You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘What Would Basil Fawlty Do?’ category.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Ah, the twenty-something hipster-doofas unemployable liberal arts major lifestyle! Except that instead of living in our parents’ basement, Mrs. R and I find ourselves currently living in our own, our bedroom temporarily covered over in plastick sheeting as the contractor and his crew swarm the mawster bawthroom.
As a matter of fact, the study down here is rayther snug, comfy and quiet. Years ago when we first moved in, ol’ Robbo had dreams of making this room his fortress of solitude. That idea lasted all of about twenty minutes. One can still have the room to oneself from time to time, but it’s more a system of right of first possession than any kind of paterfamilial precedence. I can throw the gels out but I can’t budge Mrs. R when she’s deep in her scrapbooking and CSI reruns.
Anyhoo, even as I type, the plumbers are here messing about with piping. All the framing and underflooring (except where the plumbers are working) have been done and they say they can start laying tile on Monday. Unfortunately, they’ve temporarily shut off the water. I say unfortunately because I’ve been working in the garden and yard all day and was really hoping to rinse off and make myself a very tall glass of iced coffee. But here I am instead wasting my time and yours blogging about it.
Actually, not so much a waste of time. Staring out the window just now, I suddenly remembered that one of the things I wanted to do today is poison some more of that damned wild grape vine that gets into everything ’round here. I would have been quite crabby had I recalled that after I’d got cleaned up. So there you go.
And speaking of cleaning up, the other day I read Graham Greene’s The Power And The Glory, the story of the hunting of a Catholic priest by the revolutionary government of Mexico in the 1920′s. Much food for thought there about the nature of piety and the relationship between God and Man that would have gone rocketing right over my head not that many years ago.
In the story, the nameless priest is pursued primarily by a zealous police lieutenant, a man hell-bent on wiping out all remnants of the old order and replacing it with the Brave New World. I had heard or known that this lieutenant was something of a monster. What I hadn’t expected was that he was so very convinced that what he was about – even where it involved torture, brutality and murder – was good. Not “good” in the Emperor Palpatine seducing Luke to the Dark Side “Good…..Goooooood!” sense, but “good” as in noble and leading to a better life for the people.
And it occurs to me that this is the kind of behavior that really gets the devil rolling around on the floor in fits of diabolical laughter. There are plenty of Truly Bad People in teh world, but they’re relatively cheap and uninteresting. How much more juicy for him must those people be who mistakenly think they’re doing good while, in reality, actually are committing sin. And, because they think they’re doing good, therefore never feel they need to repent.
Enough to make your flesh creep. It really is.
Oh, speaking of which, I had quite the odd dream last evening. In it, I was wandering around a Metro station trying to find a fare machine that took credit cards. As I passed up and down seemingly endless stairs and went through countless doors, the station looked less and less like a Metro station and more and more like the inside of some grand house. Suddenly, as I passed through a swing door, I found myself not in house but in the National Cathedral. The staff was busy preparing for some particular Sunday celebration I’d never heard of – something like Up In The Sky Sunday. The walls were covered with all kinds of art work, among which I particularly recognized a poster of Tweety-Bird. Somebody was rehearsing at the lectern and throwing flower petals about her as she spoke. As I stood looking around, an enormously tall priestess came by talking to somebody else. I overheard her say that this Sunday was her favorite of the year and that she was really looking forward to it. I scowled and she, spotting me, glared back. And then, as they say, I woke up.
Make of that what you will. In the meantime, I’m going to go kill me dead some grape vine.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
There’s a throwaway sentence early in The Fellowship of the Ring in which Frodo looks at himself in the mirror before setting out on the first stage of his journey – the walk from Hobbiton to Crickhollow – and notes that his reflection appears to have got rayther flabby.
Earlier this evening, I had occasion for a very similar notation. I believe that I’m one of those people constitutionally incapable of actually becoming fat (I’m just under 5’11″ and about 157 lb.), but I can’t remember myself looking looking quite so, well, flaccid since I was about thirteen or so.
Frodo’s condition, we’re given to understand, is based on indolent self-indulgence. Not so at Port Swiller Manor. True, I do have some indulgences, but I suppose the heart of the matter is a winter and spring full of paterfamilial worry and lack of sleep and exercise. Back in the day, it wouldn’t have mattered so much to my constitution, but now that I’m within visiting distance of the big 5-0, well, apparently it does.
