Pinter's "The Homecoming"

We think this would be a play worth driving all the way to NYC to see. Alas, the money is now mostly gone. Ian McShane and the rest. Pinter's "The Homecoming". Never heard of it before now.

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/theater/reviews/17home.html?th&emc=th

One finds it increasingly hard to scribble these dispatches. The end seems closer than ever. We won't complain. We've had our moments, chances to hang onto a decent stake, but the compulsion to lose is just too overwhelming. Of course, that's the whole point: Winning would mean to having to go on, and THAT we don't really want to do. These things are always a mystery anyway. Some end up being just bigger mysteries than others. Same old story, just another iteration--gambling, booze, food, laziness, terminal inertia. The last two, we suppose, are the same: Sloth. They aren't just whistlin' dixie when they write about those seven sins as being deadly.

We dropped by the Colorado Train Museum today. Lot's of tears. Our father was the son of a boiler-maker in Wichita. He loved trains, especially the old steam locomotives. He worked as an industrial insurance inspector for many decades with what was then called Kemper. I think he was also certified to inspect some nuclear stuff as well. I regret that I didn't fully debrief dad before his death in 1995 at a diner in Switzerland during a trip focused on trains.

Well mother seems OK, comfortable. Sister Grace now has my (brother's) kitty cat and also seems OK. Maybe we just wanted to see some stability. We are the only decidedly not OK--at least in this life. What was remaining of the money is mostly gone. Work is but a distant memory. Just playing out the string. Perhaps the little long-term rental car will be our tomb?

Heard dear Mayor Hick on KOA. Talking about tough love for the homeless. One can only imagine how distorted are those homeless statistics that hizzoner throws out. We suppose tough love might be the only cure for anonymousbuyer. It also might a cure worse than the disease. Which statistic do we want to be? I used to have that structure that a job confers. Used to....

It HAS been a good run. Pity to think about ending just short of the dawn of our forty eighth year. Movies, books. All ultimately meaningless. Like television, just another way to kill time.

The play "Becket" is an interesting read. The movie understandable is quite faithful to the play. Fun reading the play in the voices of O'Toole and Burton. Becket was a man searching for meaning and he found it in God.

Goosebump moments:
----KOA playing "Houston" by Dean Martin on the day of Thursday's Bronco game in Houston.
----Irv and Joe and Jim on 950thefan: Joe mentioning Merle Haggard's song"I Take A Lot of Pride in What I Am". Also the title of a Dino album and a great cover version of that song.

Watched Dean and Jerry in "At War With The Army" this morning. Dean is and was everything. That'll be the hardest thing to let go of, but we're close....

Reading a Robert Mitchum bio at Tattered. Very interesting fellow. Born same year as Dino and died two years later, in 1987. "Five Card Stud" is an all-time favorite.

We went through the book "1001 Movies To See Before You Die". We tallied it up and it turns out we've seen about 225 from the list. We wonder if you could get all of them from netflix? Quite a few relatively obscure silents and foreign films. A few worthy favorites of ours, however, didn't make the list: House of Games, A Face In The Crowd, Ace In The Hole, Romance (French). "Airport" is worth seeing and it's on cable all the time. The Young Lions, Some Came Running. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Becket. The Killing. Cannonball Run 2. As we leafed through all those movies we were reminded of the year we saw a particular movie at the Mayan or Chez Artiste. I remember seeing Pulp Fiction four or five times. Mulholland Drive, same thing. And "Memento" was worth seeing more than once.