Pain In The (Foot)
Wednesday. So I walked down the way and saw Intolerable Cruelty yesterday afternoon, the new Coen brothers' film. Well, I saw the first two-thirds, thinking as I was watching - out of popcorn, the Clooney and Zeta-Jones characters having just gotten married - I'd rather be ambling home while it was still light and sit in the apartment in front of a computer screen than see the rest of this flick. This isn't a particularly negative comment, it's just that I've walked out early on a number of films this last year. Or maybe it is a negative comment coming, as it does, from a Coen brothers movie freak.
Did you walk out on Kill Bill!, the movie the local Chronicle critic finds so hateful in what is now his second commentary ("Tarantino clears it up - Kill Bill is great for kids") in the Chronicle today?
Well, no, but I might have walked out on Bill! under other circumstances: a different moon, a suddenly remembered errand. I must admit Bill! was beginning to wear in those last five minutes, Liu's character having been trimmed in the quiet night of a snow covered (Japanese) garden. (Which I find a waste. If you must kill a lady in a movie, something I am not recommending, at least use it as a mechanism for coitus-interruptus or a heart overcome.
Friday. Back from Gilroy, an hour and twenty minute trip, closer than I remembered. An easy drive arriving before two, a drive to MSM's home out in the farmlands, one of those large rambling houses of many rooms at the end of a narrow road that angles through facing lines of old Eucalyptus trees. Really nice country living for the price of a two bedroom apartment here in the city. There is life outside of Oakland. Believe me. Many need to know this; you may be one.
The week has buzzed along. I was able to drop off the negatives in Berkeley on the way to Gilroy to have prints made, although they won't be ready until Tuesday after work; I was hoping for tomorrow. You live, you learn. The right leg went numb again, the foot with a burning sensation, something that's happened in the past, so I made an appointment for Monday morning with the doctor when I got back. He didn't think it was the end of the (my) world, perhaps a pinched nerve. They probably take a class on this in medical school, "Put the patient at ease while motioning to the nurse to call an ambulance 101", suggesting you come in the next (working) morning "just to look you over". I'm up for that. How can I not be up for that? This turning sixty is becoming more than a pain in the (foot).
|
