My Night in Paris...Almost

The theme of this weekend was great plans made and almost executed.  Which does not at all mean that it wasn't a great weekend!  It all started on Friday night...

First, Friday was going to be dinner with E and S, but E was not feeling so hot.  Then it was going to be dinner with L and L, but some out-of-town guests arrived, so that was off.  So it turned out to be dinner with ourselves.  Originally we were going to see Moneyball after dinner, and honestly I can't remember why we decided against that.  But I had wanted to see Midnight in Paris since about the second week it was in theaters.  Turns out that it's still in theaters!  Actually, only one theater.  But it's there!

Unfortunately we were running a little low on time, so we couldn't go too fancy (Chez Leon) or too far away (Franco) or anywhere we'd have to wait too long (Brasserie) for our Parisian dinner.  You can see how that severely limited our options.  We ended up at Roxane's in downtown Clayton.  Does that say, "Eclectic American Bistro?" you might ask?  In fact it does.  But we were there for the "Continental flair" added to the "classic Parisian cafe."  It was our best option.

Surprise: it was a pretty good one after all!  Our first decision: to watch the game or not watch the game?  Watch the game.  Second: what to drink? The list of martinis and cocktails is lots of fun.  I wanted one of almost everything, but limited myself to just a bellinitini (say that ten times fast after you've had a couple).  Look at the restraint I exercised!  Go me.

Third: food.  The menu isn't huge, but it's varied.  We had everything from jerk chicken wings to Thai calamari to French onion soup to lamb shanks (the special of the night).  The food wasn't great, but it was good.  The drinks were delish.

By the time we were finished with all that, though, we were full and sleepy and didn't really want to sit through the movie.  So, despite our good intentions, I still haven't seen it!  Probably one that I can wait on until the DVD is out, though.  But it was a fun night anyway, and now I've finally been to Roxane's!

The Song I'm Loving Today

Wonderful Tonight (Eric Clapton)

I had to make a run to the store today for some supplies for our office.  On the way home, following on the tail of Don McLean's classic American Pie was Mr. Clapton's Wonderful Tonight.  The link above is to the studio version.  There are a number of live versions available online (here, here, and here, among others).  My personal favorite is below, from a 1999 concert at Madison Square Garden.  (A couple things: I could do without all the oooh-oooh-ooohs at the end, so you can skip those; you'll have to watch on youtube because Warner Bros. won't let me embed the video.)

Clapton is a fantastic guitarist.  Wonderful Tonight, great love ballad though it is, does not really show off his best work. For some classic work, you might check out Layla (from the same NYC concert), I Shot the Sheriff, or Further On Up the Road.

But still, Wonderful Tonight is a lovely song, and I've been listening to it all day.  So here it is:



It's late in the evening, she's wondering what clothes to wear,
She'll put on her makeup, and brushes her long blond hair,
And then she'll ask me, "Do I look all right?"
And I'll say, "Yes, you look wonderful tonight."

We'll go to a party and everyone turns to see
This beautiful lady who's walking around with me.
And then she'll ask me, "Do you feel all right?"
And I'll say, "Yes, I feel wonderful tonight."

And I feel wonderful because I see the love light in your eyes,
And the wonder of it all is that you just don't realize
How much I love you.

It's time to go home now, I've got an aching head,
So I'll give her the car keys, she'll help me to bed,
And then I'll tell her, as I turn out the light,
I say, "My darling, you were wonderful tonight.
Oh my darling, you were wonderful tonight."

The Cards Squeeze Out Another Victory...

...by the skin of their teeth.  That's how they've made it this far.  It certainly makes for exciting baseball though!

Last night, T and his good friend K took me to the Game 3 against the Brewers.  So there we were, just settling in, and the action starts.  Of the final 4-3 score, all seven runs were scored in the first three innings.

 

The rest of the game was exciting even though the score stayed frozen.  There were lots of close calls, near misses, and full counts.  There was a steady light drizzle through the second half, but we were tucked just under the balcony for the seats above, so stayed dry.  And I got my hot dog, so it was a good game all around!

[And then the Cards lost tonight, so now we're even at 2-2.]

What I'm Reading Now -- The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

Enough with the teen books already!  But really, I just want to be reading.  And if this junk is all I have the energy to get into, then so be it.  I'd rather read this than nothing at all.  (Although to hear T tell it, I have a stack of stuff to read next to my bed which is taller than I am.)

Anyway, I at least have to give Stephanie Meyer credit here for ripping off a good idea.  I'm not sure where the idea of rewriting a book from the bad guy's point of view came from, but it was done to great effect with Beowulf.

I first read Beowulf in English class my junior year in high school, and instantly fell in love with it.  (This is a better translation, but it wasn't the one we read in class.)  My teacher knew I loved it and, good teacher that she was, encouraged me to read more.  She gave me a copy of Grendel by John Gardner.  It's the same story retold from the lonely monster's point of view.  Good stuff.

So, here Stephanie Meyer does the same thing.  She takes one little part of her series and spins the story out from someone else's perspective.  Pretty much anyone would be a more interesting protagonist than Bella Swan, so it'd be hard to go wrong.

Pride of Baghdad -- Take 2

I finished reading Pride of Baghdad on Saturday night.  Unfortunately my environment wasn't terribly conducive to reading (dark and noisy), but I was going to finish at least one book this weekend if it killed me.

I picked up with our pride wandering the bombed-out streets of Baghdad, and that is most of the remainder of the story.  There are power struggles, accusations of a lack of loyalty, anger, exhaustion, martyrs, and discussions about freedom.

