Sunday Sundries, 139

1. AOTW: I'm taking Joyce's word for this one: The people in the crowded grocery-store parking lot on Saturday, the day before, you know, Easter. Not a lot of Christian charity, from what I hear. As always: Easier to preach than to practice in a busy, too-small parking lot.

2. I saw a film I knew wouldn't really be very good (and it wasn't), but I was experiencing Popcorn Deprivation on Friday night, so off I went to see Going in Style, one of those Old Guy movies--in this case: Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Alan Arkin. They've all just lost their pensions because of some bank hanky-panky (banky-panky?), so they decide to rob a bank to re-pay themselves. (They vow to steal no more than they are owed--will donate any excess to charity.) Yawningly predictable. But ... excellent popcorn. (Link to film trailer.) Oh, I did like seeing Matt Dillon (remember!!), who plays the FBI agent who doesn't really have a chance with these Sly Old Dudes.

Some flaws: What about all the other guys who lost their pensions? How can Our Heroes possibly spend the money? The FBI and cops will be watching them ... wondering how their mortgages got paid off, etc.

3. I used the phrase hanky-panky in the last paragraph and realized I didn't know its source. Looked it up. Webster's says: alteration (perhaps influenced by handkerchief) of hocus-pocus; First Known Use: 1841. The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins echoes Webster's--but adds that it originated in the jargon of fairs and carnivals. There you go ...


4. I finished only one book this week (shame, shame, I know), an early collection of Michael Chabon stories--Werewolves in Their Youth (1999). I am slowly reading all the Chabon works I somehow missed since he began in the early 1990s--and am having a good time. I liked all the stories, but my favorite was the final one--"In the Black Mill," a sort of metafictional tale supposedly written by August Van Zorn, a character/writer alluded to in Chabon's excellent novel (and one of my favorite films, too) Wonder Boys.

The narrator is a doctoral candidate in archaeology, and he goes to a town called Plunkettsburg to do some research on a long-gone Indian tribe, but his digging leads to Trouble, My Friend, Right Here in River City. Lots of carnage and body parts ... and a lot of fun reading!


5. We're enjoying streaming (Netflix) some new episodes now available of the detective series set in Galway, Jack Taylor; in the first new one (some of which we watched last night), Taylor waxes a bit literary: The story involves the Irish myth of Deirdre. (Link to some info about the story of Deirdre.) (Link to some video of Jack Taylor.) Joyce, very coincidentally, wrote a paper about Deirdre back in her early days of grad school. (I'm sure she'd share it with you if you asked ... not.)


6. Final word--a good one for today, Easter, a day that mixes stories of the Resurrection with rabbits and eggs. Makes sense, I guess.

- from dictionary.com:

leporine  [lep-uh-rahyn, -rin]

adjective, Zoology.

1. of, relating to, or resembling a rabbit or hare.

Origin of leporine: Latin

1650-1660 < Latin leporīnus, equivalent to lepor- (stem of lepus) hare + -īnus -ine