Heaven and Helen

My wife's grandmother, Helen, in her 10th decade, suffered a large heart attack about a week ago. She'd been in the hospital ever since, at times seeming like she'd pull through, at other times seeming pretty frail and showing her age and condition. Upon her being admitted to the hospital, the nurses told the family to expect Helen to not leave the hospital, and so, over the past week, we were expecting death to come. Today at noon It did.

I wasn't really close to Helen. I liked her and she was friendly enough to me over our 20 years of knowing each other, but in the past few years, I'd only seen her a couple of times. Karyn and Cameron, the church-goers in our family of three, would see her much more often at church.

One of my last memories of her was when she, still living on her own in her own home, invited us to stay for lunch during one of our visits to see her. We didn't really want to stay but we did. She made us Kraft Dinner. From what I remember, she didn't have any milk for the cheese mix, so she used a bit of water instead. Unfortunately, she used too much water, and the resulting cheese sauce was pretty weak. Actually, the word 'weak' implies much more flavour than what was contained in that dinner. It was, by far, the worst macaroni and cheese I've ever eaten.

Still, it was a nice visit, and she was remarkably smart and clear and spright for a lady of her age. And in my 20 years of knowing her, I've never seen her angry or unpleasant, and she was always quick to laugh.

She was a pretty religious lady. And even though I am not religious at all... Helen, I hope everything works out for you.

If I Could Save Hair In A Bottle

Well, it was bound to happen. Obviously, a few months ago, all the pipes and plumbing in our bathroom got together and planned this. First it'll be the toilet that goes. The bathroom sink and its pipes, having been replaced a mere year or two ago, decided it'd be obvious if they went again. Now, the final bit of bathroom plumbing has decided to malfunction and depart. So, today, we have new taps and shower, plus new pipes leading to the taps and shower.

To get to the pipes, our interim plumber (the much appreciated Cecil has put his back out and was unable to attend to our needs) had to go in from the bathroom closet. That means the wall in the closet had to be, um, removed. That means that everything in the closet had to be removed.

The closet in question has probably seven shelves, and is as deep as a standard tub is wide. Pretty deep, for a closet, I think. Over the 10+ years of living here, we've begun using less and less of the back areas of those shelves. Lately, in fact, I'd guess we only use the front 6 inches of those shelves. That's not to say the rest of the area is empty. Quite the opposite, in fact. All the shelves are piled deep with all sorts and manner of bathroom and non-bathroom items. Many of which have not been seen for years.

One of those objects was a pill bottle that contained some of Cameron's baby hair. Much lighter than it is now. I found it interesting how my wife was quite struck by the memories that this bottle of hair elicited, yet my reaction was (perhaps typical of the male of the species) more along the lines of "Erp."

The difference must have something to do with the fact that she has a vagina

Strumtrulescent

For those, like me, who are a fan of both, Johnny Depp will be on The Actor's Studio tonight on Bravo.

"The Ladykillers"

Film actors must just salivate at the opportunity to act in a Coen brothers movie. Tom Hanks looks wonderfully funny. The movie looks very promising.

CBS - Censoring Bush's Spending

Here's a link to the MoveOn dot org Voter Fund 30 second television commercial that CBS won't allow to be aired during the Super Bowl.

Be careful, though. You might see something that makes you think just a bit.

Next Year's Oscars

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's Oscar time in Blogland, and everyone's got a post or two about the nominations.

But here's one that I bet is different. See, I'm very much looking forward to seeing (I'm assuming they'll perform) Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara perform "A Kiss At the End of the Rainbow" as Mickey and Mitch.

That got me thinking:

What five artists would you really like to see perform at next year's Oscars?

