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The Christmas Special

The Christmas Special

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In preparation for family visiting since last week, I did something I seldom do around the holidays: got ahead of the game. Christmas cards are written and mailed. Cookies are baked. Gifts are purchased and (almost) wrapped. 

While there may be trips for last-minute items, for the most part I have a little more time than I usually have. I won’t say I’m caught up, but holiday preparations are flowing along at a slightly more leisurely pace than they usually do. And that means I can linger at the breakfast table and work in a walk here and there. 

When I was young I remember Mom sighing this time of year, saying that if only she could finish all the buying/wrapping/baking, she’d have time to settle down and watch one of those Christmas specials on TV. I think what she was wishing for was time to savor what she had created — the ever-elusive pause before the chaos of Christmas Eve and Day. 

It’s still dark outside, but so far I’m the only one awake. I’m about to stream a holiday movie. It’s my Christmas special. 

Making Do

Making Do

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This morning while doing what passes for a quick clean of my kitchen with paper towels and disinfectant spray I was thinking about the house maids in “Downton Abbey,” which I’ve been rewatching recently.

When I view the excess that attends the lives of the Earl of Grantham and his family I feel disgust laced with envy. How dare they consume all those resources for just one family (a family of two parents and three daughters, exactly the size of my own)? 

But then, quick on its heels, this rueful observation: Wouldn’t it be nice if I had a cook, a gardener, a chauffeur and a scullery maid?

My house is seldom spic-and-span. It’s tidy, but not scrupulously clean. Long ago I realized that in order to raise children, write and bring in some income, standards would have to slip. And slip they did.

Now I have more time but I’ve learned to live with stains on the carpet and smudges on the walls. Truth to tell, if a crew from Downton Abbey were suddenly to offer its services, I might have to think a minute before I said yes. 

Chariots of Fire

Chariots of Fire

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It’s pretty corny, but I did it anyway, played “Chariots of Fire” on my i-pod as I made my way down the beach yesterday. I was looking for an inspiring piece, one that would pump up the pace a bit, and that one did the trick. 

There was the familiar opening salvo, the electronic pulses, the melody itself. In my mind’s eye I saw the 1924 Olympic athletes splashing through the surf, recalled their stories, their motivations for running, each of them different, each of them their own. 

While I can’t claim any speed records I did feel the thrill of that music. And since I was running — well, mostly walking — on a beach then, too, well … you get the idea. It was fun, it was exhilarating, it was a movie-lovers beach walk.

(A still from the beach-running scene in the film “Chariots of Fire,” courtesy Wikipedia.) 

On Midwives and Texas

On Midwives and Texas

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In my mind now are snippets of the music played in “Call the Midwife.” Not just the opening tune, but the crescendo that signals a baby is about to be born, the whimsical notes that accompany Fred the handyman, and the ecclesiastical chords that sound whenever the nuns gather to pray.

All of this suggests that I watch a little too much “Call the Midwife” — and on that point I plead guilty — but there’s a reason why I do. And it’s worth mentioning on this day we’re all grieving the tragic loss of life in Texas.

“Call the Midwife” takes place in the East End of London in the 1960s. Watching it whisks me into a completely different world from the one I inhabit. It’s a world of poverty, to be sure, but also a world of community. It is not a world without violence but it’s a world where police are armed only with billy clubs and the only children who die are rare ones who, despite the best efforts of the midwives and doctors, do not survive a difficult birth. 

I started re-watching the show a few weeks ago when I was feeling under the weather because it never fails to buoy me up. And you can bet I watched an episode last night to calm myself down. The show distracted me from the thoughts swirling around in my mind so I could fall asleep. But now it’s morning and the thoughts are back:

When will we do something about the gun violence in this country? Whatever it is, it won’t be enough. But it will be a start. And without it … well, I just don’t know what will become of us.

Raft of Hope

Raft of Hope

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When I wrote yesterday’s post I hadn’t yet realized that I’d missed the biggest Oscar news to happen in years. Bigger than when Moonlight’s Best Picture award was momentarily and mistakenly given to LaLa Land in 2017. 

When Will Smith slapped Chris Rock to defend his wife against one of Rock’s jokes, he ignited a storm of controversy that hasn’t let up yet.

What I thought not just after watching clips of that episode but often throughout the three-and-a-half-hour show is how the Oscars —and the world, too — have changed in the last couple of decades, how things have grown darker, starker and meaner. 

At times like these I remind myself of what art can do when it’s at its best: how it salves wounds, promotes understanding, draws us together.  What Ralph Ellison wrote of the novel can sometimes be applied to other arts: “[It] could be fashioned as a raft of hope, perception and entertainment that might help keep us afloat as we tried to negotiate the snags and whirlpools that mark our nation’s vacillating course toward and away from the democratic idea.”