Eh. Time to get back on the elliptical.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Well, the great Port Swiller Manor renovation project has begun. I returned home in the quiet eve’n (well, not so quiet, as a line of heavy t-storms came through) to find a large pile of debris in the side yard, much of the house covered in cardboard, painter’s tape and dust sheets, and every last bit of the mawster bawth completely stripped down to the under-flooring and two-by-four skeletal walls. I understand that we get an on-site port-o-potty tomorrow. Oh, joy.
Ol’ Robbo doesn’t like change. He doesn’t like chaos, either. He’s now got both in spades. It’s going to be an awful couple weeks.
(Oh, and I take back every rant I ever ranted about the gels sneaking into our bathroom to take showers instead of using their own. I took my own first shower in their bathroom tonight in thirteen years of living here and now understand completely their desire to escape.)
However, we must keep our eyes focused on the end result and ignore the interim.
Which reminds me of a curious thing. With regard to the transmogrification of said mawster bawth, Mrs. Robbo and I have been sparring gently with the builder over what the new floor plan ought to look like. Without getting into the details – which would be impossible to explain here without photos, diagrams or a lot of tedious wording – he wants the whole area, which encompasses tub, potty, vanity and closet entrance, to be as wide open as possible. We, on the other hand, have been lobbying to retain some semblance of the current division of these various parts into smaller, discrete spaces.
Whenever we raise our preferences, Mr. Builder always responds by saying, “Well, it is the mawster bawth, after all, and you two…..” He never completes the thought, but the argument clearly is implied: You two are used to seeing each other go potty, so why not let it be One Big Space.
Well, no. No we’re not. Nor have we ever been.
We’ve tried to imply this right back at Mr. Builder, stressing repeatedly that we are both very private people. He either feigns not to understand what we’re driving at or else looks at us in mild surprise.
Are we really so far out of the mainstream about this? I’ve always been very firmly of the opinion that intimacy, like most other things, is best preserved and enhanced where there are recognized boundaries and limitations. Evidently, there’s an opposite school of thought that demands we, ah, let it all hang out in front of each other.
No, thankee.
I’m reminded of an old Bloom County strip in which Opus’s girlfriend barges in on him in the loo despite his panicky cries of, “Occupied! OCCUPIED!!” In the last panel, Opus appears hastily draped and says, “The Big Casual – fear it!”
I’m further reminded of an old Thatch strip dealing with co-ed bathrooms on college campuses. As it happens, I had to suffer such an arrangement during my time at the People’s Glorious Soviet of Middletown, CT, so I was particularly amused when “Tripp”, the macho fellah of teh strip, says of said arrangements, “Nothing so demystifies the opposite sex like listening to it tinkle.”
Tripp was something of a jerk in the strip, but sometimes he spoke sooth. I think this was one of those times. And of course I completely agree with Opus.
Anyhoo, I believe we’ve struck a happy compromise with Mr. Builder involving a half-high wall screening the potty, french doors sealing off the entire bawth area from the bedroom and a clear understanding between Mrs. R and Self about respecting each other’s privacy when said doors are closed. I think it will work.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
And welcome, NSA! Here’s the decanter. There are walnuts on the table and the Stilton is over on the sideboard.
And now, a little Sunday random….
♦ Friday saw the annual student talent show at St. Marie of the Blessed Educational Method. Among the offerings was an a capella rendition of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Do You Believe In Magic?” by the youngest gel and three of her friends. They hit the notes somewhat in the manner of regimental volley fire – by saturation rayther than precision accuracy, but they were clearly enjoying themselves. The final act of the afternoon featured a kid cutting dance steps to “Dynamite”. (For those of you who don’t know it, this is a standard techno dance tune featuring lots of thump-thumpa and synthesizers. It’s pretty awful, but at least it’s not rap, which I can’t stick at any price.) About half way through, most of the rest of the elementary kids suddenly rushed the stage and joined in. The spontaneity was quite pleasing.
♦ Did I mention before how amazingly fast this school year seems to have blown by? I think I did. So far as I’m able to keep track, we’ve got about a week and a half left until all three gels are over and done. They all keep expressing wonder that I don’t get a summah vacation. I’ve not made up my mind whether this is naiveté or just a little parental needling.
