May 16, 2014
Dear Everyone:
Let’s start with movies, for a change.
“Jeannie” opted out of seeing
Mr.
Peabody and Sherman, so I went alone.
Jay Ward was a brilliant satirist in the 1960s, who hid his best barbs
in “children’s cartoons” like
Rocky and Bullwinkle,
Fractured Fairy Tales,
Dudley
Do-Right, Aesop’s Fables,
Peabody’s
Improbable History. And
don’t forget
Crusader Rabbit.
Dudley Do-Right, whose heart was pure and who was significantly dumber
than his horse, was usually a take-off on the
Perils of Pauline.
(Trivia Question:
What was the name of Dudley Do-Right’s horse?
Answer: “Horse”.)
Aesop told fanciful tales of animals with human characteristics
and always ended with utterly appalling
puns.
Mr. Peabody’s Improbable History
took some famous event in the past and, basically, twisted its tail.
Example: In the
Battle of
Bunker Hill, in 1775,
William Prescott was famous for issuing the
command: “Don’t fire until
you see the whites of their eyes!”
However, in this version, the British
General Howe had cunningly
issued dark glasses to all of his soldiers.
Mr. Peabody set about righting the situation with a clever ploy,
quickly finding a wooden fence with a convenient hole in it.
He placed a large sign that read, “Don’t look through this hole”
on the fence.
Of course the British soldiers couldn’t resist looking, whereupon
Sherman spray-painted their dark glasses.
The British troops couldn’t see anything and promptly began
bumping into everything. Mr.
Peabody volunteered a solution to General Howe, removing the dark
glasses with a magnet. The
battle continued as it should have.
Quick: How many
anachronisms
can you find? Dark glasses,
check. Spray paint, check.
Magnet, well they had magnets, but not metal-framed glasses.
And let’s face it, how many eight-year-olds would know an
anachronism if it jumped out and shook hands with them?
The new movie, Mr. Peabody and
Sherman falls flat on its face.
Ignoring everything that made the original well, original, the
producers manufactured a sodden mess of a lame
roller-coaster-ride-through-history.
A few puns and a little word play doesn’t make up for an abysmal
storyline. In a word:
“Jeannie” was right.
Next up is
Belle, which we
chose because it’s a
period piece, meaning lots of fabulous costumes and
set decoration. This is one
of those “based on a true story” cases which really means “based on some
real people who lived a really,
really long time ago (and can’t sue us); so take it with a really
big grain of salt.” There
really was a
Dido Elizabeth Belle.
All else is subject to change without notice, of course.
The story takes place in the late 1700s,
Jane Austen territory, when a
young woman’s most important achievement is to find, and be acquired by,
a “good” husband. Dido’s
father, in true English fashion, takes her away from her African slave
mother and dumps her on his kindly old uncle who is already raising
another niece, also named
Elizabeth.
Then the father “goes to work”, in this case off to sea, never to
be heard from again.
The kindly old uncle and his wife look at the two little girls, destined
to become fast friends as well as cousins, and immediately begin to
worry about their marital prospects.
They bring up the girls in proper English fashion.
Each young woman is beautiful, accomplished, multilingual, and
well-educated. In those
days, having a wife who is all-of-the-above was what would be considered
a “status symbol”. Not
unlike having an
SUV in the driveway today.
Dido has two strikes against her:
First, she’s illegitimate, something that might be “overlooked”
if the price is right.
Second, she’s Black. This is
a little harder to ignore.
Nevertheless, Dido is extremely wealthy, thanks to her father, who
specifically left her enough money to “attract” the “right sort of”
husband.
Due to the convoluted English inheritance laws, a female might inherit,
but only after every possible male relative had been dredged up from as
far away as necessary. The
kindly uncle’s rank and property must go to some obscure and distant
descendant of the male line, leaving Cousin Elizabeth comely but
“penniless”, a fact that causes one splendid prospect to drop her like a
hot rock. Elizabeth is
devastated, never realizing just how lucky she is.
To make the movie “relevant”, the producers throw in the
Zong Massacre,
an historical event that took place elsewhere but involved African
slaves, so that makes it OK.
What really makes the movie is the marvelous performances by the actors.
The film is awash in veterans from
Masterpiece Theater.
Also the attention to detail in the costumes and sets.
It really makes you appreciate Civil Rights, nominal equality,
electricity, air-conditioning and indoor plumbing.
And for the record, both Dido and Elizabeth did succeed in achieving
matrimony.
In other news…
There’s always an excuse.
When there’s something you should
be doing, but might rather not be doing, there’s always an excuse.
Take going to the gym, for example.
Some people might say, “A gym is too expensive.
I have better things to spend money on.”
True. Except, in my
case, the gym is included in the
Homeowners’ Dues.
Some people might say, “The gym is too far away.
I have to get in the car and drive to it.
Takes too much time.”
The gym is, literally, across the street from my front door.
It would take longer to walk to the car.
Some people might say, “After a hard day of working, I’m too tired to
work out.”
Retirement means never having to say, “After a hard day of working…”
Christmas makes for a good excuse.
“I have too many things to do to get ready for The Holidays.
I can’t spend time working out when I have so much to do.”
By mid-April, however, that excuse can wear pretty thin.
But then! We have a wedding
in Denver! Need to get ready
for the wedding. This excuse
is good for at least a couple of weeks.
Next excuse: “Working out is
boring.” Not since the
introduction of the iPod and other
MP3 players; you can listen to any
music you like. Without
bothering anyone else, I might add.
Those exercise machines can get pretty noisy, you know.
Also: The
Kindle (and its
many cousins). One of the
advantages to the e-reader is its very light weight.
I can easily hold it in one hand, reading my latest novel, while
using the other hand to hold onto the handle on the
treadmill, and be
galloping along at a whopping 2 miles per hour all at the same time.
So, all excuses aside, I have just completed my first “official” week of
exercising, so far, this year.
Feels pretty good.
Subject to change without notice, of course.
Love, as always,
Pete
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