Dust Bunnies and Books and Films... Oh my.

Well, it’s that time at work again. The air is filled with the sound of hundreds of screams as wet rags and feather dusters wipe out the colonies of dust bunnies that have been congregating since the last inventory (back in August). I’ve been stuck in the same small room for the last week; tagging, rearranging, counting and transferring numbers. I’ve various stages of the same headache for the same amount of time. Please help me.

Last Friday James, Rich, his niece Lauren and I saw "The Producers" although we were a few minutes late. It wasn’t a bad movie, but I found Matthew Broderick to be kinda annoying. Earlier in the week I saw "Chronicles of Narnia" and "Memoirs of a Ghesia". "Narnia" was very good and kept very true to the book. "Memoirs" was alright, a bit dry. I"m probably going to see "Brokeback Mountain" on Sunday. I may go with Mom and Nat since they’re the only people I know who want to see it :-)

Last week my Sherlock Holmes discussion list (Yeah, I’m a geek. Shut it.) got into a discussion about what you had to have read back in the day to have been considered "well read". My dad and I then got into a talk about movies and what you’re "supposed" to have seen. And what would you call it, "well seen"? I went through everything I could remember and realized that there are alot of classic/legendary movies I’ve never seen. So I rented "The Godfather" as a jumping off point. It was... okay. I wasn’t blown away but it (no pun intended) and was about five seconds away from turning on the subtitles just to figure out what the hell Marlon Brando was saying! Then this past Sunday night I was flipping through the Comcast On Demand Free Movies and saw they were playing "Casablanca" and "Citizen Kane". As I started "Casablanca" my parents came in from a Super Bowl party. Mom joined me on the couch and Dad was headed off to bed. He looked at the TV, smiled and said "Good luck with that". Now I know why. That movie was an hour and thirty-three minutes of my life I’ll never get back. I haven’t been that bored in quite some time. My mother, the one with cronic brain and sleep problems, was nodding off halfway through! Well, now I can say I’ve seen it... and I’ll never have to see it again. God knows what awaits me with "Citizen Kane". I mean, I already know what the whole "Rosebud" deal it about. I’m also taking suggestions for films and books. I plan to spend this year bettering myself and learning some new things... until I get bored and decided to do something else :-) I’ve also attached the classical "well read" list from my group. Though it might interest some of you guys.

Well Read

The Greeks- Aristotle, Plato, Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes.

The Romans- Ovid, Catullus, Petronius, Caesar.

Hebrew- The Bible, Hillel, Moses Maimonides (The Rambam), The Gaonim.

Old English- Chaucer, Sir Arthur Mallory (Le Mort d’Arthur).

Renaissance- Shakespeare, Danta Allegheri, Sir Francis Bacon, Vasari, Robert Herrick, Marlowe, Milton.

Age of Reason- Descartes, Jonathan Swift, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Johnson, Rousseau.

19th Century- Herman Mellville, Mark Twain, O. Henry, Jane Austin, Coleridge, Keats, Whitman, Dumas, Zola.

20th Century- Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Arthur Miller, Eugene Ionesco, Eudora Welty, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, James Baldwin, Issac B. Singer, Winston Churchill, Primo Levi, Dorothy Sayers.