tickets to see The Current War, which was, surprise, produced by Martin Scorsese.

"The Current War? Why do you want to see THAT?" Gary grumbled. 

As I mentally answered, "Benedict Cumberbatch," he continued, "... The reviews for it are awful. And why are you supporting Harvey Weinstein?"

Evidently this was the movie that The Weinstein Company was supposed to distribute just as Harvey was exposed. Gary didn't know it was shelved for two years while they found another distributor, and they took that time to re-shoot some things.

"Gary, I just want to know more about the story. All I know is that Edison and Westinghouse were rivals and one of them" [SPOILERS] "electrocuted an elephant to show that the other one's electricity was deadly."

People, I watched that entire movie steeled to watch a big elephant death scene, and then it never happened.  Elephants flit by on screen, elephants are shown as ghostly stylized images, there is much elephant foreshadowing. There's an animal death demonstration scene, but a horse is electrocuted (off screen), not an elephant.

The credits weren't even over before I was on Wikipedia checking out the facts. Fact 1: Edison did kill animals to prove the dangers of alternating current. Fact 2: Later in life, well after the rivalry, Edison filmed the electrocution of a violent elephant that was being put down by a circus company. I suppose it was just something dramatic for him to film, but afterward people conflated the two and assumed Edison was still making his point.

Also, I saw so many antique light bulbs that it reminded me to check in on the world's longest-lasting bulb at that New Jersey firehouse (still functioning, now with a bulb cam).

I don't know why the reviews were bad: I enjoyed every bit of it. It looked gorgeous, it sounded gorgeous, Benedict was gorgeous, the main characters were complicated, and can you just imagine what it would be like to have electricity installed in your town?

Review: Zombieland Double Tap

We almost didn’t go see ZombieLand Double Tap, the sequel to the delightful ZombieLand. Gary read some poor reviews. The general complaint was that it was just the original ZombieLand repackaged.

I said I liked the original, what I remember from ten years ago, and I wouldn’t mind seeing it repackaged.

And it was just delightful! Just like the original. (I think there may even be a nod to that when you meet the Albuquerque and Flagstaff characters.)

So, if you liked the original, go see ZombieLand Double Tap; if you didn’t like the original, what didn’t you like? Was it the gore and violence? Oh, yeah, then do not see the sequel. It’s just as gory.

So, now we’ve seen our four movies for five bucks each: Ad Astra, Downton Abbey, Judy, ZombieLand Double Tap. Pretty good deal. (I’m not considering the fifteen dollar soda or all the two meals out as part of the value equation.) So, we bought another set of movies, since the trailers roped us in to wanting to see Jojo and Motherless Brooklyn. Could we have watched these movies at home? Probably, except for Ad Astra. But I like going on dates with my grumpy husband.

Pie

Well, I made the People Pot Pie. As usual, I was too ambitious, so it was a bitter disappointment to me but was a wonder to everyone else.

First off, it's modeled after my face. I wanted my distinctive bumpy nose, but I didn’t want a Mr. PotatoHead nose just plugged into my face, and Friend Anne had the brilliant idea to carve an apple and use it to support the nose shape. Of course, draping the pastry over the nose apple added 1/4 inch of bulk all around, and then the baking made it go bulbous on me, so the resemblance went south.

Still, it looked creepy and human, at least. Here's the plain pie (caramel apple filling, if you are curious):

Here it is with some decoration (cherry pie filling and cocoa powder, and apple bits for teeth,  if you are curious):

And finally, here it is with eyeballs (Lindor White Chocolate truffles with cocoa powder, if you are curious):

Three times, people said, “Ellen, your pie looks delicious!”

“Delicious, you say? Have you seen the pie?”

”Yes, it looks so tasty. I can’t wait to try it.”

Then they each actually looked closely at the pie and revised their earlier statements.

I brought it in at eight a.m., no one cut into it until ten, but then it was gone by one. Good reviews. (God bless America’s Test Kitchen for a reliable pie crust recipe.)

Big Box O' Jerry Part Four: The Miscellany

The Starter Family

I was flat-out astonished to see my name in the obit and funeral program as "survived by." I mean, they had to acknowledge my brother Dave, because Dave was the only one there when Jerry actually died. (He famously gave away Jerry's eyeballs post-death: the poor nurse took the word of his "son" that that's what Jerry would have wanted.) However, I'm pretty sure Jerry's friends looked at the obit and said, "Wait, there's another one?"

The Seeds

I don't know why, but the box-in-a-box filled with mementos from Jerry's funeral is also full of grass seed. I hope this isn't some Oklahoma tradition, because that seed is all in my Dustbuster now.

