Hello and welcome -- short break for vacation coming up.

Just a note to let you know that I'll be posting to this blog only occasionally for the rest of the year. We're timeshare owners and we're off to travel in Nevada and California. When we're gone, we shut down our home computers. (Besides that, we can't think of a good reason to get a laptop since we are both retired.)

Please check the right column for the blogs I follow and perhaps one will interest you. If you care to check this link again in a couple of months, you'll probably find me ambling around.

My husband and I wish you a pleasant fall and winter season. Thanks.

Keep Your Powder Dry Through the Election

See more of Louise August's work at: http://www.estrellafineart.com/louise_august2.htm

We've decided that whatever happens in this 2008 election, we will be rid of "The Emperor and his New Clothes."

That's the good thought.

Beyond that, we'll be in Las Vegas on Election Day. Hopefully, we will take part in a big victory party. We don't gamble or drink (beyond a beer or two, or a couple of glasses of wine) but will check the "spread" on Bush vs. Obama while we are there. Our son and grandchildren will keep us too busy to worry at all.

It's not a bad place to be.

EK

PS -- Ellen's Afterthought:

Fie on you, Alan Greenspan. You will live in infamy!
"The Credit Tsunami = Irrational Exuberance"

&&&&&&&&

Digital Geezer: A View from My Spouse

In April 1957, I moved to Rochester, New York to work for Stromberg Carlson. I had driven my 1949 Chevrolet convertible with a hole in the floor behind the driver’s seat – all the way from Boston to Rochester, NY. The hole was big enough to see the street underneath! I had a small apartment in an area bordering the city, and in the evenings, I parked my car near my apartment. Months passed, and spring turned to a brief summer, then to winter.

One night, I parked the car, and snow began to fall in earnest. The next morning, it was still snowing even harder. I looked and looked for my car, but it was GONE. I called the police, and explained that somebody stole my eight-year-old car with a rust hole big enough to put two feet through. The cop chuckled, and said it was hardly likely that someone had stolen the car! It was probably parked on the wrong side of the street – perhaps ODD or EVEN numbers – nobody recalls now! He checked his records and -- sure enough -- he found the car was towed during the snow emergency.

I bundled myself up in a heavy coat, hat and gloves, and stood out on the corner of Alexander and East Avenue waiting for a bus to take me to the police station in downtown Rochester. I waited and waited with a bunch of other people. Finally, some Good Samaritan picked up some of us lucky folks, and I was driven to the police station, where I paid the fine and towing charges and received a receipt.

But the fun was just beginning! The car was NOT ACTUALLY THERE -- it was parked in a field outside of town. So, I had to get on another bus, and then a second one, to get to the tow lot. I finally made it, and I showed my receipt to the guard at the lot. But, the lot was not plowed! There was a narrow area between the cars where it was OK to drive and walk, but there was snow up to the car's hubcaps. Without a shovel, good luck! However, I remembered that the guard had something stashed behind his chair. I trudged back to the guard shack, and asked to borrow the shovel. After much cajoling the guard reluctantly parted with the shovel, and I was able to finally dig the car out and drive home.

As Northerners know, you HAVE to go, even in the snow. The blizzards in upstate New York – Albany – Syracuse - Buffalo - are spectacular. Asked about the summers in upstate New York, one friend of mine said, “When summer falls on a Sunday, we play golf.”

The Digital Couple: The Geezer and Ellen Kimball

Never Yell 'Fire' In A Movie Theater... but how about something political?

It was Saturday afternoon just before 1 PM.

The Regal Cinema at Bridgeport Village, in Tualatin, Oregon, was not full for the 1:10 PM screening of Bill Maher's "Religulous." We missed the screening, so we paid matinee prices to see the flick.

We had just settled in our seats, hoping for a bit of a laugh from Maher and his cunning views on world religions. Oops.

Up came a trailer for the new movie "W" -- it's a film about George W. Bush that opens later this month. Josh Brolin plays GWB, with an uncanny look and voice. I don't know if I will see it, but my blood began to boil -- our investments had taken a whack on Friday -- and I was not in the mood to see ANYONE who reminded me of the Worst. President. Ever.

