Grandchildren: Running a Restaurant
January 12, 2025
My grandchildren certainly get taken to restaurants more than I was at their age. They are generally reasonably well behaved. And they have picked up on some aspects of running the business, including at least one bad one.
They built a restaurant kitchen that is a long narrow structure of pillows and blankets. It is pretty precarious. My grandson insists on crawling in and being the chef, and insists his sister stay out of the kitchen. On the face of it, that supports two discredited ideas: only women can cook, and women can’t be chefs.
At the same time, she only gets to serve as the waitress. She takes a small book from her extensive library and pretends it is a menu. She then reports the orders to him.
To poke a little fun at them, I ordered a plate of blither with some blather sauce. She delivered it post-haste. When Vicki ordered a salad, they cooked it in the “oven.” Tres Chic.
As mentioned previously, my 5-year-old grandson is an avid cook, and learning to bake. His sister, at two, is young for that… yet.
Heart Chakra Opening Day
January 12, 2025
My heart chakra opened on Saturday January 18, 2020. This is what I wrote in my journal that day: “Wow! I woke up this morning to another amazing moment. Treatment and prayer work! There was love in my heart, for those who I once felt “wronged” me. We are all children of God, and share one soul; I forget at my peril that we’re not going to Heaven because we never left it, and that this physical life is an illusion.”
This and That
January 12, 2025
Quote: Teach Your Children Well
While we teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.
--Angela Schwind
…
Quote: Question Headlines
The answer to all question headlines is no.
-- Ian Betteridge…
…
Quote: Choice
“Every choice you make makes you.”
--John C. Maxwell
Neal Vitale Reviews: The Brutalist ****
January 12, 2025
[after only 16 years, I welcome my former editor and long-time friend Neal Vitale back to PSACOT]
I've found myself going less often to see films in theaters, preferring the pause and rewind buttons on my video equipment at home over a half-hour of on-screen commercials and trailers. I made an exception, though, for The Brutalist, and I'm glad I did. This is a 220-minute cinematic experience that calls out for theatrical presentation.
The Brutalist presents thirty years in the life of Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth, He has survived the Holocaust but was forcibly separated from his wife, Erzsébet, and niece, Zsófia. He emigrated to America to live with relatives and to strive for the American Dream. Stunningly-produced on a budget of less than $10 million, the film tells an epic story weaving power, money, jealousy, abuse, desire, addiction, bigotry, sacrifice, and pain.
The key players -- Adrien Brody as Tóth, Guy Pearce as his pompous and mercurial benefactor Harrison Lee Van Buren, and Felicity Jones as Erzsébet -- are rivering to watch on screen. A thundering score is paired with gorgeous cinematography. It is fascinating to watch the construction of a massive piece of Tóth's brutalist architecture and witness the beauty of the finished structure.
If there is a shortcoming with The Brutalist, it is the lack of empathy developed for most of the characters in the film - these are not likeable individuals. But the rich narrative development, echoing - dare I say - Citizen Kane, makes for a gratifying theatrical experience well worth the investment of time.
End of Jan. 13 Column (No. 963)
January 12, 2025
Start of Jan. 6 Column. More or Less Continuous News Service since 1998
January 05, 2025
Writing and Thinking
January 05, 2025
Quote Investigator has found quotes that are close but not exact, so I have no attribution. All I can tell you is this has been true of me since I was 10 years old—which was a long time ago.
(1) I write to find out what I think.
(2) I don’t know what I think until I read what I write.
If Offered A Choice: New Version
January 05, 2025
One of my favorite songs is If Offered A Choice, now available in a four-part harmony version.
Things I Didn’t Know
January 05, 2025
Here is my 2024 List:
* The Platypus is the only mammal who lays eggs. (maybe I already knew this, but I feel like I’m on a streak after wombat poop last year)
* In Greek mythology Pandora was the first woman, just like Eve. Institutional misogyny. Eve with the snake; Pandora with the box.
* Tetraphobia is fear of the number four, which, in Chinese, sounds similar to the word for death. Throughout China, the fourth floor is often “missing” from buildings. I don’t know about you, but every once in a while I feel like getting out on the 14th floor of a building and going up to each door, knocking and saying “you’re really on the 13th floor!” At BofA, the problem was resolved by making the 13th floor a mechanical floor with no tenants.
