New Bins

 ...for some reason.  Hope this means that one squirrel won't be able to scatter our neighbors' trash all over our driveway any more.

I went to a concert!

 Specifically, this one.  Pretty sure this is the first one I've been to since the mid-90s.  And you know what?  It was great!  The venue was an actual amphitheater, so it was nice that it was cooler than it has been but not too cool.  And I wasn't the oldest person there by a long shot (although I didn't see many solo people - a lot more families with young kids - only some of whom were wearing ear protection, so the rest will be deaf in their 30s (I took advantage of the $2 ear plugs somebody was hawking and am glad I did)).  Clearly the appeal of Vampire Weekend transcends generations.  (It was a total accident that I heard about it - I actually read the billboard below when I was doing my most recent Whole Foods/Trader Joe run and thought why not?

They put on a great show: they started with just guitar/bass/drums in front of a huge backdrop and did three of their earliest songs before the backdrop came down revealing a much bigger band (2 drummers, another guitarist, a keyboardist, a violinist and a saxophone player) that did the rest of the set.  Then for the encore they took requests specifically for other people's music from the audience, hence the weird selection, before finishing with probably my favorite song.  Then it was a race to get out of the parking lot before it became hopelessly jammed.

Sidenote: the bass player is the true star.  He appears to believe that instead of being in an effete indie band he is in fact in Napalm Death and acts accordingly.  Legend!

Apparently they're done in the basement

 

Film review: Nous les Gosses (1941)

One of my favorite books as a child was The Otterbury Incident (and I'm not alone in this), by one-time Poet Laureate, but now more famous as Daniel's father, Cecil Day-Lewis.  While looking at it recently I noticed that it was based on a French film called Nous les Gosses, so I made it my mission to track it down.  This was made a lot easier when it was remastered and re-released (in France) in 2019, and thus it is that I own a copy.  So, was it worth it?  Yes, actually.  It's very charming, and the kids (which, as it's called "we, the kids" (although apparently at one time it had the super-lame English title of Portrait of Innocence) is important) are pretty much all excellent.  Okay, so the basic plot (which is pretty much ripped off from Emil and the Detectives, which makes Otterbury a rip-off of a rip-off) is that the kids of a small town divide into two rival armies for regular battles, and are in the middle of one (involving one group pretending to be a wagon train and the other group attacking) who are brought together in order to help one of their own pay for an expensive (1800 Francs) transom window at their school.  It is notable that, while the leaders of each army are boys, they are completely co-ed.  Further (and this surprised me for a 1941 film (actually filmed during the German occupation) there is a little black girl (who is inseparable from another child whom I genuinely couldn't tell if they were a boy or a girl) who is completely integrated (although she is referred to as "Snow White" by said best friend).  

Anyway, adding to the window-breaker's misfortune, his parents are both poor and somewhat abusive, and when he reveals that someone broke the transom, they tell him that if it was him he would be off to a borstal tout suite.  (In the book, which was written in 1948, the boy has been orphaned and is being raised by his aunt and uncle who are not happy about it.)  So the gangs forge a truce over the Easter Holidays and find all sorts of ways to raise the money.  (One of them is to ask their parents for money for the movies and then just get one boy to go to the film and describe it to everyone so they can act like they did indeed go to the movies rather than give the money to the transom fund.  Unfortunately, that boy fell asleep in the middle of Camille, so they have to get creative.) The main way, and I remember thinking this was ingenious in the book, but since then I've seen that it was used in The Little Rascals, which is probably where the film got the idea, is to set up a shoe-shine stall just round the corner from a shop window, in which is a fascinating automaton that people all pause to admire, and below which is a subterranean room containing two kids who spray the shoes of the unsuspecting automaton admirers with muddy water.  Oh, and I forgot another key difference between film and book: a main character in the film is the boy's young teacher, who is sweet on Mariette, the older sister (and guardian) of the head boy of one of the gangs (and the one who brokered the truce on behalf of one of his gang).  I think the book was right to drop this distracting subplot (and add an exciting ending that is missing in the film), which also involves the main bad guy as a rival suitor and Iago-figure.  But anyway, this teacher helps the boys out until he is partially misled in the third act.  Anyway, the kids make the money, and store it in a special box, but the bad guy 

(Johnny Sharp in the book, who is much more terrifying than the weaselly fop in the movie, and who wields a cutthroat razor and is involved in much worse crime) and his stooge (called "The Wart" in the book, and again, less memorable here) contrive to switch out the box for a duplicate while pretending to feel how heavy it is.  Suspicion for theft of the money falls on our brother and sister and that, along with the weaselly guy's Wormtongue whisperings turn the teacher against them... There's a side-plot about the local newsstand's bumbling amateur detective, 

whom the kids who have faith in the brother and sister assist in trying to find the real thief... until the Wart makes the mistake of using a fake soft coin that one of the kids contributed to the fund and that has his teeth marks.  As in the book, they stalk the Wart and surround him at a cafe, but all of this seems very rushed in comparison with the book, and there is no final scene at a warehouse containing much more stolen goods.  So, all's well that ends well - even more so because the sister and teacher get engaged, 

and the transom has been paid for by the school district anyway, so the 1800 can go on a school trip... until somebody kicks a football too hard...

Trump in Flint!

I drove by the Dort Financial arena (home to minor league ice hockey team the Flint Firebirds, and also the place where UM-Flint holds some graduation events) and noticed that not only was its parking lot filled to bursting (which certainly never happens for the Flint Firebirds) but that the next-door parking lot, belonging to a defunct Target, was also full.  And also that a large percentage of the vehicles had giant Trump flags.  This caused me to google the place when I got home, and what do you know...

What ARE they doing at Court and Dort?

 This crucial intersection has been dug up for at least the past 6 months (or so it seems to me) and they don't even seem halfway done.  If they were installing a subway system it wouldn't require this much equipment.

Edit: QUESTION ANSWERED!  It's a culvert for a river that goes under the street!

Basement update

 

Retreat!

 On Friday I went to a "retreat" to plan the agenda for the next year of SACUA (which will be my last).  As it was free food, how could I say no?

Alas, I didn't get to stay for the kayaking...

Not Fall Yet

Rose Oaks County Park looking lovely: