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| R.I.P. Toby |
A sad note to report from my phone conversation
with the favorite son last night; the ABFA’s parents lost one of their two cats
this week to a paralyzing blood clot. Toby was a great cat and entirely too
young to depart from the realm. He was always greeted us when we arrived and
monitored out behavior while there from his family room perch. I’ll always
remember him from the rehearsal dinner last year. We were moving things to the
basement to make room for the tables and he refused to leave the perch as it
was moved – it was one of the signature moments from the Best Weekend #2.
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| That Moment From Last Year |
I know the ABFA’s hurting right now
and my son will certainly not burn through any more laser light batteries with
Toby’s absence. I’m not a big cat advocate but I really enjoyed being around
Toby. Losing a pet is never easy or something just you slough off. Non-pet
owners will never understand as the beasts truly capture a part of your heart during
their all too brief existence. Toby’s was briefer than it should have been and
he’ll be missed and I’d like to apologize to him posthumously about the whole
the Buddy visit.
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| Toby on Perch with his Partner in Crime |
On a decidedly more positive note my two
California ladies reported in after their latest pre-natal doctor’s visit. The
First Blog Reader continues to develop healthily along with his/her mother.
They re-calibrated the machine that estimates the baby’s current weight which provided
some relief to the future mom. Last week’s measurement had the baby well over eight
pounds already with three weeks till arrival (ouch). After recalibration this
week had the baby back in the more reasonable seven pound district.
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| Progress Continues Apace |
I braved Hurricane Patricia’s remnants
last night to escape the empty house and see Bill Murray’s latest movie – Rock the
Kasbah. I should have stayed home. I’m a huge Murray fan and he’s the only
thing remotely watchable in this, well he and some of Kate Hudson’s hooker
outfits (but I digress). Murray plays a has-been rock manager who takes one of
his musical acts on a USO tour of Afghanistan where he’s promptly abandoned. He
falls in with a bunch of scruffy ex-pats working the fringes of the war and
hilarity ensues. At least it should have.
Some major stars populate the fringes
of the plot but this is Murray’s movie and it’s just not funny. The jokes are
flat and the situations a little too raw to joke about. Even when IEDs don’t
kill anybody other than the odd goat and even a major Alamo style shootout is
hinted at despite serving as the focal point of the plot line, Afghanistan is
just not humorous. If this was billed as a story of courage of a young Afghan
girl fighting her medieval culture’s ban against her singing, which is really
what the movie’s about, then it might have worked. This doesn’t and isn’t worth
the watch, despite Murray and those outfits.
I polished off the latest in my march
through the Matthew Scudder novels with A Long Line of Dead Men by
Lawrence Block. I’m starting to get that itchy feeling knowing that there’s only
a few left, why do I do this to myself. Block has really found his stride with
Scudder by this point. He’s married him off to his longtime girlfriend who
provides a great foil for his musings. While Scudder remains the story teller
and focal point Block has populated his life with recurring characters, like
his faithful assistant, TJ, a street wise African-American kid as well as a crime
lord best friend to truly flesh out Scudder’s existence.
Scudder is called upon by a men’s club
that only meets once a year but whose membership has experiencing an increasing
number of deaths. Scudder plows in with his usual dogged persistence and tracks
down the mystery to its roots. When the source of the evil is contained they
arrive at a truly elegant solution to the problem. As always New York City
plays a central role as Scudder’s stalking grounds. I’m going to miss Matthew
but I’ve still got a few to go, so I’m not going to dwell on it. Here are some of Lawrence Block’s words from A Long Line of Dead Men. Scudder is explaining his methods, kind of:
I
have been detecting one way or another for so long that certain parts of the
process have become virtually automatic for me. Now and then in recent years I have
looked around for some other way to make a living and invariably I have
realized that this is what I do, that I am reasonably good at it, and that my
experience and talent equip me for nothing else. And yet I don’t begin to
understand it. Sometimes it’s reasonably straightforward. You go up one side of
the street and down the other, you knock on every door, figuratively and
literally, and each new piece of data clicks into place and points you toward a
new street, with new doors to knock on. Finally you’ve walked down enough
streets and knocked on enough doors, and the final door opens and there’s your
answer. It’s not easy and it’s rarely simple, but there is a logic to the way
it unfolds. But it’s not always like that. Sometimes it’s like a jigsaw puzzle.
You separate all the straight edge pieces and get the outside hooked together,
and then you sort by color, and you try that until you’ve made a little
progress. And you’re looking for a certain piece, and it’s not here. It’s got
to be missing, and you want to write to the manufacturer and complain, and then
you pick up a piece you’ve already tried in that particular spot three or four
times already, and you know it’s not the one you’re looking for, but this time
it fits. It’s not always like that, either.
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| Today's Endeavor |
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