January 4, 1996
Dear Everyone:
Happy New Year,
everybody, and who got the
Circulating
Stocking Stuffer this year?
Or did it get “lost” when “Richard” and “Marge” moved into their
new home? If so, we’ll have
to find something at least as God-awful to replace it next Christmas.
How about a sea-green candle in the shape of a steer’s skull from
the Southwest?
Christmas here was
fairly quiet. Mom came down
with a cold, courtesy of
Alaska Airlines,
on the day she and Dad arrived and still had it when they left a week
later, so a number of half-formed plans were scrapped.
Mostly, I think we sat around watching TV, reading and (for me)
sleeping late.
I didn’t even spend
as much time on the computer as I had thought I would.
Not working, of course, but playing around withAmerica
Online (also known as “AOL”), which I’m trying out to see if I can
use it $8.95-worth each month.
I do rather like the idea of having access to an encyclopedia
that doesn’t think that
Adolph Hitler
is still Chancellor of Germany, or that
King
Richard III murdered his nephews and usurped the English throne
three years after he died.
We’ll see. Anyone wanting to
send E-mail, my (home) address is XXXX@AOL.COM.
One thing we did do
this Christmas is establish a new family tradition, destined to continue
for many generations to come:
Going out for Chinese food on Christmas Eve.
“Jeannie” recommended the restaurant, which is about a mile from
my place. Just to be sure,
we called ahead to make sure they were open (of course!) and make a
reservation.
A good thing we did,
too. The place was jumping.
I counted at least three other tables with diners.
We had one whole room to ourselves.
We ordered. Mandarin
beef; pork fried rice; cashew chicken; house chow mein.
The waitress brought a platter.
Didn’t look like anything we’d ordered, but Mother and “Jeannie”
tucked right in anyway.
The waitress came
back. “So sorry!”
She grabbed the platter.
Grabbed “Jeannie”’s plate and scooped the food back onto the
platter. Grabbed Mother’s
plate and did the same.
“Don’t tell anyone I did this!”
And whisked away.
Mother’s remark: “I hope I
didn’t just give my cold to somebody else.”
In time, the
waitress came back with more platters.
These dishes did, indeed, look like what we’d ordered.
Nevertheless, each time the waitress returned, we’d sort of hang
onto our plates, just in case.
A most interesting meal.
Definitely something we’ll have to try again next year.
Apart from Mom’s
cold, Christmas went very well.
Everyone got books and Dad had finished reading one of his before
dinner was ready. “Jeannie”
got big, fluffy slippers (on sale!) for stocking stuffers, in spite of
the fact that the slippers were bigger than the stockings they were
supposed to stuff. We
compromised by tying ribbons on the slippers and hanging them over the
stockings.
With everything else
going on, I still found some time to take in a couple of movies...
Heat,
starring Al Pacino
and Robert De Niro,
thus proving, once and for all, that they’re not really the same guy.
With two such high-powered actors, you’d expect a lot from this
movie, and you’d be disappointed.
The fault, of course, lies with director
Michael
Mann who just couldn’t decide if he wanted to make an in-depth
character study of two men on opposite sides of the law, or an action
thriller. He tried to do
both and failed on each count.
What was innovative in
Miami Vice
12 years ago is old hat now.
Unless you’re a real fan of Al or Bobby, pass on this one.
Sudden
Death, with
Jean Claude
Van Damme. Oddly enough,
this is the better movie. It
has no pretensions or delusions of grandeur.
It’s just a summer thriller and nothing more and the director
knows it. However, it did so well
with test audiences last spring that the studio decided to wait for the
more lucrative Christmas season when the competition would be the more
high-brow Oscar
contenders like
Sense and
Sensibility.
Bad guys have taken
over the owner’s box at a hockey game, with the vice-president, no less,
and plan to kill everyone at the stadium unless their demands are met.
They’ve out foxed the Secret Service and have everything under
control, except for a lowly fire Marshall.
He has quick reflexes, quick wits and two kids attending the
game. Who do
you think is going to win?
There’s the usual
mayhem, including an inspired fight scene in the stadium kitchen,
between our hero and a seven-foot penguin with a foam head and homicidal
tendencies.
Actually, this is
not your typical Van Damme movie.
He’s graduated from “head-kickers” to the more mainstream action
thriller. They could have
pulled him out and thrown
Keanu Reeves or
Val Kilmer in and
the movie would have been pretty much the same.
Of course, if they’d tossed in
Kenneth Branagh,
it would be different. You
wouldn’t catch Branagh fighting with a seven-foot penguin.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed it a lot more than
Heat, so take your pick.
Mother says her cold
is much better and her next door neighbor concurs.
Love, as always,
Pete
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