I just got back from seeing The Hulk with my sons. A couple of weeks back I took them to see Iron Man in the evening and they liked the thrill of seeing the movie in a packed house. I always preferred to see movies that way, too, but I usually took my sons to an early afternoon show because it was a lot easier that way.
This time I snuck in some Swedish Fish for us to munch on instead of tortilla chips. I had forgotten that I once took tortilla chips with us to the show until my son Adam reminded me. I really felt like my father when I did take the tortilla chips. All I needed was the jar of salsa. The advantage of seeing a movie in a packed theater is that I’m not the only one laughing at the funny parts.
Usually my sons tell me that I embarrass them when I laugh out loud by myself for too long. In a crowded theater, there’s always someone who laughs louder and longer than me. I then tell my sons that I laugh normally compared to these other extreme laughers.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed. Jack and Jill were tripped. Goldilocks was framed. Sleeping beauty was over-medicated. The chicken crossed the road because of housing discrimination. The Puss in Boots used steroids. The Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe had so many baby daddies she didn’t know what to do. The race between the tortoise and the hare was fixed. Hansel and Gretel were domestic violence victims. Rapunzel wore hair extensions. Little Bo Peep posed nude for Playboy. Alice in Wonderland dropped some bad acid. Snoopy was spayed. Miss Piggy dropped out of finishing school. The Ogre failed to take court-mandated anger management classes. The Emperor’s new clothes were stolen. The Black Cat was the target of yellow journalism. Prince Charming was a jerk. Mary had a little lamb because she was abducted by extraterrestrials. All the Big Bad Wolf needed was a hug. Cinderella was anorexic. The fire-breathing dragon had an extremely large carbon footprint. Lady Godiva had a wardrobe malfunction. The Three Blind Mice were born near a nuclear power plant. Jack’s beanstalk was genetically altered. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum were clones. The Seven Dwarfs were gay. The Farmer in the Dell had a condo in the city. The Farmer’s Wife slept with the traveling salesman. Jimmy cracked corn and he don’t care ‘cuz he’s takin’ the Fifth! The London Bridge is falling down and the engineer is hiring a lawyer. The Beauty and the Beast were cousins. Jiminy Cricket was a Wiccan. The Fairy Godmother was heterosexual. Snow White falsely claimed the Seven Dwarfs as dependents. Pinocchio’s lies caused deforestation. All fairy tales are plagiarism!
I’m enjoying my summer vacation from teaching so far. I get up whenever I feel like. I have a cup of black coffee while I rub the sleep from my eyes. I more or less kill time and stall before I go out my front door for my morning run before it gets too hot out.
Lately, I’ve been slowing down on my runs. I’m not sure if it’s due to age and/or allergies. Of course, I’ve had these experiences before, even when I was in my twenties.
I have been running, on and off again, since high school. I first started running competitively at Divine Heart Seminary when I joined the cross country team. For some reason I wanted to be on a school team because I thought it would be cool to be a high school jock.
My first race was the Marshall County Cross Country Championship in Indiana. Since I didn’t know any better, I ran alongside the lead pack right from the start. After about a mile, I suddenly slowed down to a crawl, or so it seemed to me. I’m not sure where I placed, but I received a ribbon.
I have one run that I will never forget: I was running on some backwoods road in Camp Pendleton when I felt a presence running alongside me. I looked over my shoulder and saw a coyote. At first, I was startled, but I continued running as if this were normal. The coyote and I ran together for about five minutes before we went our separate ways. Well, enough stalling! I am now going out for my morning run.
Carmen has always caught my interest. As a name because my mother was named Carmen. I have also met two Italian males named Carmen. I have met a couple of girls named Carmen, but I can’t seem to get too involved with a girl with my mother’s name.
In high school, I had to read part of the opera Carmen by Georges Bizet. As I learned later in life, French composers have written some of the best Spanish classical music ever. That’s just one of those mysteries of the universe! I don’t even remember in which class I read Carmen the opera or even why. But I do remember that it was a French opera about a gypsy who lived in Spain. Later, because of my interest in Carmen the opera, I read the book Carmen written by Prosper Mérimée on which Bizet based his opera. Eventually, I saw a video of the opera Carmen and loved it.
I love watching different interpretations of the same work. So I was ecstatic when I saw the movie Carmen by director Carlos Saura. The characters in the movie decide to produce a stage version of the opera Carmen while also referring to the original book by Merimee. The movie is set in Spain, so they will make a flamenco version of Carmen. There is a lot of wonderful flamenco dancing and guitar music in the movie.
The main problem for the director Carlos of the flamenco version is finding the perfect Carmen. Well, as luck would have he finds her: Her name happens to be Carmen and she also happens to be a gypsy. The movie blurs the line between fiction and reality on multiple levels and the viewer must differentiate between the action of the characters of the flamenco version and the actors who portray those characters. Sometimes the actions and emotions of the actors and characters overlap.
I also recently saw–again!–the movie Carmen Jones that stars an all-African-American cast. The movie follows Bizet’s storyline faithfully and uses his music, but the lyrics were changed to suit the updated plot and characters. The story takes place down south near an army base, perhaps some time around WWII. Carmen works in a parachute factory instead of a cigar factory. Instead of a toreador as the rival lover, there’s a boxer. Don Jose is still a soldier, but a U.S. Soldier. The movie is very good and the lyrics that are true to the characters are sung well by Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge. Of course, none of this would have been possible without Bizet’s wonderful Spanish music.
