When my daughter and Wingman moved out
to California I thought I only had to worry about earthquakes, wildfires, mudslides,
gang violence, and the whole state falling into the Pacific Ocean theory. I
didn’t think I’d have to worry about mass shootings, call it naiveté. The San Bernardino
massacre took place about sixty miles east of them but it still had me anxious
when the news first broke. The motivations behind the attack are still murky
but the shooters were Islamic and initial reports say the husband was born here
while the wife came from Saudi Arabia, which is where they were married. I know
the administration for strategic reasons will try to downplay the Saudi
connection but how many more people have to die before we acknowledge them as
the sun source of Sunni terrorism. You
can trace all of the recent attacks and ISIS itself back to the flawed edicts
of Saudi religious leaders. It sounds the like this was a case of the American
gun culture combined with radical Islam – talk about a worst case scenario.
This time of year the cinema gets flooded
with movies of both the blockbuster and Oscar trolling variety. My wife and I took
in The Secret in their Eyes which is a re-make of an eminently superior
Argentinian film which I had forgotten I’d seen until reminded by my daughter
later. The plot doesn’t translate well to an American milieu. Julia Roberts is
staggeringly good and definitely discards the glam for her role as the mother
of a murdered daughter. Chiwetel Ejiofor is usually very good but he flails
around a little too much here, clearly fighting above his weight with Roberts
and achieving zero chemistry with Nicole Kidman. I lay the blame, as I usually
do with former Mrs. Cruise, with Kidman. She was in her ice princess mode which
robbed the film of the “denied love affair” between Ejiofor’s character and her
which was so poignant in the Argentinian movie.
They make a serious mistake by making the
murder victim the daughter of one of the law enforcement agents. The
preposterous concept that other agents would protect the murderer just doesn’t
work – totally unbelievable. They also minimize the importance of the title and
what that meant to the investigator. I really looked forward to this movie but
it falls flat which is a searing indictment of the filmmakers when they’re
blessed with this quality in their cast.
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| Cuteness Personified! |
Of course this wouldn’t be a Frail
Deeds Dancing post if I didn’t pause to acknowledge the superb character and peerless
beauty of my granddaughter who is now officially three weeks old. I forgot to download
the daily batch of photos this morning so you’ll have to make do with this one
which includes yet another outfit we bought during my wife’s shopping foray on
my second day in LaLa Land.
Finally I’m saying goodbye a Mathew
Scudder as I finished the last of the currently published novels by the incomparable
Lawrence Block with A Drop of the Hard Stuff. I have a very real habit
of thinking of my literary heroes as friends so when I finish the last works
they appear in I feel I’ve lost a friend; at least for a while. Block still
fairly prolific so I can hope Scudder will return at some point in the future
but now I have to wait (not my strong suit) instead of having another one
waiting for me. I’m weaning myself off the addiction by reading a collection of
Scudder short stories collected into book. I also completed the list of
locations I’m going to make a pilgrimage to at some point next year. Some are
fictional while others do exist. New York City and the fringe of Hell’s Kitchen
were vibrant characters in all Scudder novels and I feel a need to go there if
for no other reason than to say I did. The locations include: Paris Green Restaurant,
Armstrong’s, the Morning Star Diner, St Paul’s Church, the Flame Diner, Parc
Vendome, the hotel across street, Grogan’s, Elaine’s shop, as well as a few
others.
A Drop of the Hard Stuff is another flashback story, set in the
first year of Scudder’s sobriety. A childhood friend who became a career
criminal reconnects with Matt through AA and is killed shortly thereafter.
Scudder’s sense of justice impels him along a path towards the killer who
solves problems by removing the person causing the problem. When the killer
becomes aware of Scudder he is classified as a problem therein leading to a
typical Block concluding, grayish confrontation. I’m going to miss Matt, a lot,
and I’ll leave you with some of his words from A Drop of the Hard Stuff:
I
was a problem for him. And I knew what solution he’d look for. When your only
tool is hammer, they say, then every problem looks like a nail. I lay there in
the darkness and wondered if I was afraid. I decided I was, but not of dying,
not exactly. If I’d died a year ago, if I’d died drunk, that would have been as
awful an ending as my life could have had. But I’d stayed sober for a year, and
if I didn’t feel like celebrating, that didn’t mean I didn’t cherish the
accomplishment. And if I died now, well, nobody could take that away from me.
Cold comfort, I suppose, but better than no comfort at all. What I was afraid
of, I realized, was that there was something I could do about this, and that I
wouldn’t be able to figure it out.
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