I watched the trailer quietly. But when the screen went dark, I blurted out at the top of my booming female radio voice:

"YOU WILL BE GONE NEXT MONTH, AND NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON, YOU CREEP!"

First, there was dead silence. Then, the crowd of about fifty people erupted with spontaneous "YEAHS" and generous applause...

I was quite pleased. I wish all of you had been there!

&&&&&&&&

"Are you better off than you were four weeks ago?" Obama asked with a chuckle.

Painting imagineered by Portland artist Lukas Ketner and published in Willamette Week, (our local alternative newspaper)


Barack Obama made us smile when he posed this well-worn question today on the campaign trail.

If you are old enough, you'll recognize that it's a riff on the original question posed in 1980. In the last Presidential debate, Ronald Reagan asked, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

Here's our answer...

Dear Senator Obama,

The last four weeks have been horrible. We just backed out of the stock market yesterday. We put the fleeing remainder of our nest egg into Fidelity Investments CASH RESERVES to stop from going completely broke in this financial collapse.

We don't expect you to repay us -- we didn't really ever own the money, anyway. You only get the money when you cash out. Thankfully, we won't have to pay taxes on it. Because we are elderly, we probably won't have to pay much in the way of taxes this year. That's a good thing. We have to do more belt tightening, but it will be worth it.

To help us keep clear mentally, here's how we figure it:

We donated this phantom money to YOUR ELECTION.

It seems as if it is taking this woeful financial crash, the worst since my father's generation, to lock in your candidacy.

We know it's a paltry sum to you -- that $125,000 we have hypothetically lost somewhere. We lost it to someone, but we don't know exactly who. However, you probably won't miss it when it doesn't show up in your coffers.

We're still talking up your candidacy as we have since you won the primaries. It's becoming more clear that many others are taking up your cause. As we said, as good citizens trying to stay up with our expenses, we had nothing to do with the increase. We thought we were just being prudent to try and keep up with inflation through our elder years.

We had nothing to do with the loss. But we will have something -- EVERYTHING -- to do with your election. We await our mail-in ballots in just a few days. Good luck in the upcoming election!

Respectfully,

Ellen and Al in Oregon

Two of the Yuppie Elderly and, theoretically, a couple of the top donators to Barack Obama's campaign.

**Go here for a true analysis of the differences whether YOU are better off than you were in 2000: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/print/36628

The Beauty of Madama Butterfly by Puccini

Listen to this animated version -- superb!

Movie Review: "Flash of Genius" (Opens October 3, 2008)

There’s an old expression that states, “It’s not the money, it’s the principle of the thing.” Robert Kearns fought for that ideal for more than three decades of his life.

“Flash of Genius” – presumably an expression inventors use to explain the moment of genesis of an idea – is the true story of Detroit engineer and inventor Bob Kearns. On his wedding night, he had an unfortunate accident. He was removing the cork from a bottle of celebratory champagne. The cork flew up and hit him in his left eye. The resultant scene was bloody but somehow prophetic – Bob Kearns came out of that incident legally blind in one eye.

His marriage survived and the man went on to father six children. Meanwhile, Kearns was keenly sensitive to the workings of the human eye. Kearns observed the pattern of the blink and he had a fascinating revelation. Kearns postulated that our brains introduce a discontinuous pattern whenever the eyes blink – quickening and slowing as necessary.

While driving in the Michigan rain, he observed that the windshield wipers on vehicles of that era only had two positions: ON and OFF. Quite often, the wipers ran too swiftly for light rainfalls, and too slowly for downpours.

Their marriage was affected deeply by his tinkering and the aftermath of the invention process. It was a single-minded effort that eventually took over Kearns’ entire life. At one point, it brought him to the edge of madness. Kearns swept aside his involvement with his loving wife, Phyllis, and his six young children as he became more and more obsessed with designing and marketing a windshield wiper that paused during its sweeping motion, as the eye pauses during blinking. By rearranging the already-existing mechanical and electrical circuitry, Kearns invented and patented the “Blinking Eye” windshield wiper. His goal was to manufacture these wipers and sell them to the automotive companies.

