This morning I finished watching the Spanish movie, The Spirit of the Beehive. Made in 1973 and directed by Victor Erice, the film is set in 1940 in a small Spanish village. It tells of… The Spirit of the Beehive (El Espiritu de la Colmena)
There are, at least, two things that my daughters mention that I never did for them. I never took them fishing (of course I have almost never fished) and I never took them horseback riding (I guess I did that a little bit myself but it violated my ‘feet-are-on-the-ground happy place’ approach.
The movie I just finished, Buck, deals with horses.
Buck Brannaman, is the prototypical what-we-think-a-cowboy-should-be cowboy (I guess I am overusing hyphens this morning). He travels around the country teaching people how to ride horses better. In fact he is really teaching them about how to treat horses better. As he says in the movie (paraphrased), “People do not have a horse problem, horses have a people problem.” And what he really is teaching is much about the riders themselves about themselves.
When one represents that shrinking number of people who actually still rent actual DVD’s to watch (my Netflix queue is up to around 490), some things end up being a mild irritant that others would… Life’s Little Annoyances
As I have mentioned before most (it should really be all) mornings I walk on an elliptical walker down in the basement and watch movies.
It usually takes 3-5 days to watch each movie, or if it is a TV show series (for example, I just finished season 1 of Once Upon A Time), I watch one show each morning.
While I have not as many foreign films in recent days, they are among my favorite ones to watch.
Most mornings I walk on an elliptical walker in the basement and watch movies (or TV shows) from DVD’s from my over Netflix queue (now over 400 DVD’s long). Many of the films I watch… Treeless Mountain
As many of you know my birthday was earlier this week.
Most of the day of my birthday I spent working on responding to discussion posts and grading midterm papers for the graduate class I teach at the University of Maryland University College. During the day I talked to my two wonderful daughters. I spent a weekend with Miriam, joined on Saturday by Ellen, seeing Broadway shows, movies (including Serenity, of course), an improv show, and wandered around New York City; my pre-birthday birthday. This coming Monday I will go with Ellen and my other daughter Tamar to see a jazz saxophonist at Blues Alley, Mindi Abair, my post-birthday birthday.
Of course I also received many Facebook and Linkedin Happy Birthday’s. One in particular stood out from someone I only met once. She worked at the FAA in Oklahoma City. I had lunch with her and a number of other FAA staff there, probably around 2007. She wrote that she had been thinking of me and the fact that I introduced her to Firefly, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_(TV_series), and Serenity, all of which she loved, and noting that if I was interested in watching Nathan Fillion, who played the Captain in both, that he was in Castle (which I was aware of, but appreciated being told). More on this shortly.
This morning, Ellen asked me to keep my shower short (scheduling issues). My response was that since I was the man, and thus the King, of the house, I could do whatever I wanted. In… Being The King
So last night was the finale to the TV show, How I Met Your Mother.
As some of you know I only on a regular basis watch four TV ‘shows’ on a regular basis:
Still More Proof That the Bob Newhart Finale Was the Best Ever
I have a feeling that the new Lego movie, called creatively The Lego Movie, may be one of those that I will have to go alone without Ellen. Even though the initial Rotten Tomatoes rating is… Lego My …, Oops Wrong Analogy
I just finished watching Wendy and Lucy, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wendy_and_lucy/, which I very much enjoyed. The story line is pretty simple. A young woman played very well by Michelle Williams, Wendy, and her dog, Lucy, on her way to Alaska to hopefully get a good paying job is stranded in a small town in Oregon when her car breaks down. With little money to have the car fixed, Wendy is arrested for shoplifting and Lucy is gone when Wendy returns. The rest of the movie covers the events that follow as Wendy continues to search for Lucy and faces more and more difficult choices.