“You’ll Never Walk Alone”
Hello again. This will be a brief update since I just posted about the last couple of weeks a few days ago, and we’re not off on any exciting adventures right now.
I love this video of Clorinda, my mother in law, puttering around and singing along to a record, completely oblivious to the fact that Alicia is recording her.
We celebrated my Mum’s birthday on Sunday as we do these days – by gathering on a Zoom call. This was the first time all the cousins had been together, albeit virtually, since the wedding in Cozumel over 3 years ago. Everyone enjoyed chatting and I left thinking that we should do this more often.
I watched the movie “The Trip to Greece” while Diana was sunbathing on Sunday. This is the fourth in the series starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. The formula is the same as the last three trips – Steve and Rob travel around, enjoying fabulous meals and trying to upstage each other with humour and impressions. The impressions are very funny and well done. The constant fight to one up each other gets a bit tiresome. The scenery and food, often eaten al fresco by some aquamarine seascape, are lovely, particularly in this time when we can neither travel nor eat those fabulous meals.
I left the Susan Sontag in Austin, probably subconsciously ready for a change of reading material. So, I’ve started re-reading “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole. I didn’t make it very far through the first time, and I can’t remember why as this is a very funny and readable book.
“A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs.” Meet Ignatius J. Reilly, the hero of this tragicomic tale. He is 30 years old, lives with his mother, and gets into all sorts of hilarious mishaps throughout the New Orleans French Quarter.
This was Toole’s only published novel. His mother went to great lengths to convince a Tulane University English professor to read it after his death, and that ultimately led to publishing, a very positive public reception and a Pulitzer prize.
I’ve always enjoyed the cartoon contest on the back page of the New Yorker magazine and decided to enter my first caption this week. What do you think?
I had fun with that one and so entered again for the contest this week.
We were watching “Little Voice”, a new series by Sarah Barielles on Apple TV, when one of the characters said, “We all have cracks, that’s how the light gets in.” I said, “That’s a Leonard Cohen quote”, right as the character said, “either Hemingway or Leonard Cohen.” That set me off on a Cohen listening spree. What a poet!
Here’s the song of Cohen’s that first introduced me to him. The finger picked guitar, backing vocals and French verses had me hooked.
And we’ll finish out with one of his last songs, “You Want it Darker?” No thanks. Not right now! I love the Gregorian sounding background vocals.
Please remain calm and kind to everyone.