At the time, the behemoth Ford Motor Company engineers had already begun their own investigations into concocting an intermittent wiper system. Kearns was invited to show off his invention and given a Ford car on which to install it. Initially, the game plan appeared to be that a Kearns family business would indeed be born and Kearns would realize his dream.

That, however, was not to be. This movie documents what followed when the Ford Motor Company suddenly quashed its deal with Kearns, and surreptitiously began installing its own version of the intermittent wiper. What follows is the courageous but truly demented tale of how Kearns’ was left with a single life purpose -- to get the Ford Motor Company to acknowledge they stole his idea – his greatest work. It may only have been a windshield wiper system to others, but to him, it was a work of art on par with the “Mona Lisa.”

First-time director and former producer Marc Abraham read the original story by John Seabrook in the New Yorker magazine and decided to make it into a movie. A script by Phillip Railsback followed. Eventually, actor Greg Kinnear received a copy with the unlikely working title of “Window Washer Man.” Kinnear quipped on TV last week that the property sat on his desk for months while he avoided reading it, thinking it would involve some kind of a caped superhero with a squeegee!

I thought the movie was profound but some moviegoers might also find it quite grim. Anyone who has had dealings with large corporations knows the scope of their unyielding grasp – you just have to look at modern companies and trace their history. Some have met their demise because of poor decisions. However, I don’t believe it is “bad karma” that finds the large automakers in difficult straits these days.

My impression is that Greg Kinnear has never had a better part and I honestly hope he will be noticed for it. He has already won the Best Actor Award at Boston's Film Festival. Actress Lauren Graham plays Kearns’ long-suffering wife Phyllis, and Dermot Mulroney (with a mane of dark hair over his forehead) is fine as a duplicitous and self-serving partner named Gil Privick. Alan Alda has a small but significant role as Kearns’ lawyer Gregory Lawson. The various young actors who play Kearns’ children at different ages were quite natural and believable.

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada stands in for Detroit, Michigan in this film. Visiting family members from the Detroit area told me there is a lot of recent film activity in Michigan. Unfortunately, this movie was apparently not part of a trend that is said to be bringing films back to US locations. As a reviewer, I support that completely.

I give this movie a “B+” on Ellen’s Entertainment Report Card.

Universal Pictures Official Website: http://www.flashofgenius.net/
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for brief strong language.
Runtime: USA:119 min
Country: USA
Language: English

A quick aside: Somehow, I have a special soft spot for inventors. My father was a lawyer, but he was always tinkering with something or other. I don’t remember all of the things he invented, but he was quite a guy – variously a playwright, painter, sculptor and very amateur violinist! Dad actually holds a patent on a coin-operated microscope machine**, which provided a tiny income for him in his advanced years. The gadget was placed at a couple of locations in Miami, Florida, where they lived and where I grew up. Regrettably, my mother and father never shared details of their finances with me although I was their only child. Furthermore, finances were not something in which Dad showed much interest or ability. He ended up spending most of their cash in the waning days of his life. I don’t know the details but my mother was practically destitute and still trying to work as a legal secretary when she died at age 71 in March 1991.

**Google found the patent for me:

Patent number: 4405202
(Granted to Leonard L. Kimball)
Filing date: Mar 30, 1981
Issue date: Sep 20, 1983

Abstract: A protective microscope container for housing a microscope having a pair of focus control extension knobs extending therefrom and a pair of two dimensional slide holder control arms extending from the rear of the container. Two dimensional control members are used to drive a continuous slide...

Everyone had fun at the Portland Pirate Festival!

All I can say is... "AARRRRRGGGGHHH"!



Portland OR Pirate Festival at St. Johns Bridge Sept. ’08

The movie GHOST TOWN rocks!! Also, it's vacation time -- right here at home!

Woo-hoo! Yes, folks, I'm taking a little break from my cooperative life with my husband. He's going to a local Residence Inn by Marriott hotel and I'm staying home for two whole days. (It's a reward, believe me!) He's taking our seven-year-old grandson with him and they're going to the Portland Pirate Festival! What fun!

