Overheard conversation that makes me smile.

This morning* on the Max train:

Person:  Hey Kevin! How are you?
Other person:  Good man, good to see you.  How have you been?
Person:  Great!  I’m 110 days sober.
Other person:  That’s great!

*This conversation happened at some point in May. But blogger moved this to June and I can’t remember now when it happened it May.  So here it is in the June posts.

Three sentence movie reviews: He’s just not that into you.

In trying to describe who should have been Snow White* in Snow White and the Huntsman, my friend who can’t remember names of actors ended up talking about this movie and recommended I see it.  I totally disagreed with the premise,** but by ignoring my disagreement, I found this was a pretty enjoyable film.  The whole Jennifer Aniston/Ben Affleck ending really annoyed me though and I couldn’t let it go.

*she was talking about Ginnifer Goodwin.
**If you want to go on a date with someone ask them.  If you want to call someone, call them.  If you want to marry someone, propose.  It doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman. This movie was set in the present, but had the gender roles of the 1950s front and center for the ladies.  Geez!

Three sentence movie reviews: Cabin in the Woods

So, you can probably guess who is in this movie which prompted me to see it, despite the fact it is a horror movie and I am not a fan of the genre.  That said, I really enjoyed this, despite the gore, and mostly owing to the fact it was incredibly clever and had a whole host of actors I enjoy, not just Chris Hemsworth.  It seems the key to the horror movie genre is to give me a puzzle to solve while watching.

ps.  The poster above was the one I saw used to advertise the movie, and it is very clever.  But according to my movie poster site the one below was the original one. I like it more, but I can see why they had to go with something else. The third poster is a bonus poster, just for fun.

A time I felt loved.

Each month the committee on which I serve has a meeting and
at that meeting we have an opening reading and a question.  The question this month was, “talk about a
time when you felt loved.”  I gave an
answer, but halfway through the meeting I thought of a better answer, excellent
for this week’s essay.

I was someone in the middle of my adolescence, hanging about
while my mother cleaned out a drawer. 
From that drawer, my mother pulled out a stack of small cards, the kind
that are delivered with flowers.  She
flipped through them, smiled, and tossed the packet over to me.
“What are these?” I asked her. 
“Those are from when you were born.”
I looked through the cards, which were a great example of
mid-seventies design, appropriate for a baby girl.  They featured a lot of pink and yellow and
drawings in the style of the big eyed naked children holding hands that were
popular then. There were also soft pastels of teddy bears and baby blankets and
bassinets.  I knew some of the people,
but many of the names on the cards were unfamiliar to me.  “Who is this?” I would ask and mom would tell
me it was her cousin so-and-so. 
Mom had 41 cousins, due to the fact that her mother, my
grandmother was the oldest of the 15 children of Raymond and Helen Catherine
Whitmore.  They were a tight clan,
growing up in and around Portland, Oregon and the size of their brood was
unique enough to be remarked on, even then. 
Though their family was born and came of age from 1912 to the 1930s, a
time when many more children were born to each family than today, fifteen
children was still a huge number.  There
is a picture of the entire family, standing on the stairs at the Paramount
Theater (now the Arlene Schintzer Concert Hall).  It’s an impressive lineup.  They were there because they won a
contest.  They were the biggest family in
Portland and their picture appeared in the paper.  There might have even been free admission to
the movie. 
Mom grew up in a gaggle of cousins.  None of the original 15 went on to have
nearly as many as their parents: my grandmother stopped at three and one of the
children topped out at eight.  Many of
the 15 settled around Portland and I get the impression that most of them spent
goodly amounts of time together over the years depending on geography and which
siblings were getting along with each other at the time.
My experience was very different.  Growing up, though I could claim at least 41
second cousins, it was as if I had no first cousins of my own.  My father’s nieces and nephews were much
older than me—most were adults or nearly so when I was a child—and they lived
either halfway, or on the other side of the country. We rarely saw them.  Neither of my Aunts on my mother’s side had
children, so when we visited my Grandparents we were a party of eight (Grandma,
Grandpa, Mom, Dad, Aunt Pat, Aunt Carol, my brother and myself) but with no one
else but my brother in my age cohort.  We
visited Portland often and sometimes would hang out with the extended family,
but I made few cousin connections.
Hearing the tales of the large Whitmore’s exploits, combined
with the fact that I grew up in a city where the large Mormon population meant
that many of my classmates had large numbers of cousins—some who even went to
the same school—meant that I mythologized and idolized the large family.  To me, having cousins meant having a built-in
companions.  Best friends. Since we were
from the same family, we would have so much in common and undoubtedly get along.  Adulthood has disabused me of this notion,
but growing up I just felt the longing for a tribe.
My adolescent self flipped through the cards from my
mother’s cousins and cards from my Great Aunts and Uncles congratulating my
parents.  Weighing the cards in my hand,
I imagined all the flower bouquets attached to the cards.  I thought of the givers making arrangements
to have the flowers sent to a different state and time zone and I thought of
each person counting out the money to pay for the flowers.  None of the Whitmore clan can be said to be
rolling in dough. It was an overwhelming picture.
“A lot of people were pretty excited I was born.” I said in
wonder to my mother.
“Your grandmother waited a very long time for a grandchild,”
my mother explained, “so many people were happy that she finally had one.”
I thought of my loneliness growing up and the intermittent
wish for cousins, or even a few more brothers and sisters.  Looking at those cards I suddenly felt folded
into the family, a part of the fabric, despite the distance.  I might not see them often, but when I did, I
would always be “Helen’s granddaughter.” 
The first granddaughter of the first child of the Whitmore Family.

