|
Movies and moving (and more)
My back hurts.
I spent Saturday moving the rest of Marc's things into his new apartment. He doesn't have any furniture to speak of, but he is a world-class junk accumulator. Artists are like that: Anything that's not a finished piece must be raw material.
Of course, I feel the same way about my words, but I confine myself to one medium.
Several times during the course of the day I told him, "Two words: Professional movers." I'm never doing it again. Nor am I moving myself again, for that matter. Forget it. When we buy the house, we're calling up Gentle Giant or Cheap Date on the phone. It's like changing my own oil: I know how to do it, I've done it quite a few times, and I've decided that's one of the things I can afford to have someone else do from now on. Call me spoiled.
The end of August is not a good time to be moving things from one side of town to the other. It's a great time to be a moving truck rental company, though. At the apartment building Marc was moving out of, another set of tenants was moving in. At the house he was moving into, someone else was moving out. As were the people next door. As I drove through Somerville that evening to rent a movie and buy myself a much-deserved bag of cookies, I noted that every third car had furniture in the back.
Welcome to Greater Boston, where nearly a third of the population is transient. We don't even refer to The Students by name anymore. We just mutter to each other, "They're back."
Actually, I don't have a problem with students, once the first few months are over and they stop being clueless. The problem with students (from the point of view of a college, a teacher, or a permanent resident) is that they leave just when you've got them trained; you're forever having to teach the same lessons.
Aside from moving, and trying to find room for all the books we've bought lately by rearranging the bookshelves, and a nice dinner with Rose and Eric this evening, and a nice drink (or three) with Molly and her beau on Friday evening -
("Beau" is a really old-fashioned word, isn't it? I hope she doesn't resent it. I hate the word "boyfriend." It sounds so elementary school. "Ooooh! Molly's got a boyfriend!")
- as I was saying, aside from those things, what I mostly did this weekend was watch movies on the sofa with Nonelvis. We saw Dragons Forever, which is a movie with Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung. The cool video store we rent from had put the copy from the last time the Brattle showed this on the box: "Easily the best martial-arts courtroom drama ever made." But lest you think that's damning with faint praise, it is actually the best martial-arts courtroom drama double-romance screwball comedy ever made. In fact, you could say it's a pioneer in its field.
After watching the movie I amused myself by looking up some of the Chinese characters on the box. "Dragon" happens to be one of the few I can recognize on sight, and so is "gold" (since the film company was Golden Harvest, this was a useful thing to know). I could look up many of the rest, but never did translate the other three characters in the title (besides "dragon") well, because the title font was so stylized that I couldn't recognize what they were supposed to be! Oh, well.
I also wondered why the "dragon" character (with two others I didn't look up) appeared in the caption for Jackie Chan's photo. Then I found some items with colons which were clearly the names of the three lead actors and the parts they were playing. Then it hit me. The character he plays is named "Jackie Lung." Lung is, of course, how you say the character for dragon. And the shame of it is, I knew that.
Now I have to go rent Twin Dragons and find out if the twins he plays in that movie are surnamed Lung too.
On Saturday I rented 9 To 5 and In Like Flint. The former is a perennial favorite of mine, so don't say anything bad about it, okay? The latter - well, you can say bad things about that if you like. It was amusing but not really as cheesy as I'd have liked.
If you're under forty, as I am, you may need to know that this is the second of two James Bond spoofs starring James Coburn as Flint, a paragon of brains and action. This is the kind of stuff that was the inspiration for the Austin Powers films ... except, frankly, even with all their flaws, I laughed more often at those. Maybe if there'd been more Coburn. Or more evil women conspirators. Or more of Yvonne Craig as Natasha. In fact, more of anything except Lee J. Cobb, who had way too much screen time for a straight man.
Bonus points if you know what part Yvonne Craig is more famous for playing. No cheating!
Other than movies, moving, Molly, Marc, and Moon Unit (see sidebar) ... hmm, I know I did something else .... Oh, yes. I wrote a new Stay Tuned.
It's about wanting to be Filthy Rich, and why advertising is a medium aimed mostly at those who aren't.
© Columbine
|
How old are these writers?
Moon Zappa,
expressing dismay with the
nature of the questions on
Rock n' Roll Jeopardy
|