Here's mine, off the top of my head (artists are real, songs and movie titles, obviously made up):

Rufus Wainwright singing "Babelfish" from the movie "Fountain Lake"

Dwight Yoakam singing "Texas-Size Hole" from the movie "The Appellate"

Liz Phair singing "Guy Homme" from the movie "Augmented" or singing "Augmented" from the movie "Guy Homme"

XTC singing "Beat Up" (from their new album) from the movie "Stone-Dead Churchill"

Tom Waits singing "Hambourg Whore in the Land of Gin and Tonic" from the movie "Uncle Auntie"

I'm sure if I gave it more thought, I'd come up with a better list, but I think the above five performers would make a kick-ass Oscar telecast.

I'd also love to see the movie Stone-Dead Churchill, especially if XTC was involved It'd be the hit smash, hot new movie import from Britain's newly discovered Tarantino. Also, I expect Uncle Auntie would be good. Maybe it's a Robert Altman comedy. Guy Homme must be some sort of period piece, maybe Guy is a french foreign legionairre? Renee Zellwegger would star as the squinting Monsieur Homme. The Appellate sounds like some southern legal drams bullshit starring Cruise and Paltrow. Fountain Lake would be a psychological thriller starring Harrison Ford and Nicole Kidman as husband and wife. Yes, husband and wife.

<em>Enthusiasm</em>, Curbed (somewhat)

I love Curb Your Enthusiasm. I've been enjoying it more and more each season as it's run on The Movie Network. Sad to say, however, that last season (I believe the series' third) may have been the high-water mark. Specifically, the episode where Larry David talks to rapper Krazee Eyez Killa and laments the effort and hard work required in orally pleasing females. To me, that one scene, in a very funny season of very funny scenes, is the definition of comedy.

The first four episodes of this season have seemed progressively more forced and false. While still very funny and still some of the best comedy on television this year, it seems the show has fallen into the trap of having David's character *dictate* the wackiness of a scene or episode, rather than allowing his character to *discover* the wackiness. In the past, Larry David would stumble into his troubles. Now it seems as if he's seeking trouble out. It's a subtle difference, and one that I'm sure I've not explained well enough, yet I'm not going to bother or bore you all with trying to explain further.

I'm not giving up on the show. Not by any means. It, combined with back to back reruns of The Sopranos, makes Tuesday night the only night of television I currently look forward to.

Action Movie Manifesto

For those of you who are planning on producing an action movie, here is my handy-dandy list of do's and don'ts: (please feel free to add your own)

My action movie:

- Will have bad guys who can shoot weapons as accurately as the good guys.

- Will not have any scene where the hero, or anybody, must frantically download or upload something. Also, I will not attempt to build tension, or waste screen time, by showing somebody typing information on a keyboard.

- Will not show a woman sitting in bed, with the sheet pulled up over her breasts. Also, when a woman turns over in bed, or reaches for something, the sheet will not move with her, as if it’s taped to her breasts.

- Will have vehicles that conform to modern-day physics and laws of gravity. When a flying-through-the-air car lands hard, damage will occur. If the damage is serious enough, the car will stop running.

- Will have a bad guy who is not compelled to divulge his plan/genius to the trapped and/or defeated hero. If the hero gets caught, he will most likely die.

- Will have bad-guy-lackeys who are capable of free-thought. That is to say, not all bad-guy-lackeys will be willing to die for whatever the bad guy cause is.

- Will have characters who are indeed dead when the other characters believe they’re dead.

- May have vehicles crashing into other ‘civilian’ vehicles, into glass buildings, and even into fruit stands. But my movie will give such incidents real weight and repercussions. Having the Lieutenant yelling at the yahoos responsible is not enough.

- Will have characters who are at least as smart as the people in the audience. If we can figure something out, given the same information, so can the characters.

- Will not have a character who is near retirement.

Chink's Restaurant

Okay, so apparently there's a popular, well-known, well-established restaurant in Philadelphia called "Chink's Restaurant" and it's one of the best places in the city of brotherly love for Philly cheese steaks. It's been in business under the same name since the mid-1940's. Its original owner was a guy nicknamed 'Chink'. He was non-Asian. Over the years, it's changed owners several times, is no longer associated with the family of the original 'Chink', yet has continued to build a solid reputation with the name.

