Week in Seven Words #504

This covers the week of 9/15/19 - 9/21/19.

bears
She likes being read to while she's being fed. And she likes repeated readings. This time, it's the Berenstain Bears and a dinosaur bone that goes missing from a museum. After the nth such reading, I sit across from her and her dad with a book about a different bear: Corduroy. She switches chairs and settles in for another story that bears repetition.

compliment
She tells me that her favorite teacher, a humanities teacher, resembles me, which is why it's her favorite class.

delights
She repeats the name of her car's model, in bursts of delight.

fisherman
His interest in wrestling has diminished. Now he's into fishing and fishing videos.

peripherality
Not for the first time, I wonder if I were to get up, push my chair back in, and leave, would anyone present care.

perspective
It amuses me when a teenager tries to be shocking. Kid, you don't know how young you look to me.

sonorous
His voice is wrenching. At midnight, the lights flicker out, as if in response to the feelings he has evoked.

Week in Seven Words #345

feline
The cat hops on the chair and places a paw on the table. The human glares at her. The cat gazes into the human's eyes. She places another paw on the table.

gelato
On a warm night, the ice cream store is a cold, clean square of light.

lop
When he plays Clue, he starts to shorten most of the names, maybe because he's trying to sound like a hard-boiled detective. Miss Scarlet becomes 'Scar.' The conservatory is "the serv."

narratives
He comes across short stories of people from a country he doesn't care about. After that, he wants to know more about their struggles and their way of life. He'll ignore a news report, but the short stories humanize them to him.

performing
At the table, the kids interview each other as they pretend to film a talk show. Meanwhile, one of the adults crafts an ostentatious display of temper for the waiter.

pizzazz
Many situations can be improved on with a bit of jazz hands and a song.

reek
The car smells like sweat and onions. Even with the windows rolled down, the smell persists, mixing with the cool wind and swirling through our heads.

Week in Seven Words #306

conspicuous
A Mustang parked outside a condemned brick home. Its front left tire is poised on the edge of a scum puddle.

drearily
His conversation - mostly heavy sighs and talk of how everything is ending.

fastened
They stand on the edge of an empty fountain and embrace.

jive
She stages her skilled, frenetic dance in the narrow aisle between two bookshelves.

myopia
Their need for a scapegoat outweighs anything good she does.

plaster
People's image of themselves can act as their greatest obstacle. They didn't work alone in constructing that self-image. If they ever want to tear parts of it down, they'll need help, perseverance, and tolerance for pain.

squishy
Scooping gobs of warm, wet clothes from the washing machine.

NYC Marathon: Music Video and Some Route Photos

The 2015 New York City Marathon is currently underway. Am I participating? No. Do I care who wins? Also no. But I'm using it as an excuse to post a music video of a singer I like:


Imelda May (I've shared some of her music before). The guy running through the video here is Al Gare, double bass and bass guitar player for her band.

Also, the last Sunday of September I walked the Brooklyn and Queens segments of the marathon route, which takes you through different neighborhoods, each with its own flavor. So I'll share some of those photos here.

Week in Seven Words #258

application
Tentative fingers and solemn attention as she plays a two-handed piece on the keyboard.

finds
Blue shells, brown leaves and a star-shaped badge with a rusted pin.

observance
A hardheaded waitress serves clam chowder to one, fried chicken and a heap of pasta to another. Raises her eyebrow as she hands me my meal, an iced tea.

shifts
His car smells like cake air freshener and newsprint. Magazines slide around under my feet as he drives.

showered
A hole has torn open in the clouds. Light soft as talc sifts down to a bare tree by the water.

trimmed
They can take ten photos of a scene I'm in, and I won't appear in a single one.

variegated
Colonies of salty pools among yellow weeds and striated rock.