♦ Ol’ Robbo’s beloved Nationals continue to hover around the .500 mark, and it’s not a pleasant thing. One could blame this on a number of key injuries we’re currently suffering, but I begin to suspect that it has a deeper root in all the pre-season hype. I’ve never been comfortable with what the Baseball Gods must think of the whole “Natitude” campaign and I begin to think they’re now showing their displeasure. For whatever reason, the team has definitely taken on the feel – as I saw somebody put it the other day – of “Flatitude”.
Oh, well. GO, NATS!!
♦ Thanks to Friday’s tropical storm, when ol’ Robbo emerged from the talent show mentioned above he discovered several inches of water sitting in the well of the ol’ Wrangler. Even with the back off, I can usually avoid this even during heavy rain by remembering to park facing into the wind, by “heaving to” as sailors would say. Forgot this time. Idjit. Now the carpeting is going to smell moldy again until it’s been thoroughly aired out.
♦ I read Roger Kimball’s The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy In An Age of Amnesia yesterday. The overall theme is right up ol’ Robbo’s alley: a defense of traditional Western culchah in the face of the effort of utopian progressivists to wipe it all out in order to start afresh molding the Brave New World. Kimball illustrates some of the permanent values by devoting chapters to various authors – Chesterton, Hayek, Kipling and Muggeridge, for example. One of teh chapters considers John Buchan (author of The Thirty-Nine Steps and other spy thrillers), whom I have never read although I’ve always heard good things about him. This is the second time in the past two weeks that Buchan’s name has turned up on Robbo’s radar. I like to take these things as signs. So I think it’s time to take a trip over to the devil’s website and sample him.
♦ Speaking of the devil’s website, I was over there this week purchasing a new biography of Grant recommended by the Mothe when, much to my horror, I discovered that I had inadvertently grabbed the kindle version. It felt like turning over a rock and discovering a tarantula. I’m glad, at least, that I was able to get a refund once I discovered my mistake.
♦ Well, I suppose I had better be about it. Off to Mass and then an afternoon getting ready for the builders (who start tearing down the mawster bawth and the deck tomorrow morning) and then cooking din-dins for my in-laws who are stopping over on their way back north for the summah. Never a dull moment round here.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
As I glance out the basement window of Port Swiller Manor this evening, I can’t help noticing a significant change in the landscape that I spy. Specifically, the big Japanese Maple that has dominated the right half of the raised back porch is no more, cut down today by our handyman in preparation for the demolition of said porch and the construction of a new (roofed and screened-in) one. All the permits have been obtained, and demo of the old starts on Monday. Time to kick the tires and light the fires.
I must confess a feeling akin to that which I always feel when the plane I’m on starts its roll-out down the runway and also on those very few occasions when I’ve been persuaded to ride a roller-coaster and its about to take its first big dive. It’s a sensation of being robbed of my autonomy and being whirled up by forces beyond my control, and frankly, it’s pretty unpleasant.
At the same time, we’re also redoing the upstairs bathrooms at Port Swiller Manor, starting with what the biznay calls the Maawstah Baaawth. While that’s being dealt with, Mrs. R and I will be required to share the gels’ hallway bathroom for the next couple weeks. My response to that is, “Eeeeeew…”
I have read numerous “scientific” articles which claim that while stink bugs are a household infestation nuisance during the wintah months, once summah comes around they move outside to do whatever it is that stink bugs do au natural.
My friends, I am here to tell you that those articles are incorrect.
The neighborhood of Port Swiller Manor reached spring-like conditions a good five or six weeks ago. And Heat Miser appeared with a whoop and a holler this past week. Yet it seems that, if anything, the number of stink bugs in the house has increased.
Feh.
Perhaps I’m bitter about this because in my early-awake drowsiness this morning I felt something prickling on my elbow and gave it a hearty whack. Turned out to be a stink bug. And he stinked me real good. Yuck.
On the other hand, I suppose I can’t complain too much. Something similar happened to sistah during our misspent yoot back in Texas, only it turned out to be a scorpion. Got her three times on the hand and face before she even really knew what was happening, as I recall.
Still, we hates stink bugs.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Regular friends of the decanter will recall that I occasionally post here about Jenny, the elder (and I mean very elder – she’s well into her 18th year) of the two cats who deign to grace Port Swiller Manor with their presence, demanding royal treatment from us house servants.