A raft of hope! … I’ll cling to that. 

CODA

CODA

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Before last week the word coda primarily had a musical meaning for me. It was the part of a piece I looked forward to most: the ending. And not just because I might want a piece of music to end—perish the thought!—but because I enjoy the big bombastic finish. 

But last Wednesday, I looked up the Oscar Best Picture nominees to see which ones I’d missed that I might still be able to see … and there was CODA. I read a review. I watched the trailer. I was hooked. I even signed up for Apple TV in order to watch it (and I have notes to myself all over the place reminding me to cancel Apple TV before my trial period runs out). 

It was worth the effort: I finally had a pony in this race. I was pulling for CODA to win last night, enough that I crept downstairs and turned the TV back on not once, not twice but three times after trying in vain to fall asleep before the winner was announced. 

There will be talk this morning about how this was Apple TV’s movie, how Apple beat Netflix to become the first streaming service to boast an Oscar Best Picture. There will be analyses of how business models are changing. All of this is worth talking about. But in the end, it’s all about the story, whether we’re listening to it around an ancient campfire, watching it in a modern multiplex or streaming it alone on our home computer. CODA has a story that lifts us up — and that’s what we need most right now. 

Oscar Season

Oscar Season

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The Academy has spoken and we now have 10 Best Picture-nominated films to rent, stream or (gasp!) see in a theater. 

I think I’m ready for that last one. It’s been more than two years since I’ve entered a darkened auditorium, slunk down into my seat and let the world slip away.

By now there will be a new protocol: tickets purchased in advance, assigned seats; that was already happening but has become more regimented, I imagine. Masks will be required. Perhaps the concession stands will be closed. No popcorn? That would be a hard one to swallow, but not a deal-breaker.

It’s Oscar season. Omicron is waning. Whatever the lay of this new land, I’m willing to travel it. 

Viva Italia!

Viva Italia!

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Like many people these days I find myself relying on streaming entertainment more heavily than I would like. This has become a winter-time occupation, slowly supplanting my race to watch Oscar-bound films in theaters since so many of them are available online.

As we enter our third year of pandemic-enforced staying-put, I’m gravitating toward films that feature faraway climes. Films like “Under the Tuscan Sun.” I read this book years ago, even own a copy of it. I happened upon the movie a couple days ago, looking for something to watch while exercising in the basement. 

What a vision! I don’t mean the sexy Italian guys … I mean the gorgeous Tuscan countryside. There is the walled city of Cortona, the Amalfi Coast marvel of Positano. There are the tall, skinny Italian Cyprus trees, the olive groves, fountains and love of life that flourish in this sunny land.

Oh, I know there are gray days in Italy, too. It’s not the garden of eden. But right now it looks like it to me. 

Photos: courtesy Wikipedia, alas I have no recent Italy photos of my own

Picketing

Picketing

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When you’ve seen a movie as often as I’ve seen “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the lines you may not have noticed on first or second viewings pop out at you later.

One of the exchanges I noticed this past December, during my umpteenth watching of this holiday classic, happens when Mary sees George Bailey walking back and forth in front of her house, presumably getting up the nerve to knock on her door. “Are you picketing?” she asks, in a lovingly jocular way that would come to characterize their relationship.

I think of that line often as I walk Copper, an old doggie whose idea of a long stroll is making it one driveway down and back. First we turn right out of the driveway. After a brief mosey on that side of the yard and a careful sniffing of the planter at the foot of the mailbox, we turn the other way and stroll over to the forsythia and its band of encircling liriope, where there are more sniffs to be had, long lovely inhalations, as if Copper was about to swill a fine wine.

Sometimes we repeat this backing and forthing several times before we go inside. Does it feel like picketing? Absolutely! All we need is a sign: “More meat, less kibble!”

Exorcist Stairs

Exorcist Stairs

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Even watching the trailer sends chills down my spine, so I will probably not be watching “The Exorcist” this Halloween. But tonight I will be attending class right next to the “Exorcist Stairs,” the Washington, D.C. landmark where the movie’s final scene was filmed. 

In this scene, Father Miller, who’s attempting to rid the 12-year-old Regan of the demon, falls from Regan’s window down these narrow steps to his death. According to Culture Trip, the stuntman assigned this task had to fall down the stairs twice to perfect the scene. 

I found the stairs a couple weeks ago after walking past them earlier in my rush to get to class. But once a classmate told me where they were, I made a point to walk them the next week. 

I’m happy to say that I did not fall. But I did huff and puff a little. And I definitely felt a sinister vibe. The stairs are steep and creepy, just as billed, and apparently, if you try to count them, you’ll never come up with the same number twice.