FunnyStrange.com

I was asked to drive a wedding couple from the chapel to the reception site this afternoon. Kind of cool, no one's ever asked me to do something like this before. We had talked about incorporating the art car into our own wedding -- either being married at the big art car parade in Houston (the head of the Houston Art Car Klub is a licensed minister), or road tripping to Vegas and going to a drive-in chapel. But it didn't work out for a variety of reasons, and I'm tickled that the car gets to participate in a wedding nonetheless.

So we've been working on the car. I had planned to deal with this over the past couple of weeks, but events beyond my control took me out of the state all last week and threw my schedule for a loop. I couldn't work on the car last week because I was away, and then I had to recover from the late night drive back (don't ask), and then I had to catch up on all the work I had missed because of going away unexpectedly, and here we are.

Yesterday we patched the carpet strips where they had worn off. It turns out it's harder to cut new pieces of carpet to match the old glue marks and fit around the other decorations, than it was to put the original pieces down when there wasn't anything on the car yet. I don't know why this surprised me. We also added a few toys to fill some empty spots & to replace a few that had gotten really gross. A casual observer probably won't notice the difference but it does look nicer to me.

This morning we've been cleaning the inside. Which, wow. The most frequent passenger in my car is my dog, and who knew german shepherd fur could collect like that. After vacuuming I feel like it's clean enough that I can say "sorry about the dog hair" with a straight face.

We're almost done cleaning and I don't have to be at the chapel for a couple of hours. Phew! I hate feeling rushed. Plus we're having friends over for dinner tonight which I haven't even thought about yet.

I have to say, working on the car last night brought back memories. It reminded me of when I first started creating the art car, how fun and exciting that was. There wasn't any burden of upkeep, just the thrill of seeing something new take shape. I'd like to try to recapture that. I've been thinking idly about doing major work on the car for a long time, but the enormity of the job made it seem overwhelming. Maybe I could start with one panel and see how it goes. Just scrape everything off and do something fun and new. If it turned out well that would motivate me to keep going.

April 15 movie: Underground. I was deeply affected by this story about German anti-fascists who broadcast an underground radio station. Released six months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when a few Hollywood movies were out there trying to win American support for getting involved in the war. It was an incredible movie. Exciting, tightly plotted, suspenseful, sharp dialogue, strong performances. Stars Philip Dorn as the leader of the radio movement, and Jeffrey Lynn as his brother, a loyal Nazi soldier, were especially good.

I read later that many of the actors were themselves anti-Nazis who had fled Germany and the surrounding countries, for instance Dorn was Dutch. This lent the performances a visceral intensity. And .. okay, I can't continue my review because this movie has brought up some strong feelings for me. Maybe this was the wrong thing to watch the day before the torture memos were released. The movie is about people sacrificing everything to stop their government from committing atrocities. The movie never mentions the Holocaust, I'm not sure if the filmmakers would have known about it that early on. The crime the Nazis are shown committing is torture of captured resistance members. I know the movie is fictional, but people like that did exist. Tens of thousands of Germans were killed for resisting the Nazis. Well, we've just gotten proof of what we already knew: torture was the official policy of the US government for years. Why didn't the American people rise up in outrage against this? Why didn't I, where the fuck was I? Did I think sitting on my ass and hating George Bush was a sufficient response? Writing the occasional angry blog post, that was supposed to accomplish something? Eight years ago I would have called torture by the US government unthinkable. When confronted with the unthinkable, my reaction was so tepid. I'm deeply disappointed in myself.

A couple of weeks ago I had to join Twitter for work. I had avoided it before because 1. I don't need another online thing to keep up with and 2. I don't really get it.

I still pretty much don't get Twitter, but I finally found something useful about it: the CDC Emergency feed. Now I can safely ignore all panic-driven swine flu rumors. When the time comes to panic, the CDC will tweet me!

(In the meantime their advice is straightforward and sensible: wash your hands a lot, use alcohol hand sanitizer, try not to touch your face, stay home if you get flu symptoms. This Swine Flu And You article is helpful. I was already a little paranoid about picking up diseases from surfaces -- can't stand to touch a public bathroom doorknob with my bare hands, who knows how many people don't wash their hands! -- and I already keep hand sanitizer in my car.)

