My brother directed my attention to this video of “The Battle at Kruger,” which is probably the best fight scene ever caught on film. Lions and crocodiles fighting over a baby water buffalo. Don’t read the comments, they’ll spoil it.
Watch it all the way through, and you just might laugh or cheer as much as I did.
Yesterday I drove to my dad’s house through the midday torrential sunshower. Just before I made the left onto his street, I saw the end of a rainbow straight ahead. Naturally, I had to drive through it.
This would be the second one I’d driven through. The first time was wild; I approached the rainbow nearly straight on—virtually in the plane of the rainbow. I hoped it would turn out to be either solid-but-transparent or magic, so that I could drive right up it. Alas, it was neither. I settled for watching the colors flood through the window and into the car, which was more than spectacular enough.
This time around, my approach was perpendicular to the plane of the rainbow. As fervently as I hoped that rainbows were solid the first time around, I now hoped that they weren’t because if they were, I was about to crash right into one. Thankfully, the rainbow turned out to be mere light rays, perfectly safe for passage.
As I drove through the end of the rainbow, something so bizarre happened that I ignored what sounded like a clunk and some coins spilling out of a bowl: the rainbow flipped horizontally.
I stopped in the middle of the street to make sure that I saw what I thought I saw, and that I hadn’t been confused by looking in the rearview mirror. But the rainbow really had flipped: it was as though God had picked up just one end of the rainbow and moved it, like a Slinky, to the other side of the street. Originally the rainbow started in the middle of the road and stretched over the northern side of the street. After I passed through it and looked back, the rainbow still started in the middle of the road and stretched over the southern side of the street. It was mind-blowing.
It didn’t last long, because the clouds shifted and blocked enough of the sunlight. I felt I was being toyed with.
Also, I tried to notice if my rainbow experience mirrored yours(pun intended)but all I acomplished was nearly hitting a mailbox that had jumped out in front of me.
Yesterday I watched The Godfather for the first time in… oh, at least a few days. My favorite scene is when Michael makes his bones by killing Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey in the restaurant.
There are so many elements in the scene that make it great: the red-checkered tablecloths that remind me of my grandmother’s kitchen. The lack of subtitles as Michael and Sollozzo speak Italian. Michael searching for the gun that he hopes had been planted as planned. The intensifying screech of the approaching train. The blood mist.
But what makes that scene my favoritest? Think back to a little bit earlier in the movie, when Clemenza prepares Michael for his mission. Clemenza gives him a few very specific instructions:
1. After finding the gun, come out blasting.
2. Two shots in the head apiece.
3. Don’t look anyone in the eye.
4. Let the gun slip out of your hand so everyone thinks you still have it.
So what does Mike do?
1. After leaving the restroom, he waits nearly a minute before opening fire.
2. He shoots Sollozzo only once (but in fairness to Mike, it was an obvious kill).
3. After killing them, he stares at the bodies for a few seconds, and then stares right at the witnesses for a few seconds.
4. On his way out the door, he tosses the gun and keeps his hand in the air.
In short, aside from killing the cop and the mobster, Mike does nothing Clemenza told him to do. Keep in mind that this is all on top of the fact that it was Michael himself who first proposed killing Sollozzo and NYPD Captain McCluskey—even though killing policemen was considered off-limits by the underworld, according to the consigliere.
That incongruity has always amused me, especially since things turn out relatively well for Mike. He ends up wiping out his enemies and becoming lord of a billion-dollar criminal empire. In fact, aside from the murder of his oldest brother, the murder of his first wife, the murder of his second-oldest brother, his second wife’s “miscarriage,” his divorce, his estrangement from his son, and the murder of his daughter, he faces no karmic punishment whatsoever for breaking the unwritten rules and ignoring Clemenza’s instructions.
…
Michael’s brother Fredo was played by an actor named John Cazale. Every movie he appeared in was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. And it wasn’t because he was just in one movie; he was in five before he died in the late seventies (Godfather I and II, The Conversation, The Deer Hunter, Dog Day Afternoon), and appeared in a flashback in Godfather III. That’s gotta be some sort of record.
I wrote about how I fell asleep during the mattresses sequence the first time I watched The Godfather, and when I woke up, Mike was in Sicily, and I hated the movie for a while until I watched it again and fell in love with it (run-on sentence = -5). I got a high content grade but I made a few comma errors and ended up with a B-.
What I’m saying is this: my content grade would’ve sucked if it weren’t for your instruction all those years (3?) ago. Though it would’ve helped if you grilled me on commas. So thanks for nothing.
A buddy of mine is a minister of sorts, and recently had occasion to share this bit of advice with his charges (reprinted with his permission):
Here’s what I said…as best I remember it…
“We teach you to be good. We want you to be good. God wants you to be good. I try to be good.
But if you find yourself in a situation where you think you can’t be good, don’t be bad AND stupid.
You can’t afford to be bad and stupid at the same time.
Nobody can. It will ruin you.”
I like it, though it seems to lend itself to cynicism. Or is that why I like it?
…
Nice of Clemson to let the Seminoles back in the game, wasn’t it? Clemson 24, Free Shoes University 18. That’s three years in a row and four of the last five.
Last night’s nightmare:
I am sitting with a friend. Someone nearby has a dog who just broke its leg. Someone has called Doggie 911, and a veterinary ambulance is on its way. We wait for it.
My friend suddenly turns very pale and stares silently into space. She slowly falls backwards, but I catch her. She looks like she’s in shock. Her body is tense, but light as a feather, and I gently guide her to the ground. Her pupils are dilated and still. She isn’t breathing.
I call for help. The dog-owner reminds me that the doggie ambulance is on the way, and that it’ll do just fine—after all, he says, she just fainted. I yell at the dog-owner to call the real 911 before I kill him.
I hope to resuscitate her, but when I put my hand behind her neck I can tell that it is broken. I don’t know whether her neck somehow broke while she was sitting, or if I inadvertently broke it when I caught her. Did it sever the spinal cord? How high up?
I’m almost afraid to try mouth-to-mouth. I don’t want to jostle her head, and I’m afraid that the chest compressions will damage her spinal cord even further. But the fact is that she’s going to suffocate unless I start CPR.
She has a sad look on her face, like she’s about to cry. I wait a few seconds for tears, or a whimper, but there’s nothing. I listen for breath, even though I already know she isn’t breathing. I check her pulse—there is none. I do the breaths, I do the compressions for what seems like forever. She’s perfectly still throughout.
The doggie ambulance arrives. Its arrival just makes me angry. It is utterly useless. The vets simply stand behind me and watch. I scream at them to call the real 911 and make sure that real paramedics are on the way. I go back to the breaths and compressions.
Eventually, the tension leaves her body. Her eyes still stare straight ahead, but they are void of life. She never even trembled. She simply ended.
There’s nothing left to be done. The ambulance still hasn’t arrived. I sit and look at her and she is as prim and proper as a porcelain doll.
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