1. Following standard procedure, I met my appointment today with Dr. Brian Miller at the Kellogg Vision Center. I read letters off of charts, sat in front of contraptions while Dr. Miller examined my right eye, inspected my new lens, and made sure my eye looked all right a week after cataract surgery. Everything looked sound. I am eager for the surgery on my left eye so that my two improved eyes can begin the process of working cooperatively with each other. Right now, my eyes are at odds with each other and my vision is not quite as good as I trust it soon will be.
2. Ecstasty.
Although I never attended a basketball game at the Xfinity Center on the campus of the University of Maryland, watching chunks of Maryland's rousing come from behind 70-56 victory over Purdue late this afternoon made me nostalgic to return to College Park, MD. I loved worshiping at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church. After church, most Sundays, I enjoyed walking a very short distance from the church to the Bagel Place for a toasted cinnamon raisin with cream cheese and a cup of coffee. Looking back, I wish I had strolled the Univ. of Maryland campus more often, but I enjoyed the times I went there. Being done with my many many years of teaching college English classes, I know I was creating some distance between myself and the academic world, but toward the end of the 2016-17 school year, I was starting to think it might be time to visit campus more often. At that point in time, I thought I'd be living in Maryland for an indefinite amount of time. But, Mom's condition deteriorated. I left Maryland in June and, by the end of September, had moved back to Kellogg.
Agony.
Then I watched a full-scale disaster unfold. Pick your metaphor: it was an avalanche, a mammoth dumpster fire, a fifteen car train wreck, a freeway pile up, a bridge collapsing. Playing at home, the Louisville Cardinal dominated the Duke Blue Devils for thirty basketball minutes and led this game by twenty-three points, 59-36, with 9:58 left to play.
Then the gathering snow began to slide down the mountain side; the hazardous materials spontaneously combusted; the Louisville freight train jumped the tracks; one Louisville car smashed into another on the interstate; the supports gave way and the Louisville bridge collapsed into the Ohio River.
In this game's miserable last 9:58, Louisville committed multiple turnovers and misfired a series of often ill-advised jump shots. Duke pounced. They scored easy baskets off the turnovers. They seemed to rebound every Louisville miss. Duke put on a full court press. Louisville panicked. When not scoring easy baskets on breakaways, Duke's shots from beyond the three point line began to drop.
Duke rallied to a miraculous 71-69 win. Duke outscored Louisville 35-10 in the game's last 9:58.
By game's end, the once boisterous, ecstatic Yum Center was a morgue.
This game was an agonizing college basketball disaster (well, unless you're a Duke fan.)
3. After the Louisville/Duke game, I sought out a change of pace, something to get my mind off the miserable disintegration I'd just witnessed.
Maybe, I thought, another Albert Finney movie would lift my spirits.
Upon Albert Finney's death, Russell had mentioned that he might watch Gumshoe again. I'd never heard of Gumshoe, so, last week, I looked into the movie's history and, to my delight, I discovered it not only starred Albert Finney, but that it was the first full-length movie directed by one of my favorites, Stephen Frears (My Beautiful Laundrette, The Grifters, Prick Up Your Ears, Dirty Pretty Things, The Queen, Philomena and so many more movies).
So I retrieved Gumshoe from Amazon Prime Video and it succeeded in delivering me in every way far from that disastrous loss I'd just watched Louisville suffer.
Albert Finney plays a rudderless guy, Eddie Ginley, who lives in Liverpool. He's barely employed, working at a local nightclub as an MC, bingo caller, and occasional stand-up comic. He fills the vacancies in his life reading stories by detective writers like Dashiell Hammett (and I assume going to movies) and goes about town imitating Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade. On his birthday, Eddie advertises himself as a private detective in the local newspaper. Almost immediately, he gets a call, accepts a job, and, soon, he's up to his neck in a case involving guns, murder, kidnapping, drugs, money, and other surprises.
I'll leave it at that. I don't want to spoil the intricacies of this story nor do I want to reveal what we learn about Eddie Ginley by the movie's end.
The movie's script is loaded with crisp, hard-boiled dialogue. The movie is, I think, simultaneously a parody and not a parody. I won't explain what I mean for fear of revealing too much, but if you ever see this movie and want to have some conversation about, I'm game -- and will likely have watched this movie again. I'd like to go back and see what I missed on my first viewing.
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