"Captain Romance" and Rapt Attention to Birthday Planning!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:        

"Captain Romance" and His Rapt Attention to Birthdays...  Sort of...!


I freely confess the fact that I'm not great at giving the Gift of Planning -- meaning birthday

celebrations -- and it is a gift that most spouses genuinely appreciate, and to which they should be richly entitled...  Yes, I'm aware it's true! In my Geezerhood I should know better; I should certainly know by now!!...    

SweetHeart has a milestone birthday coming up very soon!! As a point of reference, however, related to the theme of this tale, I suppose we need to look into the distant past...  Some years ago, she asked me to plan her special day, complete with a particular choice of ice cream cake and one or two additional special

This wasn't exactly the cake, but you
probably get the idea.

elements, such as choosing and booking a restaurant, along with maybe a music venue, a movie perhaps...  Dancing!  (I don't dance very well...  I tend to move my arms a bit while my lower torso remains sort of "mired in concrete," on a chair or stool!)  

But, to continue...   I arrived home from work on that fateful Birthday...  "Where's the cake?" she asked, pointedly.  
"Uh..." I responded.  "I, uh, the cake, you say...  I sort of forgot.  Should I dash out and make the purchase now? Um, what were the particular ingredients you wanted again?"
"Where are we having dinner," she asked, now just a bit beyond skeptical as to my reply.
"Uh...  um... I sort of forget to..."
"Wonderful!," she responded. "I should have known better."  
"I'm really sorry, SweetHeart," I stammered and sputtered nervously, guiltily too, of course.
"Do you remember what I always say about what I want for my birthday?" SweetHeart asks.
"Um, gosh," I began to reply, "that you don't want to have to plan it?"
"And then what do you most often say in response?"
"Uh... I guess, um...  something like, 'Sweetie Heart, what do you want to do for your birthday?" (Gulp!!)

In the end, I believe I... actually we, to be honest more SweetHeart than me...  figured out a place to dine, and then we went to the ice cream cake store to remedy that portion of my brilliant lack of planning.  "I'm really so sorry," I continued to say, pleadingly, throughout the evening. SweetHeart is nothing if not endlessly patient, understanding and forgiving.  "I'm really sorry," I repeated frequently.  "I'll really do better in the future...  really!!"


"That'll be something novel to behold," said SweetHeart, her words appropriately drenched in sarcasm and disbelief!  

Although one year, to my credit, I planned a Birthday Date Night, complete with a decent hotel in Madison, dinner at a restaurant beyond my means, and even a nighttime horse-drawn carriage ride. My, my, but I was gallant, "Captain Romance" and "Commodore Money Pots" at the zenith of my powers!  Well, yes, it was only that one year in a row!  

Not the actual
costume, but you
get the idea, eh?

But!  This Year!... This year it'll be something quite different, a Birthday Celebration to remember for years to come, no doubt!  We'll lunch at a fine restaurant, attend a Brewers Baseball contest during which we've both pledged to eat stadium hot dogs!! A true rarity!!  By golly, this is quite a magnificent plan, and SweetHeart should be suitably delighted and gratified. "Lemme see, now...  did I order the baseball tickets?  Did I make the reservations...?"

The image above is an actual photo
of Miller Park where SweetHeart
and I plan to view an actual ball
game on her Birthday!!...  Hot Dog!  

As SweetHeart's major birthday celebration draws near, our beautiful daughters are planning a gathering, much to their credit and thoughtfulness.  In many respects, this should surely be a birthday to remember, and cherish! Maybe I'll write about it, post event. You know...  were there fireworks, a live band...  the Beach Boys, for example??!!!  Stay tuned...

One additional reflection, having to do with SweetHeart's brilliant design of one of my own pivotal birthdays.  She created an ersatz costume party, ostensibly hosted by a dear friend. I was exceptionally reluctant at first, having no great fondness for costumed events. In the end, I relented, and then embraced the idea enthusiastically. I dressed as a bag of leaves,

replete with leaf designs painted all over my silly face, leaves glued to a knit cap atop my head, a large garbage sack fastened to my torso containing bushels of leaves.  SweetHeart dressed as a raker of leaves, clad in a simple flannel shirt, cap and jeans. 

As we arrived and our host opened her door to us, a mighty and rousing shout of, "Surprise!" greeted my completely shocked auditory orifices!! I was the only lunatic in costume! The ensuing laughter was louder than the greeting. It was, I'll admit, great fun overall, and a truly remarkable ruse played upon me by the clever and creative SweetHeart. And I was eventually allowed to "de-leaf" myself so that I could actually sit upon a chair and enjoy the festivities.

