Harry's Ruminations

Won't someone PLEASE think of the children?! The hue and cry surrounding Miley Cyrus's recent photos in Vanity Fair disgusts me. NOT the photos themselves. Certainly not the photographer, Annie Leibovitz, whose work stands on its own. We should be ashamed. We're a country addicted to drugs, gossip, and pornography. We're so in debt, we're destitute, yet we spend like there's no tomorrow. We care little except for how other people PERCEIVE us. Substance matters not. Given that, the Helen Lovejoy-esque reaction to this photograph is disgusting. More skin is on display on your average beach outfit than this girl showed in this (to my eye) tasteful photograph. Given the Disney spin-machine and handlers involved, I have no idea if Cyrus fits her squeaky-clean image. But for goodness' sake, put the torches and pitchforks down, people!! What's there to apologize for here? This country that devoured infamous Rolling Stone spread from Britney Spears 10 y...

* From the "not worth reviewing" file: Beowulf was awful. How do you take a blood-soaked elegiac epic and turn it into, essentially, The Devil and Tom Walker . Plus, the CGI was good, but not quite there. * A cold snap has hit, with frosty mornings and cool, windy days. * I've *got* to stop staying up late to watch bad movies on DVD. A netflix queue reordering is...er...in order. * Everyone's doing well. Whitney's recovered from her stomach virus last week. Maria's managed to no maim herself lately, and seems ready to break-out running any day now (with injuries to follow, no doubt). Joey's school year is winding down, and he's enjoying baseball on his very good coach-pitch team, the Reds. ("Communism was a red herring") * Finally sorted-out Joey's latest seizure-inducing Wii game Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity At its heart, it's a racing game, and I LOVE racing games. Still, it's annoying as heck, and very short. We pl...

Link In lieu of going skating with Joey and Whitney yesterday, I put Maria down for a nap and watched Cate Blanchett reprise her role as Good Queen Bess in Elizabeth: The Golden Age . As the story opens, it's 1585, and Elizabeth has been on the throne 27 years. Still, intrigues surround her throne, as the Catholic Spain seeks to remove "the bastard whore" from the throne and put Mary Stuart ("Queen of Scots") in her place, or so it seems. For all it's star power (Blanchett, Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh, Geoffrey Rush as Sir Francis Walsingham, and so on), this film is static and distant. It's The Lion in Winter without the irony. Where the first Elizabeth was a gripping tale of a girl becoming queen, in this episode, we see the queen fully realized, and the action revolving around her. Sure, there's plenty of pithy dialog, great costumes, and history galore, but the central human story isn't there. This is the story of a country (pers...

There's a market out there for old, efficient cars. And somebody is going to figure-out how to fill it. Let's face it, cars used to be more efficient: The Honda CRX HF from 1990 was rated at 50mpg, and was a simple, dead-reliable transportation appliance. Cars also used to be less expensive and less complicated. Here's the secret--new cars can't be made like cars from 20 years ago. Regulations won't allow it. Today, you must have airbags, side impact beams, stability control, etc. For years, the enthusiast market has been finding these gems (like my E30) and holding on to them for a half-million miles or so. The vast majority of folks aren't enthusiasts; they just need.cheaper, reliable, more efficient cars. Seems like somebody could fill that need. I see several tiers to this: - At the dealership level, you could pay top-dollar for good used examples, scouring the online resources available targeting efficient vehicles--Older Civics, Volkswagen TDIs, M...

There's something awesome about going to a real city , staying in a great old hotel and eating at a darn good restaurant Bella really outdid herself this weekend...first class stuff all the way from the room and its appointments, through the champagne and fruit tray. I particularly enjoyed the Art Deco throughout the great old building, which served as a model for the Empire State Building (same architectural firm). Through it all, I enjoyed my darling's company...that was the best part.

21 was great, if you like ill-paced movies with recycled plotlines. After enjoying other such pictures about genius kids ( Real Genius ) and breaking the bank at Las Vegas casinos ( Ocean's 11 ), I hoped for a tight, enjoyable romp, with a good "nerd + hot chick" love story and lots of nerd-rific references--sort of like War Games in Vegas. Yeah, not so much. The elevator pitch is dynamite: MIT students act as a team to count cards at Vegas blackjack tables, facing opposition from the latest technology (biometric scanners) and old-school Vegas security men, as well as internal turmoil. Somewhere between there and adapting the bestselling fact-cum-fiction book Bringing Down the House , this movie becomes a mess of recycled ideas and predictability. By the end, I was rooting for security guards to nab the lot of them. They're just annoying people we're given no reason to care about. Some highlights: Classroom discussion of The Monty Hall problem Scene-stealing...

"We need to talk." The four words no man likes to hear - I don't care how old you are, how married, how single, or how many cumulative man-woman experiences you've had - those words bring a chill to a man's soul. Yes, in the Soap Opera that is Dr. Bud, one word suffices: Nadine