“It is 3:30 on a Tuesday and you are having a drink. As you should be,” she said to her lifelong friend. Hard to argue with that:
The Yankee is modeling in the hallway outside our cabin:
Our cruise director has a Broadway background, and so he was excited about Donna McKechnie, who won a Tony for A Chorus Line in 1976. She was diagnosed with arthritis in 1980 and told she’d never dance again. And then she turned to choreography and television before, in 1996, winning the Fred Astaire Award for Best Female Dancer. Lately she’s touring on this show, Inside the Music, a mix of songs, dances and anecdotes about her life in the theater. She has a beautiful voice. If you can see this show, don’t. It isn’t good. Unless you’re interested in the therapy of others through interpretative song.
At least she recognized “these marvelous musicians,” the cruise group, four people with names she couldn’t be bothered to learn.
This is the best reaction for that:
Just sitting in one of the quiet lounges on the back of the ship:
Sunset:
And now it is time for the creative food carving. Have a dragon:
Because it is June and my site and so on I’ve decided that this will be a week of older pictures. Most of these are on my phone. Some of them have been in this space or elsewhere on the site or in some of the regular social media places before. So they might be old to you — and bless you for still visiting — or they might be brand new.
Enjoy.
It is hard being the black cat. This is some time in the early fall of 2011:
Later that same year we had Thanksgiving on Dauphin Island. We stopped just as we crossed the bridge for sunset pictures:
I’m coming down with it, whatever the sinus-driven, allergy death mojo of the day is. The Yankee got it last week — she was fine when she got on her bike and then after a short ride she was feeling less than her normal best self. And that continued for several days before her medicine took hold.
Me, I got home from my weekend visit to see grandparents, stood outside for about 10 minutes to rinse the bird souvenirs off of my car and came inside feeling it too. So I’m telling myself these are Tennessee Valley allergens, which means I could flush them out of my system soon now that I’m back on the plain.
Otherwise, I have developed local allergies and that would be no good.
The good news is that this seems mostly confined to the region between the third rib and the nasal cavity. The bad news is that I’d rather have pretty much any other part of me not feeling well.
The upside is that it gave me the opportunity to not only listen to, but live this song:
But, I mowed the lawn today. I trimmed back a tree. I took this picture of Allie:
Did some other things. Felt my head swim. Started taking sinus and allergy pills myself. Life is grand.
Adam came over for dinner, and then we all ventured out to the new Dunkin Donuts. It opened today! And it closed this evening. So they aren’t 24-hours yet, after all.
If they were worn out on the first day, this doesn’t bode well. (I’m sure they’ll be fine.)
Finally, if you ignore the reporter, this is the best story you’ll watch all day:
Journalists: Remember your humanity. Remember that, when someone’s life has absolutely been turned upside down, one piece of normalcy makes a difference.
And put the microphone down and help the lady.This is remarkable in that random way that you find lot of the things that happen during and after a cataclysmic event. What a story. And the reporter is … very poor. “Are you able to comprehend yet what happened here?”
The woman is looking over the wreckage of her life. Yes, she has a good grasp on things. Based on the reporter’s speechlessness and poor questions I’m guessing she was either in shock herself or well out of her depth. Even still.
I do like that you can clearly hear that lady say to the journalist “Help me.” We all need to hear that now and again.
Sometimes we should reconsider what being a part of the story is. (Stations write promos about this sort of thing after all, “Our community” and all that.) I don’t have a problem with the position of remove, but not every circumstance warrants it. The dog seemed to be fine in the longer video, for example.
But what if that was her grandchild’s arm reaching out?
It is a tricky thing.
Saw Star Trek: Into Benedict Cumberbatch’s World today:
He’s way too good for this film, and the film is pretty good.
It was a nice summer blockbuster type movie. I’m not convinced these are really Trek films — but that is OK, too. I don’t think you could really make a successful movie — or traditional Trek TV — these days.
My biggest things might be more about me than the movies, but the Kirk swagger now seems more of an impetuous teenager than the devil-may-care, I’m-out-on-the-frontier-making-this-up-as-I-go mentality of the old days. Maybe it is just that I watched the old stuff as a child and saw the Wild West Roddenberry was going after whereas now you see all these layers of bureaucracy because that’s what the world is. Also, the 21st century modern conceits sneaking in as futuristic things I’d rather forego for the bygone 1960s bravado. “You were in a firefight? You need a checkup!” Can you imagine Deforest Kelly saying that to William Shatner? But that’s also what the world is, and it will become, no doubt, more so over time.
Karl Urban is terrific, though. And Simon Pegg has his moments. Zachary Quinto would take over Spock if they’d leave Leonard Nimoy out of it — falling back to him thing is just annoying. Every now and then it seems like Chris Pine is getting the Kirk thing, but I think that he’s just going to kind of stay as he is. Which is fine, these movies are movies for movie fans, not just Trek fans. That’s great. Why would you want to try to reproduce Shatner, anyway?
You know what is most interesting about the entire thing is that comic book fans will accept relaunch after relaunch after relaunch, but Trek fans find this to be a non-starter, hence the alt-universe thing. But, if you think about, if you read comics you’re probably watching Trek. So why will people accept some reboots and not in other universes? Isn’t that interesting?
I think it is because that has happened in the comics for forever, but these characters on screens are more real and perhaps more beloved, at least in a parasocial interaction sense. So you can’t just flip this and start over. Not in Trek. Perhaps in Trek the least of anything. What a weird and wonderful thing.
Biggest problem in the movie? They still aren’t making the ship a character. That’s what is missing. They almost did, but not quite, not really.
There is a chipmunk. Being a chipmunk he tends to move very quickly. The cat has, to my knowledge, never seen him. She is not the most attentive indoor hunter of things outdoors. She’s not the most attentive hunter of things indoors, but I digress.
Anyway, the chipmunk took the time to sun himself today. I was able to get a shot from a fair way off. I have now documented the chipmunk:
Aubie came to visit us at the game tonight. Aubie has a flashing problem:
No one in the family has bothered to confront him yet. I think everyone is waiting for the right time.
He also sat with us for awhile, until the children came calling. Aubie is a ladies man, but he’s all about the kids, too. And so, after a time, he was off to hug little girls and tousle the hair of the young guys.
All of this during a baseball game that Auburn lost to Jacksonville State 6-1.
Grading papers. One student wrote “This class has shaped how I view journalism and will be foundational in my future studies in this major.”
That made my day.
And then I graded on. And on and on.
Still not done.
Two new things on Tumblr, here and here. A lot, lot more on Twitter.
Also I converted that not-quite-good Toomer’s Corner thing I wrote last month into the Big Stories format. You might have read it here or on TWER, but it is a different way of seeing it. Sometimes that makes all the difference. I’m going to use that format for things every now and then. I expect there will be a few additions this summer.
Which is on the way, by the way. Summer, I mean. We hit 79 today. We’ll be in the 80s tomorrow.
Talking with my grandmother Sunday I told her that I knew she’d been frustrated by the spring, with the cold temperatures. She said it was the coldest spring she could remember. And she said she wouldn’t complain about the summer at all. When it gets here.
