Red Nose

Irritated Talk

When I was a kid, my Pop would come home every evening, hang up his suit jacket, put on his sweater, and pick up the evening paper. He read the paper and then settled in to do the crossword puzzle. He always finished them, too.

I started doing crossword puzzles in college and kept it up while I was on the road. I once even completed a Sunday New York Times puzzle; that was a day for a celebration! Then I kind of let them slide and pretty soon quit altogether.

Well, a few weeks ago I was looking at the Sunday Washington Post puzzle, just kinda idly reading the clues, and I just sorta picked up a pen and started filling in words.

I didn't complete that one, but the next morning I looked at the weekday puzzle. And that one, I did complete.

Thus was born -- or reborn -- a crossword puzzler.

Now I can't get enough. I do the daily puzzle every morning. On the way into work, I pick up the Post Express paper and do that puzzle at lunchtime. On Monday, I fire up a classic New York Times puzzle online. On Thursdays, I pick up the City Paper and do that puzzle. (It's a tricky one, too! I usually have to resort to Google for at least one answer. I am not proud of this, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.) Every evening I do a puzzle or two on BestCrosswords.com. I only do the American (as opposed to British) style with straight (as opposed to cryptic) clues, because I am a wuss and easily frustrated. Online puzzles are okay, but there really is nothing quite like folding a newspaper just so and and filling in the squares.

Sunday afternoons, of course, are reserved for the Sunday Washington Post puzzle. It takes me a couple of hours, but I can usually finish it. (I confess to a few Googles on that one, too.)

So, imagine my delight when, as I spun through the channels last night, I found the PBS show Independent Lens, which was playing the documentary Wordplay. It's all about crossword puzzlers! It featured Will Shortz, the puzzlemaster of the New York Times, and the crossword competition he sponsors. But it also featured several well-know puzzlers, including Bill Clinton and Jon Stewart.

It was a really good and fun documentary, but it also convinced me that competition is not for me. These folks are timed; scoring is based on both speed and accuracy. I prefer a more leisurely approach.

And, of course, a pen.

Yes, a pen.

Yoo Hoo!

Last night I fell asleep watching Monsieur Hulot's Holiday, a 1953 film starring Jacques Tati. It's a lovely, funny movie, but I'm going to have to pull it up on On Demand again so that I can see it all the way through. I woke up around 1:00 am and stumbled up to bed.

And stayed wide wide wide awake for the next hour.

So I grabbed my pillow and schlepped back down to the sofa to let another movie put me back to sleep. I found Miracle on Ice, a 1981 movie version of the 1980 US Olympic Men's hockey team's gold medal victory. Karl Malden starred as the coach, Herb Brooks. It was clearly an attempt to cash in on the victory, especially the semifinal match against the USSR, but hey! It had hockey! So I latched onto that movie, fully expecting to be asleep by the time the torch was lit in Lake Placid.

Nope. Saw the whole damn movie. I gotta say, I liked this version, with Kurt Russell as Herb Brooks, a lot better.

I did finally doze off for a couple hours.

We did see a wonderful documentary film this afternoon though, in a nicely restored big old movie house in DC. The Avalon Theater was saved from destruction by a completely grassroots neighborhood effort and now shows indie films, documentaries, and other cool movies.

We saw Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, a movie about the life and career of Gertrude Berg, who was pretty much the Oprah of the 30s through the 50s. What a woman! She was smart; she was talented. She married a chemical engineer who encouraged her. She started writing skits for the guests at her father's Catskills resort to perform in. When she sold the idea for her show to radio (first to NBC, then CBS), she wrote every script herself, chose the actors, and played the title role, Molly Goldberg.

The premise revolved around the homey adventures of the Goldbergs, an immigrant Jewish family living in an apartment house in the Bronx. Molly started each show by leaning out of her window, talking to the audience and to her neighbors across the air shaft.

In short, Gertrude Berg invented the sitcom.

The radio show ran for 17 years, then moved to television in 1949, where it was just as big a hit. In fact, Gertrude won the first Best Actress Emmy! She fought against Joe McCarthy's minions, doing her best to save Philip Loeb's career. (Loeb played Jake Goldberg, Molly's husband.) Ultimately, the blacklist prevailed and, while Gertrude herself was never on the blacklist, her career was badly damaged.