In the meantime, my husband and I saw a preview of the new movie "Ghost Town" a couple nights ago -- and we loved it! It opens wide on Friday, September 19, 2008. I've put the text of Portland film reviewer Kimberly Gadette's review because I respect her and enjoy her writing style. (I don't know what she will say, and that's the fun of it!) Seems we both agree on this one! I'm giving it a B+ on Ellen's Entertainment Report Card.

Here is Kimberly's review at http://www.livepdx.com/Portland-Movies/

Some films open with a bang. This one starts off with a colonoscopy. An end to the means — in more ways than one.

An idea expounded by Ghost Town's filmmakers is that when you sneeze, you've just passed through a ghost. Another idea: Import a middle-aged, first-class funny man from England to play loner dentist Dr. Pincus (Golden Globe winner Ricky Gervais of the original The Office and HBO's comedy series Extras). With Greg Kinnear channeling a persona similar to the natty Cary Grant in Topper, acting as an other-worldly Cyrano of sorts, he persuades the dentist to romance his widow, the lovely Egyptologist Gwen (Téa Leoni). Even harder than turning an awkward, hair-challenged pudgy man into a charmer is the fact that Pincus openly admits to hating people: "Not so much the crowds, as the individuals in the crowds."

1993's Heart and Souls had a similar premise, but rather than Robert Downey Jr.'s handsome yet cold businessman acting as the ghosts' go-to go-between, it's Ricky Gervais' goofy-looking yet even colder dentist who's forced to do the honors. But while Downey ultimately gave us heart, soul and charm, Gervais has us howling in the aisles.

If not for Dr. Pincus' botched colonoscopy, he wouldn't have died for seven minutes during the procedure. If not for that temporary death, he wouldn't have changed from dour man hating the intrusion of corporeal strangers to dour man hating the intrusion of all strangers, corporeal or not.

Post-op, he's chased all over town like a rock star, haunted by unhappy haunts begging him to do just one little thing for each of them. But Pincus won't be moved. Not until dead, smooth-talking Frank (Kinnear) comes along with a deal that the dentist can't refuse — if Pincus will intervene in the impending second marriage of Frank's widow Gwen, then Frank will get the other ghosties to permanently vanish.

Perhaps due to the fact that writer/director Koepp has worked primarily in drama, he allows each of the three leads to let their masks slip, giving us glimpses of their individual pain underneath the funny.

And speaking of funny, hats off to Gervais in his first leading role, a sly imp of a man who sidles up to his lines, a deft sidestep here, a quiet utterance there. He rises to the challenge of portraying a misanthrope who secretly longs for love. We see his struggle, cheering for him to unlock his imprisoned heart. Without a comic actor of Gervais' depth, Ghost Town would not have worked.

Kinnear turns in another smooth performance as the cad who finally connects with his soul long after it matters, and Leoni, a modern-day Carole Lombard, sparkles. When Pincus surprises her with his oddball brand of humor, she fills the screen with a merry, irresistible luminescence. What today's cinema needs is even more Leoni — she is a treasure, one of a select cluster of star actresses who handle screwball comedy as if she was to the manner born.

In support of the three leads, we're treated to delightful turns by the likes of Kristen Wiig as a barely competent doctor, The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi as Pincus' colleague who gently schools him in a different kind of dental care, Dana Ivey's pushy poltergeist of a mother, and Billy Campbell (Once and Again), having great fun with his humorless human rights activist.

Also having great fun is cinematographer Fred Murphy, taking a vibrant autumn in New York and exploding it with fantastical hues. The fall foliage is bathed in color so sharp it almost hurts, a reminder of the mercurial beauty of life that cries out to every last one of us, begging us to take it all in while we can. Before it's too late.

Given Gervais' poor gag reflexes, member-of-the-mummy jokes and a 200-pound Great Dane puppy, this isn't your usual rom-com. Like Dr. Pincus, it stands alone.

From ghost to ghost: With wonderfully comic actors, a delightful plot and effervescent direction, this film is a boo-tifully spirited comedy.

