Saturday, November 21, 2009

Thursday, Sunday, Thursday, or Sunday?

Tomorrow is Friday or Monday?
In AKIC, the last sane world in the world, it will be Friday on November 23.  Which means that I don't work on November 24 and 25.  Jenny and Tony will return on one of those two days.  

Not so Cold
Waking up this morning, I could feel immediately that the temperature had risen.  I was sweating under my 2 quilts; and I didn't need to wear long johns.

It Happened One Night
This was the title of a classic movie I watched on DVD last night.  It Happened One Night, starring Clark Gable and Claudette Corbet, was made in the 1930s.  It was a light comedy which I thoroughly enjoyed because it took me to a different time and place, and offered sensations not provided by current films.

Several thing struck me about the movie which I will list for you in no particular order:

  • Clark Gable was cool.  No doubt about it.  I could imagine the presence he had at the time the film was first released in the theatres.  I was prone to think that you can't trust guys with mustaches and that they also had no style, but Gable changed my mind about that.  I now regret that the colour of my facial hair doesn't allow me to grow a thin mustache.
  • Everyone riding on a inter-city bus was wearing a suit and tie.  You wouldn't see that on a inter-city bus in China or Canada.  In fact, the passengers on the bus, in the film I watched last night, were dressed better than many suit-types you would see today.  I wonder if that was the way that people always dressed in those days.  Of course, I think of how people were dressed in the footage I saw of the Kennedy Assassination  -- Ruby was wearing a suit and tie when he shot Oswald -- and I can say that people these days dress much more casually, and perhaps they dressed that well on the bus in the 1930s.
  • Passengers on the bus engaged in a sing-a-long.  Did they actually do that?  Would anyone dare try that today on a bus?  He flies through the air with the greatest of ease!  The daring young man on the flying trapeze!
  • Claudette Corbet had nice legs.  She didn't initially strike me as beautiful, and she seemed average by my modern tastes, but she grew on me as the film progressed.  I think of how someone said that Evolution means that people are having more attractive babies, and realize what a stupid thought it was -- standards change.
  • There was spanking in this movie!  Clark Gable spanked Claudette Corbet because she said something particularly stupid.  Nowadays, the woman has to be slapping or spanking the man because he talks oafish.  Alas!  How standards change, and often for the worse!
  • Alan Hale, who played the Skipper on Gilligan's Island, made a brief experience.  He picked up the two hitchhiking stars of the movie, and proceeded to sing as bad as I do in WTUs.  A young couple in love is never hungry!  It was my favorite scene in the movie, nonetheless.
  • I liked the movie because of the high standard of dress and behavior.  The Gable character earned the love of the Corbet character because he behaved on principles.  The Corbet character's father actually encouraged her to not marry a rich man because he was a skunk.  And everyone wore suit and tie  -- even in the woods.
Crowded Bus
The bus in China is not as civilized as it was in the movie.  With the bus is crowded in China, it is everyone for themselves.  This morning on the crowded bus, I was grabbed and shoved, and I had a shoulder and elbow hard pressed against my back for the longest time.  Anywhere else in the world, it would have upset me.  Here, it was material for my blog.  I have even thought of joining the locals and using my size-advantage in the shoving competition to get on the bus first.

No comments: