Annihilating Winged Film

Silliness on Road to New Jersey

A very calm if satisfying New Year’s Day if sad because we are bereft of a certain one year old filling up the house. I can at least now slam the door to the garage without worrying about how much noise it makes in the upstairs bedroom. Speaking of the garage I’d forgotten that special “fragrance” the accumulating rubbish of a house stocked with one of those one year olds can be. A small price to pay for her luminous presence.

Surgeon at Work

I say satisfying because the Patriots concluded their regular season with a convincing win over the Miami wannabes. The Patriots concluded with the best record in football which must be most confounding to those slope-shouldered, pencil necks in the New York NFL offices. Brady was his usual surgical self and delivered a dagger just when the fins thought they were climbing back into the game. He hit Edelman with a short pass and he was in turn sprung free by a devastating block that the Miami player’s ancestors must have felt. The road to the super bowl now appropriately runs through Foxborough. We’ll see how many of those pencil necks make the trip.

The Block - Ouch!

There was some sad news in the neighborhood late on New Year’s Eve. The neighborhood Mafioso lost her mom just before midnight. She had been in seriously declining health for a very long time but that doesn’t mitigate in any way the pain associated with losing your mom. My wife had tasked me with making one of my standard holiday turkey dinners for yesterday. We just increased the amounts and delivered it to the grieving house. They’re such good friends that I wish we could do more.

I recently finished a book my daughter had gifted me, Annihilation, by Jeff Vandermeer. She had really enjoyed it and since it involved a post-apocalyptic theme she thought I might as well (she knows me). It wasn’t what I expected but that was a good thing. The story involves a mysterious “natural” zone that poses some kind of undefined danger to whatever team is sent into to explore it. The latest team, composed of four women, venture into the zone and immediately become acquainted with those dangers. The book is extremely well written and luckily the first of a trilogy so the story will continue. My daughter received the next two books for Christmas and once she saw how much I enjoyed Annihilation she left them for me to read. She’s a special kind of awesome.

She has also repeatedly and anxiously recommended the film La La Land. Which she has managed to see three times in the past week. I thought it might have been about the whole Ryan Gosling thing combined with him playing a keyboard player (and her known affinity for that species). My wife and I went to see it last night and I was wrong. La LA Land is about dreamers. It tells a simple love story but the more important message it to hold on to your dreams. L.A. is probably the sun center for dreamers and this was a poignant ode to them. While most movies expose the heartbreak of broken dreams, and while there’s some of that here, it’s mostly about possibilities. You’ll hear more about the song and dance numbers which are dazzling but this movie is all about heart. While Gosling is very good this film belongs to Emma Stone who tells the entire story through her eyes. I’m sure there will be thousands of would be actresses trying to line up self-financed one woman shows after seeing this but none of them are Ms. Stone. I’m not big on song and dance movies but there was an imbedded magic to this flick that drew me in. Great movie; I’m proud that my daughter likes it so much.

Artiste at Work

The Californian contingent continues their New Jersey adventure, hopefully falling in love with east coast living again. The First Blog Reader is apparently exploring her artistic side (you know she’s going to have one considering her parentage). Today’s photos included both art and music. The piano must have been something Wingman was especially proud of. Boy, do I miss having them around!

Pounding the Keyboards

Is a Handstand Next?

Story Time with the Hosts