The Novel

The novel is a 5 inch high stack of papers, all numbered, all out of order. Three different typewriters. Gary suggested we take it to an optical scanner, only I think it will be enough of a chore just to sort the pages. Besides, I know Dave said he kept a copy, so it's possible someone else already did that. I glanced at one page and there was some spicy dialog; that's all I know so far. The prospect of sorting the pages is daunting.

Big Box O’ Jerry Part Three: The Photos

Family #2 Photos

Jerry had a boy and a girl with his second wife, Suzanne. As is always the way in "our" family, there are countless photos of the boy child and almost none of the girl. Then again, I suppose my half-sister Julia took her photos with her when she left, but I do wonder why she left her confirmation photos behind. Those photos made me realize how inaccurate my memories of my stepmother are. I remember her as an icy glamorous blonde, and it seems from the photos she was a very pretty perky brunette.

Negatives

There are more negatives than there are prints, which means I have some time ahead of me scanning the negatives and sending them to Photoshop to invert. (And then, saying, "Who are these people?")

There is a another very interesting, three by five inch negative. It's glass, and it was in an envelope from a photo studio in Rome.

I don't need Photoshop to see that's a page from Mom and Jerry's wedding photo album. The holes on the side show plainly show that they sent the page to Rome, and then got this negative plate in return (and the page back, I believe). But why? I know they didn't have any negatives in the album. Perhaps they wanted a negative so they could blow it up? For blackmail? Why?

Me

I was very taken aback to see my eighth-grade photo in there, especially given that I was in my twenties when David found Jerry. Gary said, "Well, obviously, your Mom sent it to him," and I laughed to think Mom would have communicated with Jerry on the sly. Regrettably, eighth grade was the worst of all of my school photos.

(I am sure Jerry thought, "This child looks nothing like me!")

It also has my signature on the back and a drawing I made of a "man eating bagel." (Oh! I just got that. It’s not a man eating a bagel, it’s a bagel with fangs. Subtle humor.)

I imagine that David had that photo on hand when he encountered Jerry. He claims not to. Perhaps Mom sent it along with a snippy note? It shall remain a mystery.

Big Box O' Jerry Part Two: The Crowder Letters

Last Letter to Jerry

The most poignant letter was probably from a doctor Jerry saw in early May, 1987.  It has some very direct quotes, like, "...more than one person who saw you in the clinic felt that they could smell alcohol in your presence. You continuing to drink is a sure way to commit suicide, and will buy you plenty of misery, I can guarantee you." He offers alcoholism counseling and wants to see Jerry again in two weeks to check liver and potassium levels. It's dated May 7, postmarked May 9th, and Jerry died May 11.

The Crowder Letters to Jerry's Mother

Now I know that in the eighties you could send a letter to "The Lockett Family, Crowder, Oklahoma" and as long as it had a stamp on it it would be delivered. Several people did that after Jerry died.

One letter was from the warden of the prison Jerry broke into in pursuit of his Pulitzer. It said, essentially, "I respect this man as a journalist, but I am not surprised he's dead." There was a politician that said the same to the newspaper for the full-length obit. Evidently Jerry was a professional, very direct, and he got the story very fast. (No doubt because work was interfering with his drinking. The alcoholism amazes me. He never drank when he was with Mom. Then again, a lot of mental illness strikes in the early thirties; I suppose alcoholism could too.)

A counter to the damning letter from the doctor came in the form of construction-paper cards made by a grade-school class. The teacher’s note said that after the Challenger disaster, Jerry used his NASA connections to find where this class could send condolence cards. And now, here they were sending condolence cards to his mother after his death. Kind of a morbid cast to this teacher's lesson plans.

There's a letter applauding Jerry for his participation in the "Coalition of of Concerned Citizens." Uh-oh, I thought, that can't be good. Gotta find out who these people hate. Not to worry, Big Dot, it isn't the New Zealand group, unless they had a branch in a tiny Oklahoma town. But based on every CCC I've Googled, they hated someone.

And of course, there are a lot of sympathy cards to my grandmother, and interestingly many of them just say,"We love you." I would never think of putting that on a condolence card, but I suppose when a mother loses a child that's the best thing to say.

Big Box O’ Jerry Part One: The Italian Notes

The standoffish period lasted two hours, if you are wondering.

Unlike Mom, Jerry kept no love letters for children to discover after his death -- or if he did his mother disposed of them.

There is some other interesting correspondence, though.

