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Saturday Snapshots
Got up pretty early and cranky this morning as I thought my son has AYSO soccer tryouts at 9:00 and we had to get breakfast at Starbucks. Turned out it's tomorrow morning, so despite his wearing cleats, shin guards and long socks, we ended up walking on the beach until about 11:00, climbing the rocks, skipping stones, finding shells and the like. I helped a fairly attractive single mother with her kids' kites but we didn't exchange names. No matter.
They wanted to go home after that but I knew we had little food at home and some time to kill before we'd be stuck at home waiting for the cable guy between 1:00 and 3:00 (the appt was actually between 1:30 and 3:30, I learned, and he showed up at about 3:45), so I pushed for us eating somewhere different besides our usual places, and we ate at a colorful, mid-priced local Mexican restaurant in Leucadia called El Callejon. I had chicken enchiladas in mole' sauce, which you don't find everywhere. I also felt like a margarita and it was pretty lousy. Watched Sixteen Candles while waiting for the cable guy and they liked it pretty well, though we discussed how "shit" is a bad word and it only turns up about 30 times in the movie.
Cable guy replaced the cable box. Apparently he's a single dad as well, and we agreed that kids are a blessing. I never call anything a blessing, but yeah, no doubt they are.
Received the Johnny Cash - Personal File 2 disc set that just came out and read the liner notes. Also received Elvis Costello's Kojak Variety, which I had when it first came out but a year or two ago it was rereleased with a bonus disc. Both this and the Cash set have in common that they're mainly covers, and I consider both men among the best song interpreters ever. I haven't listened to Kojak Variety yet, either, but I know I prefer Costello's version of Dylan's "I Threw It All Away" and The Kinks' "Days" to the originals. I'm going to see Ray Davies play in San Diego next month with the biggest Kinks fan I've ever known, and his wife, and the CEO of my company and his girlfriend, and another male coworker. It would be nice to have a date for it, but too late.
Played kickball with a small rubber ball with my son and this older neighbor kid who obviously has had no male figure in his life. He's a nice kid but his speech isn't at the level it should be and he is totally hopeless with anything athletic. I feel bad for him, but it also made the game really long and draining. He couldn't roll the ball straight down the sidewalk fifteen feet and hadn't a clue about the basics of baseball, and frequently quit or just flopped down on the grass to detach himself from the game.
The main thing that kept me from buying the Godfather box set the past few years has been the price--I think it was around $70 when it first came out, but I just got it for around $35 or so, and watched the first one last night after the kids went to bed. Together we watched the horrible Scooby-Doo Meets Batman dvd, which is two worse-than-usual animated episodes from the '70s with Batman and Robin as voiced by the regular Super Friends team, convenient since Casey Kasem does both Robin and Shaggy. The overuse of "chum" is hilarious, as is how unmuscular they draw Batman, and just how short Robin's trunks are. Joker and the Penguin are the villains in both episodes and the Joker's voice is weird and mushy, and neither really retains what makes them distinct as characters in regards to their crimes. Each episode is nearly an hour and they just drag on and on with no funny bits at all.
The Godfather is as great as ever, nearly impossible to shut off. Maybe the only flaw I found was the phony missed punches when Sonny beats up Carlo in the street. I cried when Brando learns of his son's death, and I expect I always will. I noticed my heart just POUNDING in the restaurant scene before Pacino shoots Solozzo and McCluskey. I find it kind of remarkable now how Coppola was able to model the Johnny Fontane character so closely on Sinatra with the well-known From Here To Eternity anecdote and get away with it. Maybe those responsible, who might have been able to affect things, were sort of proud of the story and didn't mind it being dramatized, as long as it didn't lead back to them.
They wanted to go home after that but I knew we had little food at home and some time to kill before we'd be stuck at home waiting for the cable guy between 1:00 and 3:00 (the appt was actually between 1:30 and 3:30, I learned, and he showed up at about 3:45), so I pushed for us eating somewhere different besides our usual places, and we ate at a colorful, mid-priced local Mexican restaurant in Leucadia called El Callejon. I had chicken enchiladas in mole' sauce, which you don't find everywhere. I also felt like a margarita and it was pretty lousy. Watched Sixteen Candles while waiting for the cable guy and they liked it pretty well, though we discussed how "shit" is a bad word and it only turns up about 30 times in the movie.
Cable guy replaced the cable box. Apparently he's a single dad as well, and we agreed that kids are a blessing. I never call anything a blessing, but yeah, no doubt they are.
Received the Johnny Cash - Personal File 2 disc set that just came out and read the liner notes. Also received Elvis Costello's Kojak Variety, which I had when it first came out but a year or two ago it was rereleased with a bonus disc. Both this and the Cash set have in common that they're mainly covers, and I consider both men among the best song interpreters ever. I haven't listened to Kojak Variety yet, either, but I know I prefer Costello's version of Dylan's "I Threw It All Away" and The Kinks' "Days" to the originals. I'm going to see Ray Davies play in San Diego next month with the biggest Kinks fan I've ever known, and his wife, and the CEO of my company and his girlfriend, and another male coworker. It would be nice to have a date for it, but too late.
Played kickball with a small rubber ball with my son and this older neighbor kid who obviously has had no male figure in his life. He's a nice kid but his speech isn't at the level it should be and he is totally hopeless with anything athletic. I feel bad for him, but it also made the game really long and draining. He couldn't roll the ball straight down the sidewalk fifteen feet and hadn't a clue about the basics of baseball, and frequently quit or just flopped down on the grass to detach himself from the game.
The main thing that kept me from buying the Godfather box set the past few years has been the price--I think it was around $70 when it first came out, but I just got it for around $35 or so, and watched the first one last night after the kids went to bed. Together we watched the horrible Scooby-Doo Meets Batman dvd, which is two worse-than-usual animated episodes from the '70s with Batman and Robin as voiced by the regular Super Friends team, convenient since Casey Kasem does both Robin and Shaggy. The overuse of "chum" is hilarious, as is how unmuscular they draw Batman, and just how short Robin's trunks are. Joker and the Penguin are the villains in both episodes and the Joker's voice is weird and mushy, and neither really retains what makes them distinct as characters in regards to their crimes. Each episode is nearly an hour and they just drag on and on with no funny bits at all.
The Godfather is as great as ever, nearly impossible to shut off. Maybe the only flaw I found was the phony missed punches when Sonny beats up Carlo in the street. I cried when Brando learns of his son's death, and I expect I always will. I noticed my heart just POUNDING in the restaurant scene before Pacino shoots Solozzo and McCluskey. I find it kind of remarkable now how Coppola was able to model the Johnny Fontane character so closely on Sinatra with the well-known From Here To Eternity anecdote and get away with it. Maybe those responsible, who might have been able to affect things, were sort of proud of the story and didn't mind it being dramatized, as long as it didn't lead back to them.
Posted by ChristopherAllen at 6:49 PM [Link to this post]
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