Bastet

Unable to sleep in the wee hours, I watched Topaze, the pre-Code film with John Barrymore in a very un-Barrymore role and Myrna Loy as an un-archetypal kept woman. I kept having “Is that really John Barrymore?” moments. While its cynical take on then-modern industrial society feels rather simplistic now (and might have then; the play’s satire was toned down for the film, and the script is pretty thin), the basic idea translates (and, in thinking on it, the Sparkling Topaze plot is pretty much how I feel about bottled water). Dr. Topaze’s “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” transformation seems abrupt, but then you step back and think about how many illusions he’s had shattered in fewer than 24 hours. (His naivete strains credulity for me, so I love that Coco is just as incredulous when she realizes.) And that it turns into “join ‘em, and then beat ‘em at their own game” makes for a greatly enjoyable scene in Topaze’s new office, and I just love Coco’s sheer delight at realizing The film is a bit weird, although I have a soft spot for movies essentially done as filmed plays, and incredibly plodding in the classroom scenes, but worth watching for Barrymore (and just about anything is worth watching for Loy, plus I find this time period when she was just starting to get better roles interesting, even though she doesn't yet have a lot to do). I think it's going to be a long time before I stop finding it odd to spoiler tag 80-year-old films.

Yeah, IF it's a deeply penetrating bite wound AND the virus is transmitted AND the resulting weakening of Mia's immune system leads to her imminent demise, then one bite could be a death sentence. I just don't know how in one breath he points out that Riley, like all cats with FIV, may very well enjoy an average lifespan and in the next acts as if Mia will not be long for the world if she gets infected. I also think he did a poor job of explaining why rehoming Mia was on the table, and hope he presented it to the woman who was already a giant bundle of nerves better in reality than he did on camera. If the two cats could not be made to co-exist in a way that made Mia contracting the virus unlikely, creating a situation in which she is either in constant danger or locked away alone in a small room for her safety, then she'd be better off if they could find a good home for her. He alluded to that, and I have to assume he made that clear in his un-staged conversations with them, but the way it aired gave the whiff of, "Oh, yeah, one cat with FIV and one cat without and there's aggression - you may have to rehome." There are SO many people out there who don't think cats with FIV can live with uninfected cats, in Jackson's place I'd have been bending over backwards to avoid sounding like that was the rule rather than the exception. And it was clear from jump that these cats had not been properly introduced, giving every reason for hope that once that was rectified the aggression would cease.

For me, it's the actor. Other than an episode of L&O: SVU, Signy Coleman has annoyed me in everything I've ever seen her in. Certainly not me. The mytharc registered as white noise in my brain by then, and all I remember from those episodes is Machete!Scully looking mighty fine and the face snuggling at the end. Field Trip, I freakin' love, though. Everything I like in a MOTW episode. I have to believe Vince Gilligan wrote 99% of it and John Shiban walked by an added a sentence or something. "Mulder, can't you just for once, just for the novelty of it, come up with the simplest explanation, the most logical one, instead of automatically jumping to UFOs or Bigfoot or...?" Heh. Of course, it leads into that "How often have I been wrong" crap (hey! I found John Shiban's line! <g>), but I love that. Mulder and the alien. "I abducted him." The episode is just such a wonderful trip. The sherriff mirroring Scully's words, Skinner and The Gunmen all praising Scully's report that she hates ("What the hell is wrong with everybody?!"), both of them realizing things were not right because their original idea was being vindicated by the other (heh) ... and I got chills when Scully asked, "What if we're still in that cave?"

I thought it was okay early on, when it was very sitcomish and the characters could be laughed at as cartoons. When I was asked to care about these people, however, I was out. Whenever one my friends sighs wistfully over that show, saying, "That was my twenties," I have to protest. No, it wasn't. I was there in your twenties. If you'd been like those fools, we would not still be sitting here as friends. And do not get me started on Ross and Rachel. That relationship becoming some great TV romance that people swooned over is downright disturbing to me. Yay for petulance, irrational jealousy, dismissiveness and subjugated ambitions?