Six months after the election, I still get a fair amount of political email. I don't know how I got on some of these lists. I knew enough to set up a special gmail account just for political mail which would be easy to drop later, but a few of the lists got ahold of my main address. Today brought a message from James Carville, which begins:

Dear Sarah,
Barack Obama is a better man than me.

I really can't improve on that.

who came up with this one?

Seriously, who thought this was a good idea?

April 28 movie: Benny Moré: Hoy Como Ayer. This movie was incredibly frustrating. I thought it was going to be all performances. Like all those Louis Jordan and Nat King Cole collections we rented last year. I was so psyched about sitting down to two hours of Moré's incredible voice. Well no, actually it was a documentary, mostly interviews with his contemporaries and a few songs here and there. What frustrated me the most was when they would show about thirty seconds of a song, and when it would start to get really good they would cut away to another interview. Also, parts of the movie seem to have been copied from a worn-out videotape. The image jumps and is scratchy and you hear that distortion that happens when the tape is starting to stretch.

It's not fair of me to blame this movie for being what it is, not what I wanted it to be. I probably would have enjoyed it immensely if I had been in the mood for it.

Also, the movie called him "Benny" but my albums call him "Beny." Not sure which is correct.

April 26 movie: The Kiss Before the Mirror. A dark suspense movie in which Frank Morgan defends his friend, who is accused of murdering his adulterous wife, meanwhile Morgan suspects his own wife of infidelity. Well, suspect isn't the right word. She's really obvious about it. Also features a very very young Walter Pidgeon as one of the other men.

April 25 movie: The More The Merrier. Judging by the measure of repeat viewability, this is one of my favorite movies. I love it so much! Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea and Charles Coburn are all superb. The relationships among all three seem so genuine. They made me believe that the actors were friends in real life. And the portrayal of crowded wartime DC is so vivid. And the dialogue just sparkles. Georg and I sat there giggling just because the movie was so fun. If you like screwball comedies, you have to see this. You really do.

This past weekend Georg and I went with D. and S. on the farm tour! Forty local farms open their gates to visitors for the weekend. One afternoon isn't nearly enough time to visit 40 farms, and we only made it to three.

We started with lunch at the Chapel Hill location of Allen & Sons. I have to say, that was some of the best barbecue I've ever had. The smoky flavor was so intense, I didn't even bother to put sauce on it. Good tea too, and since we all ordered tea, they brought us a pitcher.

The first farm we went to was Maple View. Which, in retrospect, I wish we had skipped because to prevent hoof & mouth disease, they don't allow anyone into the actual farm. Instead they sent us to an educational area which was kind of like the ag displays at the state fair. I like those displays at the state fair, but we were there to see actual farms.

Out back something funny happened: they had pens with a few animals for people to look at. The first pen had goats, and I noticed that about a half dozen people were inside petting the goats. I figured maybe they were taking small groups into the pen to see the goats. We moved on down the line to see the rest of the animals, and then a few minutes later I heard an employee come running out and yell, "You're not supposed to be inside the pens!" By that point there had to be at least 20 people in there. It was kind of hilarious to see them all filing out one by one.

Our second stop was the Dancing Pines Farm. It's a small farm and we got to talk to the farmers about their method for keeping lettuce alive during that really cold snap we had over the winter. The best part though was the beekeeper! He did a little demonstration where he opened one hive and showed us the bees. And he let me put on a long sleeved shirt and a bee hat and go with him to the hive! He didn't have extra gloves so I couldn't do anything, just got to stand close and watch. Still, it was So! Cool!

The beekeeper was just what you would expect. An older man who loved bees & was so in tune with them. He brought out a comb full of baby bees so we could see the nurse bees feeding them. While we were watching, a baby emerged from its cell and started trying to open its wings. You could hear the joy in the beekeeper's voice when he saw it.

I have some interest in beekeeping and I asked him lots of questions. He confirmed my suspicion that we don't have enough land to raise bees in our yard. But he said that it would be easy to find a farm which would let us keep bees on their land. Maybe when we get our yard under control, I'll look into those free beekeeping classes that I think the county does once a year.