Well recently ol’ Jenny has started to impress her immense age and failing faculties on us via a distinct uptick in the number of times in which she refuses to avail herself of the litter boxes at her disposal and instead sneaks off to take care of her biznay in remote corners and behind various chairs.
In addition to the distasteful matter of having to clean things up, the smell of apres chat is beginning to become somewhat too pervasive, even for tried old pet-owner campaigners as Mrs. R and self. As a result, Mrs. R set out to discover a means by which we might persuade Jenny to cease her out-of-bounds latrinal forays. (A very, very small voice somewhere inside my head suggested pitching the argument that maybe this is the time to start thinking about sending Jenny to “the Farm”, but I have so far not listened to it, nor relayed its whisperings to the Missus.)
Anyhoo, in answer to her requests for suggestions, someone among her vast network of armchair pundits suggested that cats, for whatever reason, hate tinfoil. Loathe it. Avoid it at all costs. Therefore, she ought to lay down squares of the stuff in all the places about the house Jenny has deemed fair to foul.
When Mrs. R relayed this tip to me, my first reaction was to suppose that, even assuming this feline tinfoil aversion to be real, what would stop Jenny, upon discovering the stuff in her usual haunts, from simply shifting operations elsewhere? Plenty of target zones in this house. An answering voice in my head said, “Well, Mrs. R would then feel it necessary to lay down more tinfoil in those spots.” Mulling the thing further, I was suddenly rewarded with a vision of Jenny racing about Port Swiller Manor, a needful look on her face, pursued by Mrs. R frantically waiving a roll of Reynoldswrap, until the floors of the place were one, vast, gleaming sheet of shiny silver. At that point, I confess, I started to snigger.
“What?” said Mrs. R.
“Oh, nothing,” I replied. ”Tinfoil. Sounds good. Just one thing – be sure to save enough to line your hat! Oh, ha ha ha!”
A gentle lob like that over the net and you think I’m not going to smash it for all it’s worth? Puh-lease.
“Yes, funny. But what of chivalry, old boy? This is your wife, after all,” you might be thinking.
Well, let me tell you a little story apropos the lob metaphor.
Waaaaay back in 1993, a month or two before we were to be married**, Mrs. R and I travelled to The Homestead for the first and only Virginia Bar Association annual meeting I ever attended. Mrs. R had graduated from Sweet Briar the previous summer where she was, among other things, captain of the varsity tennis team.
I, personally, have never been a tennis player or had much interest in the game, although I took some lessons as a kid. As a result, I know little technique and almost no strategy. However, during our courtship, Mrs. R and I would venture out to the courts on a fairly regular basis to play a gentle set or two. Mrs R, being an infinitely better player than self, would indulge me by confining herself to the tennis equivalent of gentle sparring while I flailed about the court and a good time usually was had by all.
Amongst the extracurricular activities on offer at this Bar meeting was a mixed doubles round-robin. Taking advantage of my pre-nuptual infatuation, Mrs. R somehow persuaded me to sign up for the thing along with her, assuring me that it would be a lot of fun and that there was no shame to be derived from my uber-novice status.
Well. I don’t recall anything of the first round or two I played. All I remember is that at some point I found myself and my partner matched against Mrs. R and hers. Suffice to say, it was readily observable that there were three real tennis players on that court, and then there was me. ”Oh, well,” I thought to myself naively, “Soon-To-Be Mrs. R knows my weaknesses and limitations and, although she’ll probably worst me, at least she will go fairly easy.”
Ha.
Ya got that?
Ha. HA.
This woman, who had so recently pledged her troth, who in a few short weeks would promise in the sight of God to love, honor and obey, proceeded on that court to flay me alive. Knew my weaknesses and limitations? Oh, yes she did. And used ‘em without mercy. In particular, I recall that she played cruelly on my inability to deal with shots aimed at my feet. It was brutal.
Curiously, I believe it wasn’t until we were all shaking hands after I had led my partner to ignominious defeat that Mrs. R even realized who it was she was playing against. I recall that she gave a curious little double-take, as if to say, “Hullo, what are you doing here?”
Since that day, I have point-blank refused ever to put myself across a net from Mrs. R. (I believe this is a not-uncommon phenomenon among golfing couples, too.) Instead, I get in my overhead smashes, such as the one above, on ground of my own choosing.
