Swimming in lakes

Frederick and have been going on long walks every afternoon ever since the shutdown started, and now it's got hot, we combine that with swimming in lakes. Our tactic is that I bring along an inflatable raft, we walk for a while to get hot, then we pack our shirts and sandals into a giant ziploc baggie (you'd be amazed how big they go) and balance it on the raft while we swim. Then we walk for a bit more to dry off and go home. We've done this for years just at Seven Lakes, but we've expanded our geographical range. Here, for example, you see us at a lake at Metamora-Hadley:

This turned out to be a bit silly, because the water was about three foot deep and choked with weeds until we'd got at least a hundred yards out. The water was warm as bathwater. The only thing is, we swim in our hats and sunglasses and it seems to alarm people, as kayakers come over and ask us if we're okay. Today we were swimming in Big Seven Lakes and a lady who was kayaking with her husband paddled over and asked us if we needed anything. "A beer would be nice," I joked. Well, she took me seriously:

Film review: The Talk of the Town (1942)

Another Jean Arthur film, not to be confused with The Whole Town's Talking, which was the Edward G. Robinson one we just watched.  Neither of them are very informatively named, actually.  This one would be better named Menage a Trois, and is decidedly forward-looking (if it cops out a bit at the end).  Cary Grant plays the (strangely named) Leopold Dilg, who is a rabble-rouser in small town Lochester, who gets accused of setting a fire that burns down the local mill that he worked in, a fire that ended up so burning up the foreman that all that can be found of him is a small athletics medal.  He is, of course, innocent, but the owner of the mill is the local Big Man who owns everything, including the police and the judge of his case, so he sees the writing on the wall and makes a break for it.  While escaping, he badly sprains his ankle and seeks refuge in the boarding house that Jean Arthur is getting ready to rent out.  She's a teacher at the local school, the same one they were both kids together at.  She is familiar with the charges against him and is none too pleased to see him, but hides him in the attic.  Aggravatingly, the person she was to rent the house to, Michael Lightcap, the dean of a law school looking for a peaceful place to write a book, shows up a day early, in a rainstorm.  This is Ronald "Prisoner of Zenda" Colman, who was 50 at the time but plays someone who turns 40 in the course of the film.  So you guessed it, Jean Arthur is torn between two English actors playing Americans.  At first it seems obvious that she will fall for Grant (I mean, it's Cary Grant) but he is sardonic and distant, and while Colman starts out as a stuffed shirt, he melts considerably.  Terrified that Lightcap will find Dilg, Arthur arranges to stay overnight (borrowing Lightcap's pajamas),

and Lightcap assumes that it is her adenoids that are responsible for Dilg's titanic snores.  The next day a flood of people show up to disturb Lightcap's peace, including an old friend of his who happens also to be Dilg's lawyer (who is also convinced of Dilg's innocence).  Arthur tells him that Dilg is hiding in the attic and he persuades her (a) that it's the safest place for him, and (b) that she must find an excuse to stick around, so Arthur persuades Lightcap to hire her as combined cook/stenographer.  It is while she is filling the latter role that Dilg is so annoyed by what Lightcap is saying (he can hear it because he's snuck down to the kitchen, being starving) that he comes out to argue with him.  Arthur quickly claims that he is the gardener, Joseph, and it isn't long before the three of them are a cozy little unit, Lightcap professing his enormous affection for "Joseph" even more than for Jean Arthur's "Miss Shelley".  But things get complicated when Dilg's picture is plastered all over the papers.  Watch for an uncredited Lloyd Bridges as a local newspaperman, and the genie from The Thief of Bagdad as Lightcap's late-arriving valet, Tilney.  Subplots involve borscht with an egg in it, Lightcap's being offered a seat on the Supreme Court(!) and Lightcap pretending to woo the foreman's "grieving" girlfriend.  Which one of Grant or Colman will Arthur end up with?  You won't know until the very last seconds, I promise.

It's a bit over-long, and Grant has surprisingly little to do, but Jean Arthur and Ronald Colman are charming and there are some great supporting characters.

Baby Raccoon

This happened back on June 2nd, but I never got round to Blogging it.  Frederick and I went swimming at Holly Recreation Area and went for a walk afterwards to dry off.  I noticed something between the path and the lake that looked like a detached squirrel tail.  Against my better judgment, I poked it and it moved, and two little ears emerged.  It was a baby raccoon.  I thought I'd better leave it alone in case it was just wandering around, but it was still there about fifteen minutes later when we came back along the path, and it looked weak.  So I made the rash decision to take it home and see if we could nurse it back to health.  (I'd seen a dead adult the previous week near that spot and half wondered if that had been its mother.)  We did indeed take it home and tried to get it to eat, but it just wanted to sleep (mainly on Thomas) and sadly died the next day.  RIP Rocky.

