The Good Wife’s Guide

This, from Good Housekeeping, 1955.  Here’s hoping my wife reads this.

  • Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready, on time for his return.  This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs.  Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal (especially his favourite dish) is part of the warm welcome needed.
  • Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you’ll be refreshed when he arrives.  Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking.  He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.
  • Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him.  His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it.
  • Clear away the clutter.  Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives.
  • Gather up schoolbooks, toys, paper etc and then run a dustcloth over hte tables.
  • Over the cooler months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by.  Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too.  After all, catering for his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.
  • Prepare the children.  Take a few minutes to wash the children’s hands and faces (if they are small), comb their hair and, if necessary, change their clothes.  They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part.  Minimise all noise.  At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum.  Try to encourage the children to be quiet.
  • Be happy with him.
  • Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him.
  • Listen to him.  You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time.  Let him talk first – remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.
  • Make the evening his.  Never complain if he comes home late or goes out to dinner, or other places of entertainment without you.  Instead, try to understand his world of strain and pressure and his very real need to be at home and relax.
  • Your goal: Try to make sure your home is a place of peace, order and tranquility where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit.
  • Don’t greet him with complaints and problems.
  • Don’t complain if he’s late home for dinner or even if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through that day.
  • Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or have him lie down in the bedroom.  Have a coll or warm drink ready for him.
  • Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes.  Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.
  • Don’t ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness.  You have no right to question him
  • A good wife always knows her place.

You know, if women would just abide by these simple rules, the world would be such a better place.

powered by performancing firefox

Donald RumsFelled

Or… Donald Rumsfallen and he can’t get up.

Saddam Hussein Sentenced To Be Dead

I didn’t even know he was sentenced to be sick.

He Said My Name Is Harvey

http://www.youtube.com/v/z04msEnyhIg

I forget how it came around to this, but today at lunch I was telling DaveS about one of my favourite scenes from the movie Harvey. While Harvey is not one of my favourite movies (I find it a bit slow moving in parts, it does contain a few fantastic scenes, mostly from Jimmy Stewart.. He had commented that the scene I was telling him about would maybe make a good monologue to have at the ready, say, for an audition. That was a thought I had when I recently watched the movie again, after not seeing it for a long time.
Well, through the wonder of YouTube, I was able to find a re-enactment of that very scene. And while this clip doesn’t do the actual film scene any justice (Jimmy Stewart was a hundred-fold better than the actor in this clip), it does show the scene in its entirety. The re-enactment is performed by a YouTube regular, Brandon Hardesty, who has, among other videos, almost 20 re-enactments of movies, in which he plays all the roles. You should check some of them out.
Anyway, in this scene, Elwood P. Dowd (who is something of a town-drinker, and who claims to be friends with a pooka, named Harvey, who takes the form of an invisible 6 foot tall rabbit) is in an alley behind a bar, talking to a psychologist who is trying to figure out just how crazy Dowd is, to see if he should be institutionalized. The doctor asks Elwood how he came to know Harvey, and the scene is Elwood answering him. Again, while the re-enactment is somewhat entertaining in its own right, it nowhere does justice to Jimmy Stewart’s performance on screen. Some night when you’re in the mood for a good old comedy, and you’ve seen all the “great ones”, this is one definitely worth checking out.

Guess The Song In My Ears

From now until forever, if you ever see me with my headphones on, if you want,  you can try to guess the song and/or artist to which I’m listening.  If you guess the band correctly, I’ll give you five dollars.  If you guess the actual song I’m listening to, I’ll give you fifty dollars.  One guess per meeting.
Or, you can just not bother.