The film itself is really good! It has lots of interviews and clips, including an interview with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. If you can find it, do see it.

A Clown, A Captain, A Count

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Before we get started, I gave up on the audio quiz from Friday and posted the answers.

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Last night Joe and I went to a world premiere movie at the AFI Theater! It was a documentary, part of the theater's renowned documentary series, Silverdocs. I read about this film in the newspaper yesterday morning and immediately knew we had to go.

Had. To. Go.

The film was Every Other Day Is Halloween -- it's about the career of Washington D.C. personality Dick Dyszel, who worked for the new UHF television channel WDCA back from the early 70s to the late 80s. Some people remember him as Bozo the Clown -- yes! Bozo, that famous franchise clown. Other people remember him as Captain 20, pointy-eared host of the Captain 20 Club, an afternoon kids' show with cartoons and contests.

But Joe and I remember him best for his late night horror movie show, Creature Feature, which he hosted as Count Gore DeVol. Here's the Count in person, posing with the Countess Von Stauffenberg, a recurring character on the show.

Count Gore was a vampire. He was a more, say we say, adult character than Bozo and Captain 20. He had a full size poster of Vampirella on the inside lid of his coffin. He had Penthouse Pets as special guests. He hosted champagne parties on set.

And he showed terrible horror movies late on Saturday nights. They were so cheesy, and so much fun; just the thing for hippies who were too stoned to get up and go out on the town. Much better to sit in the lounge and laugh at the Count!

The movie was a hoot. The audience included other horror movie hosts and a whole bunch of Count Gore's fans, from grown-up kids who watched Ultraman on Captain 20 in the afternoon and then snuck out of their bedrooms to watch Creature Feature with the sound turned low late on Saturday night to people like us, horror and monster movie fans who got their fix from the courtly Count.

We had a great time! Now we keep in touch with the Count and the movies on his site, where he still runs a weekly movie. The Count is dead; long live the Count!

Hat Tricks and Silly Flicks

Thanks for all your comments, notes, and good thoughts on the whole dizziness deal. I've had a couple of nasty spells this weekend, but I was able to grab on to my sister in one case and Joe in the other. Today was much better as far as symptoms go, though. If tomorrow is a little better still, and the next day a little better than that, I'll be happy.

It was a great weekend for my Capitals though! A stellar win over the Lightning on Saturday night, featuring Greener shattering an NHL record, and a gut-check win over the Panthers on Sunday evening, featuring another Ovie hat trick. (Yes, the third goal was an empty net goal. I do not care.)

I had the day off today, so Joe and I celebrated the births of two of the countries greatest presidents by seeing Paul Blart, Mall Cop.

Fat guy on a Segway -- now that's comedy gold!

Actually, I liked it. It was silly and sweet and did not contain any poop jokes. Stomach growling jokes, yes, but no poop jokes. I like that in a comedy.

SonnyeBoy Drops In

SonnyeBoy just left, just now, with a load of presents and a kittycat. It was way too short of a visit -- he arrived late yesterday afternoon.

But we had our Second Christmas, with gifts and everything, and it was wonderful. SonnyeBoy always says he never knows what to get for me, but everything he gets is perfect, so he just thinks  he doesn't know what to get me. Or something.

SonnyeBoy treated us to a movie last night. We saw Valkyrie, the flick about the last assassination attempt on Adolph Hitler. It starred a whole bunch of great British actors, and Tom Cruise. It was better than I thought it would be, actually, and I quite enjoyed it. Now I'll have to read up on the history to see how accurate it was. Or I'll just ask Mom. She's quite the expert on Der Fuhrer.

Tonight we treated SonnyeBoy to the Capitals game against the Toronto Maple Leafs. What great fun!! The evening started out with a ceremony honoring Capitals great and Hall of Famer Mike Gartner. The game was terrific -- of course Alex Ovechkin scored another outrageous goal along with an empty netter, helping the Caps win 4-2.

But alas, SonnyeBoy has court tomorrow morning, and so he must go. I miss him already.

Quantum Of Explosions

Joe and I threw caution to the winds tonight and went to a movie. We live fast and loose, we do, so we went to see Quantum of Solace, the new James Bond flick.

I know it got mediocre reviews, but I quite enjoyed the movie. I figure as long as I willingly suspend -- actually, willingly completely ignore -- my disbelief and just go along for the ride I can have a pretty good time, and I did.

