Sunday, October 2, 2022

Three Beautiful Things 10-01-2022: Supercuts and Costco, I Visit a New Joint for a Beer in CdA, A 1950 Movie About Stopping the Spread of the Plague

 1. Today seemed like a good day to get out of the house! I hopped into the Sube and blasted over the hill to CdA and decided to drop in at Supercuts and get a haircut. Robin was working today. She commutes to CdA from Pinehurst, so we always gab about the Silver Valley and I filled her in on our class's 50 year reunion in July and relayed the good news about the upcoming All-Class Reunion during the weekend of July 21-23, 2023. 

I'd have to say no one at Costco noticed I had a fresh haircut, not at the gas pump and not in the warehouse. Ha! 

I had fun wandering around at Costco, stocking up on coffee, granola, pork, chicken, toothpaste, and a few other things. 

I might be wrong, but I seemed to be the only happy male customer in the store. I thought more than once, "Come on guys! Cheer up! No need to look so irritated/glum!"

But, I just thought that, kept a smile on my face, my mouth shut and I enjoyed looking at stuff and glancing at what other people were buying.

2. Over the last few weeks I've been keeping tabs on Bottle Joy, a new establishment in Coeur d'Alene. It's a bottle house. In a cozy environment with patio seating, Bottle Joy carries about 16 beers on tap and serves cider, wine, and canned and bottled beer out of six double coolers. 

Bottle Joy has a food truck on site. The menu includes chicken wings, pizza, tots, charcuterie, and other offerings. 

I haven't been drinking much beer lately, for no good reason, but I've often wished I lived closer to a taproom or bottle shop. 

Today, I scratched that itch for such a place when I dropped into Bottle Joy. At least on Saturday afternoon, a pleasant crowd of people were in the house and on the patio. Things were very mellow. The first music I heard on Bottle Joy's sound system was Steely Dan's "Babylon Sisters", playing quietly, and the made me very happy.

The Saturday matinee crowd was older and I fit right in. I went to the bar and ordered a pint of Odell's Drumroll (I think) Pale Ale, sat at a small table, and slowly, calmly, and peacefully drank my beer. 

That was it. No more beer for me.

Debbie asked me to bring home some Hazy IPA or 2IPA, so I picked out four pint cans, paid for them and my beer, and headed on home. 

If I lived in CdA, I'd frequent Bottle Joy. Well, it's one of several places in CdA I'd frequent! Let's just say that I enjoyed Bottle Joy's handsome decor, quiet Saturday afternoon environment, splendid beer choices, and friendly, eager to please service. 

3. Back home, I decided to watch an unusual and compelling film noir movie, Panic in the Streets (1950). It tells the story of a stowaway from Armenia who brings a case of the pneumonic plague to New Orleans. No one knows he has it, but he becomes very ill while playing poker in an underground game, wins a big hand, and scoops up his money and leaves because he feels so lousy.  This angers the guy running the poker game, Blackie (Jack Palance). He wants that money back and with the help of two accomplices, murders the immigrant.

The victim's autopsy reveals that he has the plague and the rest of the movie is about a public health doctor's (Richard Widmark) efforts to work with the very skeptical police to find the killers and get them inoculated within 48 hours in order to keep an epidemic from taking over New Orleans and spreading elsewhere.

So it's a shadowy, murder-medical thriller. Much like a movie I watched earlier, The Naked City, Panic in the Streets was shot in a documentary style, all on location in New Orleans, and features a host of non-actors filling different roles alongside Jack Palance, Zero Mostel, Richard Widmark, Paul Douglas, and Barbara Bel Geddes. 

Like The Naked City (only in Manhattan), Panic in the Streets takes us into local New Orleans businesses, like a coffee shop, a Greek restaurant, and other places and, like The Naked City, climaxes with a harrowing chase scene, not on a construction site, but in warehouses and other locales on the waterfront. 


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