When I pack my suitcase the night before a trip, I learned early on that I have to shut it away in the closet overnight or Maddie will pee on it to express her displeasure that I will be leaving. And this is a cat who doesn't even pee outside the box when she has a UTI. I loved when Jackson told Asshole Owner basically, "By the way, moron, if the cat is peeing on your clothes, pick them up off the floor and shut your closet door." Absolutely, which is why I was so pleased when Jackson used his introductory remarks for that segment to talk straight about FIV. I had high hopes for an episode that could dispel widespread myths and educate people, perhaps making a small dent in the difficulty finding homes for FIV-infected cats. But that was seriously overshadowed by the repeated "one bite could be a death sentence" drama he resorted to after that.

I loved Cynthia. The entire scene of the roomies trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on in that bathroom was hilarious (back when threesomes in a communal space were something for the roommates to gape and giggle over, not just a usual Friday night at the homestead), and Flora getting stuck in - and breaking - the window does, indeed, remain one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

Oh, you'd notice her if her body looks remotely like it did during Friends, because that "really good shape" on screen is positively skeletal-looking in real life. I used to see the cast frequently because of where I worked at the time, and Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox were freakishly skinny, even in Hollywood.

I had to turn away from the segment with the FIV cat, since Jackson's quest for the dramatic - "one bite could be a death sentence" - spread dangerous misinformation about the disease. In his reasonable talking heads, he was honest about the disease -- it's only transmitted through deep bite wounds, infected cats can live long, healthy lives despite the suppressed immune system, etc. -- but he kept dismantling that with repeated scare tactics. Appalling. They got the other cat after having had the FIV+ one, right? Why didn't they adopt another FIV+ cat instead? Barring that, why the hell did they not follow one single protocol for introducing a new cat to an existing one? They set themselves - and those cats - up for failure. If they had followed the Cat Introductions 101 advice Jackson gave them here - available from numerous sources all over the internet, in books, etc. - when they first got Mia, they'd have avoided all this crap. Although Puma wasn't doing it intentionally, if I was him I would have peed on that asshole's stuff on purpose. What an awful person. I cannot believe his wife not only married him but is going to have a child with him. She'll be doing 100% of the diaper changes and all other cleaning up, and heaven help that kid when he makes a mess on his father's things. And is elevator butt really not a commonly-known thing? Lots of cats do that.

I don't know, but when it comes to the husband of Puma's owner ... I would pee on that jackass, too. And she's having a baby with him?! Good luck ever getting him to change a diaper, and heaven help your kid if it ever messes with his stuff. (I was going to start an episode thread for it, but can't find definitive info on the episode number.)

Marathon last night, too -- comfort TV at its finest. The next two Fridays, too, so it looks like it's back on the schedule. Last night included an episode I just love, the one where a drive-by shooting that killed a little girl on the swings turns out to have been committed by her brother, who was aiming at the guy having an affair with their mother. The flashback shot of that little boy sitting on a phone book to drive the car is wonderful, as is the modern-day scene when Lilly and Scotty show up to make the arrest -- the parents, having also figured it out, try to cover for him, and the detectives are genuinely sorry to have figured it out. I also love the part of the closing montage - set to Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror - showing the evidence locker filled with guns. Unfortunately, the gross storyline between Lilly's sister and Scotty is in the mix, but I just ignore that.

Thelma & Louise is one of my favorite films, and I know it verbatim, but every time I watch it the end puts me into such a mood. Two men would not have had to end that way.

I strongly prefer backsplashes that are just a continuation of the countertop, but regardless of personal taste, I agree -- the small glass tile backsplashes are going to be so associated with this era that HHs in ten years will walk into such kitchens and gasp, "It's so dated! We'd have to gut it."

So, for those of you who like the kitty stories, and as an update for those who have asked about my mom -- thank you so much, and I'm truly sorry I haven't yet had time or energy to respond personally -- I bring you the tale of Chester the Physical Therapy Supervisor. As an aside, yesterday was Chester's one-year anniversary with my parents. I pushed them to adopt him because Bandit needed a buddy after Bailey's death, and Chester was both the oldest cat (8) in the shelter and the one who'd been there the longest (three months) and we were heading into kitten season; indeed, a couple of weeks after that, the other older adults were among the MILLIONS of cats euthanized each year in this country for lack of homes/space in shelters. <sigh> Spay/neuter your pets, folks ... and keep them once you take them on. Anyway, Chester is absolutely adorable “helping” my mom. She has to walk, with the aid of a walker, around (and around and around and … <g>) the house every hour or so when she’s awake, and Chester follows along behind her like he’s spotting her. She also has to do her physical therapy exercises in bed three times per day. Chester dutifully jumps up there to keep an eye on things. She doesn’t need any physical help with them, but for a couple my dad has to count off time for her, and those are the most painful ones. So if she’s really groaning through those, Chester meows loudly at my dad like, “What are you doing to her?!” And when she’s sitting or lying down, she’s supposed to keep her leg straight so the knee doesn’t get frozen in a partially-bent position. Chester is apparently aware of this, as he routinely sits right on top of her new knee, pressing it down. My mom is doing really well, well beyond average- in terms of strength and mobility - at this stage of recovery and managing the pain with far fewer pills than she's allowed to take. I'm freakin' exhausted, but I've set things up in terms of work and my parents' food supply so I can do nothing but rest this weekend, and hopefully finally knock the last vestiges of this flu out for good. And, hey, my dad learned how to scramble an egg. :-) So I'm going to make another bloody mary and settle in with the PBS cooking shows. Have a great weekend, everyone ...

