Intermission
Like a man possessed (by bad judgment) I went outside at 6 this morning to retrieve the vacuum cleaner from the bighouse up the hill. I had dressed hastily and the 13 degree temperature made my head ache as if I had drunk the cheap rum in trying to keep up with Albee's George and Martha.
Oh that sly bastard Mr. BC, sure he knew that I would get down to the cheap rum eventually. It was all part of his master plan and no doubt he has been smirking since that day he tricked me into drinking his 200 dollar bottle of scotch, waiting for my descension. Oh, how did I not see this coming? Well played Mr. BC, well played.
Anyway, I thought I was going to die, that my head was going to split open right there on the sidewalk lugging that 600 dollar vacuum cleaner which if you ask me for that price should never break unless you drop if from a ten story building. I put it in the back seat of the Jeep. Step one completed, or two actually if you're into making a simple task sound a lot harder than it is and by doing so puffing up your imagined worth to an audience that includes one small cat and some geese.
What was step one? Does it really matter?
There was no Pulitzer awarded for drama the year the play came out because Albee's language was too harsh for the times, and to award anyone else the prize I think would have considerably devalued the committee's standing. Two years later a movie version came out and the language was adjusted somewhat so that Martha's frequent attacks on George came out--Goddamn you George, instead of Screw you George. When I was growing up I always thought that screw you was a polite way to say fuck you and as befits my upbringing I tried to stay at a level of politeness. Goddamn though I thought would bring down bolts of wrath from heaven and even to this day I try to avoid the use of that word.
After a couple of large drinks (George has been through several 8 ounce tumblers by this time) it came to me that the actors were probably just drinking colored water. My head was spinning uniquely and I lost my focus on that amazingly well crafted script. I was of the opinion that I should be listening soberly so I paused the movie and where we are now is the intermission.
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Moby Dick
It seemed like two different movies, the one in which Orson Wells climbs a rope ladder to a pulpit mimicking a ship and the one where Richard Basehart says call me Ishmael (which I will if you ask but could you work harder to make me believe that you are).
Although the acting was sufficient to convey the story and the screenplay by Ray Bradbury and (co-writer and director) Huston was well done if by necessity pared down a bit lean, I feel the potential of this being a great movie, while approached, was not reached.
It could be that the expectations raised by Wells as Father Mapple were too high for any project to live up to and it is therefore no fault of Gregory Peck that I kept thinking throughout the movie--Gee, he sure is no Orson Wells.
It was good clean fun though and I'm certainly not regretting that it is what I chose to help me while away yesterday evening.
I could say one great fish story reminds me of another except that whales aren't fish and the story I am reminded of isn't that great, nor does it include that many fish.
I can never seem to escape during periods of deep reflection the Fishorama on the former Lake Lewisville north of Dallas. In fact, as often as not if you see me lost in thought or you ask me what I'm thinking about (and I say nothing) I am probably thinking about the Fishorama. It is where I go to visit my father who has been dead coming up on 15 years. And it was 20 years or more before that that we were at the Fishorama together, which was an enclosed barn-like space jutting out into the water, with walkways around 16 or 20 rectangular "fishing holes" protected by painted tubular railings. And chairs, there were chairs to sit in if you were not as eager as I, leaning over the railing looking at my reflection and the always predictable bream near the surface, swimming lazily beneath that reflection.
My father was no great fisherman nor did he pretend to be or as far as I could tell, aspire to hooking fish. It was relatively late in my adolescence that I realized he wasn't much of a ball player either and I cringe with admiration when remembering the afternoon he suggested, for the first time, that we play catch. I was 15 and he was sixty-something. He couldn't throw worth a damn, or catch that well, and before I was able to do much damage to his person he admitted as much and then disappeared to the other side of the patio gate. I can imagine he went inside and told my mother of his failure. He was a father of six and a veteran of two wars and a journalist and a political consultant for people both crooked and honest, but he couldn't throw or catch a ball. Some people realize it much sooner but I lived a pretty sheltered life I guess and it was the first time I came to see that grownups were fallible. After that of course it was pretty much an open flood gate and as a wizened 15-year-old I arrived at the conclusion that all grownups, to put it mildly, were fallible.
There he is though, back in 1969 or 70, walking up the floating sidewalk to the Fishorama, alongside that little freckled wisp of boy whose brown head glowed red in the afternoon sun. People were always mistaking him for the boy's grandfather. He got a kick out of that is the way he put it. It was one of the things he could pull off convincingly, which is as good as it gets sometimes, regarding this definition of who a man is. I am not a fisherman, I am not a ballplayer, I am this boy's grandfather.
It seemed like two different movies, the one in which Orson Wells climbs a rope ladder to a pulpit mimicking a ship and the one where Richard Basehart says call me Ishmael (which I will if you ask but could you work harder to make me believe that you are).
Although the acting was sufficient to convey the story and the screenplay by Ray Bradbury and (co-writer and director) Huston was well done if by necessity pared down a bit lean, I feel the potential of this being a great movie, while approached, was not reached.
It could be that the expectations raised by Wells as Father Mapple were too high for any project to live up to and it is therefore no fault of Gregory Peck that I kept thinking throughout the movie--Gee, he sure is no Orson Wells.
It was good clean fun though and I'm certainly not regretting that it is what I chose to help me while away yesterday evening.
I could say one great fish story reminds me of another except that whales aren't fish and the story I am reminded of isn't that great, nor does it include that many fish.
I can never seem to escape during periods of deep reflection the Fishorama on the former Lake Lewisville north of Dallas. In fact, as often as not if you see me lost in thought or you ask me what I'm thinking about (and I say nothing) I am probably thinking about the Fishorama. It is where I go to visit my father who has been dead coming up on 15 years. And it was 20 years or more before that that we were at the Fishorama together, which was an enclosed barn-like space jutting out into the water, with walkways around 16 or 20 rectangular "fishing holes" protected by painted tubular railings. And chairs, there were chairs to sit in if you were not as eager as I, leaning over the railing looking at my reflection and the always predictable bream near the surface, swimming lazily beneath that reflection.
My father was no great fisherman nor did he pretend to be or as far as I could tell, aspire to hooking fish. It was relatively late in my adolescence that I realized he wasn't much of a ball player either and I cringe with admiration when remembering the afternoon he suggested, for the first time, that we play catch. I was 15 and he was sixty-something. He couldn't throw worth a damn, or catch that well, and before I was able to do much damage to his person he admitted as much and then disappeared to the other side of the patio gate. I can imagine he went inside and told my mother of his failure. He was a father of six and a veteran of two wars and a journalist and a political consultant for people both crooked and honest, but he couldn't throw or catch a ball. Some people realize it much sooner but I lived a pretty sheltered life I guess and it was the first time I came to see that grownups were fallible. After that of course it was pretty much an open flood gate and as a wizened 15-year-old I arrived at the conclusion that all grownups, to put it mildly, were fallible.
There he is though, back in 1969 or 70, walking up the floating sidewalk to the Fishorama, alongside that little freckled wisp of boy whose brown head glowed red in the afternoon sun. People were always mistaking him for the boy's grandfather. He got a kick out of that is the way he put it. It was one of the things he could pull off convincingly, which is as good as it gets sometimes, regarding this definition of who a man is. I am not a fisherman, I am not a ballplayer, I am this boy's grandfather.