Sunday Sundries, 161

1. AOTW: This is an easy one. On Thursday night, coming home from an event in Aurora, after 9, full dark, ,no stars (okay maybe a few ... billion), I saw a guy zoom up behind me, having apparently decided he needed a good, close look at my rear bumper, and what better way to do that than to be as close as possible--with his bright lights on. This went on for about five or six miles till he turned off--presumably headed back to Hell. I really did feel at the time that I was in some kind of Stephen King story and that All Was Not Going to Be Well.

2. Last night we drove down to Green HS to see our grandson Logan (12) in his middle-school play production, Shrek, Jr., a musical based on the film(s) (I guess: I haven't seen them).

Logan played the military captain (serving Lord Farquaad) and had a ball up there, swinging his sword around, mugging for the crowd. He was good--okay really good. And it made me wish I could direct him some time--but, of course, that ain't gonna happen. Got one shot of him wielding that weapon!

3. I finished two books this week ...

     - The first (via Kindle) was the 2nd by Ken Bruen in his series about Irish PI Jack Taylor (whom Joyce and I first met while streaming that fine TV series).

This one--The Killing of the Tinkers--is about the murders of some tinkers (aka gypsies), murders that the police don't seem all that interested in investigating. Enter Taylor--ex-cop, current drunk and dopehead. But still effective and deadly (sometimes). The books are far more brutal than the TV series, and Taylor himself is only marginally admirable. He does love to read, and he's continually talking about what he's reading--from famous poets to novelists. Likes to quote things, too. That quality alone endears him to me! (You Old Folks remember that TV show Have Gun Will Travel? Paladin was like that, quoting Shakespeare while he blew someone's head off.) Here's a link to a list of all the Taylor series.

Anyway, I'm eventually going to read all of these--but will read some other things, too, just to recover my ... what? Self-regard?

     - The second book I finished this week was Dunbar (2017), the latest in the series of novels by current authors based on Shakespeare plays, a series published by the Hogarth Press (link to their Shakespeare book site).

Dunbar, based on King Lear, is one of the best in the series, I think (yes, I've read them all). I'd not read anything by Edward St. Aubyn before, but this will prompt some more reading, believe me.

Dunbar is the name of a media mogul. Two of his daughters have screwed him out of his position, and the third daughter ... well, you know ....  Anyway, I was impressed how St. Aubyn managed to get Dunbar out on a heath in a blizzard to rage, rage, rage--and how he raised my hopes for a better outcome even when I knew the story of Lear, knew that the ending was not going to be Disneyesque (no ogres loving ogres here!).

I liked how St. Aubyn varied the points of view throughout--the sisters, Dunbar, and "Dr. Bob," an ethically-challenged physician who keeps the Two Bad Sisters supplied with "meds" & thinks only of his own enrichment.

And this, from the thoughts of Dunbar: "... it had all really been leading to a rehabilitation of his innocence" (229). And "'No mercy,' said Dunbar, pressing his hands to his head, 'in this world, or any other'" (242).

I am really enjoying this series. One by Jo Nesbø is on the way! His version of Macbeth. Can't wait.


4. For some reason I woke up this morning thinking about that old TV series Ben Casey, which ran, I see, on ABC-TV from 1961-66.  Starring Vince Edwards as the eponymous physician, and Sam Jaffe as his mentor, Dr. David Zorba. I was thinking about it so much that I will do an entire post about it tomorrow. Meanwhile, be satisfied with this image--a TV Guide cover from January 1963.

5. Final Word--a word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers.

     - from the Oxford English Dictionary, a rare, obscure word that is both mildly amusing and full of potential uses!  (The princess was impatient with the slowness of my disarmy!)

† disarmy, n. An act of removing armour.

Origin: Apparently a borrowing from French. Etymon: French desarmée.

Etymology: Apparently < an unattested Middle French noun *desarmée action of disarming < desarmer disarm v. + -ée -y suffix5.

Compare later disarm n.(Show Less)

  1548   Hall's Vnion: Henry VIII f. lxxviijv   The herauldes cried the disarmy [1809 disarme].