A dirty secret no more, the return of Barb Wire & a paper sack for retirement

20+ years ago, I worked alongside Mike Cullen, a guy my age who was single like me.  He was also twice as good looking, in much better shape and dressed twice as nice.  He even had better hair than me.  Normally I avoid guys like this but I loved Mike.  He was a rascal, but kindhearted too.

One time he told me we should sign a pact.  Whoever dies first, the other would enter the deceased one's home and remove any embarrassing things.  A key to get in and location of the nasty stuff would be supplied in advance.

I didn’t really have anything but didn't want to let Mike down, so I said I had some adult stuff on an old laptop in my bedroom closet.  When I asked Mike what he had, he just laughed and said I'd find everything hidden in his oven.  Surprised, I said "Don't you cook?"  

He just smiled at me and said yes, but not in the kitchen.  

Anyway, it seems that every time I put something in my oven I think about Mike because of the nasty stuff I've been hiding in mine.  About 5 years worth of grease and grime.  How did I let it get this bad?  I bought rubber gloves, large sponges and oven cleaner a couple months ago, but was waiting for the weather to warm so I could tackle this with an open window and plenty of ventilation.  So with Spring arriving this week... ta-da!  

I thought this would take about an hour and I wound up spending almost 3.  But this turned out better than I hoped for.  Y'know, I have an air fryer in my cupboard (a small one).  I'm going to try and cook more with that going forward, every chance I get. 

A couple days ago I ran up the street to Kuhn's to get some eggs and other things.  When I walked down the dairy aisle, I saw Barb--aka Barb Wire--looking at the cheeses.  I wrote about this woman last August, she's in her upper 70s, maybe 80.  She always wears the same thing; a skin-tight black jogging suit and black baseball cap with her ponytail coming out the back end.  She's pretty fit.

The woman has some peculiar issues though--the first time I met her at the Senior Center last summer, she asked me if I grew up in the city or somewhere else.  When I said in the country, she snapped "I think you're too soft to be a country boy!  I think you're a liar!"   

But I haven't seen her since September, so I figured I'd let bygones be bygones and say hello.  I walked up and said "Hello Barb, do you remember me?"  She turned around and frowned, and said "You look familiar..."   I told her I used to be a regular visitor to the center but haven't been there since last fall because of health issues.  She said "How did you know it was me from behind?  BECAUSE YOU WERE CHECKING OUT MY BEHIND!"

Sigh... I'm looking forward to returning to the center, hopefully this summer.  I'm not so much looking forward to that. 😣

Finally, I've had this paper sack with "For retirement" written across its front for umpteen years in my old apartment's storage locker and now my current one, and I honestly can't remember what I put in here.  

It's pretty heavy, I'm guessing a stack of books.  I decided it was time I opened it up and took a look.

Inside were unopened dvds of Babylon 5, a sci-fi tv series from the 1990s that I've never seen.  There are 5 seasons in here, plus a box labeled Babylon 5 Movie Collection.  

When did I buy these?  According to Amazon, they were purchased in November 2007.  It's a little kooky that I can remember conversations with my friend Mike from 20 plus years ago, but draw a blank when it comes to these dvds.  

Are there any sci-fi fans out there that have seen and liked this show?  Is it worth watching?  These hologram boxes are pretty cool, but there's so much here and frankly I feel done with 90s television.  I don't know what the me from 2007 was thinking. 😐

The Next Ten Movies I've Enjoyed Again & Again

After the positive feedback from my recent movie blog The Top Ten Movies I've Enjoyed Again & Again I thought I'd strike again while the iron's hot.

If you recall in that post, I mentioned my list was more like 20 movies, but thought it was too many for one blog-post.

I want to stress these aren't necessarily what I consider the best films ever.  I saw a horror movie in 2020, Saint Maud that I consider a masterpiece--but I couldn't sit thru it again. 

These movies are 'wonderful comfort movies', that I enjoy revisiting whenever I can.

So in ascending order...

10.  Every time I watch Butterflies Are Free (1972) I'm struck by Edward Albert's portrayal of a young blind man.  It's flawless. He's a 20 year old aspiring musician, living on his own for the first time (in a very slummy apartment in hippie-San Francisco) and Goldie Hawn lives in the adjoining unit, an aspiring actress who spends most of the movie in her underwear eating his food.  She's wonderful.

I love when Goldie takes him shopping for some far out threads, but there's a scene where she pretends to move on and Edward's world is suddenly very dark again.  It makes me tear up every darn time.  Goldie won an Oscar for her performance but Edward Albert deserved the prize.  I'm glad I own this on dvd.

9. Breaking Away (1979) is about 4 young men from blue collar lives who just graduated high school with no idea what's next--except for David who loves his Italian bicycle, singing opera and dreams of becoming a professional bike racer--in Italy.  His father (Paul Doolie, God bless him) is a used car salesman in Bloomington Indiana struggling to understand what happened to his boy.  

