Brooklyn, Queens
Headline from nypost.com: “Chick-fil-A is America’s favorite restaurant — for the 8th year in a row.” Still none in Brooklyn, far as I know.
How ‘bout this headline from foxnews.com?: “JUST PLANE WILD: Delta reportedly paid passengers $10K to leave oversold flight.”
RIP consummate character actor Joe Turkel, 94. His name may not be familiar but his face will be. There are 142 credits under his name at IMDb, career spanning 1949-’97. Born in Brooklyn, son of Polish Jews, he served in the Army as a teenager in WWII. Here are the most notable films in which he appeared: The Killing (1956), Friendly Persuasion (1956), The Boy and the Pirates (1960), King Rat (1965), The Sand Pebbles (1966), The Shining (1980), Blade Runner (1982). I first noticed him in Stanley Kubrick’s scathing anti-war film, Paths of Glory (1957), in which he plays one of the unfortunate three to draw a short straw, which leads to execution for cowardice, although the character had received prior medals for bravery. He was given excellent dialogue. Here’s an example, screenplay by Kubrick, Calder Willingham & Jim Thompson:
Pvt. Pierre Arnaud: Well, which would you rather be done in by: a bayonet or a machine gun?
Soldier in bunk: Oh, a machine gun, naturally.
Pvt. Pierre Arnaud: Naturally, that’s just my point. They’re both pieces of steel ripping into your guts, only the machine gun is quicker, cleaner, and less painful, isn’t it?”
Thank you, sir. Here he is as the doomed soldier. Photo from Google Images:
Friday night’s movie fix courtesy of Netflix by mail was going good until it stalled midway and wouldn’t budge using Fast Forward. The Farewell (2019) is a family and immigrant story at first set in NYC. The matriarch is terminally ill with lung cancer. It is customary in China to keep the diagnosis from the patient so that he/she will live normally for as long as possible. This does not sit well with her grand-daughter, a pianist. The brood travels to the homeland for a wedding, perfect cover for relatives to share time with the old woman, who is full of life. I love the premise, and believe I side with the tradition. Why immediately cast a pall over the stricken’s existence? I was unfamiliar with the cast, although I’d seen the name Awkwafina before. She is Queens-born, real name Nora Lum, first bursting on the scene as a rapper, now an actress. She is very good, as is Shuzhen Zhao, as “Nai Nai.” Born in 1943, this was her first role. Some folks are simply naturals. She has since done 63 episodes of a TV show, another movie, and a guest shot on a series. The Farewell was written and directed by Lulu Wang, a graduate of Boston College, her second full length feature sandwiched around five shorts. She has two titles in the works. Here are the two women in character:
The mind is a curious thing. I was wide awake at 3:30 AM. I’m pretty sure it was because I had a lot to do, at least more than usual. I made two trips to the car, dropping off a couple of pieces of mail on the way, hauling the boxes of books given to me yesterday one at a time. I then shaved and did my monthly DIY buzz of my head — a day late. By then it was time for breakfast, albeit a little early. I then read a bit before my morning stroll through the web. Then it was off to Stop n Shop, where I forgot to buy pasta sauce — duh. At 8:30 I napped for an hour. That left me no time to play the guitar for the second straight day. I lack the will and pizazz to pick the instrument up any other time of day. Next stop was BP, where I was surprised the price of gas had fallen to $4.79, and that a Burger King had replaced the sandwich shop that had been there. Then it was off to the old house to do laundry.
Love it when a forecast for rain doesn’t pan out. The floating book shop reaped an unexpected reward on this ultra-muggy day. Just in case, I displayed only a quarter of the wares. My thanks to the woman who did a swap and buy, five paperbacks in English for a bunch of stuff in Russian and the Burlesque (2010) DVD, and to the couple who purchased four vampire sagas by P. C. Cast & Kristin Cast, and a young adult version of one of the Harry Potter novels.
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