Saxondale

I’ve been a fan of Steve Coogan, ever since I first saw took notice of him in 24 Hour Party People, and most recently in the odd (in a good way) Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. I absolutely loved his segment with Alfred Molina in Jim Jarmusch‘s Coffee and Cigarettes.  (had enough with the links?)  He is universally heralded for his performance of the title character on “I’m Alan Partridge”, a TV show I’ve never seen, yet since it gets such glowing reviews, one I should probably search out.  I like his easy, natural acting style, and, although he’s primarily a comedic actor, looks like he’d be able to handle dramatic stuff without problem.
Anyway, this weekend, I read a brief review in Salon (I won’t link to it), about a new-ish series of his that’s airing (or has aired) on BBC-America.  The show is called Saxondale.  Me, being a child of the internet age, promptly downloaded the whole 7 episodes of Series One of the show (I don’t know if there’ll be a Series Two).
After watching the first three episodes, in a row, I can say that this show is definitely worth the effort to find it and watch it.  It is quite wonderful, in all kinds of subtle ways.  Coogan plays the title character (he also is co-writer on all the episodes), Tommy Saxondale, who is a somewhat burnt-out former-roadie for all the big bands in the 70’s and 80’s.  Now that he’s middle-aged, he makes a living as an independently subcontracted pest control guy.  He’s married to a rather BBW woman who makes her living creating and selling t-shirts (the “creativity” primarily consisting of putting pictures of famous uptight people on t-shirts, superimposing them with a joint in their mouth/hand whatever).  So, basically, he’s a middle-aged guy who has hundreds of stories of his wild youth, who is now a rather comfortable middle-aged man with anger-managment issues.
While the plots are sometimes thin, that’s not really an issue.  Because Coogan so totally inhabits this character (who is reminiscent of an older, British version of Dude Lebowski), that it’s simply a joy to watch him act.  He enjoys spouting his opinions everywhere/anywhere, and often finds himself going too far in his opinions, as he gets himself worked up into an angry froth.  While this may sound rather boring and too one-noted, it’s really not.

Check it out, and then agree with me.  If you’re looking for something to replace the weekly fix of downloading and watching Extras, now that Series Two of that is ended, take a look for Saxondale.  I think you’ll like it.

Technorati Tags: ,

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

A Luted Sting

Now, if I hadn’t watched it, and if somebody told me that Sting was on this week’s Studio 60, and that he was playing a lute, I’d probably scoff and imagine the ArrogantAndPompous version of Sting coyly smugging himself into the show.
But I did see it (twice, actually), and I’m very surprised at how wonderful it was. I’ve been, at times, a pretty big fan of Sting’s music. Not so much lately, but I think he’s immensely talented. It’s just his personality sometimes gets in the way. Anyway, I didn’t recognise the first song he did, but enjoyed it quite a bit. However, the lute version of Fields of Gold he performed at the end of the show was, well, wonderful.
Still, though, the show continues to bug me. The characters are far too-often too involved and engaged in the conversations they have, and are never at a loss for words. Unless it’s written that they’re supposed to be at a loss. For a comedy show, nobody seems to be having much fun. Not that that’s a prerequisite for being involved in a comedy show, but they’re just so serious about everything. And are any of them someone you’d want to spend any time with?
At least this week’s shown comedy segments were supposed to be on the verge of being funny. Because that’s exactly what they were. On the verge of being funny.
I’m still hanging in there, with the show, but I’m not in any way gaga over it. I’ll watch next week.