Official movie site is at: www.ghosttownmovie.com

Here's the plot outline without spoilers:

In the romantic comedy "Ghost Town," Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais), is a man whose people skills leave much to be desired. When Pincus dies unexpectedly, but is miraculously revived after seven minutes, he wakes up to discover that he now has the annoying ability to see ghosts. Even worse, they all want something from him, particularly Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear) who pesters him into breaking up the impending marriage of his widow Gwen (Téa Leoni). That puts Pincus squarely in the middle of a triangle with spirited result.

Here's a great photo of Kimberly. She's scrumptious, svelte -- and married, you fiend.

More later...


Kimberly Gadette

Movie Review: "Burn After Reading" (Opens 9/12/08)

Burn After Reading

“Burn After Reading” is the new comedy written and directed by the formidable brothers Joel and Ethan Coen. This is a very funny film rendered all the more amusing by zany comedic performances from several unexpected sources -- Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Francis McDormand in particular.

The plot has footprints in several genres and there are some darker aspects to it – such as divorce, adultery, blackmail, murder, and such, but never mind. It’s all wrapped up with shiny and spot-on fun stuff. From what I have seen of other Coen brothers films, they actually like it mixed up that way. Most of the time, their double-entendre, genre-bending scripts work quite successfully. However, if you follow my reviews, the Coens’ last effort -- “No Country for Old Men” -- was too dark for me although it amassed a huge following. I bow to those of you who predicted it would be a hit. After the on-screen bloodletting and questionable ending, that movie soaked up a clutch of Oscars, much to my chagrin.

So, I went to the screening of “Burn After Reading” with some trepidation, but this one really tickled my funny bone. I predict you will be ‘guffawing while watching’ and still ‘chuckling after viewing.’ In the case of every comedy, the actors are at their best when they have straight foils as their adversaries. Credit John Malkovich (absolutely fabulous at chewing the scenery), Tilda Swinton (bright red hair and just gorgeous in this outing), and rest of an excellent supporting cast – all of whom provide this element in abundance.

The goofy plot – featuring many exteriors in New York, New Jersey, and Washington, DC – is actually a collection of intricate and interacting subplots. They revolve around a mixed-up Central Intelligence Agency, messed-up marriages, a couple of dumbed-down employees of an exercise facility, self-centered men, and a woman eager to go under the cosmetic surgery knife. These very odd individuals help spice up the cinematic brew. The script is fast moving and left me wanting a second showing so I could fully appreciate everything that is going on.

“Burn After Reading” starts out somewhat seriously but with an undercurrent of humor as CIA Agent Osborne Cox, played by John Malkovich, is confronted with a demotion for a rather spurious reason -- he drinks. (Gee, why doesn't he go into rehab like all the other government flacks do?) Osborne goes off the deep-end in anger…and effectively quits his job. Throughout the rest of the flick, he supplies a necessary comedic ingredient with his extreme, manic posturing as he is confronted with comic innocents that confuse and irritate him. One of these is Chad Feldheimer, (Brad Pitt), a sports-gym coworker of Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand). Pitt’s portrayal is an over-the-top gem, equaled by McDormand’s. She is obsessed with obtaining what she feels are expensive cosmetic surgeries -- which she cannot afford.

George Clooney triumphs also in the creation of the womanizing Harry Pharrer. The plot is too nutty for me even to begin to describe, but it will make you forget all those stupid "Oceans 11 - 13" movies, and maybe even "Syriana." Suffice it to say that “Burn After Reading” manages to hold together amid all of the crazy mayhem that takes place. I’m pleased to report that the result is classic.

Go see “Burn After Reading” and, if you don’t find it to be one of the best laugh riots ever, don’t blame me, you grouch!

For all normal people, I rate “Burn After Reading” a solid “B+” on Ellen’s Entertainment Report Card.

Rated: R for pervasive language, some sexual content and violence

Link here for KGW.com:

http://www.kgw.com/entertainment/stories/kgw_091508_entertainment_review_burn_after_reading.7c11b300.html