Happy May Day

My current job requires quite the upper body workout, daily, which is nice.

I've been distracted by a small medical drama in my family, but everyone's still alive, so I'm reasonably happy.

I don't know why people get in such a tizzy about how green Ireland is. Right now, looking outside, I am pretty bowled over with a bright, verdant green. Certainly, the New England greenery is broken up by more houses and roads and unsightly monstrosities than Ireland. But give it time. Ireland will soon blot out its luscious green hills, too.

I am often curious to see films that I don't want to support by actually paying to see them. Since piracy is illegal and you are unlikely to meet a bigger goody two-shoes than myself, I have to resort to borrowing the films from the library. This is quite the trend, and if I'm going to be honest, the residents of Wallingford don't borrow many books from our library, but they sure do pack away the DVDs.

Anyhow, I borrowed, among several books, Marie Antoinette, which is an extraordinarily beautiful film, as if Valentine's Day and spring and all that is luxurious and lovely had been boiled down and made into a perfume that Sofia Coppola snorted as she wrote the script. I don't remember being that impressed with Versailles, but then again, the place wasn't spiked on tarts and petit-fours either, and in person, extravagance doesn't really do anything for me anyway. I'm more of a Skid Row kind of gal myself, and I find a flood of gold inlay rather mundane compared to the grit of, let's say, Montmarte after dark (or hell, anytime of the day). Back to the film, it's 2 hours and it's not terribly exciting... I can imagine getting extremely restless in the theater, but despite by my general lack of enthusiasm for anyone associated with that film (though casting Rip Torn as King Louis the whateverth was nothing short of genius), there was actually nothing wrong with it. It was a good movie. I mean, why is The Squid and the Whale allowed to be lauded despite the fact that it's pretty damn dull, but not MA? I don't know. The film certainly made Marie Antoinette a sympathetic character, and we will never know for certain whether she was indeed simply the product of her circumstances or, in fact, a spoiled little bitch. I have met both sorts of people, but I have never met any Austrians, so we'll have to leave it at that.

My sister, who is more of an impulse shopper, rented Bobby, which, while mildly educational for those of us born after the RFK assassination, was only half about Bobby. OK, a quarter. The other quarter was about the other people who were shot at the Ambassador. And the other half was actually about how it is kind of important who is president. Because a man who puts the environment, race relations, and class problems at the forefront is going to do different things for a country than someone who doesn't care about any of those things. And that was 40 years ago. All in all, it's not a great film, but it's worth watching.