So there you are.
**Yes, our 20th anniversary is coming up in about three week or so. More on that when we get there.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
This evening ol’ Robbo was mapping out in his brains the logistics of transporting the gels to and from school over the course of the next couple weeks.
As regular friends of the decanter may recall, the gels go to three different schools this year, the eldest finishing up her freshman year in high school, the middle her first year of middle school and the youngest her next-to-last elementary year at St. Marie of the Blessed Educational Method. Mrs. R and I had, between us, put together a shuttle regime that worked just fine for the day-to-day of the normal academic year and to which I had got quite used. However, we’re now into exam/end of semester time and Of Course all their schools are on different timetables of short days, exam periods and end-of-year ceremonies and festivities. All I can say is, “Cry Havoc! And let slip the dogs of altered scheduling!”
But aside from the technical arcana of who-needs-to-be-where-when, what really weighs on my mind is the speed with which all of this has come upon us. It really and truly feels as if it was just yesterday that we were packing them all off with brand new books and supplies to their first days of class. And I am positively gob-smacked that the year has blown by in such a flash. I honestly cannot think of any other academic year that, in retrospect, has whirled away in such a blur.
I hope that this is just a product of the particular circumstances that have imposed themselves upon the denizens of Port Swiller Manor this year. I haven’t talked about them much here, but in the past nine months we’ve had a death in the family and several major health issues which, combined, have taken up a goodish bit of our time and attention, not to say our energy. Thinking on it, I like to believe that distraction by these circumstances has been a major player behind the telescoping of my perceptions.
The alternate explanation – that Robbo is just getting old – is one that I don’t particularly care to contemplate.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Over this past weekend, ol’ Robbo found himself rereading for the umpteenth time George MacDonald Fraser’s Quartered Safe Out Here, his memoir of his service under Slim in the Burma Campaign of WWII.
At some point in the book – and I’m not going to go hunting for it now because I want to finish this post and go catch the Nats’ game – GMF mentions a scene from an American film called Air Force, a picture actually made during the height of the War, in which a gunner on a B-17 chuckles as he informs his Captain in rayther stark terms that he’s just set a Japanese fighter on fire and it’s going down. The point of the mention was a comparison of racial attitudes towards the Japanese during the War and what would be acceptable nowadays.
As I read the passage, I thought to myself, “Self, we’ve never seen this film. It would be interesting to look it up some time and have a dekko.”
Well, wouldn’t you know it? In honor of Memorial Day, TCM (I think it was) aired that very film on Monday evening.
Ol’ Robbo savors these little grace notes of interconnectedness. I strongly suspect that if one were to do the math, one would find that there are a great many more of them than one might otherwise have thought.
As for the film itself, it was enjoyable enough once, but I don’t think it’s the kind of thing worthy of inclusion in my general rotation of Netflix repeats. Filmed in 1943 and directed by Howard Hawks, it’s the story of the crew of one of a flight of B-17 bombers – the “Mary Ann” – en route from the Mainland to Hawaii, that gets caught up in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (This really happened, btw. Happily, all the Flying Fortresses managed to get down safely.) The “Mary Ann” is sent on immediately to the Philippines, via Wake Island, to assist with the defense there. (Why the rest of the bomber fleet doesn’t also go, I’m afraid I missed.)
It’s rah-rah propaganda and high-flying action coupled with a depictions of the bonds and rivalries among a small unit of military men, coupled with standard outlier story lines concerning the love interest of the bombardier and the crew chief’s worrying over his officer son stationed in the forefront of the battle. (Spoiler alert, but I believe both the love interest and the chief’s son cop it.) There’s nothing particularly outstanding about the film, but if its purpose is to be a statement of American values and perceptions in the early 40′s, then it certainly does its job.
For me, the best parts were, shall we say, probably not what Hawks had in mind. For one thing, there were some delightful historickal inaccuracies. Por ejemplo, in the film, the bombers fly into Pearl and the surrounding fields in the dark, greatly adding to the suspense over their landings. However, the Japanese attack commenced at 8:00 ack emma, local time, well after the sun had come up. Then again, in the film we are shown squadrons of Bell P-39 Aeracobras defending the Philippines during their fall in 1941/42. I am enough of a history geek to know that this is inaccurate. However, since I liked the film as a whole, I smiled over this rayther than ranting.
