Single Malt Report: Bowmore 16yr 1994/2011 Signatory

What?! Two single malt reports in a row? Yep, just a little something to leave you with for the weekend...

Distillery: Bowmore
Age: 16 years 11 months - April '94 to March '11
Bottler: Signatory Un-Chillfiltered Collection
Maturation: bourbon hogsheads
Casks: 565+567
Bottle: 196 of 773
Region: Islay
Alcohol by Volume: 46%

Hope you appreciate the clean kitchen background

Here she is.  I will be sad but wiser when she is gone.  This was the first peaty Islay malt that I fully enjoyed (not just appreciated).

I purchased this bottle at the wonderland known as Royal Mile Whiskies during our May trip to London.  700mL (UK size) as opposed to 750mL.

There's no artificial coloring and no chillfiltering.  Most of the major distillers chillfilter their whiskies in order to keep them clear-looking through all kinds of temperatures.  Whiskies that are not chillfiltered cloud up in cooler temperatures or when cold water is added to them.  I love when that happens, so I'm a fan of the un-chillfiltered whiskies.

Established in 1988 by Andrew Symington, Signatory is an independent family-run bottler that pioneered single cask bottlings.  Good on 'em, because I've really enjoyed following them and their releases.  In 2002 they actually bought the Edradour distillery from Pernod Ricard, but more on that when I report on an Edradour.

Back to this Bowmore.

As you might be able to see in the picture, the natural color of this whiskey isn't gold or copper or any of the usual tinted whisky tones.  Instead the shade sits somewhere between ginger ale and chardonnay.

When sampled neat, the nose is softly peated, medicinal (but less salty/briny than Laphroaig), and has a little cowhide leather.  The palate is peat forward but smooth.  Light cream and sweet potatoes.  The finish is hot and cayenne peppery.  It takes a second to sneak up on you, but then it hangs out for a while.

With a few drips of water, the oils release but there's a minimum of clouding.  The peat and medicine almost disappear from the nose, and some menthol opens up.  Conversely, in the palate, the peat smoke is all that remains.  Everything else is gone.  The finish is cooler, but still present with some lingering black pepper.

I really recommend this with sea-salted dark chocolate.  There are only two or three more drams left in the bottle and they will all be partnered with that dessert.

You can compare this with the notes on the three Bowmores reported on two weeks ago.  But frankly, this one wins.

Sadly, I can't find this bottling online anywhere in the world (Master of Malt has a younger batch of '94).  So I guess I swiped this one just in time.  Here's how the pricing is built: (Price - VAT + Shipping) * (conversion rate in May 2011).

Heck, if you can find it, it's a treasure.

Pricing - Bargain at $70
Rating - 93

Single Malt Report: Laphroaig 10yr

Distillery: Laphroaig
Age: 10 years
Maturation: bourbon barrels
Region: Islay
Alcohol by Volume: 43% (US)

Ah, Le-Froyg.  I had no intention of reporting on you.  Hell, I had no intention of ever drinking you again.  But I am because I did.

I'd tried Laphroaig twice about four years ago with two different sets of friends.  Both times I wanted to wash my face after sipping this Islay.  The first sensation that came to my mind was "it's like drinking piss out of an ashtray. With iodine."  Never again.  Never ever ever again.

So there I was, sitting at the Belmont Brewing Company bar last night, watching a few innings of the World Series.  I glanced at their whisky shelf......not bad considering that it's a beer place.  I didn't want the two usual Glens.  Lagavulin 16, splendid though it may be, was a little rich for my wallet.  Strathisla, interesting.  Laphroaig.  Hmmm, I'll be here for a while...maybe I could add a little water?

The bartender brought me the BIGGEST WHISKY POUR that I have ever received at a bar.  Thank you, Melissa.  I looked at the drink.

Now I'm really in for it.

I took a sip.

Hmm.  I took another sip.