It was mostly the wife with the screenless window phobia, and that Michigan to Paris episode is legendary in my book; love the real estate agent's response to her nonsense! To hear her fret, the streets of Paris are littered with the corpses of children who fell out of windows for lack of screens. I now think of her whenever I stay someplace without window screens, especially in western Europe where the particular type of window she was worrying about is common.

Overlapping dialogue goes back to at least 1930, but His Girl Friday is among the best at using it, that's for sure. Howard Hawks in general, really, but others too. The final scene of Libeled Lady - another film I watch over and over - is one of my favorite examples.

One of the worst renovation episodes was a somewhat recent one where the couple covered every available surface in their kitchen in one of two not-at-all-coordinating patterns of stone (I think one was marble and one was granite). They also hung up two light fixtures far more hideous than the ones they replaced, and just all around spent a whole lot of money to make their kitchen look like crap. Also the people who turned what had been a home theatre into a ridiculously-oversized master suite, and kept the projection screen as part of the bedroom. I suppose when they have people over for movie night, they either all pile into the bedroom or watch on a much-smaller television in the living room?

Also the woman who was adamant about having a two-story house, so the bedrooms could be upstairs and thus no burglars could break into them and no future children could sneak out of them ... as if two-story homes don't have ground floors.

I'd do up to about the fifth or sixth floor, too, especially if I would mostly be shopping at the local "bodega" and thus only picking up one or two meal's worth of food at once. But, then, do I have to haul my laundry up and down as well (probably, and laundry just isn't something I'm willing to outsource) ... if I'm commuting by bicycle, can I leave that locked up downstairs or will I have to haul that up and down ...? For a vacation or sabbatical home of a year, no problem. For years on end, probably not.

Ah, but reference to Shelley Long does lead me to another film for my list: Troop Beverly Hills.

With my best friend, it's the opposite. We grew up together, and are essentially extra members of each others' families. Both my mom and her mom are good cooks. As are her sister, brother and me. Her? Terrible. We all - including her - marvel, "How did that happen?!"

I'll scoot over and make room. I also completely agree on Robert Downey, Jr. I love him in Heart and Souls.

Probably. I once garnered applause from surrounding passengers when I demanded that a father do something about his two devil spawn who were making our lives miserable while he ignored them in favor of eating his breakfast. As noted above, this ongoing trend in commercials where abdication of parental responsibility - to correct children's behavior, to make them eat a balanced meal, etc. - is presented as the norm, the effects of which the rest of us are just supposed to suffer gladly, is thoroughly aggravating.

I don't even remember Alpha or Trevor. Monday is one of my favorites. The Unnatural is not. Take out "oh, sorry, those last two are mine" and I'd love the baseball scene, though. Oh, hell - I still kind of love it anyway, because they're just so damn cute and had fun filming it. The opening scene in the basement is also cute, but it's pure David and Gillian rather than Mulder and Scully. Things like Arcadia, where people who have to go undercover act like caricatures of the roles they're supposed to be playing, tend to really bug me, but with M&S it sort of works because by this point they're so in their own little world that they really may be that out of touch. It took me a long time to come around on that episode, and there are still too many gender clichés on display even when they're not pretending, but it's now enjoyable to me.

The instructions are here.

I'm a sucker for Airport and Airport '75, too. Also the original Poseiden Adventure. Okay, I kind of have a thing for '70s disaster movies. Earthquake, Towering Inferno, etc. Also, the original Piranha.