Thomas said when I brought him home that I should've been warned against this by Calvin and Hobbes:

...and sadly he was right.

Haven Hill

 Highland Recreation Area is a large state park just round the corner from Thomas's old high school.  I knew about it when he was going there and visited some parts of it, but didn't really realize its full extent.  This past year we've really expanded our exploration of it.

 But this month we discovered something else about it: right in the middle of it is the remains of an old lodge that used to belong to Edsel (son of Henry, after whom a famous white elephant car was named)

 This intact building is just the lodge.

 Absolutely nobody was around on this day.

 Just so you know.

 This is about a week later.  We're approaching Haven Hill from another direction.

 Don't know what these are.  Feel free to find out and let me know.

Well that's nice.

Film review: The Whole Town's Talking (1935)

Another Jean Arthur production, this one the rare comedy directed by John Ford and featuring a double performance by Edward G. Robinson, playing both milquetoast accountant Arthur Ferguson "Jonesy" Jones and the aptly nicknamed violent criminal "Killer" Manion.  It's really Robinson's film, as he gets to do his Scarlet Street wimp and his Key Largo psychopath in one film, but Jean Arthur is the object of Jonesy's affection, a sassy co-worker who is young enough not to care if she gets fired (even in the midst of the great depression) and probably wouldn't have noticed Jonesy if he hadn't been thrust into the limelight.  He, on the other hand, secretly refers to her as "Cymbeline" and has stolen her framed picture and has it on the wall of the apartment he shares with a cat and a bird (who are similarly classically-named).  The film opens with Jonesy's direct supervisor (Seaver) on the phone with the big boss discussing how many people are typically late.  They agree that the one person who's never been late (Jones) should get a pay raise, while the next person to come in late should be fired.  Of course, this is the one day when Jones's alarm fails and he is threatened with firing.  But actually fired is Arthur's Miss Clark, who strolls in even later, nonchalantly blowing out cigarette smoke.  She gets to finish out the week, but, as she says when she plops down at Jonesy's table as he is lunching at a local restaurant, she doesn't care. 

The reason she seeks him out is because earlier a newspaper showing a photograph of the newly jail-broken Manion is circulated and everyone notes his exact resemblance to Jones.  And in fact, a man in the diner sees the same picture and rushes to the phone to call the cops.  They flood the diner in absurd numbers and drag Jones and Clark down to the station.  Clark loves every moment and strings along her questioners (and Arthur gets to show how funny she can be),

but Jones is terrified and helpless, especially when the police bring in Manion's ex-associate "Slugs" Martin (played by the voice of the mouse in Dumbo - it's unmistakable, if, like me, you have seen that film a hundred times) to identify him.  The only reason Jones isn't imprisoned is because Manion robs a bank while Jones is in custody.  The cops realize that if they just release Jones, though, they'll always be arresting him again, so the chief hits on the idea of giving him a signed letter testifying to his non-Manion-ness.  Unfortunately, the papers get wind of this and publish this information, which leads to Jones coming home (drunk, after a raucous meeting between him, his boss and a newspaper man, who has the idea of publishing a column attributed to Jones on Manion's life as told by his lookalike) to find Manion sitting in the shadows in his apartment. 

Instead of just bumping Jones off and stealing the letter, Mannion just "borrows" the letter for each night and sleeps in his apartment by day.  Jones is also tasked with bringing Manion the papers after he comes home from work each day.  Alas, the first day includes a column attributed to him that describes Manion as a coward who hides behind his gun.  This enrages Manion so much, he decides to dictate his REAL life story to Jones.  Things get even more complicated one day when Miss Clark, after acting as Jones's agent with the newspaper to secure him $250 per week, comes up to his apartment to let him know.  She initially confuses Manion for him, until she sees his gun.  She makes her excuses and tries to alert the cops, but Manion's thugs take her hostage, along with Manion's elderly aunt, who has come to visit.  Then the chief of police, who is suspicious about the details in Jones's columns, decides to put Jones in prison, but Manion substitutes himself so he can get to "Slugs", who is also being kept there "for his own safety".  Then Manion makes another break for it (picking up Jones's supervisor Seaver to add to his collection of hostages).  He then decides to set Jones up to be shot by the police as him to get himself off the hook.  He gets Jones to deposit money in the bank for his (Manion's) dear old ma, then calls ahead to the bank claiming to be a friend of "Slugs" who wants revenge, and another cohort of heavily-armed cops hole up in the bank with orders to shoot to kill...  Overall, not as charming as Devil and Miss Jones, but an interesting curio with some great characters (especially the man who initially calls the cops in the restaurant and who keeps cropping up throughout the film).