---

Here are the tasting notes that I typed furiously into my Blackberry:

(NEAT)
Color - Gold
Nose - Wet peat, burning plastic, wood embers, Atlantic Ocean, ash at the end of a fire, an evening in a small town on the British Isles
Palate - Menthol, cinammon, brown sugar, salty peat smoke, less iodine than I remember
Finish - Long, sweet but also dry (is that possible?)
Your burps will taste like cigarettes.

(W/ WATER)
Nose - Sweetness moves to the fore, maybe even maraschino cherries?, much less peat
Palate - Menthol has vanished, iodine gone, fire put out, just wet peat and a bit of sweet, a mite of sourness too (Ed.: How lyrical of me.)
Finish - Hushed

---

I finished the big drink without a problem.  I'm such a big boy.

The massive nose and palate are very specific to this single malt.  As I'd mentioned in my big Bowmore report, the Laphroaig distillery (similar to its neighbors Ardbeg and Lagavulin) dries their barley out for a long period of time under salty peat smoke.  Through this peating process and the spirit's contact with the American oak of the bourbon barrels this strange chemical miracle plays out.

Laphroaig's flavor is so intense that it can mute anything else you have over the next half hour (which is really unique for a whisky at 40% ABV).  So if you want to follow it with something, don't do another whisky because you might not taste it.  I had the brewery's bitterest ale afterwards.  This big Islay cut through the bitterness revealing everything else that was going on with the ale.

Do I recommend Le-Froyg?  Unless either you've enjoyed other peaty malts or you chew cigarettes for breakfast, the answer is no.  When you do try it for the first time, add about a teaspoon of water (or more, depending on the pour).  But first, try it neat.  Then curse me for suggesting so.

Pricing - Bargain! at $35-45  (Ed. note, 1/1/14: oh, for the days when it was $35)
Rating - 87

We own this

In case you missed my rant two weeks ago, Kristen and I are now the proud owners of a 2-bedroom 2-bathroom condo in Long Beach.  The move has been exhausting.  As I had told my folks, this is the hardest either of us have worked on something.  Ever.  Has all of that hard work been worth it?  I don't know yet.

I'm going to avoid talking about the financial side of things.  It's sufficient to state that the loan and escrow process has been upsetting.  K and I did everything correctly, while everyone on the other side did not.  I am unable to write about it further in order to avoid rage-quitting this post.

I don't think we realized that were purchasing a fixer-upper for our first home.  It's like getting an abused dog from the kennel.  This place has been treated terribly by all of its previous owners.  We plan to be the first ones to really care for it.  And like a child (metaphor switch!), it will take over our lives for quite some time.  That wasn't the intent, but that's what we've got.  Every hour we're learning something new.

Last week we soaked, scraped, sanded, dusted, and painted the ceilings. Where they had once been crumbly cottage-cheese-looking "popcorn" ceilings, they're now smooth and flat.  Except in the second bedroom (heretofore known as The Office) where we discovered a significant mold infestation.  Speaking of significant infestations, the walls are full of termites.  Both of these problems should have been noted by our professional inspectors.  They were not.

We'll be pulling down all of the painted-over wallpaper, killing the mold, and repainting the walls and ceiling.  We're also trying to figure out how our HOA handles termite issues since the bugs don't just hang out in one place.  And the building is made of wood.  We've been told a few times, "Don't worry, now that the weather has cooled the swarmers won't come out of the walls."  Yeah, that's not really the point now, is it?

We've cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned.  Still finding chunks of food(?) from previous occupants.  We pulled out two sets of cabinets and replaced them with a fridge, washer, and dryer.  The fridge arrived without a connecting hose and the washer/dryer had the wrong stacking kit.  This resulted in multiple visits from the delivery crews.

The plumber, a great guy from Guardian Plumbing, has been here three times because there are issues with almost all of the plumbing in the unit.  But we've been lucky that the plumber has been nice.

The Verizon tech came by to install the cable, phones, and Internet.  For a one television home, he said it takes 2 to 3 hours.  It took over eight hours here.  He said that was a record for him.  The building is old, its phone box is outdated, and the cable installation had been done incorrectly and wastefully multiple times in the past.

