May 15, 1997
Dear Everyone:
A few years ago, “Jeannie” gave me a Christmas
Card. It showed a really
angry-looking Santa Claus in his sled.
The card read, “Made a list, checked it twice...left it at home!”
There are two kinds of people in this world:
Those who make lists and those who can’t imagine why we make
lists. Guess which group I’m
in.
I make lists.
There’s the running list on the front of the refrigerator of
things to pick up the next time I’m at the store.
(I can always tell when “Alice” has been by because really
strange things start showing up on this list.
Things like “Coolie slaves (2)”.
IMHO - “In my humble opinion,” - asking for two is being a bit
greedy.)
There’s the weekly shopping list, loosely based on
the refrigerator list and a brief canvas of various storage closets.
This list is, of course, arranged in the order, from left to
right, of where things are located in the grocery store.
“Jeannie” views this with absolute amazement.
“Jeannie’s” method of shopping is to go to the store to get cat
food and wander up one aisle and down another, traversing the entire
floor plan, picking things up at random and eventually getting home,
still without any cat food.
When we go shopping together, I’m the one with The
List of places to visit, to make sure I get everything in one trip.
When “Jeannie” goes shopping, she goes into whatever store
presents itself, just in case they might have anything interesting.
My method is to consult The List.
If it’s on The List, go in, get it and get out as quickly as
possible. If it’s not on The
List, why go in at all?
“Jeannie” says I’m no fun to shop with.
At work, I would be up the proverbial creek without
my electronic To Do List.
(Things I absolutely, positively
must do right away: 1.
Find The List.) The
great thing about an electronic To Do List is that it makes it very easy
to change the dates on things.
If I have something I was trying to get to last February, and
it’s obvious I won’t get it done this week, I can just change the due
date to next month and it doesn’t look so much like I’m not getting
anything done.
Tonight, I’ll be making yet another List of things
to do and pack for our trip up to
Canby.
The purpose of the trip is to meet Mother and Dad’s new computer
and present a crash course on how to use it.
The purpose of The List is to make sure I don’t forget anything
important like say, our airline tickets.
Don’t laugh, it’s happened before.
There was the time we went to
Ashland and all I had brought to
wear were very light sun dresses.
Just north of
Redding, I realized that I had forgotten to pack
any slips to wear with the dresses.
Then there was the trip to
Houston when I carefully packed the
camisole to wear with the white blouse, only to discover in the Houston
hotel that I hadn’t brought the white blouse that was supposed to go
over the camisole.
So now I make lists.
As things get packed, I can check them off on The List and not
have to worry about whether or not I remembered to bring clean
underwear, or something to read on the plane, both critically important
items and only one of which can be found in an airport gift shop.
Of course, having a computer makes lists a whole
lot easier. In fact, I have
a “template” list called “triplist.doc” that contains all of the most
essential things that I’d take on any trip (like
tickets).
I call that up, save it under a new name, add the things that
only pertain to this trip and delete things I won’t need.
Example: I won’t
bring the travel iron because I know Mother has an iron and because I’m
not bringing anything that would require ironing.
I know what you’re thinking:
Come on! It’s only
for the weekend. You don’t
need a list for just that.
Well, just last week I packed a bag for the one-nighter at the hotel in
San Francisco. I figured,
I’ve done this enough times that I don’t need to make a list.
And when I started unpacking the bag, I discovered that I had
makeup, but no applicators.
OOPS. Ever try applying
makeup with hotel grade Kleenex?
Bottom line:
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth making a List.
Movies...
Saw the new
Bruce Willis movie
The Fifth Element. This
is based on an idea the director had when he was a teenager and has been
saving for when he could get someone to spend a really large amount of
money on it. It starts with
some quasi-mystic mumbo-jumbo about
Evil coming to the
Earth every five
centuries. To combat the
Evil, a priest must assemble the
Four Elements:
Earth, Wind, Fire and Water, plus a “fifth element” that will
somehow combine the others into a force that will drive Evil away for
another 500 years.
So what is the Fifth Element?
It’s a babe from outer space.
I kid you not. She
falls out of the sky and lands in Bruce’s flying taxi cab.
In Brooklyn, no less.
She jabbers away in some prehistoric language that Bruce can’t
understand, but that’s OK.
Bruce’s hormones are all in the right places and he recognizes a
damsel
in distress when he sees one.
Even one that has Raggedy Ann hair and wears the most appalling
and excruciatingly uncomfortable-looking outfits I’ve ever seen.
“Jeannie” says the costume designer enjoys torturing people.
You spend a lot of time feeling sorry for the
actors who have to wear these things.
You also feel sorry for
Ian Holm and wonder how he got roped into
this film. The only person
who looks comfortable is Bruce.
What hair he has left is bleached blond and he looks like he’s
been working out a lot lately.
(Sure, all taxi drivers have muscles like those.)
We speculated that he shaved a few thousand dollars off his
salary in return for a clause in his contract that reads, “...does not
have to wear rubber.”
Speaking of rubber, there are a lot of aliens.
There’s an aerial dogfight in which many of the pilots look a lot
like really ugly dogs.
There’s an opera singer who looks like what you might get if you crossed
Maria Callas with a really big bug.
Lots of extra appendages and (literally) blue blood.
The plot is asinine.
The costumes are awful.
The music is atrocious, except for the opera.
The actions scenes are top notch.
The production values are very high.
This movie cost a fortune to make and will probably make an
excellent profit because its target audience is really teenage boys.
If you’re a male teenager, or have the mentality of a male
teenager, you will love this movie.
It has all the classic fantasies of an adolescent male up to, and
including, making it with a
flight attendant during takeoff.
If you prefer films that are a little more mature,
wait a week. Something is
bound to show up.
Love, as always,
Pete
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