1. AOTW: An easy one this week. We're at a four-way stop. Facing us is a car that arrived at the intersection ahead of us. Left blinker on. The car goes through, turning left. We're next. But then the car that had been behind the car-whose-turn-it was zipped through, turning left directly in front of us. (No turn signal.) And was I dazzled to see that the license plate was "AOTW." (Not really, but I like the thought.)
2. We've been streaming a new series (for us)--Line of Duty--about some British cops, one of whom--viewed throughout the force (and city) as a Super Cop--is corrupt. But Our Heroes are on the case. Very intense. I often switch to lighter fare when it becomes too much to bear! (Wuss, wuss, wuss, I know.)
3. I finished two books this week.
- The first was How Not to Get Rich: The Financial Misadventures of Mark Twain (2017) by Alan Pell Crawford. I've read a lot of Twain bios (and the three massive volumes of his autobiography), so there wasn't a lot new here for me--but it was nice to have it all in one compact place (the text is only 194 pp.).
Twain, throughout his life was, as we see here with great clarity, "an easy mark." He had, for a while, mega-bucks (his wife's inheritance, his own writing and publishing), but he flung much of it into the wind on cash-sucking investments, virtually none of which worked out. In his later years he ended up having to go on a world lecture tour to avoid poverty--and to pay his bills. (One of his investments, by the way, was in ... condoms.)
- The second was Go Down, Moses (1942) a collection of stories by William Faulkner. As some of you know, I'm (slowly) reading my way through those books of his I somehow never managed to read.
I read it in the Library of America volume (Novels 1942), and I really did admire much of what I read. Faulkner knew--profoundly--what he wrote here: "... this whole land, the whole South, is cursed ...," says one character in "The Bear" (206).
And how about this: "There is only one thing worse than not being alive, and that's shame" ("The Old People," 138).
3. Last night, Joyce and I drove over to Macedonia to see Suburbicon (link to film trailer). Originally written by the Coen Brothers, the script got a revision from director George Clooney and a colleague, but it very much looks like a Coens' film--in a good way (at least as far as I'm concerned).
In some recent outings (e.g., Burn After Reading) the Coens have taken a beating--an undeserved one in my view. (This film got trashed, too.) Both this one and Burn are very dark; both show the pervasive ugliness in the human species, an ugliness that--in Suburbicon--only children may possibly correct. (The film ends [SPOILER ALERT] with a small black child and a small white child playing catch across a backyard fence.)
We see it all here--corruption in business people, murderous solutions to problems (even family ones), racism wearing its most disturbing vizard. Everything is exaggerated--that is the point. Ugliness is ugly, you know--not subtle.
And there is dark, dark humor (as you expect from the Coens via Clooney, who has starred for the Coens before). A peanut butter sandwich becomes significant; Matt Damon, bloodied, riding along on his little boy's bicycle (after I-ain't-gonna-tell-you-what); a couple of Tough Guys whose day jobs will surprise you; etc.
The Coens are not for everyone. And Clooney, honoring them in this film, has held up a mirror to us, and what we see is not, well comforting. To say the least.
5. Final Word--a word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers:
- from wordsmith.org
chillax (chi-LAKS)
MEANING:
verb intr.: To calm down and relax.
ETYMOLOGY:
A blend of chill + relax. Earliest documented use: 1999.
USAGE:
“Chillax, sit back, just take it slow
make every effort to unwind
let the calming breeze just blow
away those worries from your mind.”
J.R. Winchester; The Word According Two; Lulu; 2016.
No comments:
Post a Comment