Our actual move took place on Sunday.  We were going to move ourselves, but due to ongoing physical pain we chose to hire folks.  (Thank you, Kristen, for suggesting out loud exactly what I was thinking.)  We wouldn't have been able to haul that stuff on our own.  It took the movers all day to complete the job.

It's now Tuesday and despite hours of work, we're less than halfway through the boxes.  The great news about the place is that it's incredibly spacious.  About 50% more floor space than our apartment.  But it has very little storage.  Closets and cabinets are almost non-existant, so we'll need to be creative to figure out where everything's going.  In the meantime the place is labyrinthine, about which neither of us are happy.  It makes us feel like hoarding squatters.

The place is full of gives and takes.  The street noise is significant because the windows are poor.  But the constant ocean breeze is wonderful.  The cabinets, counters, and fixtures are stupendously ugly.  But the sunlight is so beautiful, it's the exact opposite of our dark apartment.  I have to figure out how to cook on an inferior electric stove.  But the stove works!  We overlook an Albertsons parking lot.  But when the sky clears we can see Catalina and the mountains.  The wandering junkie quotient has tripled.  But we're a 15 minute walk to the beach.  It's not Los Angeles.  And it's not Los Angeles.

We're restarting our lives this week.  Kristen's commute has been shortened by 90%, thirty miles to three.  I woke up before the sun to go to the gym for the first time in two weeks.  Today will be the first  LBC TJ's run for groceries.  And I'm trying to get a blog post out from time to time!

I'm sure that there's some advice to dole out here, but we're not on the other side of this, yet...

Getting rid of baseball cards

I gave up 17,000 baseball cards last week.  Seventeen thousand.

Let's break this down, list-style:

1. Reasoning – This massive stash had been holed up in my old bedroom in Santa Barbara.  My mom was in the process of putting her home on the market, so this had to be cleared out of the house along with other old belongings.

Then the boxes took up space in my Accord’s trunk since Kristen and I didn’t have room for them in our apartment.  When we decided to move, the cards had to go due to the sheer weight and space they took up.

2. Quantity – 95% of these cards were commons, thus the bulk.  And at least half of them were from my efforts to assemble Topps sets (1986, 1987, 1992, etc.)  The other 5% were “semi-stars” (a mixed blessing of a label if there ever was one) of which I’d already had double or triples.

3. Finance – These cards made up 67% of my collection, but less than 25% of its value.  This lot’s High book value was about $1200.  Its Low book value – or the price one should expect to sell – was $600.

I failed to sell it for $100.

One month of craiglist posts went nowhere.  My sale price started at $200 with all sorts of sweeteners: better cards, unopened packs, and video games.  No takers.  Week after week, I dropped the price.  $175, $150, $125, $100.

Simultaneously, I listed the same lot on eBay for a few rounds, starting at $150.  eBay and PayPal would take a cut but I didn’t mind.  Even at a Buy It Now price of $100, drew nothing.  I actually wound up taking a hit of a couple bucks.

4. Donation – Long before I attempted to sell the cards, I had made a dozen phone calls and emails around Los Angeles to see what organization would accept the cards as an in-kind or re-sale donation.  Children’s hospitals?  Goodwill?  Religious centers?  Shelters?  Nope.  Nope.  Nope.  Nope.  Not only were these cards unsellable, but I couldn't give them away to a non-profit because the batch was virtually valueless and required labor to move and process.

5. Emotional value – I’d thought that getting rid of these would be difficult.  A shedding, abandoning of my childhood.  But really, most of them were acquired as I was assembling sets which was actually done in 2002, post-college.  No baby was I then, just unemployed and wasting time.

So I felt nothing.  In fact they became a burden as they blocked half of my trunk. They were always there, slamming around every time I took a right turn. When I walked to my car, I kept picturing those 3200-count boxes taking up space.  If I could only get rid of them, I would be free of ballast.

