The push to Thursday

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Hey, Wednesday is tomorrow. After tomorrow night, I am concert-free for awhile. Well, until next week’s nursing home gig, but that will be fun and relaxing. Then there’s the Cavs game in March, followed by May: the Month from Hades. But let’s not think about that today. There is much Christmasing to be done.

Last night’s concert went quite well, despite having a 6-foot 6-inch young man pass out on the top row (thank heavens for safety rails on the back of my riser sections). He’d just flown in from basketball practice, and was exhausted and probably dehydrated. The kids around him handled it well, as did the audience. And a great audience it was — polite, quiet and respectful of the kids. Thumbs way up.

Middle school concert tomorrow, then it’s smoooooth sailin’, cap’n. Bring on the Christmas music.

Ack, what am I saying?

:-?

Do. You. Have. Your. Shopping. Done. Fiends?

Review: Hugo

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Talk about unexpected.

Yesterday, good fiend Tom Hanks and I went to see the new Martin Scorsese film, Hugo.

Based on the children’s book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the story centers around an orphaned son of a clock maker who lives secretly within the walls of the clock towers in a busy 1930s Paris train station. He keeps the clocks running during the day, and by night, works to solve a mystery — one directly tied to the father he misses so much — locked inside a non-functioning automaton his dad found rotting in a museum.

This is not a children’s film, in that there are no blazing special effects (although the CG and 3D were masterfully done), and actually very little extended dialogue. Things are left for the viewer to discover; to experience; to pull from the tale’s framework. It is a touching, moving and tender story of a sad little boy with a heart full of love and a penchant for adventure, and no one to share it with, until that one day…

The casting, typical of Scorsese, is flawless. The child actors are completely effective: no pandering or becoming tiresome. The somewhat sparse script, while a bit slow to start, wastes not a single word. Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen and Christopher Lee are brilliantly believable. The colors in the cinematography are not to be believed, however. Seriously, the photography will knock you out. The only way to drive that point home is to provide some stills, taken from the movie’s website:

~

You simply must see this film. Not only is it cinegraphically (is that a word?) and verbally beautiful, but there’s a fantastic side-story surprise buried about halfway through, in the form of a delightfully entertaining, visually stunning history of filmmaking and film preservation — a subject near and dear to Scorsese’s heart.

On the Rat-O-Meter scale of five cheeses, I give Hugo:

Great movie, great company, great afternoon. Done and done.

Now it’s on to the insanity of the next 72 hours. We shall overcome……………………..

FO

See, here’s the thing.

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It’s all over Facebook:  the latest indignant foot stomp about the whole “Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays” thing. Behold the official RtB stance:

I say “merry Christmas.” I say “happy holidays.” Why does it have to be one and not the other? What’s wrong with saying “happy Hanukkah” to a Jewish person, or “blessed Kwanzaa” to an African American, or “good winter solstice” to a religiously unaffiliated friend? What’s the big hairy deal? Is America not the great tossed salad, where liberty — both secular and sacred — reigns? So the government would rather we use generic terms to describe this time of year. Yeah, so? It’s part and parcel of the free society. People who make you feel guilty over saying “merry Christmas” are not “making” you feel guilty; you’re allowing them to make you feel guilty. So, don’t. Somebody dissing your beliefs? It happens all the time. Don’t give them the time of day.

Do you feel ooky at the fact that we all sing “White Christmas,” even though its composer was Jewish? It didn’t matter to Irving Berlin, fiends, so it shouldn’t matter to us. Life’s too short.

And for those who constantly yammer about how the “founding fathers” did things…I say HA to you. If I had the time, I would go into more detail about some of the practices in which our “founding fathers” engaged. It might make some think twice. But it’s all about selectivity, isn’t it? We like this or that rule, so we’ll pick the ones we want and ignore the rest.

Buuuuuuuuuuut….it’s time for me to wake up the Js and get them gussied for their CHRISTMAS program at church this morning. :-)

Merry Christkwanzakkah solstice!

Checking in again

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All right, fiends — how is your weekend shaping up?

Last night, the Thriller and I went to M-town to get a few things, and ended up going to five different places, including a stop we rarely make: the mall.

At that mall is a lovely store in which I could spend the better part of a day (and of my paycheck): yikes. But I managed to escape with only this new little toy, and God bless the Thriller, he bought me a new griddle, which I’m not even sure will fit on my tiny little kitchen counter top. S’ok — I’ll use it on the dining room table. Kidding. :-)

The Js arrive tonight for a fun sleepover, which means I have got to get to work today. So little to do, so much time. Stop. Wait. Reverse that.

Happy Saturday! I’m off to check off the list.