Technorati Tags: , ,

The Miami Dolphinished

Regular readers here may know that I’m a big Miami Dolphins fan, they of the NFL.
This is the second season of their new coach, the much-lauded and uber-successful college football coach Nick Saban. Last season, the Dolphins ended strong, and all indications pointed to the belief that Miami’s players had bought into Coach Saban’s coaching philosophy. That, coupled with the common belief that a coach only starts “owning” his team in his second year onward, and with a few good moves in the offseason, the Dolphins should be able to make the playoffs this year. That was the belief.
One of those good moves seemed to be the acquisition of a new (to them) quarterback, in the name of Duante Culpepper. Two years ago, he was a star qb, a hang-your-franchise-on-my-shoulders kind of guy. Last year, his performance fell off a bit, then he got a very significant knee injury and missed the final half the season. He recouped his knee remarkably well in the off-season, enough so that Miami decided to trade for him. I was happy about this trade, because the Dolphins, for about half a decade at least, were in desperate need of a star quarterback. I (as did many others) expected Duante to return to some semblance of his star form after being fully recuperated. Hopefully, he’d return a month or so into this season, and play wonderfully. Joey Harrington, an underachieving but potentially quality qb who last played in hapless Detroit was also acquired. The question about Joey is this: are his poor statistics more a reflection on his abilities, or on the woeful team he played for? I always thought he was better than he was allowed to be, and when “we” got him, I was happy thinking he’d most likely competently start this season, until Duante was ready. That was the belief.
Then, over the early summer, Duante’s injury progress had improved to the point where he was now expected to start the season. A very fast knee recuperation. All was well with Miami. Preseason has the team not playing so well, but Duante is playing well enough. Yeah, he’s still rusty, but that’ll rub off quickly. Harrington, too, was playing pretty well.
All was so well with Miami that at least two prominent sports magazines declared the Dolphins to be SuperBowl favoured team from the AFC. While I never bought into that hype, I was quietly expecting the Dolphins to make it into the playoffs, and depending on how things stood then, who knows how far they’d go.
Well, six games into the 16 game season and Miami are a pathetic 1-5. They are a terrible team of underachieving, poorly coached, poorly motivated sports individuals. While the defense has shown itself capable, the offense stinks. Turns out Culpepper wasn’t ready to come back this soon, and needs to get more rehab. He proved to be slow, indecisive and rather immobile. After four awful games (even the one game they won was not a good win), in which he got sacked far too often, he got benched so, says coach, he can rehab himself back to the point where he has his spark back.
Enter Harrington for the past two games, and while the offense does look crisper, there are still far too many things going wrong in this offense for it to win anything.
The reality of the situation is that the Dolphins really suck this year, and I’m glad now that I didn’t splurge on NFL Sunday Ticket this season. It is highly improbable, bordering on impossible, that they’ll make the playoffs now. Honestly, I’m hoping they’re able to turn it around enough so they win half their remaining games. That would leave them at 7-9. A small smidgen of my brain still holds out hope that they magically turn on the “team” switch, and enough things will change that they turn it around and become a force to be reckoned with. But that ain’t gonna happen.
Anyway, it’s not fun being a Dolphins fan so far this year.

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

With Great Power…

Okay, so you’re a superhero, let’s say. Your super abilities are not really important to this discussion, except that they must include an ability that comes into play in the scenario below. Also, because of the nature of your abilities, and the community you live in, it’s somewhat important that your secret identity remain secret.
Let’s say that you’re on the bus back home, after a long day at work. By work I mean the “normal” job you get paid to do in the real world, where your superhero abilities don’t *necessarily* come into play.
Okay, so you’re on the bus back home. The bus is moving along at a good clip. All of a sudden it stops short, causing people on board to lurch forward. Most passengers are able to compensate to the shifting physics. The eager newspaper reporter, with the camera at the ready, has compensated. So, too did the girl or guy upon whom you have a secret superhero crush. But one passenger, a young child, a young boy, let’s say, a happy young boy, he cannot compensate in time. He’s sitting in such a seat on the bus that causes him to fly out of his seat, fly forward, towards a pole on the bus. A dangerous, hard metal pole. Now, because you have the ability to suss out the situation, you see that he’s going to fly face first into the pole, and probably do some serious damage to himself. You also know that if you act quickly enough, you can use your abilities to catch him. You can stop him from smashing face first into the pole. Problem is, if you do, your quick action will more than likely cause people to wonder how you did this. Some of the more clever passengers will likely piece together that you’ve got superhero abilities. If they do, then it may very well become more difficult for you to perform your superhero obligations (whatever they are for you).

So, the question is: Do you save the child and risk revealing yourself? Or do you let the child suffer the accident and save your identity for more *important* moments?

Personally, I allow the child to smash his face into the pole.