I like Daniel Craig's Bond. He's flawed, and gritty, and imperfect. (Except when he wears a tuxedo. That, my friends, is pretty much perfect.) He actually gets dirty and bloody and bruised, although a hot shower and a fresh shirt seem to fix him right up.

So anyway, I couldn't pay too much attention to the plot in this movie, because that way lies madness. I just identify the main guy and maybe a secondary bad guy or two and sit back and watch the chases and explosions.

This version has several car chases (the opening one is hard to beat), a boat chase, an airplane chase, and a couple of on-foot chases. There are, of course, plenty of explosions, country hopping (Italy! England! Haiti! Germany -- I think!, Bolivia! Russia!), and narrow escapes from certain death. There's revenge and excessive violence and drinking in swanky bars on private airplanes and drinking in dirty dives in third world countries and a tricked-out Tosca. I was exhausted by the end!

However, there's only one sex scene. It's very short and you don't get to see anything, which is a damn shame given Daniel Craig's assets.

Ten (True) Bloody Things, Or Fangs For The Memory

Ah, it's the day before Hallowe'en, so it seems only right that I come clean about my latest obsession: HBO's new series, True Blood. Here are ten things about True Blood in particular and vampire stuff in general.

1. I have not read the books (by Charlaine Harris) yet. I probably will, but I plan to wait until after the series is over. I hope (hint, hint, oh family mine) to get one or two for Christmas.

2. I got totally into the Anne Rice vampire world and have read nearly all of that series, starting with Interview with the Vampire. Heck, I even saw the movie and thought Tom Cruise actually did a very good job as Lestat. But then I lost my taste (heh) for vampirism, so I never picked up the Sookie books or, I might add, the Twilight books.

3. To me, the scariest vampire movie in existence is the F.W. Murnau silent film, Nosferatu. We saw it, with fabulous organ accompaniment, at AFI. However, the scene in the Bela Lugosi Dracula where Renfield appears, quite plainly mad, at the bottom of the ship's stairs makes my blood run cold. I love the Hammer vampire films, with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and any number of well-endowed actresses in filmy nighties and big hairdos.

4. I really like the idea in this series that vampires are lobbying for equal rights, down to the passing of the VRA (Vampire Rights Amendment).

5. I also like the fact that not all of the vampires on the series are creepy gothic types. The redneck vampire in the first episode was great, as is the character Eddie (played by Stephen Root), a nerdy gay vampire in love with the gorgeous Layfayette.

6. The little details in the series have really hooked me. For example, Tara is reading The Shock Doctrine in the first episode. I am also reading it -- it's really excellent and very scary in its own right, especially when you consider the fact that it's nonfiction.

7. Is Sam a shapeshifter or not? Why, yes, I believe he is. After all, he barks in his sleep.

8. So much eye candy in this show! Bill, Sam, Eric, Lafayette, Jason, Rene... oh my, oh my.

9. The opening song, Bad Things, is just great. I happily forked over my 99 cents on iTunes and now listen to it quite a lot.

10. Only four more episodes! Damn! Thank God for On Demand.

Dancing On Air

Wirewalking is one of my very favorite circus arts. I never mastered it, but I've always loved it. My very favorite act from my circus was Herbie Weber, a great wire dancer.

So when I read an article on Salon.com about Man on Wire, the documentary about Philippe Petit's incredible tightwire walk between the towers of the World Trade Center, I knew that I would have to see it. And so we did, yesterday, at the AFI.

The fellow who attempted to teach me how to walk on a tightrope said, "Once you learn how to do it, it doesn't matter how high up you are."

While I could never quite embrace that philosophy, Philippe certainly did. He walked wires strung between the towers of Notre Dame in Paris and the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Australia before he walked between the tallest towers of all. He did all of the walks without permission; he just strung his cable and walked.

Wirewalking was his absolute passion. It still is; you can tell from his appearance in the documentary.

The movie is great. You get to peek into the hearts and minds of all those involved in the highly illegal caper, from Philippe himself to his girlfriend Annie to his best friend Jean-Louis to several other folks who aided and abetted the enterprise. Philippe spent six years planning, visiting the towers, building scale models, calculating distances and wind speeds and angles, and, of course, practicing while his cohorts pulled on the wire to simulate the bouncing and swaying he was likely to encounter.

