Goals 2018 -- May Recap

I set out to do some specific things in May. Here's how I did:

1. Ride my bike at least once each weekend.
I missed this one, but I have some good excuses.
-- The first weekend in May, S wasn't feeling great, so we took the weekend off.
-- Mother's Day weekend we did a 41-mile road ride.
-- The weekend of the big family party, S was out of town. Knowing that I had to get my ride in on Saturday morning, I got up early and got all dressed to go.  However, when I opened the door to go outside, I was confronted with a wall of pea soup fog. I live in a bit of a valley, so I drove up to the main road to see if the situation improved. It did not, and I didn't think it was safe to be out riding alone under those conditions,  so I put my bike on the trainer and watched some Netflix while I pedaled away to nowhere.
-- Memorial Day weekend, we drove to Clayton and parked there for reasons that will become apparent momentarily. We rode out to Kirkwood, down Grant's Trail, and back up to the Tower Grove Farmer's Market.  We were limited on our buying power because (1) our mode of transport was not excellent for fresh veg, and (2) we had forgotten to bring cash, so it was card only.  But we got a few things before heading back to Clayton - where we had delicious crepes as City Coffeehouse and Creperie to reward ourselves for our 32 miles of hard work.

2. Go to the Tower Grove Farmer's Market at least once.
Done! See above.

3. Go to the Lake Saint Louis Farmer's Market at least once.
Done! We drove there the weekend S wasn't feeling great.

4. Cook outside on the grill.
Done! S grilled up some steaks from the LSL Farmer's Market.

5. Go to the Whitaker Festival at Mobot once.
Done! We went with P on their opening night to see Gene Jackson, and it was lovely and not too hot.

6. Tend to my plants, which are finally enjoying some fresh air and sunshine.
Done! Mostly. There is definitely some weeding that needs to be done in the front, but overall things look pretty good!

Happy Birthday Grandpa!

What I Watched -- Multi-Movie Recap

I have watched so many movies that I haven't blogged about!  They've been a mix of genres and quality, so here's a quick recap of what I've missed.

Good Kids was a cute, sort-of funny film about four friends in the summer after they graduate from high school.  They were the nerds of their class, and can't stomach the idea of going off to college without having any of the life experiences they feel like they should have had by that age.  So they set out to have those experiences, to reasonably comical effect.











Kodachrome is entirely an all-too-predictable film about an estranged son's relationship with his dying father.  It's also an homage to the eponymous color film; the dying man is a photographer who is on a quest to get his last rolls of film to the sole remaining location in the U.S. which is developing the film.  The movie itself, as I said, is completely predictable.  It is worth watching to see a wonderful performance by Jason Sudeikis.








Spectral is what you should watch if you just want to see lots of shooting and explosions.  It's a sci-fi military tale, with a main character who is a DARPA scientist, and travels to eastern Europe to solve the mystery of the supernatural beings which keep killing American special ops fighters without leaving a trace.









 

Quiz Show had been on my list for a long time.  It's a fictionalization of a true story -- a Congressional staffer investigated television quiz shows when he believed they were fixed.  The film focuses on two contestants: Herb Stempel (John Turturro) and Charles van Doren (Ralph Fiennes).  Great performances by both of them.









Revolutionary Road is another one that had been on my list for a long time.  Unlike Quiz Show, this one was more depressing than satisfying.  Which is not to say that the acting wasn't impressive in this one as well -- both Leo and Kate (reunited after the Titanic went down!) do a nice job.  But it's just so hopeless.  Not fun.











Blue is the Warmest Color got so many great reviews, and I have to say that I was a little bit underwhelmed by it.  It was likable enough, for what it was, but it seemed like the only thing that really made it anything other than a run-of-the-mill coming-of-age love story was that it was about lesbians rather than a heterosexual couple.









The Last Five Years stars one of my favorites, Anna Kendrick.  Consider yourself warned before you start it, though: it's a musical.  It's a clever story-telling tactic though.  The plot moves backwards and forwards in time, while you piece together -- you guessed it -- the last five years.  Those years make up the length of the relationship between Cathy and Jamie, as Cathy's songs move backwards in time from the end of their relationship and Jamie's songs move forward from the beginning of it.

Memorial Day

Quote of the Day

"Normality is a paved road.  It's comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it."
  -- Vincent van Gogh

What I Watched -- Flash of Genius

I was working on a mind-numbing task not too long ago, and picked out Flash of Genius on Netflix to entertain me while I did it.