The Italian Notes

There are three tiny notes in Italian on some tiny intricate notepaper involving a cellophane piece printed with  ... oh, I can't describe it. Here's a photo:

The three notes are in bad cursive so my attempts to run them through Google translate resulted in only, "Happy new year ... American friend ... our daughter ... baby chickens ... Sincerely, Caterina." The only girl in the Vespa photo that would be Jerry's age would be the one on the left. I don't know, there was a girlfriend from when he went to high school in Saudi Arabia, perhaps Caterina is the same. But for God's sake, the man was enough of a mystery to me already, now I have Italian cursive on top of it?

Big Box O’ Jerry

As you may recall, my brother recently mailed me a box of our father’s ephemera. I opened up the box of Jerry's files, and the first thing I saw was a photo of my brother and I. So cute. Who would abandon those cuties?

Our photo is sitting next to folders of medical records for Jerry's other son, the severely autistic one. If I were a good, well-balanced, emotionally mature person, one who had moved on, I would feel sad for Jerry. After all, after throwing away two perfectly good children, he had one who (in my imagination) didn't give him any of the hugs we could have given him.

But I am not that person. And, oddly, I am not tying into this box of relics the way I expected. Maybe just one more night of being as stand-offish to Jerry as I can. I will get to you later, box, when it suits me.

I Must Make This Pie

This showed up in my Facebook feed last week.

Here is the article. It explains that the pies above are made of latex, but the article gives tips on how to make them out of actual pie, as does this one.  I'm making at least one before Halloween. I'll leave it in the break room.

The Buffet

There's a forty-year-old tree in front of our house.  The limbs scrape the roof of my car when I back out of the garage. We haven’t bothered to prune it the last few years. 

I began to notice a few twigs were down. Then the next week I happened to notice the driveway was littered with twigs. And not individual twigs, more like the last six inches of foliage off everything. Like someone had just randomly attacked the tree with hedge clippers. Snip snip snip.

Or, chew , chew, chew. A few weeks later the lawn guy told Gary that deer were eating our trees and bushes.

”Cool!” Gary said.

”Deer can really damage your landscaping.”

”We love deer!”

I was not there to say, “I am not buying new shrubs to please the deer when they could be eating from a backyard full of shelled peanuts.” When Gary told me about the exchange later he explained how it was vital to a deer’s health that it get enough roughage in the form of trees and shrubs.

I thought, “Well, at least they’ll chew off the limbs that scrape the top of my car.” 

Since we have established the all you can eat deer policy, the tree no longer scrapes on my car, but exactly one of our four yew bushes has turned golden brown. I could cut it down, because I know the others would fill in the gap, or I could live with a brown bush until spring when I am fairly certain the yew would come back green. It’s hard to kill a forty year old yew. 

One thing I know I won’t be able to do is act like I’m at the top of the food chain and spray deer repellent on the bushes. Gary now wants to put trays of chestnuts by the landscaping to see if they’d prefer nuts to bushes.

Also, “I think my deer would like to eat my bush more than my husband’s nuts” — yes, I am aware of how it sounds.

Review: Judy

We went to see Judy last weekend. I can certainly see why Liza Minnelli disavowed it. It’s sympathetic to the causes of Judy Garland’s addiction but pretty harsh about the results.

Of course, I had to come back home and research the accuracy, and it turns out everything is dead-on except for the heartwarming parts. None of the heartwarming parts happened.

I didn’t feel as swept-up in the movie as I usually do. I don’t know if that was the script or because I kept being distracted by the police walkie-talkies outside the door. We chose to see Judy on the same weekend that the Joker movie opened, and the sheriff and two police officers were keeping the lid on any terrorist attacks.

If you’ve seen even just the trailer you know the acting in Judy is remarkable. I kept thinking that Renee Zellweger’s singing was fake, because it was so good. It seemed as if she was lip-syncing to her own voice, but evidently she did sing live in rehearsal. I suppose my brain just refused to believe it.

So, glad I saw it. Would I see it again? Sure.  When it comes up on HBO I’ll fast forward through everything but the singing.

Ball Game

Yesterday I was lucky enough to go to the most exciting baseball game I  have ever seen live.

Exciting: It was a day game. I had to work on the weekend and start my day at 6:00, but I got to play hooky at a ball game during the day.

Exciting: The price of the parking got my heart going: forty bucks.

Exciting: I was expecting to sit in regular seats, not nosebleed, but by the foul pole, where we were the last time we lucked into division playoff seats for TeddyJ. Instead, we were in the Legends box, because the TeddyJ box was too small to hold all the people TeddyJ sent to the ball game.

Exciting: They are back to cutting the arch into the grass at the ballpark. For some reason I thought they stopped this.

Exciting: You will be shot if you try to run on the field at a Cardinals game.

