Category: What the…?

The oddest thing on the UK trip a couple of weeks back — for me, anyway — was as we were going through Heathrow passport control after an eleven-hour trip. The line was long, although it moved fairly rapidly, and we’d already filled out our entry forms hours before, but halfway through the maze there was a high table with blank forms on it.

On the table was a small box with flaps on either end that has been opened and you could see the contents matched with the exterior. The artwork on the cover was for a plastic airplane model of a Boeing 747. The box was labelled in both English and Arabic. The decals on the plane were for Iran Air.

Barbara and I just got back at midnight Wednesday from a week in England. We headed over there with Mom and Dad to see London for a couple of days and then went to Chester, where Dad and his sisters had all been before at various times (with the sisters having done some genealogical research in the Cheshire area). Mom made the accommodations, and after striking out at a couple of locations, she found a home stay with a couple in Sandbach (pronounced sand-BATCH), a former market town about twenty miles from Chester (that’s a whole other story).

Sandbach is like a lot of other towns with an outsized church on a site dating back a thousand years, but built and rebuilt over the years. Our host led us around the town the first day we were there but only skirted the outside of the church grounds.

The next morning we went exploring on our own and stopped in at the church to look at the graveyard’s old stones. We just happened on the sexton as he was returning from feeding his cows. He let us into the very mildewy old building which was quite pretty otherwise. We looked around at the windows, listened hard to the old gaffer — who had a brogue very unlike the middle-class folks we were staying with — and then Barbara spotted this on the wall:

It says:

Sacred to the Memory of ELIZABETH, Wife of

THOMAS PLANT of Ellsworth Hall, who died

May 26th. 1804, aged 57 years.

Also of ELIZABETH, Wife of EDWARD WESTHEAD of

Manchester, and Daughter of the above THOs. & ELIZth. PLANT,

who departed this Life the 19th. Octr. 1849, aged 56 years.

“Precious in the Sight of the Lord is the Death of his Saints”

Psalm 116th. V. 15th.

Also of the said THOMAS PLANT, who died

February 26th. 1828, aged 76 Years.

Also of SARAH, Wife of JOHN, Son of the above

THOMAS & ELIZABETH PLANT, who died May 29th. 1832, aged 34 Years.

Also of the said JOHN PLANT, who died

January 13th. 1849, aged 58 Years.

No idea if there’s any actual relation, but it’s a heck of a coincidence.

As if you didn’t know, it’s Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Stan Ridgway, the poet laureate of broken dreams and thwarted ambition, a guy whose voice you’d remember if you ever heard it in songs like “Mexican Radio”, “Don’t Box Me In”, “Camouflage”, “Drive, She Said”, or “I Wanna Be a Boss”, ends his 2007 summer tour tonight in Portland at Mississippi Studios on (natch) N. Mississippi. Doors open at 7pm.

I was heading back to the bridge after dropping Barbara off this morning and passed the downtown Meier & Frank construction site where they’ve got the right lane blocked off with concrete trucks waiting to pour. Standing next to the trucks waiting for their chance to cross traffic were a couple of construction workers in hard hats, already pretty dirty from whatever they’d been doing, and one of them was holding a cute little bag with the Moonstruck Chocolate Co. logo on it.

Yasushi Ukigaya/Kyodo News, via Associated Press

To Punish Thai Police, a Hello Kitty Armband

By SETH MYDANS
Published: August 7, 2007

BANGKOK, Aug. 7 — It is the pink armband of shame for wayward police officers, as cute as can be with a Hello Kitty face and a pair of linked hearts.

No matter how many ribbons for valor a Thai officer may wear, if he parks in the wrong place, or shows up late for work, or is seen dropping a bit of litter on the sidewalk, he can be ordered to wear the insignia.

“Simple warnings no longer work,” said Pongpat Chayaphan, acting chief of the Crime Suppression Division in Bangkok, who instituted the new humiliation this week.

“This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense, no matter how minor,” he said. “Kitty is a cute icon for young girls. It’s not something macho police officers want covering their biceps.”

Your fondest dream will come true within this year.

I’m not sure which fondest dream that might be — I’m continually changing my mind — but I’ll take it.

Congratulations to my brother and his beautiful wife on the birth today of their baby.

Nike has indefinitely delayed the release of the Nike Vick V sneaker (bottom) for an image retooling. Could be they intend to add an extra washable layer to the upper and to restore the color scheme of the Vick II (top), both of which would come in handy of you were, say, walking through puddles of dog blood.

