Mo Flicks

SheWhoMustBeObeyed and I watched 13
Conversations About One Thing.
I watched it a second time with the four big
boys. It wasn't your typical Murkin movie that
spells everything out and ties everything up
in a tidy little package. The movie was little
slices of peoples lives chopped up and shown
non-sequentially. Yet, all of the lives told
interrelated stories. The conversations are
about happiness, but they aren't preachy,
moralistic, or even always right. Guilt,
selfishness, ambition, sacrifice, joy,
frustration, and a bunch other adjectives
muddle up happiness, but don't alwaysderail it.
I can puzzle on this movie for a long time.
It has depths.

The biggest boy bought Pan's Labyrinth.
This was a weird, but compelling movie. Set
with a backdrop of the Spanish Civil War and
the (correctly portrayed) evil Facists. It
also had the righteous (incorrectly portrayed)
Communists - right down to their red stars. But,
I mustn't let my anti-soviet biases ruin a good
review of a good movie.] The movie concerns a
little girl torn between the horror of the
real world and the horror of Fairy. Her real
home she is surprised to find out is in Fairy,
but how she has to get there is the real story.
There is sacrifice, deliverance, and redemption,
but that reflects more of the catholic than of the
lapse in the lapsed catholic director's effort.
The movie is violent and not for the kiddies.

ofs

Finally a Flower

It's taken five years for my jacaranda to
finally have blooms, but it's been worth it.
In full bloom, this is one awesome tree and why
I live in the sub-tropics. Yankeevania just
can't compete.

Click the link to see a mature tree in bloom.

ofs

I can't really claim to be an old
rock and roller, but I do like a lot of
classic rock. My kids know it far better
than I do. For my birthday this year, my
two biggest boys bought tickets to see
Peter Frampton. I haven't been to a concert
since Molly Hatchet at the Great Southern
Music Hall back in the late '70s.

The show was pretty good. I, of course,
enjoyed when he played the songs I knew
off of Frampton Comes Alive.
The newer instrumental stuff was good, but
I didn't connect with it as well. Frampton
himself was a lot of fun. The crowd kept
yelling "LOUDER". He offered
to crank it up to where our ears would bleed.
I was surprised at the sea of fat, bald people.
Frampton himself wasn't fat, but he ain't got
no hair no more. He even joked about that too.
I guess if I do have to turn fifty this year,
a good rock concert isn't a bad way to do it.

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