With two weeks remaining before the move, I tossed up a hail mary (or Baruch Hashem).  I hit up Collectibles With Causes California which I found via Google searches.  They were quick to respond and very friendly.  A couple of phone calls and emails later, a laid-back buzzcut guy in a big white Ford traded me 1 donation receipt for 17,000 cards.

As the pickup drove away, I was surprised that I didn’t feel wistful; just thankful that my car was 100 pounds lighter and that there was one less thing to do for the big move.

---

In the larger picture, the collections market is dead.  If no one even bites at $100 or makes a counter offer – hell, I would have taken $50 – for 17,000 cards AND if no donation center will take them because they know that they can’t sell them, then all of that cardboard is basically valueless outside of the $5-$10 in recycling redemption value.

Actually, while I was asking a card dealer for advice about this lot, he offered me $15 in case nothing else worked out.  A $15 offer thus establishes the actual Low bid value, not $600.  One could also argue that it represents the High value as well.

At some point I’d like to do a follow-up post about collectables.  I’ve been a collector of different kinds of stuff throughout my life.  And I know some hoarders pretty well; they're a very special breed of collector.  We hold onto things from the past, important to us but worthless to others, and I really don't know why.

The George Herman Hitchcock project, Chapter 2B: The Ring

Introduction

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2A:


HITCHCOCK
(1927-1928)
continuing from Chapter 2A...

The Ring (1928)

After Downhill and Easy Virtue, Hitchcock directed another drama, The Ring.  Sadly it has nothing to do with the future horror series or vice versa.  It's a love-triangle tale about two boxers (wait, there's more!) and a woman.

Not much happens over the 89 minute cut, goodness knows how the 116 minute UK cut played out.  The events are simple.  Jack is a local boxer who fights in front of small crowds (think Rocky Balboa as a carnival attraction).  Nellie's his girl.  Bob is a world-class boxer who has a crush on Nellie.  He fights Jack and defeats him.  He hires Jack to spar with him, but really just wants to get his gloves on Nellie.  Jack and Nellie get married, but when their marriage goes sour she runs off with Bob.  Jack gets back at Bob by fighting him at Albert Hall.  During the match Nellie sees Jack getting his butt kicked, so she goes back to his side of the ring.  Jack is instantly Popeye-ed and defeats Bob.

It's edited at a good pace, but not much seems to happen.  There are no surprises or twists.  The knockout at the end doesn't make any sense.  There's a quick final scene that at best is unnecessary and at worst deflates whatever emotional/sexual tension that had existed in the film.  The long shots of the boxing matches look great, but then Hitch intercuts awkward melodramatic close-ups that don't match the action.

On the positive side, there are a lot of great double-exposure shots.  Plus there's a fantastic time-lapse shot of champagne going flat.  It not only serves to telescope time, but also serves as a metaphor for the moment when the marriage goes flat.

The male leads seem to have gotten their direction switched.  Jack is whiny, spastic, and vengeful while Bob is calm and friendly.  Nellie on the other hand is another example of an early-Hitchcock flirty destructive coquette.  She's eyeballing Bob from the first moment, but marries Jack anyway, then leaves him for Bob.  It's unclear what her character's values or intentions are other than to be a jerk.  This in turn makes it even more challenging for the viewer to care what happens next.

So what I'm saying is:  Where are the thrills, Alfred?

---

The Farmer's Wife (1928)

The thrills are not here.

The Farmer's Wife is, I think, a comedy.  I don't know.  I couldn't finish it.

It starts off looking like a drama.  An idyllic farm.  The farmer's wife has died.  As the farmer sits in his chair staring off into space, Hitchcock lingers on his face.  Over and over and over.  I began to wonder if this was going to be some sort of awesome Scandinavian-style film about a man pondering existence.  But, nope, suddenly it's a comedy!  Whee!  Thirza Tapper, Churdles Ash, and Dick Cooker (actual character names) run around the house mugging and hamming and falling down.  The farmer is pushed to find a new bride, so he invites over All the Single Ladies for a party at which point they all make F*** Me eyes at him.  But when he later professes his humble marital hopes, they're all offended.  He then responds by making fun of how old, fat, and ugly they are.