* Apparently Bunsen (of the burner) and Erlenmeyer (of the flask) worked together in the same lab.
* A blatherskite is a person who talks at great length without making much sense.
* The term “Pale, Stale and Male” is not known to every English-speaker in the world, which is baffling because its so useful in describing… well… everything that’s wrong with this world.
* Wishcasting (which should have been 2024’s word of the year) is a portmanteau of wishing and forecasting, which means making a wish and pretending it’s a forecast.
* Invariant is the word for nouns whose single and plural forms are identical (moose, deer, salmon, aircraft and so on…)
* Bellend is British slang for an idiot.
* If you learned Yiddish from your friends, you probably don’t know the literal meaning of Putz and Schmuck.
Most Popular PSACOT Items
January 05, 2025
As this time of year, I like to point to the most popular items of all times, and of 20'24 in particular.
All Time
Groundhog Day The Movie Of course a lot of people are always interested in the greatest movie of all time.
Life is short, and we do not have too much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel the way with us (Although it was posted in 2018, scarcely a week goes by that someone doesn’t click on this prayer.)
Women in Journalism Movies I guess there just aren’t many pages on this subject, and that it is a frequent J-school assignment. Either that, or my cogent analysis has gone… well viral is a bit much, but still…
And Journalism movies.-
Humor: Four Musicians of the Apocalypse At least once a month someone stumbles on this item. Yes, I do have the artist’s permission for the post.
How To Read The Obituaries by Roz Chast, another hardy perennial.
False Modesty “I went to school in Cambridge.” Particularly enjoyed the comments.
Someone Else’s Poetry Intersects Mine
Creosote: King of the Coal Tar Distillates
2024
Beloved PSACOT regular M.G. Wolfe died in August 2022; it took me two years to find out why she stopped contributing. I added a link to her obit, and her friends have been dropping by weekly. Index of Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe appearances in PSACOT
Things No One Will Ever Do Again: Set Type (admittedly because I promoted the hell out of it among the target audience of The Tech staffers.
Really? A Vile of Gold? In This and That.
More Hardboiled Dialog from Monsieur Spade
Invariants: Who Knew There Was A Word For It
Groundhog Day The Movie, Buddhism and Me (presumably because of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire)
Highlights from the Tom Stoppard journalism play Night and Day
Neal Vitale Reviews: A Complete Unknown ****
January 05, 2025
[after only 16 years, I welcome my former editor and long-time friend Neal Vitale back to PSACOT]
This is an entertaining and enjoyable recounting of Bob Dylan's early career, from his arrival in Greenwich Village in 1961 to the legendary "Dylan goes electric" performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Though the film doesn't attempt to be painstakingly accurate, it seems to capture many of major events in Dylan's evolution quite well.
There is excellent acting in the film. Timothée Chalamet makes a convincing Dylan, as does Ed Norton as Pete Seeger. The key women in the film - Joan Baez and Sylvie Russo (Suze Rotolo IRL) - receive somewhat short shrift, with far less film time devoted to understanding them and their relationships with Dylan. The film is bookended with lovely, bittersweet interactions between Dylan and his hero (and, ultimately, fan) Woody Guthrie.
In terms of helping understand Dylan, though, the film is less successful. Unless, of course, the point is that he is moody, exploitative, intentionally opaque, and, in all likelihood, a fabulist and trickster who invents chunks of his past to serve his needs. Answering a few of the “whys” would have been nice but probably too much to ask.
(Chalamet has suggested that he would be open to a "Bob Dylan trilogy," carrying on to the various Dylan incarnations that followed what is presented in A Complete Unknown. I, for one, am a fan of that idea!)
Next Week: A Review of The Brutalist
Movie Review: Babygirl ***
January 05, 2025
There is a lot to unpack in this arthouse film about adultery and desire. If you dislike loud simulated female orgasms, this film is not for you. Other than that it raises interesting questions, including, how could a woman (a 50-year-old Dutch woman no less) write and direct this? I am a huge fan of female centric movies, but this film reminds me that women can make barely good films the same as men.
Click here to discover every thought in my mind on the subject, as well as my wife's.