July 27, 2018
Dear Everyone:
Last April, on the advice of two different specialist doctors, I spent a
month enrolled in “Aquatic Therapy”.
This consisted of slowly performing various exercises in a large
pool, with about a half-dozen “ladies of a certain age and generous
proportions” and one old geezer named, “Phil”, who kept falling asleep
in the warm water.
One exercise involved a “pool noodle”, a length of buoyant foam.
You pushed in down in the water, held it for a second or two,
then let it float back up.
Repeat ten times for three sets.
Then we pushed foam discs around for a while.
Also foam “dumbbells”.
The basic idea was using something designed to float and trying
to submerge it to work the muscles in your arms and torso.
After a month, I had a pretty good handle on which exercises were best
suited to going on my own in our community pool.
So I went to the local sporting goods store and got a “pool
noodle” of my own. They
didn’t have the foam discs, but the clerk dug out an “Aquatics Fitness”
kit that did include the foam “dumbbells”.
And a pair of finned “gloves” which did nicely in the
water-resistance department.
With that, I was set except for one thing:
“Water exercises” are pretty boring.
I decided it was time to get a new
MP3 player.
The ones I had were hopelessly outdated.
I went to the Really Big, Blue Electronics Warehouse Store and
eventually found the rather small “MP3 player” section.
I selected a “Sport Clip”, which had the advantage of being
“waterproof” and included a clip that I could use to fasten it to the
shoulder strap of my swimsuit.
Now I just needed to figure out how to get the music from my rather
“ancient” CDs to the MP3 player.
The helpful clerk at the RBBEWS just told me to hook it up to my
computer and it would “know what to do”.
Of course.
No, it didn’t. But I did
some searching on the Internet and found some instructions for
transferring music from the CD to the computer.
It turns out that
Windows 10
Media Player already has the
capability to “rip” from a CD to the computer.
No extra software required anymore.
That’s quite a time-saver.
After that, copying from the computer to the MP3 player was also fairly
easy. Apparently, all that
concern about
copyright laws has settled out.
Theoretically, having previously purchased music on a CD,
transferring it to another medium, like the laptop or MP3 player, is no longer
a problem. It makes sense
that I wouldn’t drag a CD into the water, along with the computer, while
listening to the MP3 player all at the same time.
So now I can shove water this way and that, building muscle tone, while
rocking out to Barry Manilow,
Neil Diamond,
ABBA, or
Bach as much as I
like.
Speaking of ABBA…
Some summers have their own Summer Movie.
In 1975, it was
Jaws,
with the same shark eating the same people every week for about 14
weeks. In 1977, it was
Star Wars, complete with the long-lost, unknown prince discovering
his ancestral sword and dashing off to rescue the damsel in distress,
followed by the requisite warm-and-wise older adviser, the
handsome-but-possibly-untrustworthy scoundrel, and the cute
comic-relief.
Not all Summer Movies have to be epic adventures.
Sometimes all you need is something light and frolicsome, plus
air-conditioning and popcorn.
Ten years ago, there was
Mamma Mia! a
jukebox musical “inspired” by a forty-year-old movie
starring Gina Lollobrigida (Buona
Sera, Mrs. Campbell), with songs previously performed by the
aforementioned Swedish musical group, ABBA.
It had the advantage of cheerful performances by some really good
performers like Meryl Streep,
Colin Firth,
Christine Baranski,
Julie
Walters and Pierce Brosnan.
Plus Amanda Seyfried and
Dominic Cooper for the younger viewers.
Ten years later, we have the sequel,
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.
This time we have no less than three (3)
Academy Award winners
gracing the screen:
Cher (Moonstruck),
Colin Firth (The King’s Speech),
and Meryl Streep (everything under the sun).
35 years ago, in
Silkwood,
Cher played Meryl’s contemporary housemate.
This time Cher plays Meryl’s mother.
Not that it matters.
Cher doesn’t actually appear until the last ten minutes of the film.
Meryl’s character, Donna Sheridan, has been dead for about a
year, with no explanation.
She’s just gone. Her
daughter, Sophie, played again by Amanda Seyfried, is renovating the
hotel that Donna had managed for twenty-plus years.
There are numerous flashbacks to show how Donna, effervescently played
by Lily James (Downton Abbey,
Cinderella,
Darkest Hour),
freshly graduated from some stuffy college on the Eastern Seaboard,
throws her cap into the air and her education out the window, to cavort
happily through Europe. So
much for paying back student loans.
In the course of a fun-filled summer, she meets up with the three
fellows who will eventually become Sophie’s three “Dad’s”.
All of which, of course, is an excuse to dance and sing ABBA songs in
the Greek sunshine.
Technically, the role of Greece is portrayed by
Croatia which is just a
little ways northeast of Greece and probably much less expensive for
location filming. Mostly the
actors seem to work in front of a green screen, with the scenery added
in later. So much more
convenient for the actors.
All in all, light, somewhat frivolous, with air-conditioning and
popcorn. Just right for
Summer.
Love, as always,
Pete
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