Month: June 2003

Movie afternoon here at the Bogardus Estate. Started off, by turning off, Far From Heaven 30 minutes into it. The movie captured the feel of the Fifties too well, so much so that it seemed on the edge of parody to me. I can’t explain it more that I didn’t get interested enough in the characters enough to care about their drama.

The next movie didn’t even get into the DVD player, Don’t Look Now. I originally rented after watching Donald Sutherland talk about the movie on Inside The Actor’s Studio. John Lipton effervesced over the film, plus they talked of rumors that the love scene between Donald and Julie Christie was not acting. But I forgot who was in the movie and when I read this blurb on the DVD sleeve, “John and Laura Baxter just lost their daughter in a tragic drowning accident. While living in Venice, an elderly psychic insists that she sees the spirit of the child. They’re unsure of whether to place their emotional well being in the hands of a stranger, but John begins to have psychic flashes of his own, seeing the child walk the streets of Venice. Is he insane, or is there a deeper meaning to the sightings?”, I just put it back in the envelope.

I did watch 2 movies all the way through. I had rented The Truth About Charlie and when I put it in the player it turns out I put it in upside down, as the movie on which it was based, Charade, was on that side of the disc. So what the heck, let’s watch this one first and then we can compare the two. I think that it was very stupid to include this version on the flip side because by comparison the original is a better movie than the update. Mark Walberg is a stick. Cary Grant just being his usual Cary Grant self has more on screen charisma than Marky Mark will ever have. Of course it could have been very smart to put these movies back-to-back, as it did make me watch “The Truth About Charlie” all the way through. I’m sorry I did, as the ending was muddled and seemed to have been made way different on purpose to differentiate the films.

A couple of years ago they opened a Target store in nice strip shopping center on the south side of town. There is a Goody’s, Michael’s and a year later they built Pier 1 on the end. Plus there is also smaller strip in there with a few more stores. About a month ago they started building something on the end of Pier 1. This store was bigger than everything in the shopping area, but the Target. There were rumors of a Best Buy awhile back, could this be it? Tonight while in Michael’s we asked the clerck what was coming and she replied, “Petsmart.” Both Donna and I sighed. The clerk laughed. She said that our response was typical of all the responses she got when giving that answer. I guess we would have answered differently had we been pet owners, but there already is one of those stores (Pet Warehouse, maybe) a mile up the street. We really need a Best Buy or Circuit City. The closest place to find those kinds of stores is in Augusta, 25 miles away. The only place you can buy any computer stuff is Staples for crying out loud.

And it ain’t Hillary Rodham Clinton. According to this morning’s paper around 13 million people watched Barbara Walter’s interview with the Senator. Which is approximately half the 25 point something million chuckleheads that tuned in to see Barbara Walter’s interview Monica Lewinski a few years back.

It is really tough to get tickets to the actual tournament unless you know somebody with an in or want to spend big bucks on scalped tickets. When Donna and I moved down here practice rounds were sold on the day of in unlimited amounts. We are not golfers, but not going to Augusta National when you have a chance would be like living in Indianapolis and not attend the 500. We went for the first 3 years on Monday because it was always the least attended day. After the third year the crowds were getting so big that they decided to limit the practice round tickets to a certain number (they’ve kept that a secret) by having a ticket lottery. For the next 3 years we got tickets, but for the last 7 we have been shut out. A lot of other locals that used to go regularly have also not gotten tickets in a while. There is a lot of speculation that out-of-town applications get special treatment because that way more money is pumped into the local economy. There have even urban legend type talk of people putting their out-of-town relatives addresses on the applications and they have gotten selected for tickets.

The reason I’m ranting about this April event now, is that in today’s mail, I got my application to get in the practice round ticket lottery. I am seriously considering putting my Mom’s Connecticut address on there to test the theory. It is not that I’m really desperate to get in and see the golfers or the course again, but I need a new hat. My hat from 7 years ago is getting disgusting looking. I’ve checked eBay and can’t find the right one – just the word Masters in script with no flag or year.