There is a saying that "the truth is stranger than fiction."  Sometimes the truth is more astonishing than fiction.  Assuming (and that is an assumption) that most of the content of this movie is accurate, it is truly astonishing.

It's the story of Bob Kearns (Greg Kinnear), the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper motor.  When his invention was stolen by the big auto dealers, he sued.  When his attorney wanted him to settle for $500,000, he refused, and fired his attorney.  When Ford offered him $30,000,000, he turned them down because they refused to admit that they had stolen his idea. 

(These are spoilers, but not very spoilery.)  In the movie, Dr. Kearns tried the case against Ford himself, having decided he could do it better than anyone else.  And he won.  Eventually, Ford agreed on a post-judgment settlement of $10,200,000 (nearly double the actual judgment) in order to terminate all post-trial litigation.

Dr. Kearns went on to litigate against Chrysler, winning $18,700,000 plus interest.  He did not prevail in further litigation against General Motors or any foreign car makers.

The film is an odd combination of inspirational and terribly sad.  It's evident how passionate Dr. Kearns was about his invention, and anything else he set his mind to untangling -- and his mind was certainly impressive.  But it's sad to see how the remainder of his life was affected by that brilliant mind.

Bottom line: a great story I can't believe I hadn't heard before.

Happy Mother's Day

What I Watched -- The Fundamentals of Caring and Cake

It just so happened that S and I watched, on two consecutive nights, two movies about people who had lost children.

First up was The Fundamentals of Caring.  Ben (Paul Rudd, whom I have adored ever since Clueless) drags himself out of unemployment (and away from his impending divorce) by getting a job as a caregiver.  Much to his surprise, his first assignment is not to an elderly person, but to Trevor (Craig Roberts), an ex-pat British teenager with muscular dystrophy.

Both Ben and Trevor have major emotional challenges to overcome.  Together, and with the help of some unexpected companions, they dive in together.

Cake had a bit of a different flavor, though some similar psychological issues.  Where Fundamentals was about the ability of others to help us get over our stumbling blocks, Cake was much more heavily focused on the trauma caused by getting stuck behind those stumbling blocks, and not being able to get past them.  Jennifer Aniston plays Claire, who becomes weirdly obsessed with the suicide of an acquaintance.  Delving into the other woman's troubled history forces her to face her own.

Bottom line: same, same...but different.  The former is definitely the pick if you want something uplifting; the latter if you want to wonder if there is any meaning in the world for a few hours.

The Stranger in the Woods -- Take 2

I enjoyed reading The Stranger in the Woods, if for no other reason than that it told a truly incredible story.  How does a person disappear into the Maine woods and live and largely apart from society for months, let alone for 27 years? 

It failed as a psychological profile, in part because Christopher Knight, the Stranger, didn't particularly want to be profiled.   There are a lot of theories thrown around, but none of them stick.  He's not schizophrenic; he's not autistic.  He was just a guy who had an idea about how he wanted to live, and he did it.

In the meantime, he also committed over a thousand burglaries and terrorized a community who never asked for trouble.  The part that was the most bothersome to me was his refusal to take handouts -- when people left bags of supplies on their doorknobs so he wouldn't break in -- he left the supplies and broke in anyway because he wanted to do it on his own.  Which he wasn't anyway, because he was stealing!

Nevertheless, it took an incredible amount of determination to repeatedly tough out cold Maine winters on the brink of starvation.

Perhaps most strangely of all, the family that he left behind when he was 20 years old never even reported him missing.  Weird.  Talk about a psychological profile.

Lovely Columbines

My front garden has been going delightfully crazy.

Goals 2018 -- May Edition

It's a new month, and hopefully the weather will stay beautiful!  It's also the kick-off for the outdoor activity season around StL, when all sorts of fun begins.

Last summer was kind of a sad summer in that I didn't get to spend nearly as much time outside as I would have liked, so it is my goal to remedy that this year, starting by doing certain things in the out-of-doors in the month of May:

1. Ride my bike at least once each weekend.
2. Go to the Tower Grove Farmer's Market at least once.
3. Go to the Lake Saint Louis Farmer's Market at least once.
4. Cook outside on the grill.
5. Go to the Whitaker Festival at Mobot once. There are only two in May, so that might be a better June or July project, but hey -- here's hoping!
6. Tend to my plants, which are finally enjoying some fresh air and sunshine.

As a bonus, I will get to see lots of family for a big birthday celebration, so looking forward to lots of fun that weekend too!