Overheard at Table 2: Hair

Michael: and the hijab, I'm sorry man, but it just bugs me.

James: what's wrong with the hijab?

Michael:  well, I been thinking about it and I just don't like it.

James: so you're some sort of feminist liberator or you just have something against religious expression?

Michael: nah it ain't got nothing to do with feminism or religion or anything, I'm just a hair guy.

James:  you're a 'hair guy'.

Michael: yeah, I'm a hair guy.  I love women's hair, especially thick, flowing, cascading long waves of black hair.

James: I think I get it.

Michael:  yeah, and I know they got that hair.   I  KNOW  they got beautiful waterfalls of hair, and it just drives me NUTS that I can't see it!

James: you got a problem.  I don't even think they have a name for your problem, but you definitely got it.

Michael:  hey man.   I just love hair!

Overread at Table 4: The Ghosts of Our Senescence by MR

2013-0809

 

What are the ghosts that will haunt us in our senescence?

Will it be the lovers that we left on the table,
helpless and breathless?

Will it be the faces of the children that we left

standing on the platform at the train station?

Will it be the dogs that we put down

for no good reason?

Will it be the cackling faces of the

false gods we served in order to

accumulate the trinkets that glut the cardboard
boxes in the attics, only to be

fed into dumpsters on some hot summer afternoon

by our grandchildren, as their parents

drive us to a “nice place, a really nice place to rest”

somewhere beyond the end of suburbia?

Overheard at Booth Two: Roald Dahl's "The Witches"

M: Loved that book.   As I was reading it I could just see it being made into a movie, like Mathilda, and I could see Angelica Houston playing the head witch.

R: It already is.

M: Already is what?

R: A movie.  Based on the book.  Came out about twenty or so years ago. 

M: And the head witch.

R: Angelica Houston.

M: No foolin!  They just stole my idea.

R: How can they steal an idea that you had just now and they had two decades ago?

M: Sometimes greatness just takes a little time to catch up with me.

Overread at Table 4: Billy Collins "Fishing on the Susquehanna in July"

Fishing on the Susquehanna in July
by Billy Collins
I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna or on any river for that matter to be perfectly honest. Not in July or any month have I had the pleasure--if it is a pleasure-- of fishing on the Susquehanna. I am more likely to be found in a quiet room like this one-- a painting of a woman on the wall, a bowl of tangerines on the table-- trying to manufacture the sensation of fishing on the Susquehanna. There is little doubt that others have been fishing on the Susquehanna, rowing upstream in a wooden boat, sliding the oars under the water then raising them to drip in the light. But the nearest I have ever come to fishing on the Susquehanna was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia when I balanced a little egg of time in front of a painting in which that river curled around a bend under a blue cloud-ruffled sky, dense trees along the banks, and a fellow with a red bandanna sitting in a small, green flat-bottom boat holding the thin whip of a pole. That is something I am unlikely ever to do, I remember saying to myself and the person next to me. Then I blinked and moved on to other American scenes of haystacks, water whitening over rocks, even one of a brown hare who seemed so wired with alertness I imagined him springing right out of the frame.

Overheard at Table 1: Billyjoejimbob's Movie Roulette

Billy:  OK, movie time. 

Joe: Describe each movie in two lines or less.

Jim: Shouldn't that be "two lines or fewer"?

Bob: Fewer than two is only one.  Can't get much fewer.

Billy: Zero is fewer.  Two fewer, actually.

Joe: Semantics.  Let's git-er-done.

Jim: The Informant.

Bob: Matt Damon plays the geekiest whistleblower ever.

Billy: And only the spoiler saved the film.

Joe: Circle of Eight.

Jim: Even by B-movie standards, this ghost-filled stone walled apartment complex is sterile.

Bob: and what's with all the green lights?  And that one lesbian chick scene that had nothing to do with the plot at all?

Billy: Macbeth.

Joe: Which one?  There are tons!

Jim: The one with Sam Worthington.  Set in modern day street gang some such.

Bob: This movie is one you turn off ten minutes into the film, and you thank this movie for letting you know to turn it off, so you can better spend your time watching something better.

Billy: The History Boys.

Joe: I liked the dialogue, and the setting, and the lit references.

Jim: But do we REALLY need another movie about how tough it is to be a closet homosexual teenager boy in 1980's Britain?

Bob: Sukiyaki Western Django

Billy:  I got this one in three words:   Sucky-yucky Worthless Junk-o.

Joe:  Niiiiice one!   OK:  Case 39

Jim: This one starts out wonderful - reallllllly twisted, especially with the girl in the oven scene.  True horror, but then . . .

Bob: ....then it shows you just how CG demons can turn a psychological thriller into a bucketful of cheese-whiz.

Billy: Twilight: Eclipse.

Joe: *silence*

Jim: er . . . .

Bob:  Better than New Moon?

Billy: That'll work.  Southland Tales

Joe: Did I watch that one late, because it seems like a dream . . . something about a near-future LA that's all destroyed?

Jim: Doesn't that describe the "here and now" LA?

Bob: Yeah, but they have futuristic styles, kinda like Timothy Leary envisioning the Rapture.

Billy: How about Carriers?

Joe: Like Andromeda Strain meets The Walking Dead.

Jim: Nightmare on Elm Street.  The remake.

Bob: Showing once and for all why remakes of any sort should be outlawed, and those who make them should be tarred, feathered, and run out of town for the talentless heathens that they are.

Billy: and that my friends, wraps up this episode of "Movie Roulette"

Joe: Tune in next time when we take on the entire Disney Ouvre!

Jim: Cartoons or Live Action?

Bob: Both.   And that includes the Pixars!

Overheard at Booth 3: Who We Serve

"Reminds me of something that I read, everyone who drives in Houston will understand this, maybe not all over the country, but some of the other cities might get it as well, there was this guy and he was taking his son, about 6 or 7, on one of those take-your-kids-to-work days, and they were going down I-10, or maybe even 610, and it was packed tight to the rim, like usual, and the kid asks his dad "wow, dad, why are SO MANY CARS?"

And the dad pops off with "Well, son, we're all in service to the Almighty Dollar!"

And the kid comes back with, "So is that why the highway's empty on Sunday mornings when we go to church?"

Overheard at the Counter: Sucker Punch

Well, I thought this would be good, because I loved "Watchmen" and because my wife loves the washboard stomachs of the "Spartan Hotties" (her words, not mine!), I thought "Sucker Punch" would be just as good.   I mean, the ads made it look like it had great FX and it's written and directed by the same guy, and yeah, I'll admit, what guy wouldn't want to see girls in thigh high boots r stockings kicking butt with big guns and swords?

But man!  You're watching this film and you're thinking, "with all this money that they can throw into a movie and they can't buy a decent script?"  It's just sad! 

I mean, don't get me wrong, this is a beautiful movie, and I ain't just talking about the girls, the sets, the CG backgrounds, the lighting, it's all brilliant, and the idea is pretty good, too, you're floating in and out of stories, and you kinda know what the fantasy is, but sometimes the fantasy bleeds into the reality a bit, and that's cool, but overall, you're just left going, "OK, so now they're kicking robot butt." and you shrug your shoulders and wonder if you're playing Xbox rather than watching an actual movie.

I dunno, the best acting in the whole bit was David Carradine, and all his dialogue probably doesn't total more than two minutes of film time.

and by the way, girls, you can prance around in your undergarments all you want to, but Carla Gugino is hotter than all five of you combined.  Sorry, ladies!