Exciting: Well, back-to-back homers, then we made errors in the fifth so the score was tied, then the crowd took it upon themselves to send psychic energy via screams to the batters. After one deafening chorus of "YADI! YADI!" Yadier Molina delivered, and then delivered again to win the game in the tenth inning.

Exciting: We ALL kept shouting "YADI! YADI!" all the way out to the parking garage. Three people high-fived me. Some man hugged Gary and me.

Exciting: Gary tried to three-point turn his way into the existing line of cars and it was such a bad idea we decided to go get dinner instead, because the parking was forty dollars and I WAS USING THAT PARKING.

Exciting: We ate at a sports bar, where the Blues game was on, and they scored a goal against the Toronto Maple Leafs. Another strange man high-fived me.

So, exciting ball game and lots of physical contact with strange men. Excellent.

Colors

Why do people choose pastels for nurseries? Life begins at its most intense. Every moment of a baby’s life is fear and hunger and screaming, except when they sleep, and I understand that isn’t often. Nurseries should be painted in day-glo neon colors.

Eventually life becomes a little less stressful: once you can walk and talk the intensity scales back to the three primary colors, then the teenage years add in orange and purple and the blends, then adult life mixes all that with shades of grey and nuance. (With a big surprise splat of red for menopause.)

Hopefully in old age you can deal with all but the most extreme stresses, and all the colors fade until you are in a residence decorated in shades of white and pale grey.

Sadly, some people I know operate in baby day-glo intensity all the time. No therapy helps. Medication can only take it to toddler levels. 

I think this must be why I look forward to old age. I recognize there will be boredom in the nursing home, but I prefer that to drama. 

Liquor Laws

I always thought that the liquor laws in Missouri were very strict. I believe this was because young kids could drive twenty minutes over on the border into Illinois and buy liquor. It seemed there were lots of liquor laws: can’t order it on Election Day, can’t buy it on Sunday, have to be 21 to drink, can’t have an open container in your car. 

As it turns out — and this is another instance of the Man changing the rules and not letting me know — turns out most of those laws are no longer on the books. But they are in my head. As recently as last month I took pains to move an un-corked bottle of wine to the trunk of my car so I wouldn’t drive with booze at the ready.

In fact, only Nevada and New Orleans have laxer liquor laws than Missouri. And with Anheuser-Busch running the show here in St. Louis, I imagine someday there will be drive-through liquor stores like they have in New Orleans. 

Strange to think that Missouri is less conservative than other states in this one aspect. 

 

Movie Review: Downton Abbey (with sub-plot spoilers)

The movie was much like the series, with a greater variety of establishing shots of Highclere Castle. Highclere at night. Highclere seen from the town. Highclere from a drone.

There were a few differences. Butler Barrow has forgotten about the torrid affair he had with some upstairs fellow in the first season. Bates has forgotten he has a limp. Violet has forgotten how to be biting. (It was a shame; they used up all the good Violet lines in the series. In the movie she just says petty things in a biting way.)

All the upstairs drama had entirely too much ex-chauffeur Tom. Tom, Tom, all the time. The Tom Show.

The downstairs drama was actually pretty amusing, in that the staff all join in their hatred of a common enemy. Sadly, I sided with the enemy. Think about it. You just can't risk poisoning the king. Gary even agreed. We are Royalists in our disdain of Tom and defense of the King's staff.

One final note for Julian Fellowes: don't have a dress makeover and then hide the reveal until halfway through the final big scene. That's just wrong. What if Scarlet pulled down the curtains and then her green dress didn't show up for hours? What if Maria cut up the curtains and you never saw the Von Trapps in them? No. Nothing that dramatic happened, but there is some tailoring that wasn't finished as swiftly as I wanted it. A dress makeover demands a quick turnaround.

I did enjoy it in general. I got weepy in the spots I was supposed to. It did its job. Required for series fans, I think: anyone else could skip it.

Mindhunter/Bundy

I took my time getting there, but now I've joined the crowd of ghouls watching Mindhunter on Netflix. Once you get to episode 3 it's a fascinating story of how the FBI created profiles of serial killers (initially called lust murderers).

After I ate that all up, I watched Extremely Wicked Shockingly Evil and Vile, the dramatization about Ted Bundy and his longtime girlfriend. Not as good as Mindhunter, except for the chilling final scene with Ted and his girlfriend and the window, which IMDB now tells me was completely concocted.

I'm sure I'll be off this kick soon, but unti that day, I suspect everyone I know of being a sexually-motivated serial killer. Well, not everyone. Not the women. But are you a man I know with a distant father and an abusive mother? You're a baby Bundy. Keep away from me, you lust murderer.