But I digress!  SweetHeart's birthday celebration is planned, and will -- as our family mandate insists -- continue for at least an "octave," that is, for 8 days at the least, possibly a fortnight! And, yes, there'll be cake, possibly balloons, gifts of course, family...  all of the important and necessary ingredients of a truly fine and memorable fete. I hope to be invited myself!  

(Special Note of Dedication:    For SweetHeart, the light and love of my life, my best friend and companion. Happiest of Birthdays to you! And just wait'll next year...  Wait...  what happens next year?? Do I have it on my calendar??!!...)   

Humbly Submitted 07-21-17 -- Joel K.  

  

     



  

A Feast of a Festival, and It's Gaining National Renown!

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:      More than a Film Festival, It's a Feast of Local and National Prominence!

Magnificent images, outstanding selections! A stunning array of spectacular variety.  We traveled to Istanbul, Iceland, India, China and Iran.  Desert sands and roiling seas, diverse personalities from the Middle East and Africa, cats and the remarkable people who care for them.  Movies!  Films!  An international feast!  They play on our emotions, offer glimpses into fascinating cultures and distinctive ways of living.

When it's over, we feel a sense of loss, as if a good friend has come for a welcome visit and then is too quickly gone.  A full year will pass before it returns to delight us once again.  For

"starters," a kind of appetizer, perhaps, the 2016 Milwaukee Film Festival gave us live action and animated short films for the younger set.  It's become an annual tradition.  We take our grandkids and their parents, gather somewhere for lunch, and then urge the kids to talk about what they liked best, what they learned from or thought about the short films we all just enjoyed.  Bounce was a particular favorite, by consensus!

Sweet Bean!  While it may seem like an English translation of a Japanese exclamation, it's a remarkable film featuring a quietly influential protagonist who molds the story and, in a sense, narrates more positive life choices for the other two principal characters.  And she does it with a beautiful, nearly palpable skill...  and dorayakis to tempt and please the palates of our imaginations.

Keepers of the Game takes viewers to Salmon River High School in upstate New York. This is inspirational filmmaking and storytelling at its very best.  The sport of lacrosse is at its center, as the first all-Native-American girls team makes history, crossing cultural and other formidable barriers to win a championship, recognition and even hard-won funding for their sport along the journey.  An outstanding documentary film!

For one who was based in Turkey
during one's military service, a return
visit to Istanbul -- courtesy of KEDI --
was an added gift of the Festival!  

We waited in a "rush" line, a first for us, but worth the time and effort to re-visit Istanbul and the beautifully photographed KEDI.  The people who care for them, the filming perspectives...  Even if you aren't particularly a lover of cats, this is a gorgeous look at an extraordinary city, its ancient treasures, including its finest assets -- the people who live there.     

Post film-watching conversations with like-minded devotees are a delicious by-product of the festival.  Peter (just to cite an example!) noted how the "aspect ratios" or screen configuration changed between time periods of the epic, Mountains May Depart, a great and at times troubling film that symbolically toys with our notions of freedom.

A beguiling gem from Chinese director Bi Gan, in Kaili Blues we follow Doctor Chen on a circuitous journey that involves trains, cars, boats and motorcycles.  The film includes an intriguing, unbroken 40-minute shot, complex poetry and a dizzying conflation of past, present and future.  Wonderful stuff, even for those of us lost -- or at the very least befuddled -- in the translation!

Nahid -- a strange but interesting film from Iran -- is described as Kafkaesque.   True to its definition, the eponymous character makes illogical and bizarre choices, ultimately designed to retain guardianship of her son.  

"Have you seen 'Rams,' " asks our friend, Alan.  Naturally we had to take the bait, and found a pair of feuding brothers, amid a starkly beautiful Icelandic backdrop, struggling to keep their precious animals from being slaughtered due to a variant of "mad cow disease."  The movie has, at times, a profound sense of isolation encouraged by forbidding mountains that ring their sparsely-populated valley.   Upon reading the brief synopsis, and the names of the brothers -- Gummi and Kiddi -- I puzzled, "What?  Is this a puppet show??!!"  But there's no such whimsey in this grim tale. The brothers reconcile in the end, but perhaps too late as the shivering climax leaves the viewer to wonder.  This was another film that demanded analytical conversation, lots of it! Strange and thought-provoking stuff!