Our last stop of the day was Fickle Creek Farm. They have a really interesting system of using the animals instead of equipment or chemicals to prepare fields. For instance, when they wanted to plant up a field, they let pigs root in it for five years to destroy the weeds. Then they let chickens live in the field for two years to fertilize. Then they were ready to plant! It was inspiring.

Unfortunately, I was being my usual graceful self that day: I lost my balance while dipping my foot in the disinfectant bath and fell on the hard gravelly ground. I got a scrape on one leg which looked terrible, but was actually shallow once I cleaned the blood off. The bigger problem was landing hard on my right hand. The heel of my hand got pretty bruised, though it took a couple of days for the bruise to come up. Today I've got a nice big purple bruise that wraps around my hand. At least it doesn't hurt much anymore.

Between me falling and the general heat of the day, we were all done in by then. We stopped at the new Weaver Street in Hillsborough for lemonade -- and can I say, it was a rare and wonderful experience for me to be the one person in the car who had any idea where we were going. I have such a bad sense of direction that it doesn't happen often! -- then headed back to Durham.

A really fun afternoon. I definitely want to go on the farm tour again next year.

In honor of Bea Arthur I did a set of mouthy broads on my show this afternoon: Tallulah Bankhead, Marlene Dietrich, Ethel Merman, Mae West and Bea Arthur herself, singing "Let's Face the Music and Dance" from her Broadway album Just Between Friends. All women who "took no guff" as I put in on the air. I was trying to speak discreetly, though I almost slipped and called Arthur "ballsy." I think that's legal but my listeners tend to be older people and I try to keep my language squeaky clean.

Most people my age remember Bea Arthur from "The Golden Girls." I wasn't really watching TV when that show was on the air so my main memory of her is "Maude," which my parents watched when I was a kid. I didn't find out until later how controversial the show was. The Times has a good obituary of Arthur today. From it I learned that Maude's abortion happened two months before Roe v. Wade. Apparently abortion was legal in the county where the show was set, though not yet in most of the country. Now that's ballsy.

We found a local group called Wildlife Welfare which helps people deal with injured wildlife. They have a list of "rehabbers" who will tell you what to do with the animal you've got, and if it needs medical care they will take it in.

Turns out we were not supposed to feed or water it, that's dangerous to a hurt small mammal. When we went back to remove the greens and water dish it hadn't moved, much less eaten or drank anything. I'm sure it was in shock. They told us to give it warmth because of the shock. They suggested a heat pad under the box, which we don't have, so we took one of those microwave heat packs and laid it along one side of the box. That way the bunny could get close to the heat if it wanted, and if it got too hot it could move away. They also told us to mostly cover the box so it would feel like it was hidden. We had just put a screen over it so it couldn't jump out & so nothing else could get in.

I took the bunny to a rehabber in south Durham, a really nice woman. She saw the injury -- missing a big chunk of fur on one side -- and said that if it has no internal injuries, it could recover from that. She asked me what kind of dog I have and when I said shepherd mix her face fell. She said shepherds tend to do a lot of damage.

So I'm not too optimistic about its long-term chances, but still I feel much better having delivered the bunny to someone who knows how to take care of it. Even if it doesn't make it, it will be much more comfortable with her than it would have been with us.

I gave her a donation which she said she would pass on to the Wildlife Welfare organization. I hope they give her something for the work she does.

We also got a lot of really helpful information from the Piedmont Wildlife Center website.

Jane caught a baby bunny about a half hour ago. She wounded the poor thing but didn't kill it. It was bleeding but still able to hop away when Georg caught it.

We put it in a box with some greens and a dish of water, covered it with an old window screen and put the box in the shed. If it's still alive in the morning I guess we'll call the vet.

After it was all over Georg told me that Jane had killed one while I was away. Poor baby bunnies. How long does it take for the stupid things to grow big enough that they have half a chance of getting away?

We have a neighbor who either just got a barky dog, or just decided to start leaving it out all night. I can't remember where I put the earplugs when I unpacked on Friday.

