In the movies

The New York Times review of the new Woody Allen movie (that would be "Anything Else") has come right out and said what I imagine we've all been thinking:

It helps that Mr. Allen, whom I am alarmed to find looking more like my late grandfather every time I see him, has declined to cast himself as the romantic lead.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! I realize that Allen's wife is young enough to be his...oh, wait, she is his daughter. (Adopted, I know. It's still creepy.) But just because he still gets the babes in his personal life doesn't mean anyone wants to see him getting the babes on screen. Especially since he doesn't have the dubious qualification of being a particularly attractive aging actor. (I can see how babes would dig, say, Harrison Ford. But Woody Allen? Yeesh.)



I also like the line at the end of the review, where they sum up the reasons for the R rating:

It has many sexual references and a few sex scenes—none of them, thank goodness, featuring the director.

Again I say, a big ol' "yes" to that...

Quote of the day

In Latin, even. I found this while browsing the Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, as I am wont to do:

Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. (When they create a desolation, they call it peace.)

—Calcagus, leader of the Caledonians,
before a battle with the Romans in A.D. 84.

(I don't suppose he was actually speaking Latin; but that's how Tacitus recorded it.)



Just kinda stuck in my mind, with all those bomb-'em-and-leave-'em wars we've been having...



(The Caledonians lost, by the way.)

Here we go again?

Well, darn. I hope this isn't the start of another celebrity death week, like we had back in June. Johnny Cash has died at 71, and John Ritter at 54. Now, Johnny Cash was not looking any too healthy, and 71 is a respectable age at which to die; but yikes, 54? Without any previous outward signs of ill-health?



It turns out that Ritter died of an aortic dissection, a nearly-always-fatal heart condition that my aunt suffered from, but survived, earlier this year. If anyone wants to read about it, here are the links:



Wednesday, May 21: "Not good." My first post after it happened, when she was still unconscious and her chances of survival seemed slim.



Friday, May 23: "Less not-good." She was beginning to recover; I also posted about how small my family is, and how much anyone's major illness affects us.



Tuesday, May 27: "Good!" She was up and about and going home; the doctors were calling her the "miracle patient." Amen to that...

As for today...

• Looks like the newscasters have gotten around the "can't wear patriotic stuff because it's not journalistically neutral" by wearing black today.
  
  
  
  (I don't know what they're wearing on the Fox "News" Channel, though. And no, I'm not going to go check.)





• Just about everyone else I saw was wearing some degree or combination of red, white, or blue; of course, I'm in South Philly, where patriotism is right up there with Catholicism. I tried to count the patriotic insignia on the houses on one block and lost track halfway down. The ne plus ultra (on that block, at least) was definitely the house with the picture of Jesus casting rays of red, white, and blue light.





• Fortunately for the entertainment industry, a quirk of the calendar means that September 11th will move from Thursday this year to Saturday next year; it won't fall on a Friday until 2009. So it'll be a while before anyone has to promote a movie by saying "Get ready for a fun-filled, laugh-a-minute ride when [whatever] opens on September 11th!" (I'm not sure that would dissuade the entertainment industry in any case...)

9/11, on paper

I don't have any "on this day in 2001" blog or journal entries to link to; I was in paper-journal-only–mode then. I've been feeling like I should type up some of my paper-journal entries, and I guess 9/11 is as good a place as any to start. Herewith, exactly what I wrote...

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9/11/01



I don't think I've ever seen a sky without planes.

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Popol i Diamant aside, lighting vodka doesn't seem to work.

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Oddly enough, my spoken-aloud salute/toast/whatever was almost entirely not in English. Egyptian, Ukrainian, Arabic, Hebrew, yes; in English, only "Peace" and "Amen." Which sums it up, I guess.



Oh, and Latin.



Requiem aeternam dona eis domine.

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You know you're in trouble when they evacuate the Speaker of the House...

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On the bright side, as J. pointed out, we're a hell of a lot more secure right now than anyone in Afghanistan.

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I seem to be somewhat of a wimp. Just as the reaction I imagine myself having on the Titanic is inhaling a lot of water right away, the reaction I imagine having to a current disaster is swallowing every pill I have on me and hoping it knocks me out.



Well, not much I can do about being an inherent wimp, I guess. And drug-induced unconsciousness strikes me as being a better way out than jumping from a 100th-floor window.

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It takes a surprisingly long time for a very tall building to collapse. And all you really see is the dust cloud going lower, as if it were climbing down the tower.



This is why it's a good thing we don't have earthquakes and tornadoes along the Eastern Seaboard. Our cities aren't built for disasters.

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9/13/01



This is all very good for Gary Condit...

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I suspect I'm going to get very sick of the phrase "war on terrorism." Can you even have a war that's not against a state? And you can have a war against Osama bin Laden and not even touch the Basques or the IRA or the Michigan Militia.

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I think the most disturbing thing I've heard since Tuesday is a 14-year-old Muslim girl saying "I thought they were going to beat me with my own flag."



Must remind people that you can no more blame all Muslims/Arabs for this than you can blame all white people for Oklahoma City...



You know, it's almost kinda too bad that McVeigh isn't around to see himself get totally eclipsed. After he died congratulating himself for the deadliest terror attack on US soil. Well, maybe they have TV in hell. (In fact, I'm pretty sure they have TV in hell.)

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9/14/01

Dad: Well, your brother's got the career of the future.



Me: So he still wants to be a New York City cop?



Dad: Openings, I guess.



Me: Aaahhhh...horrible but true.

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9/15/01



You can tell it's getting back to normal when there are commercials on TV again.

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9/19/01



"Operation Infinite Justice"? Who names these things?



(J.'s suggestion: Operation Smoke a Camel.) (And also: Operation Hot Date.) (And: Sand Blast and Rock the Casbah.) (Me: Operation Whack-a-Mullah, but don't tell anyone I said that.)

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9/20/01



J.'s reaction to Bush's speech: "So to sum up, we're the world's policeman and God is on our side."



My reaction: getting "Deutschland über Alles" stuck in my head. Doubtless not the patriotic response I was supposed to have.

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That's about all I wrote back then...for one thing, I lost the journal under a table for a while, and on 9/25/01, J. and I got engaged, which provided other things to write about.



One of these days I'll type up my Iraq War journal entries. (I actually started blogging with the intention of writing a war blog; but by the time I got started, the war, apparently, was over. Or at any rate it was out of the headlines and they were showing other stuff on MSNBC...)

9/11

Well, it's that time again.



Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine.

Department of "no kidding," again

Shocked, I tell you, shocked! First Richard Chamberlain made his big confession, and now Tab Hunter, his career behind him, admits he's gay. Gosh, I never would have guessed, would you?



(I didn't know he had a relationship with Anthony Perkins, though. Well, good for them.)