Week in Seven Words #250

clear-eyed
They prefer being spoken to sincerely, not smothered in pats and hugs and baby talk - a tone-deaf sort of love.

inconsistent
He's wearing a seatbelt, driving at speed limit, and taking his eyes off the road to check sports news on his mobile device.

jarring
He murders an otherwise good presentation with jokes about mental illness. The laughter that ripples through the room is faint and disbelieving.

projectiles
His parents are too polite to discuss the issue publicly, but he's overheard them hash it out at home. He doesn't understand everything they say, but he knows enough to know they'd be embarrassed. He knows how to make the next family get-together more entertaining.

stashed
She's brought paper shopping bags full of winter clothes and toiletries to an elegant restaurant. The waiters pretend not to see any of it poking out from under the tablecloth.

tickling
His small feet thrumming on the back of my car seat.

what-ifs
To what extent would my life have been different had I grown up next door to him? I consider this as we sit on opposite benches and pick at our salads. He might have been an advisor or advocate. Or maybe still too much removed from what was going on. I might not have listened anyway.

Week in Seven Words #236

dupe
Her way of preserving peace between us is to think that I'm incapable of coming up with my own ideas. My head is a bucket, basically, and other people come along and drop ideas into it. This means that when I disagree with her, it's not really out of my own willfulness; I just didn't protect the inside of my bucket-head well enough. (The alternative is to think of me as a calculating opponent, purposefully against her.)

fibrosis
There are relationships held together by scar tissue and not much else.

indignant
A car protesting at getting towed - its alarm going off in the early morning.

lures
She tosses food to the birds, but not to feed them - only to get them closer to her when she begins her chase.

scattering
Her brain trips her up. She makes rapid deductions, but can't focus well. She chases down each stray piece of information no matter how irrelevant it is.

scholastic
It's a theater of the academic: pants rolled at the ankles, square-framed glasses, bike and backpack, a spotty beard.

staged
The barrel outside the store has filled with rain, and now the lamplight dances in it.

Week in Seven Words #123

buskers
Music waits for us at the subway platforms too - xylophone Disney and Broadway melodies, a guitarist smiling through his performance of The House of the Rising Sun.

incredulous
Being menaced by a sword made out of construction paper.

laboriously
The whine and sigh of taxis, cars, and trucks on the street below, muffled by window glass.

multiprocessing
I sit with my laptop outdoors in front of a dark rectangular pool. When looking up from my work I picture images flickering across the pool, as if it's become a computer screen too, full of scrolling text and pop-up ads.

saccharine
I'm reminded of why I don't like most non-fat frozen yogurts. They taste like sharply sweet coldness.

transport
What an unreal day, floating around on buses and trains.

willful
The child objects to the stroller. As he's folded into it he screams that he wants to walk. When his hollering turns into frustrated tears I can't help feeling bad for him.

Worth Watching: Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)

Title: Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Director: John Hughes
Language: English
Rating: R (because of the f-word monologue)

Synopsis
A couple of days before Thanksgiving, Neal Page (Steve Martin) is wrapping up a tedious business meeting in New York City and plans to fly home to Chicago right after. When he leaves the meeting to rush to the airport, he doesn't expect the stressful convoluted journey that follows: a snow storm diverting his flight from Chicago to Wichita, and from there a scramble to get to Chicago via train, bus and car, in the company of a cheerful blabber-mouthed shower curtain ring salesman, Del Griffith (John Candy), who makes it his personal mission to get Neal home in time for Thanksgiving dinner.

Characters
This is a good buddy film and road trip movie, because it's funny, because Steve Martin and John Candy are wonderful here (the best I've seen them), and because the movie has surprising moments of depth and sadness. Beneath the humor there's sometimes a good amount of pain, and you don't expect it in a movie like this. The characters have humanity.



Del blabs on and on, leaves a mess behind him and laughs at corny jokes. He's big-hearted and friendly, has a large body, lugs a heavy trunk around - a big guy in a number of ways. You can't not notice him. He strikes me as someone who's grateful for any good company or bit of friendliness that comes his way. Happy with little pleasures. He's expansive when it comes to laughter and conversation (or one-sided chatter) but when he's hurt he handles his feelings with restraint, with a bruised dignity; his eyes show a wounded defiance.