Three sentence movie reviews: Glee, the 3-D Concert Movie (in 2-D)

So this movie was not so engrossing as to pull me away from many various thoughts and wonderings* while watching, but for the ending of a stressful day when I forgot to take a full breath the entire time I was at work, this was perfect.  I loved seeing the actors perform (as opposed to acting like they are performing, which is what we see on the show,) like the moment when the actor who plays Blane finished singing and gave a short laugh of delight at the crowd’s reaction.  I also thought the stories told by the featured Glee fans were quite good.

*Examples of various thoughts and wonderings would be:

  • Has Brittany had implants?  It might be the top, but her breasts look rather big for her frame.
  • Do they Auto-Tune Quinn?
  • Do they 
    Auto-Tune  Santana?
  • I’m pretty sure they don’t 
    Auto-Tune  Rachel, and if they 
    Auto-Tune  Mercedes, I would be incredibly disappointed.
  • Are they really singing during this concert?  Really?  Maybe just the lead singer, the ones they don’t 
    Auto-Tune ?  Maybe the rest are lip syncing?
  • Man, if anyone won the “Glee lottery” it’s Finn: he’s old, he can’t really sing, he has amazingly normal looks and we all know he can’t dance that well.  Yet still, he’s a star and people love him, myself included.
  • What must their rehearsal and preparation schedule look like?  It’s probably pretty intense.
  • I could watch a whole movie of Brittany and Mike Chang dancing.
  • It’s over already? If I payed 3-D prices for this movie I would be annoyed that this is only an hour and 13 minutes total.

ps.  The name of this movie in the library catalogue is:  Glee, the 3-D Concert Movie.  And when you scroll down on the page it says, “2-D version”  So I delighted in telling people I saw Glee, the 3-D Concert Movie in 2-D

Three sentence movie reviews: Snow White and the Huntsman

I took advantage of a nice day to sit in a dark theater and contemplate my Chris Hemsworth thing.  This was not a “good” movie, but I greatly enjoyed it, including the costumes, the special effects, the very sullen Snow White and a wonderful, scene-chewing (in the best way possible) Charlize Theron as the evil Queen.  Oh yes, and a grimy Huntsman.

Let’s have a bonus poster, just for fun:

Bike ride.

I took the long way to St. Johns because it was such a nice day.  I got extra time to contemplate the nice day while I waited for the train to pass.  I came upon the train midway through and still counted over one hundred cars.
 
A view of the slough. (It rhymes!)
 
Don’t go here on the bike path.  Happily, I’m almost to my destination.
 
Yep.  The Willamette and Columbia are still confluence-ing here, at Kelly Point Park.  I like to go and check on them every once in awhile, just to make sure.
 
Blue skies and power lines just past Kelly Point Park.  Soon after that I took a wrong turn and made my ride longer than it needed to be.  But it was such a nice day, I was happy.
 

Three sentence movie reviews: Crocodile Dundee

I mentioned in passing to Matt that I had never seen this film and it soon after arrived from the library.  The film being over 20 years old, I was a bit leery that we would get some good racist humor, but it was a surprisingly progressive film and also was pretty funny, even after all these years. Now that I’ve seen it, clearly my life is complete.

Rose Festival Parade 2012

Saving seats for the Rose Festival Parade.  I’m from the blue chair to the end of the blanket.
 
After much time saving seats, Mom and her friend Tanya arrived.  Then Rick arrived with S & K.  Kids at parades are much fun so there are many pictures of S & K and none of Mom and Tanya.
 
Trying to get both kids to look at the camera.
 
There’s a parade going on, but who needs parades when you have rocks behind you?
 
Because then you can take the rocks…
 
…and put them in the bike helmet!
 
Attempt at self-portrait with myself and K.  It captures neither of us, but does get a bit of my mother.
 
This weird yellow guy hung about, trying to excite the crowds.  He was a bit creepy and eventually moved on.  He seemed to not be actually affiliated with the parade, just a random all yellow guy looking to motivate people to cheer.
 
K had the eating thing down. 
 
S took a break from rock-moving to have a snack.
 
They lasted a long time, but eventually it was time to go.
 
In case you missed the Rose Festival Parade, here it is, in less than three minutes.