Shovel shopping/safes

24Dec09

While shopping for a snow shovel in a farm store, I stumbled upon a whole section of full-size safes. The priciest was $1,700, but others could be had for less. Someday, when I have equity, I will most certainly purchase a safe to keep it in. Carpe diem.

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Tags: safe, shopping

Movie review: Did You Hear About the Morgans?

22Dec09

By J.A. O’Sullivan

The only statistic as bleak as our unemployment numbers has to be this year’s mounting pile of shoddy romantic comedies. Did You Hear About the Morgans? does nothing to reverse this genre’s slide down the trash chute.

The Morgans, Paul (Hugh Grant, Love Actually) and Meryl (Sarah Jessica Parker, Sex and the City) a separated power couple, bumble into the murder of an arms dealer as during a reconciliation date in the Big Apple. After being told they’ll have to relocate under the Witness Protection Program, Meryl pulls a tantrum (the first of many) while, Paul, who wants to reunite, blathers about timidly (the second or third of many). The couple is temporarily sent to Ray, Wyoming, while law enforcement tries to find the bad guys. While there, the couple go through what you’d expect – a bear incident, the town rodeo, etc. – as they work through whether to get back together.

Rather than illuminating itself, Did You Hear About the Morgans? adds luster to this year’s slew of mediocre romantic comedies. Where The Proposal gave a spun a yarn about a cutthroat executive blackmailing her secretary into a marriage, at least the leading couple, Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds, gave us chemistry. Where He’s Just Not That Into You served a mish-mash of predictable stories, at least there was a laugh or two to go around. Where New In Town made small-town Midwesterners into goofy, prudish caricatures, at least it conveyed warmth and a dash of sincerity.

Not here. Here, the folks of Ray are cardboard cutouts, strategically placed to prompt a series of big-city inside jokes about guns and wireless internet. Which is a shame, since rural ambassadors Sam Elliott (Tombstone) and Mary Steenburgen (Melvin and Howard) could have delivered much more with better material. Elliott and Steenburgen play Clay and Emma, a U.S. Marshall and his wife who take the targeted witnesses into their rustic country home, which itself serves as joke fodder for at least half the film.

Paul and Meryl, prancing about helplessly, are far too nice to embody the edge and wit of New York’s urban elite. The audience is left with New York caricatures (Where’s my latte?!) using cardboard cut-out cowboys (Well, howdy, stranger!) to crack jokes that entirely miss the essence of city-slickers and prairie-dwellers. And far worse than their mischaracterization of personalities, the jokes – if you haven’t guessed – aren’t all that funny. One bright spot is the casting of Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss as Jackie, Meryl’s uber-type-A personal assistant. She manages to steal three or four scenes as she bosses around and at one point maces Paul’s assistant, Vincent (Michael Kelly, Changling).

The only emotional response prompted by Did You Hear About the Morgans? was guilt about grading The Proposal so harshly. Just like economic data, I may have to go back and publish some revisions.

GRADE: D
DIRECTOR: Marc Lawrence
RUNTIME: 1:43
RATING: PG-13

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Tags: did you hear about the morgans?, elisabeth moss, hugh grant, mary streenburgen, michael kelly, morgans 2009, Movie review, movies, romantic comedy, sam elliott, sarah jessica parker

Context-Free Highlights From My Personal Diary

22Dec09

R.I.P. Light of Truth. Born in glory, died Dec. 22, 2009.

“The only failure I will accept is death.”

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Tags: diary

Bring Out Your Dead

22Dec09

– Arnold Stang, Milquetoast Actor, Dies at 91

– Robin Wood, Film Critic Who Wrote on Hitchcock, Dies at 78

– Mary Curtis-Verna, Opera’s Champion Pinch-Hitter, Dies at 88

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Tags: dead, death, obituaries

Context-Free Highlight From My Personal Diary

21Dec09

“It probably helped that I looked like a longshoreman, with my wool hat, broken sunglasses and dark coat.”

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Tags: diary, random

Life in the Boarding House

21Dec09

Most magazines on the community table are about guns and fish, so I decided to spice things up by adding islands/sex/drugs/rock n' roll. My mags went in a day; the guns and fish mags are still there.

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Tags: boarding house, island magazine, photos, rolling stone, South Dakota

Context Free Highlight From My Personal Diary

20Dec09

“- the buckle just came off. In retrospect, I might have been able to repair this, but I had already thrown it in a trash bin in front of the police station at 7:15 this morning,”

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Tags: context free, diary

Haiku

19Dec09

stepping on sleeted
railroad tracks, I squint to find
a vanishing point

turning from hostile
wind to deserted rails, I
can’t quite comprehend

Far Away I see
animals, or machines, or
dreams. maybe shadows.

women with their hair
done-up drive by the tracks. I
wonder after them {[?}]

pines sugared in snow,
but green clings to
their rear flanks

treading on other
footprints (=) drowsy universe
I won’t awaken

:::flakes::::extra:::silence:::
:frosted::pines::delivered::by:
::air:::by:::cloud:::blankets::

so many footprints:
the day long gone, and we all
romped our feet through snow

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Tags: Haiku, photographs, Photography, photos, poetry, snow, Watertown

Context-Free Highlight From My Personal Diary

19Dec09

“Why can’t I talk shirtsleeves? No, it’s all good.”

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Tags: CFHFMPD, diary

Toby the Twinkie Sunbathes Beneath the Light of Truth

14Dec09

It just gets weird around here after 5 p.m. . . . .

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Tags: photo, Photography, pictures, twinkie