Last year, a woman (non-Asian) who lives in Philadelphia yet had never heard of Chink's, suddenly became aware of the establishment. She became deeply offended by the degrading racial connotations of the name, to the point that she is now trying to get the 'Chink' removed from the establishement's name.

To me, this is an interesting problem. On the one hand, the name-recognition that Chink's has built for itself over 60+ years of business is invaluable. To force them to forfeit that name would undoubtedly cost them some business. On the other hand, there's no doubt that the name could be offensive to some people.

Should the current owners be forced to change the name of their business?

49 Per Cent

With only one game left in the NFL season, the best I can hope for in the online football pool that I'm in is to reach 49% accuracy in my picks. Right now I am 130-136, which the site tells me is 48.9% correct. I am ranked 2028th out of 4560 players.

That might sound pretty bad. I am, after all, an avid football fan, and I think I have a pretty good grasp of the abilities of each team, relative to each other. While I don't scour the wires each week, looking for trends, tips or tendencies that might influence the outcome of each game, I put a bit of thought into the picks. Theoretically, I didn't even do as well as I might have if I had simply guessed. Yet when I look at the leader of this site, I see his (I assume 'his') stats are 158-108 for 59.4%. So, the best of the best of these 4560 football fans only guessed correctly 10% more often than I did. And, looking at the statistics of so-called 'professionals' on sites like ESPN or CBS Sportline, or FOX, they seem to hover around the 50% to 56% range. From practically all accounts, to be over 60% is out of the question.

Obviously, guessing the outcome of NFL football is pretty tricky, and for those really into it, the results are little better than guessing. More than ever, the phrase "on any given Sunday" really does apply.

I guess this is the result of parity; of the salary cap. I'm not sure I like it. This is now, and has been for a decade or more, a league where teams that are pretty bad one year (two years ago the Panthers were 2-14, this year in the SuperBowl) can prosper the next.

I kinda like the concept of the dynasty. I like the idea of building a team over a number of years, striving to implement a 5 year plan to reach the top. Knowing that the bad team on your schedule next year will be pretty much as bad as they were this year; that the tough teams will be tougher next year. Now, it's too now-or-never. Players switch teams like they were underwear. Everyone is striving to win it next year. It certainly makes for exciting games, and choosing who wins is pretty much the flip of a coin, but in some way, it's not as fun being a fan of any particular team. Teams are built too much now on chance.

Of course this is coming from a guy who only guessed right 48.9% of the time this year.

They Were The Stars In Our Eyes

Today I thought to myself "What song would I be embarrassed to admit I like?" The first song that popped into my head: Patio Lanterns by Kim Mitchell.

I'm not sure why I'm embarrassed to like this song. It's not a song I think about often, if ever. I don't have it in my music collection. I hear it about maybe once every 3 or 4 years, I'm guessing. It's not a bad song, has nice harmonies, invokes pleasant memories of adolescence. Yet, I am. I am embarrassed to admit I like this song. And what is astonishing to me is how immediately it answered my question.

Those of you trying to figure me out can add this bit of trivia to your theses.

And what of you? What song are you embarrassed to like?

Oh, Lotta. I Can Hear You Even Now

I think it's over at Delta Tango Bravo where there was a post about great names.

One of the greatest, I think, has to be Lotta Hitschmanova, she of the USC television ad from the CBC of the past.

Before peaking at this website, or any other documentation, who will be the first to correctly post the address that will be forever associated with Lotta Hitschmanova.

The prize for posting the correct answer is the respect and admiration of an entire blogging community (yes, I can speak on behalf of us all).

Were I A Cartoon Character, But For One Day...

This is entertaining: Cartoon Laws of Physics

And, in something of the same vein, this (from 1990) is too: Coyote V. Acme (although I also seem to recall seeing something like this earlier than 1990, in National Lampoon)