The night before the walk, they somehow managed to smuggle a half-ton of equipment -- the 450 pounds of quarter-inch steel cable not the least of it -- up to the top of two towers. Then they spent the rest of the night rigging the wire.

Finally, Philippe stepped off the one tower and into space, with only a silver strand of cable between him and a very hard landing 104 stories below.

But because he knew how to do it, it didn't matter -- at least not to him. He crossed eight times, just out of reach of the cops. He lay down on the wire with his balance pole across his middle, looking like a miniature airplane from below. He sat down on the wire and actually looked down at the street below.

He. Looked. Down. That makes me shiver just to think about it. I mean, imagine being a quarter mile up, sitting on a quarter-inch thick string of steel, with a 50-pound pole across your lap, and looking down into the morning traffic in Manhattan! I'd have been flat on the ground at the first glance. But Philippe gazed down into the street, then stepped back up onto the wire and walked across, just like that.

I remember when he did it. I was at The International Mime Festival in Lacrosse, Wisconsin, learning to juggle and pretending to be a mime. (Remember, this was 1974, when mime was cool.) While all these folks were watching renowned clowns and mimes and new vaudevillians, and learning to walk against the imaginary wind and outline imaginary boxes and pull on imaginary ropes, this inspired Frenchman, this surefooted artist, saw two towers and decided to walk from the top of one to the top of the other, across space, above a city.

Damn. I mean, damn.

10 Top 10

We are watching AFI's 10 Top 10; they just finished the Sci-Fi category. The top 10 -- not in order here -- were:

• A Clockwork Orange
• Alien
• Terminator
• Star Wars
• ET
• The Day the Earth Stood Still
• Bladerunner
• Back to the Future
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind

The winner?

2001: A Space Odyssey

I saw 2001 when it first came out; I was in college. I remember seeing it (several times) in the university movie theater. You could tell exactly when someone started getting off on their particular sensory enhancement technique by the murmured exhalations of "Oh Wow..." that occurred as the movie progressed.

But The Costumes Were Great!

I have just finished watching the weirdest old movie on TCM that I've ever seen: Idiot's Delight, starring Clark Gable and Norma Shearer. It's one of those pre-World War II deals that can't decide whether it's a comedy or a serious message movie, or a romance set against the backdrop of war. Not only that, it can't decide whether the message is patriotic pro-war or anti-war. The acting deserves the William Shatner award for scenery chewing.

Clark Gable plays Harry Van, a vaudeville hoofer who hooks up with a strange woman (Norma Shearer, playing Irene) who's performing with an aerial act. She wants to join Harry in his mentalist act, and picks him up. They spend one night together, then split up. When next we meet Harry, he and his troupe of blondes are stranded at a seedy resort hotel on the Swiss border. With them are a motley crew of hotel guests, including Norma Shearer. This time she's all dolled up and accompanying a German arms dealer (I think). She's now posing as a Russian countess, and pretends not to know Harry.

Well -- all sorts of antics ensue with the motley crew (heh), including anti-war rants from Burgess Meredith, and a strange version of Puttin' On The Ritz with Clark and the blondes. Finally the war starts, and of course everyone has to escape.

Except there's a problem with Norma Shearer's passport, so the Germans won't let her leave. Clark gets in the bus with the blondes, but of course! He comes back, because true love is like that.

Now it gets really confusing. The bombs start dropping, and the hotel gets hit (collateral damage; the bombers are really going after the air base at the foot of the mountain). Clark and Norma decide they don't want to die in the cellar, so they stay in the lobby.

Now -- the movie has two endings, and TCM showed them both. In the first ending, Clark and Norma talk about how they're going to do the mentalist act now, it's going to be great, it'll play all over the world, and then another bomb shatters the window. So they decide to sing a hymn.

Yes. A hymn. Clark sits at the piano, and together they sing Nearer My God to Thee. And miracle or miracles, the bombing stops!

In the second ending, they're talking about the act, blah blah blah, bomb shatter window, but they keep on talking about the act, getting more and more excited about it, and then they sing a lively vaudeville ditty. They've realized that they love each other madly, and then! Miracle of miracles, the bombing stops.

My mind, however, is still boggling.