Okay, I was wrong. In my last post I suggested that Saturday Night Live wouldn’t find much material from the VP debate last week. Instead, they came up with a hilarious 12-minute sketch that captured the essence of the 90-minute spectacular. And they were equal opportunity skewers, with Biden taking almost as many hits as Palin, and even Iffil taking a few shots.
This weekend, I put the finishing touches on a short story for an upcoming contest. Since it was only 1000 words long, I was able to make numerous editing passes, then I cut myself off and sent it in, even though it’s not due until next week. Enough is enough sometimes. Maybe even too much on occasion.
I finished The Story of Edgar Sawtelle this weekend, too. It is a fascinating riff on Hamlet with a more downbeat ending than I was prepared for. I’ve seen a number of people saying they didn’t want to read it because they were sure dogs were going to die. Well, some do, mostly from natural causes, but it’s the human tragedy that got me. I’m working on my formal review, but I’ll say this in brief: it’s not a brief book. It’s one that takes its time, paints a picture using a vast literary palette, and is a sheer joy to read. It has the sort-of-Western feel of Shane in places, and the adventuresome spirit of The Incredible Journey, touches of The Jungle Book, with some Jack London and Shakespeare thrown in for good measure.
I’m not sure exactly what the couple did wrong to finish last on The Amazing Race this week. It’s hard to put a finger on a single flaw, especially when other teams committed far worse gaffes and survived. The two divorced women could easily have been eliminated, with their pointless digging around for a non-existent container and not looking hard enough for their taxi. Or the newly dating couple, who wasted a helluva lot of time looking for the taxi stand. If the mother/son team hadn’t helped them out, I think they’d still be out there looking for it. I was glad to see the woman in that relationship standing up for herself a little more with the guy, who is a major dick most of the time. I thought it was hilarious when the ex-football player kissed him when they were standing in line at the airport. He says he’s going to rectify his ways, but that remains to be seen. I’m waiting for her to toss him off a cliff next time he isn’t looking.
Cold Case felt like it was ripped off from that Hillary Swank movie Freedom Writers. I pegged the culprit the minute they pointed out his chewing gum habit. I didn’t know why, I just identified it as the kind of obvious clue that the show relies on all the time. Notice an unusual necklace or piece of jewelry somewhere? It will ultimately seal the villain’s fate.
All this financial turmoil is worrisome. For every piece of bad news, there’s a silver lining, I guess. The US dollar has gotten strong, which means my daughter’s Canadian university tuition is less expensive. At one point recently, the Canadian dollar was worth 10% more than the US dollar. Today it’s worth 10% less. I focus on that and ignore the current balance on our investment accounts. Eventually things will turn around, and it will be like now never happened—for some of us, at least. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
I caught up on taped shows from early last week over the weekend. So far, Boston Legal feels like a “greatest hits” season. Big tobacco one week, big pharma the next. The discussion at the end made it seem like they’re preparing us in case this is the last season. (Aren’t there time slots we haven’t tried out yet? Denny asks.)
