Episode 41: "Perfectus Interruptus"

That's what Boston Globe sportswriter Dan Shaughnessy called the end of the New England Patriots' almost-perfect season in the Super Bowl. Geezer has been a Giants fan since they won the championship in 1956, and he's been wallowing in this latest afterglow since Sunday night. I've seen The Play at least forty times, but when Eli (up there on the right) rips away from three Patriots to whip a 35-yard pass to Tyree(on the left), who catches it against his helmet, chills still wriggle up my spine.
My son, the computer genius, and I can't get enough of the retelling of the game, easily the biggest upset of the decade, scanning the Internet by the hour for more. A Lowell (MA) paper put out a day-after edition headlined "18 and Uh-Oh".
The same Globe columnist wrote: "The Patriots lost the Super Bowl. It is an alternate universe. It does not compute. It's like hearing Tony Bennett singing, "I Left My Heart in Ashtabula" or seeing a photo of Mitt Romney with his hair messed up."

Delicious.

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"Too much success is not wholly desirable; an occasional beating is good for men - and nations,"
- Alfred Thayer Mahan, 1897

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I'm Not Leaving
Life is way too interesting, especially these days. There's the Super Bowl (next year: Manning v. Manning?), and then there's this campaign. The Democrats had the best lineup Geez can remember and I would happily have voted for any of the top four, with few reservations. Now that the slate is down to two, though, it's time to choose. Some questions and observations about Hillary:
*After all those 35 years of experience, she finally "found her voice" in New Hampshire a few weeks ago?
*She did many admirable works in those 35 years, especially in service of children. Why doesn't she give us details, instead of simply parroting "35 years" over and over?
*She can bob and weave all she wants, but the fact is she voted for the war in Iraq. Her published policy to bring it to an end is to keep a substantial force in that devastated country until 2013! And even then, she'd leave troops there afterwards for an indefinite period. Is she that hot to show us how tough she'll be?
*Finally - and this may be just the projection of one long-married old guy - but she has a way of responding to issues that is guaranteed to drive boys and men up the wall from the day they start understanding words.
She has called Obama "naive and irresponsible" for saying he'd speak to adversaries without prior assurances of progress. When cracks like that and worse from her pending co-president angered Obama enough to fight back at one debate, she smiled that smug maternal smile and said he was "just frustrated". Hillary, he wasn't frustrated, he was pissed off!
That passive-aggressive tone is familiar to every man who has ever co-habited with a woman. It manifests itself when she says sweetly, a block away from their driveway, "Shouldn't we get directions?" And especially when she utters the most dreaded phrase in the language:
"We have to talk."
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Geezer's Indispensable Movie Guide
With Oscars on the way, we've checked out most of the major flicks under consideration. (Two of the perks of retirement are discounted senior tickets and catching the first Tuesday show. Much of the time , we have the entire theater to ourselves.) My takes:

No Country For Old Men**** is a Coen Brothers bloodbath, riveting, brutal and uncompromising. I liked it. It felt real, right down to the ambiguous ending that annoyed some reviewers. The Spanish actor who plays the killer serves up the most chilling portrayal in recent memory.
Charlie Wilson's War **shows off Tom Hanks' graceful slip into middle age. He plays a real-life politician, a womanizer and drinker and all-around playboy who gets caught up in the plight of Afganistan at the time of the Russian occupation. Much of the dialog and situation is hilarious, some of it painful. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a C.I.A. operative with his customary intelligence.
Michael Clayton***isn't doing much box office. It's too adult. Only one murder and one explosion. George Clooney, who got way more than his share of looks and intelligence when those were handed out, plays a fixer for a major New York law firm. He doesn't try cases, he smooths over difficulties in which favored clients and fellow partners embroil themselves. It's essentially a legal thriller, professionally constructed, with uniformly capable acting.
Atonement*is severely over-praised. It is essentially a weepy chick flick as might be produced by Masterpiece Theatre. It contrasts gorgeous scenes of the upper-crust English countryside with the clamorous events of the Dunkirk evacuation in the second World War. There are no complaints with the photography, settings, or acting. But the script/director insists on a back-and-forth structure of continuous "Four Months Later", "Two Weeks Earlier", "Three Years After" that is both maddening and unnecessary. The coda is as depressing as these things get.
There Will Be Blood**stars Daniel Day-Lewis, who is, as we know, a powerful actor who elevates any film in which he appears. He has the role of an oilman in the early decades of exploration of the 20th Century. His character is ruthless and unbending in pursuit of his goal - making money. He professes to love his adopted son, but with the kind of shaky commitment that pulls him into frequent compromises. At the end, despite a good exit line, viewers have to wonder what was the point of making the film.
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