May 7, 1998
Dear Everyone:
Those warm sunny days a few weeks ago were just
El
Niño’s way of saying, “Fooled ya’!”
In the past few days we’ve had
deluges, thunderstorms, hail and
an honest-to-God tornado. In
fact, the headline in yesterday’s paper read, “Maybe we are in
Kansas,
after all.” Those drapes I
hung in the bedroom window worked great as far as keeping the sunlight
out is concerned. In fact,
the sun hasn’t been out since I put them up.
In other news...
One of “Jeannie’s” cats is not well.
The smaller cat, Monroe needs surgery.
But the vet wants her to take some medication to get stronger
before he does the operation (she has a tumor of some kind).
So “Jeannie” has to feed the kitty pills.
You may recall that I recently sent out a set of handy
instructions on how to give your cat a pill.
“Jeannie” elected to ignore this sage advice and proceed with her
own plan. “Jeannie’s” plan
goes as follows:
Use a special syringe.
Partially fill syringe with meat-flavored baby
food.
Stick hideously expensive pill into syringe.
Fill the syringe with some more meat-flavored baby
food.
Stick syringe in little cat’s mouth and inject the
meat-flavored baby food and pill into cat.
Watch little cat spit out the meat-flavored baby
food and pill.
Watch Big White Kitty pounce on meat-flavored baby
food and gobble down hideously expensive pill.
After all, if you were feeding it to little cat, it must be good
stuff.
“Jeannie” is currently working on a revised plan,
part of which includes sticking Big White Kitty in another room at
pill-time. She might also
consider changing flavors of baby food.
Maybe Monroe would prefer
puréed
asparagus.
Movies...
“Jeannie” declined to go with me to see Les Miserables on the grounds that it would be “too depressing”.
She was wrong, of course.
The movie skips the first part of the
book, possibly because the
audience would find 19 years of hard labor boring (and depressing).
Instead, the film starts out at the bishop’s house, when the
protagonist, Jean Valjean, gets his first taste of human kindness.
Then it leapfrogs merrily along, leaving years (and details) out
in an effort to get to the really good stuff (the conflict between
Valjean and Javert), preferably in under 2-½ hours.
Liam Neeson turns in a solid performance as
Valjean, a man with innate nobility coming out of every pore.
He’d rather lose everything than let another man go to prison in
his place.
Geoffrey Rush
plays Javert, the walking rule book whose tombstone should read, “He
never broke a single rule.”
Not even when it makes every sense to do so.
We’re talking
obsessive-compulsive, big-time.
Uma Thurman is the
dying prostitute whose orphaned
daughter becomes Valjean’s responsibility and salvation.
Uma plays the part with visions of little gold statues dancing in
her head. However, if this
film does wind up on the
Oscar list (and it probably will), look for it
in the set decoration and costume categories.
While it never quite soars, Les Miserables is at times engrossing and overall, completely
satisfying.
Love, as always,
Pete
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