April 24 movie: Ivanhoe. Is it Robert Taylor day or something? Just for me actually. TCM wasn't showing this today, I had recorded it while I was away.

What a treat this movie is. A huge MGM spectacle with big sets, big locations (real English castles), big action set pieces, a big story, big acting, big costumes, big everything. Stars Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Fontaine, and George Sanders. All of whom I adore. The movie is a historical drama about the rescue of Richard the Lionhearted, and there's a big love quadrangle, also a subplot about the persecution of the Jews in medieval Europe. (It's pretty mild in the movie compared to reality, but still, it's not the "clerks saying "Happy Holidays" in a store" nonsense that passes for religious persecution these days.)

This was a great way to spend a lazy afternoon. One of these days I should read the book and find out how close an adaptation it is.

April 24 movie: High Wall. I've got to say, there's nothing like a week of other people's drama wrapped up by an unexpected and mostly involuntary seven-hour overnight drive to make me appreciate the saying, "there's no place like home."

The silver lining is that no one was expecting me until tomorrow, so I had today to relax and recover from driving all night. Turned on TCM just as this movie was starting. As it happens, it's a tight, well-made noir starring Robert Taylor as a war veteran who apparently killed his wife during a psychotic episode, and Audrey Totter as a psychiatrist at the state mental hospital. Both stars are great, a pleasant surprise from Taylor who doesn't generally turn in such a subtle, believable performance. Also good work by Herbert Marshall as the dead wife's employer and H.B. Warner as a sad, music-loving inmate of the mental hospital.

April 13 movie: Escape. Decent thriller about Robert Taylor trying to rescue his mother from execution by the Nazis. It was made in 1940, after the war had started and before the US had gotten involved, and the message of the movie was "Wake up, people! We can't just stand by." Norma Shearer plays a naturalized German citizen, originally from New York, who stands in for America as she gradually learns about the evil of the Nazis and comes around to helping Taylor. My main criticism of the movie is Taylor's acting: his idea of intensity is to Shout! At! People! and he spends the whole movie running around doing just that. Good supporting work by Conrad Veidt, Felix Bressart, Philip Dorn and silent legend Alla Nazimova as the mother.

April 13 movie: Wife, Husband and Friend. Romantic comedy starring Loretta Young and Warner Baxter as a couple who hate each other, should never have married, and if they must stay married should live as far away from each other as possible. Okay, that's not how 1939 audiences were supposed to read it. They're supposed to be a couple in love who just happen to sabotage each other at every opportunity. I can't recommend this movie unless you loathe your spouse and you want to feel like that's the natural order of things.

April 15 movie: Show Boat. Is this the earliest film version of Show Boat? It was made in the dawn of the sound era, and like The Jazz Singer was almost entirely silent, punctuated by a few musical numbers in full sound. Also the racial plot element had been completely removed.

You might be asking yourself, why would anyone watch a mostly-silent, bowdlerized version of Show Boat. Good question. I kept watching out of curiosity. The print they showed on TCM read like a sound movie for which most of the soundtrack was missing: it was totally silent, no music or anything, and also no intertitles. It had modern subtitles some of the time, and sometimes nothing at all to indicate what they were saying. I'm still not sure what was up with that. Also, I had never seen Joseph Schildkraut in a starring role before. He had a high-pitched voice with a German accent, and when I've seen him in soundies he usually played a villainous, conniving nobleman. The ambitious king's councillor in The Man in the Iron Mask, the vicious courtier in Marie Antoinette, that sort of thing. It was really interesting to see him as a romantic lead.

...that torture would be used to extract false confessions.

"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."...

"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.

"Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies."

Senior administration officials, however, "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information," he said....

A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

Report: Abusive tactics used to seek Iraq-al Qaida link, McClatchy

April 16 movie: The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. Hard to believe I never saw this before. It's a fun movie. If you saw what Jim Carrey and Mike Myers did to Dr. Seuss and wished there was a good live-action Dr. Seuss movie, you should definitely watch this. As I said to Georg at the time, you probably have to be high to fully appreciate it, but I enjoyed it plenty without chemical enhancement.