1. Today got off to a blazing start when Carol, Paul, Debbie, and I piled into the Camry and hightailed it over the 4th of July Pass and on into Coeur d'Alene. We met Christy at Taphouse Unchained for a family dinner on the road and redeemed the gift certificates Cosette and Taylor gave us for Christmas.
I'm happy to say that I DID NOT hobble from the Camry to the restaurant and I felt no pain or discomfort the entire time we yakked and dined together. My toe is, at last, settling down. It's still red. There's still some swelling. But I can bend the toe and my left foot bore my weight better today than it has in nearly two weeks.
Because my toe worsened the last time I drank a cocktail and because all the literature on gout says stay away from beer, I didn't imbibe in a pre-dinner cocktail. When it came time to order, I knew that if the food I ordered were too heavy, I'd struggle staying awake on the drive home. Therefore, I ordered a house salad (and shared some with Debbie) and Debbie shared a couple of her Buffalo Drums with me.
It was a fun change of pace to enjoy a family dinner out together and, even though we didn't do anything else, I enjoyed being in downtown CdA and imagined myself returning to try out some other places to grab a bite to eat some day.
2. Out of nowhere, really, Debbie announced she had rented The Banshees of Inisherin and wondered if we could watch it on the Vizio.
We could.
We did.
I found it to be at once a gorgeous movie and very unsettling. The movie's landscapes and seascapes are stunning, giving the movie frequent visual beauty. Its music soundtrack and the music played by characters within the movie is also beautiful.
But, to my way of thinking, it was a movie about humans, for the most part, at their most elemental, at their rawest. So while the movie portrayed moments of kindness, humor, and sweetness, it also featured raw brutality and sickening violence.
I don't want to give away even the most elemental plot details in this movie. If the movie is an allegorical story (parts of it seemed to me more allegorical than realistic), I'm not certain what its allegory is pointing to beyond itself. This actually left me asking myself as the credits rolled, "What did I just watch?"
This movie will stay with me. Not only will I not be able to shake its disturbing scenes for a while, I'll also want to remember and relish the marvelous acting in this movie, especially Barry Keoghan, Brendan Gleeson, Colin Farrell, and Kerry Condon's deeply affecting work.
I loved the movie's animals, too.
3. Debbie and I gave ourselves some time to decompress after Banshees of the Inisherin and then we returned to much more comfortable television viewing.
We watched another episode of Columbo.
Columbo hung around and hung around and poked and observed and asked questions and, thanks to the help of a chimpanzee, was able to nail a greedy, desperate murderer played (to the hilt!) by Rip Torn.
This episode was a blast, not only because Rip Torn was awesome, but also because it also featured former I've Got a Secret panelist, the fabulous Betsy Palmer.
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