In books where politics is only tangential, I try to look past it for no other reason than that politics is a dirty game and I hate it.  But it's pretty central to Pride.  That theme of freedom that runs through the book is the crux of it: What is freedom?  What does it mean to be free?  If you've never known anything but captivity, how can you understand what it means to be free?  What price are you willing to pay?

This is a short book; it'll probably take you 45 minutes to read it.  When you do, you can formulate your own answers to those questions, but (as much as I hate to admit it), they're interesting to think about.

What I Watched -- Unstoppable

I guess I'm into suspense lately.  I just watched Buried, which was heart-pounding, and Harry Potter, which, while maybe not suspenseful exactly, was still an action movie.  And the other night I watched Unstoppable.  In it, a runaway freight train threatens to derail and spill its toxic and combustible chemicals all over the good citizens of Stanton, Pennsylvania.  The action starts about four minutes in.

I like Denzel Washington, who plays engineer and 28-year railroad vet Frank Barnes.  I knew nothing about Chris Pine, who plays newbie conductor Will Colson, but I like him now.  They're both a little lost in life, so together with the help of capable yard master Connie Hooper (Rosario Dawson), they agree to go after the runaway.

Dad walked in about two thirds of the way through the movie.  It was obvious there were good guys.  "So who's the bad guy?" he asked.  Well, that's the thing about this movie.  There isn't one.  There's a bad train, but the train didn't do anything wrong.  There's the guy who let the train go, but he was stupid and lazy, not malicious.  The bad guy doesn't really exist.  Nor, for that matter, is there much blood - another oddity for an action movie.  But it works.

I know nothing about rail freight shipping, or about trains at all really.  It was neat to see how the yards and the tracks work.  I never knew there was someone called a yard master.  I've never seen what you do when you want to derail a train on purpose.  This is all cinematically enhanced, of course, but "based on real events."  Which the movie actually is! In 2001, CSX Locomotive 8888, unmanned and under power, led a 47-car freight train through Ohio for two hours, reaching a maximum speed of only about 50 miles per hour.  You can read the incident report here, or read the CNN coverage.

The cast also includes Jessy Schram of the TV series Life as Darcy Colson and Kevin Dunn (Samantha Who?) as Connie Hooper's boss, and Andy Umberger (Mad Men - lots of TV stars!), as well as a number of other people whose faces you'll know but names you probably won't: David Warshofsky, Kevin Corrigan, Kevin Chapman, Ethan Suplee.

Bottom line: a surprisingly good way to spend the evening.

What I'm Reading Now -- Pride of Baghdad

K had to read Pride of Baghdad for a class she took on the Iraq War, and she recommended it to me.  Pride is, I'm - um, proud? - to say, my second ever graphic novel! I always wrote off graphic novels as part of the manga genre, and I don't really get manga.  As far as I can tell, they're just comics for grownups, but I was never really that into comics even as a kid.  Probably just not for me.

However, graphic novels are different.  They're stories, just in a different format.  Which I guess is why they're called "graphic novels," but I never thought that one through before.

Anyway, the first one I read was  Laika by Nick Abadzis.  I heard about it on NPR, and it sounded like something I might enjoy; it's the story of the first Russian space dog, and boy was it good.  They weren't kidding.

So, Laika opened me up to the possibility of graphic novels as an enjoyable genre, and the K recommended Pride.  It's the story of a small pride of lions who are inadvertently freed from the Baghdad Zoo after the city is bombed.  That's about as far as I've gotten, but I like it!

Maybe I like these books for the animals more than the graphic novel format.  Thoughts?

What I Watched -- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

It's the end of an era!  Kids everywhere have already quit reading, but now they may also quit going to movies.  Well, they actually probably quit going to movies 3 months ago when the movie came out, but I just saw it.  There are only two theaters still showing it, so we barely made it.  But we made it!

And it was a worthy venture.  The movie was well-made, and super dark, which I like.  (Yes, I probably should be in therapy.)  There were bits and pieces of the book that I had forgotten, but I was actually a little bit jealous of T, since he didn't know how the puzzle fit together.  To be sure, just watching the movie as enjoyable.  But I remember reading the book, and being eager to discover how it all played out.

Bottom line: if you can still find it in theaters, you should probably see it.  It's a worthy, if somewhat predictable, end to the Harry-and-Voldemort showdown.

What I Watched -- Buried

I heard about Buried and just had to see it.  The whole 90-minute film consists of Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) in a coffin.  Sounds boring, right?  It's not.

He was working as a contractor in Iraq when his convoy was ambushed.  Everyone was killed but Paul, who was buried alive and is being held for ransom.  He has a cell phone, a flashlight, a lighter, a knife, and some other tools.

The movie is claustrophobic yet intimate.  You spend the whole movie in the coffin with Paul, and see him go through the whole range of emotions right up to the heart-pounding final moments.

Bottom line: do not - I repeat: do not - watch this movie if you are claustrophobic.  It will seriously freak you out.  But if you can handle the idea of being buried alive, it's fascinating.

What I'm Reading Now -- The Unthinkable

Somehow I ended up with The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - And Why on my iPod.  I don't know where it came from, but it actually sounds kind of interesting, so I've started listening to it.  I'm into it only sporadically, usually when I run out of regular daily podcasts, so it may take me a while.

So far, I've learned about various responses to 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and other major disasters, as well as (depressingly) more common situations, such as police shootings, hostage-taking, and the like.

It's actually very interesting stuff.  The analysis of people's responses to different situations is a mix of cognitive science, psychology, and history.  Just the kind of "science" I like!