I fell asleep right there, 40 minutes in.  I was irritated about how this was beginning turn into a proto-Sandler film: "You're fat and ugly.  Wackety Shmackety!  Oh no, my pants are falling down!"  I was disappointed in the abrupt tonal changes.  The ending was as obvious as a turd in the pool.  And the poorly chosen film score was lulling, sleepy sleepy sleepy.

When I woke up and saw the DVD sitting there, I went back to sleep.

I understand the class themes that are confronted when he ultimately marries his housekeeper, but that doesn't negate the fact that the rest of the hired help act like they're mentally disabled.  Add to that my disappointment that Alfred Hitchcock was responsible------

It's amongst the five worst silent films that I've ever seen.  It's even worse than all of the films starring this guy:

---

Hitchcock achieved a certain level of attention with the artistic and financial success of The Lodger, yet followed it with four films fully outside that thriller genre.  None of them lost money, but none of them garnered any attention.  One can applaud him for the efforts, his attempts to expand his craft.  But as a viewer, one yearns to see him take on a subject ripe for suspense, twists, and the macabre.  Would such a film be on the horizon?


Sources:
Spoto, Donald. The Dark Side Of Genius: The Life Of Alfred Hitchcock. De Capo Press, New York. 1999.
Truffaut, Francois. Hitchcock. Simon & Schuster, Paris. 1984.

---

RUTH
(1916)

Source: Major League Baseball

As Hitchcock was experiencing moderate box office success, while treading water (at best) artistically, after his initial successes, Ruth erupted onto the baseball scene, albeit differently than what would later make him famous.

Ruth was the best left-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball in 1916.  It really did happen that quickly.  While Grover Cleveland Alexander was decimating the NL, Ruth and Walter Johnson were nautical leagues ahead of every other pitcher in the AL.

Ruth was first in ERA, first in Opponent Batting Average, first in shutouts, and third in strikeouts.  In advanced stats, he was first in Advanced ERA+ and led pitchers in Wins Above Replacement.  This wasn't due to a small statistical sample size since he led the league in games started and was third in innings pitched.

He also won his very first World Series ring as the Red Sox beat the Brooklyn Robins four games to one.  In Game Two, Ruth pitched a 14-inning complete game, a World Series record that still stands today.  Ruth's only weakness was his lack of control.  Like everything else about him, Ruth's fastball was big.  Though he'd learned to mix in an off-speed pitch from time to time, batters were tied up by the erratic hammer.

Walter Johnson was the best pitcher of the decade and has been considered by many to be the greatest of all time.  Johnson's only weakness in 1916 was Babe Ruth.  They faced each other five times, Ruth went 5-0.  Ruth actually won six in a row against The Big Train, something no other pitcher ever accomplished.

Johnson and Ruth each allowed zero home runs for the entire season.  Meanwhile, Ruth's crowd-silencing home run feats from the previous season didn't repeat in 1916.  He did hit three home runs, which was tied for the best on the team (even though he played in only 43% of their games).  But all of his batting statistics dropped off.

His focus was on his pitching (and hookers and blended whiskey, but I digress) which now garnered attention and provided his first championship ring.  Like Hitchcock, Ruth was succeeding outside what had first caught him high regard.  But while Ruth's acclaim was much larger much quicker, Hitch would venture back to his bailiwick sooner......in Chapter 3: Champagne.


Sources:
Creamer, Robert. Babe: The Legend Comes to Life. Simon & Schuster, New York. 1974.
Jenkinson, Bill. Baseball's Ultimate Power: Ranking the All-Time Greatest Distance Home Run Hitters. Lyons Press. 2010.
Jenkinson, Bill. The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs: Recrowning Baseball's Greatest Slugger. Carrol & Graf. 2007.
Montville, Leigh. The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth. Broadway Books, New York. 2006.

