Crankenstein requested another old movie tonight and I selected Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, a quintessential noir she hadn’t seen before. There’s not much need to get into its plot, which exemplifies the genre. The title gives you the gist of it: Robert Mitchum’s Jeff Markham, a former gumshoe who got mixed up with […]
Baby, I Don’t Care Read More »
All four installments are now complete. Sorry for doing it piecemeal. This month has been off to an inauspicious start, but I should have some good news to share soon, possibly within the next few days. And if anyone liked the Whirlpool post, I might try something similar with whatever I watch this weekend —
The Stacks: February [Updated – Complete] Read More »
You know those goofy quizzes where you get a point for each infraction you’ve committed? Things like playing hooky or joyriding, recreational indulgence in various substances, or killing a man in Reno just to watch him die? My score is probably equivalent to, or lower than, that of your average nun. I’ve never been drunk,
This evening I introduced Crankenstein to Whirlpool, a 1950 film noir directed by Otto Preminger and starring Gene Tierney as a doctor’s wife who finds herself mixed up in kleptomania and hypnotism before catching a murder charge. Richard Conte, unfairly overlooked among leading men of that era (see: Thieves’ Highway and House of Strangers), plays
Night two of the return-to-melatonin experiment was slightly better than the first, for anyone keeping track at home. I wasn’t awake for hours at a time, staring into the darkness while imagining myself in a remake of Laura Branigan’s “Self Control” video, dancing unrhythmically while lip-syncing “I, I live among the creatures of the night.”*
The insults flew fast and furious yesterday morning, coming mostly from the universe and my own decrepit body, so it was hardly surprising when an elderly stranger joined in on the act. It wasn’t long past 8 am and though I pretended not to hear her question, there was a part of me that longed
“Why Are You Here Then?” Read More »
The first and only time I watched most of the Australian Open unfold in real time, rather than via replay, was in 2008, when my doctor prescribed something for a non-intestinal IBD-related issue. A few days later I developed serum sickness, a rare reaction in which your immune system goes berserk in response to animal proteins
Australian Open: Strutting and Sinning Edition Read More »
I’ve been remiss in not yet posting about this year’s Australian Open, but I’ve been remiss in all kinds of things lately — it’s been a long last few weeks when it comes to sleeplessness and annoying YOPD problems.* An AO post is hopefully coming on either Friday or Saturday, and a new telefilm review
Australian Open: Speedo Edition Read More »
It was early in the morning of what was, for me, a rare snow day, when our neighbor accidentally started a fire. I’d been lazing around at home with my ex in a cozy scene of such domestic idyll that its memory could still warm me today if I allowed it to. Oblivious to the
The Winter of Our Discontent Read More »
Have you ever stopped to listen — really listen — to the fervor with which Village People frontman Victor Willis extols the YMCA’s virtues in the band’s most famous song? That’s how I feel about libraries, to the extent that one of my chief house-hunting criteria was “must be located within walking distance of a
The Stacks: January [Updated] Read More »