Movies I’ve watched recently:

Stranger than Fiction

Entertaining exploration of the boundary between reality and storytelling

The Departed

Over the top but it’s Scorsese

Flags of Our Fathers

There was something a little too pat and obvious about the story after the return from Iwo Jima but sometimes life is like that, too

Mystic River

Liked the doom and darkness of the story although I didn’t exactly buy the local shopkeeper as the leader of a gang

Babel*

I don’t buy how all the white people lived through it

Man of the Year*

Was going to write this story as a book for my thesis project in 1990 but had to write about Shakespeare instead

Thank You for Smoking*

All of a sudden we were getting a lot of movies with references to people dying from smoking or trying to quit smoking, this was the only one I deliberately chose

Children of Men*

Something about this one irked Barbara but she couldn’t put her finger on it, OK by me though

The Da Vinci Code

I only got it for the much-hyped Smart car chase scene, which sucked

For Your Consideration*

It wasn’t Spinal Tap or Best of Show, but we got some laughs

Paths of Glory

This movie should be shoved down the throats of every Iraq war planner

Taxi Driver

Somehow I’d never seen this before, but I’m really glad now I did

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?*

Another old movie I’d like to force some people to watch, although the people who need it would probably just hoot and holler at Jane Fonda’s demise

The Constant Gardner*

We’re suckers for Le Carre

Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers

I was disappointed by this, it just seemed slapdash, but then Greenwald’s just sort of churning them out

Apocalypto

The Running Man, set in Mesoamarica, a tried and true formula with little dialog needed; you may not admire Mel Gibson but he knows global marketing for action movies

Richard III*

This was the first movie I deliberately chose from what I’ve seen before; it’s a great turn by Ian McKellan who does a fantastic job with the 1930s retelling of Shakespeare

Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie

Realized I’d seen part of this on TV before; it’s pedantic and extremely repetative, although there is some interesting information buried in there

Good Night, and Good Luck*

Missed it in the theaters, but it worked well on TV, the medium it portrayed

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind*

A hell of a career for Chuck Barris, even without the killing

The Last King of Scotland

I can’t wait for the sequel; seriously, Forest Whitaker was a fantastic Amin, it just seemed like the movie focused too much on the doctor and that there wasn’t enough of what was going on around him

Nuts in May

A seriously odd ’70s British telemovie about snooty “nature-loving” prigs messing up a camping vacation for the “lesser” people around them

Bill Hicks: Sane Man*
Bill Hicks Live: Satirist, Social Critic, Stand-up Comedian*

I’d seen some clips of Hicks, so I got a couple of his shows, but something about his delivery just rubs me the wrong way after a little while; it was just a little too mugging and too obvious

God Said Ha!*

After what I said about Hicks, I suppose people would wonder how I could like Julia “It’s Pat!” Sweeney’s cancer show, but it didn’t seem as forced and it was more of a storytelling style I’ve always thought worked well

Passport to Pimlico

Could anything subversive like this or The Mouse That Roared get made in the US any time in the past decades and be at all successful? A suburb of London finds out they’re actually part of France and uses the fact to get around post-war rationing, with not entirely beneficial results

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill*

Obsession about animals; I recognize it

Rashomon

For some reason, this is always trotted out as an example of relativism and different people telling different versions of the same story (Rashomon-like) but now that I’ve seen it, it’s just different people telling different stories, sort of like in criminal court, which is what’s going on in the movie

I’m All Right Jack*

An old British film about missile defense plant owners sending getting their stupid upper-class twit relative a job in the workers ranks to muck things up and cause a strike; except that the workers are portrayed as not too bright either. A pox on everyone’s house. Entertaining, but not one I screened for dad.

Wages of Fear (and bonus disc)

A very interesting movie from the ’50s, about the relationship between the US, Europe, and covered with a thick sheen of oil.

Richard Pryor: Live in Concert*

I’d only ever seen the expurgated version of this on TV. I like Pryor, but it doesn’t live up to the hype as the best comic concert performance movie ever and not just because it’s dated.

The Battle of Algiers (and 2 bonus discs)

Very gritty and oddly-entertaining portrayal of the French vs. the Algerians.

Z

More old-style political drama I’d never seen, but found quite gripping

You’re Gonna Miss Me*

Roky Erickson’s adult life on video. Some days I think I’ll end up like Roky, just without the talent.

American Hardcore*

This just depressed me. Not because I wasn’t in the scene in the big cities or because it exploded, but the bands featured were just the ones I really didn’t think were all that good.

Donnie Darko: Director’s Cut

I’ve heard about this movie for years but while I liked it’s playing with time and space and I could see how it might be appealing to a teenage crowd, it didn’t hang together for me.

* Barbara watched it