This coming of age drama was released one month after my own high school graduation, and like these four boys I knew college wasn't in my cards either--at least not yet.  But it's poignant and original, and after all these years this movie still resonates with me.  

8.  This movie bears the distinction of being the first thing I recorded on a vcr when I got one in 1983.  (I think it aired on Sunday Night at the Movies but I can't be sure.)  It's The Final Countdown (1980).  I replayed the recording so much I wore out the tape.

The USS Nimitz is a nuclear aircraft carrier in 1980 (102 aircraft, 6000 men) that is mysteriously thrown back in time to 1941--right before the Japanese are set to attack Pearl Harbor.  The captain (Kirk Douglas) must now decide if he should use his vessel (which contains more firepower than the US & Japanese fleets combined) to stop one of the greatest attacks in American history. 

I'm not into war movies, but I do love time travel stories--and I love this one.  Also, this movie is unapologetically patriotic.  It's like a Navy recruitment film, but it works.  Watch this just once and you'll want to enlist, I guarantee it.

7.  I miss Jill Clayburgh.  I can't believe she's been gone since 2010.  The first time I saw Starting Over (1979) was the night of my 18th birthday.  I'd been on my own for a few months and this cheered me up so much.  After Burt Reynold's wife Candice Bergen announces she's leaving him to pursue a "disco songwriting" career, his brother (Charles Durning) convinces him to leave a slushy New York City and start over in slushier Boston.

Charles wants to fix Burt up with their friend Jill Clayburgh--who is dubious of Burt the first time she meets him, let alone all the baggage he comes with.  And then his ex-wife decides she wants him back... did you know this movie was written by James Brooks of The Mary Tyler Moore Show?  

I feel the need to watch this every couple years, and every time Candice Bergen breaks into her hit song "Better Than Ever" to a stone-faced Burt Reynolds I burst out laughing.  It's so good!

6.  I can't remember the first time I saw Moonstruck (1987), but boy did I fall in love with Cher here.  Cher plays Loretta, an Italian bookkeeper on the brink of middle age who is swept off her feet by her fiancé's younger brother Nicholas Cage.  The film is laugh out loud funny, but when Cher agrees to attend the opera with Cage, gets a glorious makeover and meets him at the Met... his look is priceless and so is hers.  It almost stops my heart every time.

5.  I'm going to say something that will bring the house down.  I am not a fan of Singin' in the Rain.  I'm not.  But I am a huge fan of Gene Kelly, and in 1944 MGM loaned him out to Columbia Pictures to star in Cover Girl (1944) with Rita Hayworth & Phil Silvers.

MGM later regretted this--the movie was a huge success.  I'm talking Oscars.   

Three pals dream of hitting it big, so what happens when one of them becomes a Broadway star?  "Make Way for Tomorrow" steals the show, but I LOVED the Broadway finale with giant sized 1940s magazines--Vanity, McCall's, Coronet, Woman's Weekly just to name a few--all with a living cover girl.  

My God this movie is awesome.  I'm glad I own it on dvd.

4.  Betty Hutton is picture perfect as Annie Oakley (sorry Judy Garland, originally cast) in Annie Get Your Gun (1950) as the real-life Wild West Show gunslinger.  I just loved how her jaw dropped every time she saw handsome Howard Keel!  And of course, "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun" & "Anything You can do I can do Better" are show-stoppers.  Did you know this movie was unavailable until 2000 because of music right disputes with Irving Berlin?  It was worth the wait.  Note: Bobi, thank you for reminding me of this one--it's my third favorite musical. 😊

3.  Jimmy Stewart is a photojournalist with a broken leg, in that marvelous run-down Greenwich Village apartment.  Thelma Ritter is his home nurse.  And Grace Kelly the socialite is in love with him!  Yes it's Rear Window (1954) and I've probably seen this 15 times, easy.  

Here's a fun fact--my first time seeing it was at our local theater in 1983, after Universal Studios bought & released 5 of Hitchcock's movies he had squirreled away for 30 years.

It was released on RCA Videodisc a year later.  I snapped it up and probably watched it 10 times with my sister.

Note:  Steve from Toronto, thanks for reminding me about this one! 😊

2.  How many times have I seen the best Star Trek movie of them all?  Countless.  I first saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn (1982) on a date with a very Trekkie woman named Amy and the moment Spock died, she literally screamed "Noooo!!" in the theater.  When I frantically whispered "Amy--stop!" she cried "Have you no emotions!!"  I swear to God, I'm not making that up.  

Fyi, when Leonard Nimoy died in 2015 I cried like a baby.

 1.  Wizard of Oz (1939)  Judy Garland, I am yours forever.  The End.

Finally, if I didn't give Honorable Mentions to The Graduate, When Harry Met Sally & every Charlton Heston movie between 1968 & 1973 (Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man & Soylent Green) I'd have to make a third list and we don't want that, do we? 😏