For another, there was that curious unevenness of special effects that I have observed in more than one film of the period. You know, the strange admixture of actual aviation footage and cheap models. (See Only Angels Have Wings, another Hawks production.) And in one scene where the “Mary Ann” is being attacked by Jap Zeroes, the fighters hung around just outside the windows so stilly and so long that the bomber crew could have hit them with flung bricks had it had them to hand.
But perhaps my favorite thing about the film was the fact that, although I didn’t recognize most of the cast, several stood out quite plainly. The feisty Irish crew chief was played by Harry Carey, Sr., who was quite prolific in Hollywood in the 30′s and 40′s and whose son, Harry Carey, Jr., seems to have been in just about every damned western ever made. The bombardier was played by Arthur Kennedy, who was the jackass American reporter in Lawrence of Arabia. Best of all, the navigator was played by Charles Drake, best known to me as Steve Miller, the lily-livered fellah in Winchester ’73 who nearly throws Shelley Winters to the Comanche and then dies at the hands of the psychotic Waco Johnny Dean. (It also was not lost on me that Jimmah Stewart, who was of course the hero in that last film, was a genuine bomber pilot during the War, although I believe he flew B-24′s, not B-17′s.)
In short, a good time was had by all, meaning me, myself and I. There are people in the world who relish cross-linking actors, pointing out anomalies and otherwise pursuing trivia while watching movies. I am such a one. Mrs. R, to give but one example, emphatically is not. (Not that she’d have any interest in a war flick from the 40′s to begin with, but even assuming I could get her to sit down for one, any mention by me of these bits and pieces would be received with a sharp, “Shut UP!”
As Basil Fawlty said, just trying to enjoy myself.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
T’other evening, on a relatively rare date, Mrs. R and I paid a visit to the local planetarium in order to take in a show on black holes. I would guess that I was considerably younger than the youngest gel the last time I sat down under the dome.
You may snicker behind the decanter and mutter to each other under cover of the cracking of walnuts, “Sink me, do these people know how to party or what?” I will say in defense that a) Mrs. R is, as regular readers may recall, the science teacher at St. Marie of the Blessed Educational Method and was eager to do a little recon on behalf of Teh Children®, b) Ol’ Robbo is an absolute sucker for big screen depictions of the Grandeur of the Cosmos, full of which this short film, narrated in his gravelly Aslan voice by Liam Neeson, was nicely chocked, c) we went for Chinese afterwards, and d) none of yer damned biznay.
Suffice to say, a good time was had by all.
Anyhoo, the reason I mention this is that the film, although really rayther vague and surfacey, touched on a point around which ol’ Robbo has always had trouble wrapping his braims. You see, in discussing the four known dimensions of the Universe, the presentation touched on Einstein’s noodlings about the possibility of the fourth dimension – that of time – being subjected to corruption, variation and warping.
Despite what his college transcripts in genetics and organic chem might suggest to the contrary, ol’ Robbo has always prided himself on possessing a certain logical, analytical, scientific side. Heck, in high school physics, there were few in my class better able to calculate, given a frictionless environment of course, exactly what force would be necessary to put a cannon ball fired at a given elevation right down the smokestack of an oncoming train traveling at a given speed.
But while I can grasp, at least at some level, the bending of the physical universe in three dimensions – via gravity – and even the bending of these three dimensions relative to Time, I simply cannot fathom the bending of Time itself. In other words, I can grasp a physical phenomenon proceeding faster or slower, depending upon the conditions, easily enough. What I can’t grasp is the changing of the chronological marker against which said phenomenon is measured.
Or, as Neo might have put it, “Whoa.”
Incidentally, the audience for this show was chock-a-block with small children, as might be expected. One of them, aged perhaps four or five, was to my immediate right one row back. Her commentary on teh film, produced non-stop and in a very piercing voice, consisted of the alternating phrases, “Is that the black hole?” and “Daddy, I’m really scared….” I was very tempted to wheel round on her father – who was discussing Palie vestry politicks with his neighbor throughout – and hiss, “Hey, man! I spent five whole dollars on this ticket and I want my money’s worth! So shut her, man….”
Of course, I didn’t. But I had quite a good chuckle thinking about it. Still didn’t like the kid very much, tho’.
Recent Comments