I was once at Blockbuster and saw another version of Carmen, a hip hop version. I didn’t have time to watch it, so I didn’t rent it. Now that I have some time, I plan on seeing it. I wonder how faithful the movie is to Bizet and Mérimée. I’ll have to watch it real soon!
After Duke, the best dog I ever had, I never had another pet for as long as I lived alone. When I had my own apartment, I liked living alone so I never had a pet. Now that I’m living alone again, I have no pets. I enjoy the solitude between visits from my sons.
However, when I was married, my wife and four-year-old son insisted that we get a dog. I kept making excuses at our first house in Bridgeport that the house wasn’t big enough, the yard wasn’t big enough, or someone would steal our dog. After a few years, I moved next door to my brother Jerry whose neighbor sold the house to me for a discounted price since he didn’t use a realtor. I enjoyed living next door to my brother for the most part–except that he always had some home-improvement project in progress and eventually he would call upon me to help him.
Anyway, once we settled into our new house, my wife and son started talking about getting a dog again. All my previous excuses were no longer valid, and I was too tired to invent new ones. So, we immediately went into negotiations. I knew we were getting a dog one way or another. And despite the promises of my wife and son that they would be walking, feeding, and taking care of the dog, I knew that eventually the dog would become my sole responsibility. I insisted that I get to choose what kind of dog we got. I got my wish and chose a chow chow. Was I ever sorry! But not immediately.
I had a friend who had not one, but two chow chows. Whenever I would visit him, the dogs would look me over and then I would pet them and then they’d go away. So, I pitched the idea of getting a chow chow to my family. They weren’t too enthusiastic about a chow chow. We saw one at the park and we went over to talk to the owner. He let us pet his chow chow and he was very friendly. My wife and son were then sold on the idea of getting a chow chow.
Well, we bought a six-week-old chow chow puppy, and he was the cutest little fur ball that you ever saw. The woman who sold him to us said that if we ever changed our mind about having him, we could take him back to her farm in Indiana. My wife, son, and I had more negotiations over naming the new puppy. I insisted on naming him Beowulf, but my wife and son outvoted me and named him Simba, after The Lion King. My niece Bridget came next door to our house every day to feed and play with Simba. He grew so fast, and he wasn’t cooperating with the house training. He was almost full-grown, and he was still relieving himself in the house. I would put his nose in it and hit him with a newspaper so he wouldn’t do it again. This had worked with other dogs that we had previously had. One day, I was about to punish him for pooping in the house when suddenly he turned on me and tried to bite me. Well, I had to show him that I was the master, so I picked him up and he kicked the wall and we both fell to the ground. I wanted to show him that I wasn’t afraid of him, so I wrestled him to the ground. He bit my hand and forearm, but I took him back to his mess and hit him with the newspaper. When I let go of him, he growled at me and walked away giving me the evil eye. My wife and son were watching, and they were both pretty scared by what they had just seen. I knew something was wrong with this dog because I had never heard of a dog biting its master before.
I also learned that chow chows are very territorial. My niece Bridget would come and go to our house at will before we had Simba, but afterwards she came to visit him a lot. She really loved that puppy. Until, one day, Simba was sleeping by the side door of the house. She came into the yard to pet Simba, but he woke up and started biting her. As she ran out of the yard screaming, he bit her behind repeatedly until she was out of the yard. I really didn’t understand his behavior at all because Bridget took care of Simba since he was a puppy, and she was like part of our household. I didn’t realize how vicious Simba was until then. There were a few more incidents where children walking by would see Simba in the yard behind the chain-link fence wagging his tail. When they tried to enter the yard to pet him, he wouldn’t growl or bark, he would continue wagging his tail. After they entered the yard, he would bite them. I put up a six-foot wooden fence around the whole yard to protect the neighborhood children from Simba.
A boy and his dog!
Simba never bit my wife or son, but when the twins were born, he bit Adam when he was about one and a half. Adam walked by Simba while he was eating, and Simba bit him. I risked getting bitten, but I punished Simba for biting my son. Most dogs don’t bite small children for something like that. I wanted to take him back to the farm where we bought him, but my wife said no. She insisted that we keep Simba. This dog was a real monster. If he didn’t like someone on the other side of the fence, he would start chewing on the wooden fence. I had to replace some of the boards on the front gate because he had chewed through them. Another time, my sons and I were going to a little league game. Simba was in the yard, and I opened the garage door and the minivan side door for my sons. Simba ran and jumped into the minivan before my sons. He wanted to go for a ride, but we couldn’t take him with us. I told him to get out, but he wouldn’t. I told him a few times. So, I reached to grab his collar, but he bit my hand so hard that I thought he had broken some bones. I started yelling at Simba like a maniac and tried to grab his collar again. He was so afraid of me that he ran out of the minivan. For two or three days afterwards, he would run away from me. A master and his dog should not have to live in fear of each other.
When my wife and I were getting divorced, we agreed on everything except what to do with Simba. I told her she could have him since she was the one who wanted a dog in the first place. Besides, Simba had never bitten her. She didn’t want him. I was stuck with Simba. When I was selling the house, I knew I had to give Simba away, but no one would be able to take him because he was too vicious. He even scared me, and I was his master. Eventually, I had to take him to the Chicago Animal Control Center. But I didn’t know what else to do with him. Well, they probably had him put to sleep because he would most likely bite anyone who tried to befriend him.
Now, my sons keep asking me to get a dog, but I keep making excuses. I’m afraid to get another dog! If I ever do, I’ll get a mutt.
Chicago USA 