The George Herman Hitchcock project, Chapter 2A: The Ring

Introduction

Table of Contents

Chapter 1


HITCHCOCK
(1927-1928)

Like the American film industry, production and distribution at British International Pictures and Gainsborough Pictures occurred with assembly line efficiency.  Audiences turned over their nickels, dimes, and quarters at an intense rate so the supply needed to meet the demand.  Individual production budgets were smaller, sets were few and recycled, location shoots virtually non-existant, stories were kept short, and editing began the moment the exposed film was printed.

Today our favorite director's films release once every 18 to 24 months.  It's not unusual for features to take almost a year to develop, then spent many months in complicated post production.  But between 1927 and 1928, Alfred Hitchcock had a new film out every four months.  He proved to executives he could run streamlined productions that found moderate box office success.  He continued this pace right through 1931, after which he rarely made more than one film a year.

I'm sure that most artists would prefer more time to work through their creations, but it's debatable whether having that luxury would have benefited Hitch.  For instance, he pushed out Dial M for Murder and Rear Window in the same year (1954), but it took him two years to release I Confess, his only (rightfully) dismissed film from the '50s.  In 1955, he directed two films (To Catch a Thief and The Trouble With Harry) and three television episodes for a series he had created himself ("Alfred Hitchcock Presents"), while it took him over a year to complete Jamaica Inn.  Never heard of Jamaica Inn?  There's a good reason for that.  I still haven't finished it myself.

After his success with The Lodger, Hitchcock was hired to direct four films over less than 16 months.  Curiously, none of these were thrillers, horrors, or mysteries.  By this date in the American film industry, directors were assigned to specific genres per their box office successes.  Yet it would still be a few years before Hitchcock would be consistently hired for thrillers.  Instead, over this 16 month period, he directed three dramas and a comedy.

Downhill (UK) or When Boys Leave Home (US) (1927)

(This film wasn't part of the cheapie Hitchcock DVD set that I'd picked up for this study.  Instead it's available for viewing right on YouTube!)

After his friend impregnates a party girl, Roddy, a promising student from a wealthy family, takes the blame and is kicked out of his boarding school.  His father then kicks him out of the house.  A theatre's lead actress marries him when she discovers that he's inherited 30,000 from a relative.  She spends all of his money, cheats on him, then ditches him.  Roddy then becomes a escort/prostitute to earn a living.  He winds up on the docks broke, starving, and insane.  He stumbles home and is welcomed back by his father and the school who have learned that he was innocent of the original accusation.

First, the title.  "Downhill" is appropriate, kudos to the UK distributors.  There really is no story arc here, it's just downhill.  The character is completely passive, continually getting beaten down by the world.  The title that the American distributors gave it is "When Boys Leave Home", which is so wrong it's as if they never saw it before they named it.  It's not about "boys", it's about one guy: a schoolboy played by a 34 year-old Igor Novello.  And he doesn't leave home, he's kicked out of the house.  That's the whole point of the first act.  Why change it from "Downhill"?  Did they think American audiences would expect skiing?

Aside from the cloying melodrama, lack of rounded characters, and no real story momentum, Downhill is the best of these four films.  I'll focus on the positive elements.

Hitch's past experience as an art director shows.  Every set is full of dimension, depth, and detail.  Columns, arches, windows, bookcases, vertical lines, and boxes frame the continually trapped Roddy.  There are also some nice effects shots -- upside down, diagonal, double exposures.  They may be jarringly obvious, but they do serve the story.  And there are also nice visuals of descent.  Roddy rides an escalator downwards after being booted out of his house, then he takes the elevator down when he's kicked out of his marriage.

Hitch also introduces a repeating theme here: the flirtatious, scheming, backstabbing woman.  We'll see this type of character reappear often throughout his silent films.  I'm not sure what to make of it yet, it's unsettling to witness it so often.  In "Downhill" both of the female leads flirt, consume, then destroy.