This photo has nothing to do with the
film, Sand Storm (Ref: just above,
right!) But, it's a great picture of four
beautiful grandchildren taken after
a presentation of "Kids Shorts, Size
Medium."  Aren't they wonderful??!!

One more!  Sand Storm from Israel.  Bedouin mother and daughter try to rebel against their repressive, male-dominated society.  In the main, and in the end, it's a story of selfless sacrifice and acceptance of forces too entrenched, too powerful to overcome.  A quixotic fable, maybe? (Just trying to put things into a kind of perspective I might be able to fathom!!)  

For those of us who love travel, a pleasure often limited by the restrictions of economics or work or family obligations (Geezerhood, too, maybe?!), the Milwaukee Film Festival is an opportunity to travel in the comfort of padded theatre seats in conveniently located "spacecraft" (airships, maybe, flying machines, low-speed trains...) -- to wit, the Oriental, Downer, Avalon, Times and Fox Bay cinema houses!   


We love the Festival, and we support it enthusiastically. As members in good standing, we pay what we can on an annual basis in order to enjoy, not only the Festival itself and reduced-cost tickets afforded members, but the "Super Secret Screening," a highlight of each annual event.  And, members can take advantage of the free, monthly member screenings, usually, of outstanding motion pictures, some first-run, some rarely presented in the Milwaukee area, or on a limited basis only. 

A somewhat recent change, the monthly screenings are now shown both at 4:00 pm -- perfect for the Geezer Set, you know, people like me! -- and 7:30 pm, great and welcome options for most members. Members need only respond to Email invitations, and then arrive early to secure seating, picking up awaiting tickets in the lobby of the magnificent Oriental Theatre where the "monthlies" are always shown.  And there's popcorn too...  Wonderful stuff (some would argue nearly indispensable in the movie-viewing experience)! 

"Hey, we're waiting!  Isn't it time for us members to be let in to the theatre?  Come on, now. We've been standing here a long time! Hey, in there!  I could begin chanting at any moment! Let us in!!...  We need sustenance -- Movies!  Popcorn...  Dots, maybe too... Junior Mints...  !!" 

(Special Note of Gratitude:  The perpetrator of this blog posting, on behalf of fellow devotees, extends great thanks to Jonathan Jackson, Kristopher Pollard and the entire cast and crew of Milwaukee Film for bringing to our fine community yet another outstanding Festival.  May we all enjoy a great many more years of this superior and delicious Feast of Filmdom!  Thank YOU!)  

Humbly Submitted, 10-20-16 -- Joel K.      

         







     

  



    

         



      

Devoted to "...Them Movin' Pitchers!"... and the "Feast of Filmdom"!

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:    ...Devoted to "...Them Movin' Pitchers!"...  and the "Feast of Filmdom"! 

My paternal grandfather had a way of using language that, as a boy, I often found amusing.  He referred to films -- "the movies" -- as "movin' pitchers," as though he'd known a mystic who could levitate solid objects.  I'm not belittling him; his syntax was perfectly understandable, and, like many of his generation, he had only the benefit of a 5th or 6th grade education.  My nuclear

Couldn't find a photo
of my grandfather, but
he loved Westerns so
this will have to suffice!
(And it's "Hoppy"!)

family's diction, two generations removed from that of the grandfather, is perhaps a bit more sophisticated, more "media-style," so to speak.  Why?  My mother was a teacher who corrected her children's language usage constantly; our male parent had an exceptional command of English, and used arcane words the hearing or memory of which still send me to a dictionary.  (I keep several in my office!)

My mother (she's NOT
pictured above!) was an
exceptional teacher, and
she loved good movies!
She taught her children to
appreciate language and art!

The opening paragraph intended essentially to titillate the reader (probably to no avail!), the aim of this month's writing is to celebrate and pay homage to the glorious Milwaukee Film Festival, and to motion pictures in general.  In my geezerhood, I've grown terribly fond of attending good films (an excellent pastime for an aging and more cerebral population).  In fact my wife and I belong to a "Film Group," in which eight members view selected movies, enjoy dinner and drinks, and then discuss and analyze the movie viewed, sometimes "half to death"!  Some in our group are quite scholarly on the subject and try to extrapolate profound meaning, while others simply wish to enjoy the film and talk just a bit about how it affected them.  Spirited discussions always prevail!