It isn't surprising that Neal hurts Del a few times during the movie. Neal is fastidious and reserved, jealous of his personal space. To be thrown into close quarters with a loud messy stranger while his travel plans fall apart is painful for him. He tends to seethe and wince for a while and then snap, hitting at Del or at others with pointed sarcastic insults. But just as Del can be both annoying and lovable, Neal can be "a cold-hearted cynic" (as Del puts it) without coming across as really hateful; inside he's just tired and wants to get home to his wife and kids.

Relationships
From Del, Neal learns to lighten up a little and be more compassionate to others. From Neal, Del learns... it's hard to say. I guess he realizes at one point, sitting in a burned out shell of a car on a snowy night, that he could try to shut up from time to time. Because Neal is the more finicky character, the one who lacks the common touch, his subtle and gradual change of heart is the real focus of the movie.

Del is his friend, whether Neal likes it or not, and most of the time he really doesn't like it; for much of the movie he goes along with Del out of desperation, because he wants to get home. So that's Del's job: to bring him home, and to wear him down while also unintentionally showing him how to be a better person. And they do have some lovely moments of bonding.



Memorable sights and sounds
Owen. Owen wins for memorable sights and sounds. He's a minor character but he looms large in the mind and senses. The way he says "Stubbville." The way he snorts - not a long loud snort, but a little hog noise that makes his unsmiling face contort. And the look on Neal and Del's faces as they take him in, sort of marveling at him and at the circumstances that have brought him into their lives.

Then there's one of my favorite moments in the film: John Candy doing the Mess Around. It's night. Del is driving while Neal sleeps in the passenger seat. And suddenly Ray Charles is on the radio. This is a beautiful moment, because Del is shimmying and bopping his head and puffing on a cigarette as he pretends to play the piano on the dashboard. John Candy, you are missed.

Stand-out scenes
There are a number of little lines and scenes that jump out. Some of the lines don't sound like much when you aren't familiar with the movie. For instance, "you're going the wrong way." But the "you're going the wrong way" scene is a great example of how the filmmakers and actors took what could have been a conventional scenario in a road trip movie and turned it into something unique and funny.

The same can be said for Neal's f-word monologue. It isn't just about the f-word and its gratuitous use. The lines are delivered with exquisite timing and emphasis (Steve Martin I suspect had a lot of fun with this scene). For reasons that I'll leave you to discover, Neal has sort of lost it, broken down a little from the stress and frustration. But he doesn't rave at people. He still has a certain composure. He can explain himself reasonably well. On the receiving end of his monologue is a woman who works at a car rental agency. She has sweet plump cheeks and a hint of poison in her smile. And the final word belongs to her. (She's played by Edie McClurg, who's also the school secretary in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.) One of the things I like about this movie is that as far as I can remember Neal never gets away with being insulting or rude to anyone; there are always consequences for him, or some sort of sharp wake-up call.

Finally when talking about stand-out scenes I have to mention the part where Neal and Del reach Chicago. It gets to me every time.

Further thoughts
One of the reasons I like this movie is because I grew up with it. This might have been the first R-rated film I watched (except for some of the language most of the film is pretty tame, especially by today's standards). I've lost count of how many times I've watched it or parts of it over the years, usually around Thanksgiving. It's a kind of comfort movie for me.




*All images link back to their source (Rottentomatoes)

Week in Seven Words #77

exhaust
Each car streams the heat from its exhaust pipe across my shins.

frangible
Time crumbles away in sweat, sleeplessness, and apathy.

heatwave
The air presses down like an iron, smoothing my clothes flat onto my skin.

kinetic
She makes her day sound exciting, each detail a delight, and something new to learn at every ordinary place she visits.

leadlight
The leaves look like pieces of green stained glass. It's reassuring to see that even when the heat is brutal and they're scorched, they can still endure beautifully.

nitpicky
He argues into his cell phone, loudly and unselfconsciously, about the precise number of tissues he used the night before to blow his nose.

pillbug
There's a little cell inside me, accessed by a hatch, and sometimes I disappear into it, curling up like a pillbug.