Film review: The Devil and Miss Jones (1941)

The Criterion Channel has a collection of Jean Arthur films at the moment.  I confess I didn't know who she was, and the only film I'd seen her in was that Cary Grant drama Only Angels Have Wings, where she wasn't particularly distinguished.  But she's good in this one, despite one of those truly awful 40s haircuts (what were they thinking?)  She's sort of co-lead with Charles Coburn, the "devil" of the title, at least, according to the opening credits that portray him as such,

although in fact he plays a stuffy, selfish tycoon who goes undercover in a department store he owns (among so many other businesses it was news to him that he did own it when they hung him in effigy outside it, prompting him to investigate).  He can get away with this because he has been notoriously secret about his appearance so nobody would recognize him.  (There's an opening message to the "very rich people of the world" about how his character was entirely made up, so nobody should sue them, which of course makes you wonder whom he is supposed to be.)  Turns out there's been somebody trying to organize the workers of the store ("Neeley's") and although he's been removed, Mr. Merrick (Coburn's character)  wants to investigate further.  He had hired a detective to infiltrate the store, but he was moving too slow, and besides, his wife was giving birth in Philadelphia and he wanted to take time off, so Merrick takes over (to the consternation of his Germanic butler, who feeds him crumbled graham crackers because he thinks his stomach can't handle anything stronger).  Merrick is quickly taken under the wing of Miss Jones as he is put to work selling slippers,

who feels sorry for him, and mistakes his reluctance to go to lunch (the stomach again) as a sign he has no money for it, and gives him 50 cents.  Miss Jones's older friend Elizabeth quickly falls for Merrick (God knows why) and introduces him to the delights of her home-made tuna fish popovers, which he demands his fancy chef back home recreate.  Oh, and it turns out Miss Jones's young man is the very union agitator who got thrown out, but is still trying to organize the store.  As you can imagine, over the course of a week or so, which includes one eventful trip to an unbelievably crowded Coney Island, Merrick warms to his proletarian friends.  But then Miss Jones discovers the card that says he's a detective, and becomes convinced he's going to cause trouble for the 400 people (which is a minority of the store's employees!  Those were the days) whose names her young man has acquired on his list of potential union-members.  Will this lose Merrick the love of Elizabeth?  Will our young friends lose their jobs?  I think you can guess. All in all, a very pleasant diversion.  May well give more Jean Arthur films a chance.  (I'd never heard of the director before, but I like his predilection for interesting framing shots of faces:

Film review: The Vast of Night (2019)

This is an excellent little flick that's free on Amazon.  Apparently it's the debut of a new film maker, and you can bet he's going to go on to big things (probably involving Marvel superheros).  It's set in the 50s in small-town New Mexico (presumably near Roswell), and manages to be completely gripping, despite being almost entirely a two-hander of teenagers, one, Fay, a science nerd switchboard operator (when she's covering for her mother, who has another job)

and the other, Everett, a budding radio personality/DJ. 

The film takes place during a high school basketball game that draws almost everyone in town except our two leads.  A strange electric sound interrupts Everett's radio broadcast (and can be hear along the line at Fay's switchboard), and when Everett asks if anyone recognizes it, an older man, Billy, retired from the Army, calls in to recount an experience he had on a secret mission in the middle of nowhere where the sound seemed to be associated with a strange craft.  He reports that he got sick after being exposed to it, and that he investigated along with other ex-military men who'd been similarly exposed, and he believed that the sound was coming from above the Earth.  After Billy is cut off, an old lady in town calls in to say she has something to add, but Everett has to meet her at her house.  Thinks get more and more creepy up until the shocking climax.  I can't say too much, but check it out.  It's Spielbergian in a good way.  It also has an incredibly talky script, but again, in a good way.

Film review: The Fearless Hyena (1979)

They've added a few Jackie Chan films to the Criterion Channel, and this was one of the very few we hadn't seen already.  Verdict: not the worst of his early efforts!  Apparently it's his first directing job, and the plot is indistinguishable from most of his other late 70s efforts.  In fact, it's almost identical to Drunken Master: Jackie plays impish young student of strict, grandfatherly Kung Fu tutor, gets into trouble, learns unique fighting style, then has to put it into action to save/avenge his master from evil Kung Fu master.  In Drunken the fighting style requires him getting plastered.  Here, the fighting style involves showing various emotions, one of them being manic glee (hence the Hyena, because you unnerve your opponent by laughing as, in this case, he gauges chunks out of you with his pincer-like fingers). 

Notable scenes include him disguising himself as an idiot cleaner and a woman

to fight people for the blow-hard head of a fake Kung Fu school in the first half of the film and in the second, a scene where his second tutor (who shows up after his first, his actual grandfather, gets killed by the baddie) keeps stealing his food with chopsticks before he can eat it.  This was lifted completely by Kung Fu Panda.  The Channel also added Fearless Hyena 2, so we'll definitely be checking THAT out.  However, if you're choosing between this and Dragon Lord, Drunken Master, or Young Master, those should come first.