In fact the only person who is nice to Roddy is a transvestite.  Yep, I'm saying it here.  There's a tranny in this film and no one writes about this, yet.  At the tail end of his male escort career, a "woman" invites him over to her table.  Hitchcock's camera focuses on her masculine face, too much makeup, huge arms, hidden Adam's apple, distinct facial hair, and labored attempts to look ladylike.  Before "she" asks him to dance, she expresses affection and concern for him.  No one else does that.  And it's actually kind of moving.  And riveting.  For a moment the film seems to poised to take risks.  Then he ditches her out of disgust for himself.  This viewer says  :(

---

Easy Virtue (1927)

"I'm afraid that I have no eyes for anything but you."

That odd dialogue title card is the most memorable thing about this film.

Though it's based on a Noel Coward play, the story is piffle and even pains me to type it.  C'mon Noel.

Larita marries a jerk, he catches her not cheating on him with an portrait artist.  He divorces her and she gets publicly labelled a woman of easy virtue.  Though it actually sounds like a positive thing presently, it was once shorthand for SLUT.  Larita runs away to another town, marries a rich guy who takes her home to his manipulative hateful mother (future Hitchcock theme!).  When Larita's easy virtue past catches up with her, she ends marriage #2 to allow that guy to marry the woman (Sarah) he really loves.

"Shoot!  There's nothing left to kill!" Larita exclaims at one point.  I would have shot her.

What I mean to say is, maybe if she died at the end the film would have been lent a degree of tragedy.  Otherwise Larita's somehow both passive and accusatory, whiny and sullen.  Husband #2 is constantly grumpy, dismissive, and never defends his wife.  So yes, in addition to a weak narrative, the characters are not interesting.

There is some innovative cutting between the past and present in the first act.  There are some heavy-handed eye-piece and tennis racquet effects that highlight trapped characters.  Hitchcock shows some better instincts when instead of filming the proposal scene, he shows us a telephone operator listening in and reacting to it.  Finally, there's this moment between Sarah and Larita at the very end of the film:

It's the most intimate moment in any of Hitchcock's films so far.  It's a pity that these two don't wind up with each other at the end.  Now THAT would be a great twist.

......Goodness, there are two films left AND Babe Ruth's 1916 entry...... Coming soon...

Enter Sandman

"First you get the sugar, then you get the power..."

It started last Friday.  It won’t stop until next Sunday.  We are at the new home until the sun sets every day, all while I battle it out with food poisoning (Thanks Subway! You disgusting hive of vile bacteria-infested meat product. Hugs!).  We soak and scrape the ceilings.  We spackle and sand them.  We dust, tape, prime, and paint them.  (I hate cottage-cheese bumpy popcorn ceilings.  I see them in the street, in the carpet, in the clouds, in my dreams.)  We’re pulling out cabinets.  We’re tearing down wallpaper.  We are cleaning, sweeping, mopping, vacuuming. 

Physical labor is not romantic.  You can work out at the gym every day of the week for years.  It doesn’t matter.  You will hurt in weird places.  Your hands will be sliced, papercut, splintered, blistered, bruised, and callused.  And that’s just in the first 15 minutes.  You’re going to be sanding the ceiling for another four hours.  No matter what protection you wear you will get paint dust in your eyes, your pores, your throat, and your soul.

Maybe you’ll think about what your grandfather and great-grandfathers did for a living.  Maybe you’ll consider what our country’s migrant laborers do for a week’s wage that’s less than a day’s pay for you.

And then you will go home and drink whisky.  Scratch that.  I will go home and drink whisky.  (Take that, food-borne virus!)

My brain feels different.  Maybe it’s the paint dust.  My nerves are numbed and I can't think beyond what we’re building.  Amongst the tension, there's a calm certainty.   Kristen and I will own the end result.  Whatever it may be.

And maybe, just maybe, we will report back with tips and pics.

And Single Malt Reports.

I don't even have a caption for this.