Good films, in my humble and simplistic viewpoint, can be superbly educative, edifying and stimulating.  They can also enhance our personal dialogue, provide useful "scripting" when appropriate occasions arise.  And movies can bolster our "sense of silly," providing a kind of lexicon or manuscript from which we can summon just the right words when circumstances warrant.  For example, in the Howard Hawks film, Bringing Up Baby -- one of our all time favorites! -- reacting to Dr. Huxley's extreme excitement over receiving a needed remaining dinosaur bone, the fictitious "intercostal clavicle" -- the delivery man says in a quiet deadpan, "This guy aint got all his buttons."  It's an expression my family and I use frequently, and isn't it kinder than, for instance, "What a complete buffoon," or "That joker musta dumped his brain cells when someone thumped his head!"?

When Katherine Hepburn's character announces that she intends to marry Dr. Huxley, her aunt, wonderfully played by May Robson, states vehemently, "Susan I forbid it!...  We have lunatics enough in this family!"  (A suitable line for many of us to borrow!)  Our children can practically recite the entire Bringing Up Baby film script verbatim.  (They've acquired such wonderful taste in film...  probably from the parents!)    

Here's another great moment in filmdom.  Henry Koster's Harvey features a number of memorable lines.  One of my favorites is spoken by Veta Simmons, sister of lead character, Elwood P. Dowd.  As she prepares to have Elwood committed to a sanitarium, she says absently to the facility's general factotum, the gruff Mr. Wilson, who asks Veta why she's tramping through the garden, plucking up flowers, "...Elwood is devoted to ranunculus."  He replies, thinking that she's the intended patient, "C'mon toots.  Let's go upstairs.  You can pick posies off the wallpaper."  (Here, I'm probably invoking the "privilege of paraphrase"...  I don't have the exact script at hand!)

If ever I encounter someone who actually owes me something, I love to do my best Walter Matthau imitation and ask with mock impatience and irritation, "Alright, Mrs. Voss, where's the money?"  We have a DVD of Charade.  I've watched it several times. 

A scene from the film,
Russian Woodpecker.  

Sweetheart (she's my wife!) and I are very fond of the Milwaukee Film Festival.  We bought tickets for several of its showings, and we enjoy the basic membership that affords us discounted tickets, and an even deeper discount for early purchases.  The festival's an absolute, international feast, and truly a "chef's dish of choice" for our fine city and its cultural menu.  Today, Thursday, September 24th, is the premiere date, Opening Night!  Though we won't be attending tonight's feature, tomorrow, Friday, we'll view, Russian Woodpecker, variously described as "conspiracy thriller...  (and)...  humorous documentary."  We can't wait!

The panoply of our upcoming "film feast" will prove to be an international delight, a breathtaking world tour, with visits not only to Russia, but to Sweden, Israel, Mexico, Iran, China and beyond, even into the heads and hearts of children from around the globe through Kids Shorts:  Size Medium!  ("...Shorts" is an annual tradition for our children and grandchildren!)

I suppose its pure cliche, but film is truly a transcendent experience, a means of opening pathways to understanding and acceptance, of developing empathy, when one has the capacity to allow such thoughts to penetrate the psyche.  Like actual travel and meeting native people of other countries -- not merely hotel clerks and restaurant servers! -- the movies can give us a kind of inexpensive passage to the extraordinary diversity of human experience, endeavor and achievement.  

And so I encourage with the utmost enthusiasm readers, friends, detractors, relatives, odd passers-by...  everyone!   Go see a film, one that tells a good story and makes you think, and not a pandering, formulaic and obtuse chaos of artificial violence.  Specifically, attend at least one (or more) showings at the superb Milwaukee Film Festival.  Take in a movie with subtitles.  After even a few frames, you won't even notice you're reading translated lines of French or Swedish or Hebrew or Russian...    

Travel via the magic of the movies to distant lands and experience the remarkable lives of people you'll likely never meet in another manner or medium.  Don't mean to sermonize; my aim is merely to help spread the wealth!  And verily, I believe one would always do well to heed the words of Harvey's Veta as she admonishes her daughter:  "Don't be didactic, Myrtle Mae, it isn't becoming in young girls" (or old boys, either!).

(Special Dedication:   The perpetrator of this Blog dedicates this writing to Bill and Cathy, Peg and Tony, Will and Ann, and to Sweetheart too, of course, my favorite film scholar and extrapolator!  May you all rejoice and regale in the resplendent delights of great motion pictures for many years, many festivals and many gatherings yet to come!) 

Humbly Submitted 09-24-15 -- Joel K.