MOVIE REVIEW: My Week With Marilyn

My Week with Marilyn was based on a couple non-fiction book first published in the late 1990s. The Wife and I saw the film last Saturday at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany, NY.

In 1956, Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) is directing and starring in the movie ‘The Prince and the Showgirl’ in London. He hires American film icon Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) to costar with him. The 30-year-old MM, accompanied by new, third husband, the playwright Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott), is a sensation to the crowds in England. But

30 Day Challenge – Day 30: Whomever You Find Most Attractive In This World

Jeez, Louise. I started this thing on May 6. I posted Day 29 on November 14. 30 days? HA!

This picture of my wife and daughter is from April of 2008 in Virginia, probably Jamestown or Norfolk, some place near Williamsburg.
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Oh, my niece Rebecca, who had one of those Kickstarter things to raise the $3000 to put together a music album

30-Day Challenge: Day 28-A Drawing

My daughter is drawing all of the time. This is a piece she did several months ago, which is the one that currently hangs in my cubicle at work. While red, white and blue, please notice the green G, for Green. She did a similar one for my wife, and since she’s seen mine in my office, she now insists that Carol likewise take hers to HER office.

30-Day Challenge: Day 27-A Picture Of Where You’re From

A picture? I did a whole blogpost about my hometown of Binghamton, NY last year, and much more recently, a partial blogpost about Albany, NY, where I’ve been the last 30 years.

Well, all right:

When I was growing up, this was the post office in Binghamton. Now it’s the federal building.

30 Day Challenge: Day 26-A Picture From One Of The Greatest Days Of Your Life

Hey, nothing in the instructions said it had to be a picture of me!

Above is a picture of Alex Trebek , host of a game show called High Rollers, which I would occasionally watch 30+ years ago. But more to the point, he has been the host of the game show JEOPARDY! since 1984.

To be honest, I’m not sure if that picture of him is from the day I was on JEOPARDY! But it WAS from one of the programs that was filmed in Boston, and the two weeks of programming in Boston was filmed over a two-day period, five shows per day, so I have a 50% chance of it being from the day I was taping, though not necessarily the episodes.

30-Day Challenge: Day 25-One Of Your Most Prized Possessions

I have developed, over the years, almost an antipathy for “prized possessions”, if by that one means something of great monetary value. This is not a function of getting all Mother Teresa, but rather of pragmatism. When you have STUFF, and especially if it’s expensive STUFF, it starts to own you as much as you own it. Someone once told me that the two happiest days of a boat owner’s life is the day he buys it and the day he sells it.

I remember being appalled at hearing about someone buying a painting for $100 million for his private collection. If you have something that goes for nine figures, you have to have security, insurance et al worthy of the piece in case it gets stolen or damaged.

Even, at a much smaller scale

30-Day Challenge: Day 24-Something Embarrassing In Your Room

Nothing. Damn, this could have been a REALLY short post. But…

OK, there may be dirty clothes on the floor at times, or maybe the bed’s unmade. But embarrassing?

I have a stuffed bear in my room named Gunther and a monkey named Oscar. Sometimes they talk to me. Am I embarrassed? I am not.

30-Day Challenge: Day 23- Favorite Music Video

Another difficult question. Probably from Year 2 through year Six, I watched MTV a LOT. Watched the video countdown almost every week, then not so much. I should note that, for the body of video work, I’d probably pick Billy Joel.

There are probably only three post-1995 videos I both saw and liked enough to even consider. Hey Ya by Outkast (and here’s a longer, though not better version) and I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow by the Foggy Mountain Boys are two of them.

Plenty of good picks in this list of best videos and in this one, although many of the actual videos have been disabled. Two on those lists that I was quite fond of were Once In a Lifetime by the Talking Heads and Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel. I was an irrationally big fan

30-Day Challenge: Day 22- Picture Of You On This Day

OK, I don’t know how to take a picture of me on this day. I gave my wife a digital camera for Christmas, 2007. She doesn’t know how to use it either. I have actually taken pictures accidentally with my cell phone but haven’t figured out: 1) how I did it or 2) how to retrieve them.

Now, to be fair, neither of us have put much effort into it; always something more pressing. I suppose I could have asked someone else, but I am disinclined.

30-Day Challenge- Day 21 – Favorite Movie Quote

I love the movies, and I love movie quotes. When the American Film Institute presented its list of 100 Top Movie Quotes, you know I had to be watching. The Wizard of Oz is a particular yeasty source of quotes.

The one I may have actually used most often in real life is