I somehow have surrounded myself with many readers in my life. Meredith
reads all the time (sometimes five or more books/week), Sonotmu and
OrangeJoJo read all the time, Rev. Transit reads all the time,
Caribbeaner is not content with just reading, so is actually writing a
book, and so on.

So, I thought I would list MY opinion on what I have read and seen this
summer. Since I read way less than everyone else, that must mean I am
more discriminating. Let the reviews begin!

The Reluctant Tuscan:
This is a very nice book for those who enjoy travel and the wonderful
madness that passes for organized activity in Italy. While I do not
agree with everything the authors did (they can be very Machiavellian
at times), it was still a nice read.

Up There With the Big Boys: The Cliff Johnson Story:
I am very biased on this one. This was the autobiography of my
grandfather who passed away a little over a year ago. I finally got
around to reading it, and I learned many things about Grandpa that I
had not known. Even aside from being part of my family history, I
enjoyed learning about the days of early radio.

Playing the Moldovans at Tennis:
A very funny book about a guy who bets a friend that he can beat the
entire Moldovan soccer team at tennis. This book is well written, and
gives a nice view of how parts of eastern Europe are still fairly wild
places.

Northanger Abbey
: I am only part way through this very thin book, but it is very funny.
It is Jane Austen poking fun at most of the things that go on in her
other novels.

That is it on the book front. On the movie front, I have seen:

Twelfth Night: (On DVD) – C’mon! It’s Shakespeare! This is a well cast, well shot movie of a very funny play. Two thumbs up.

V for Vendetta: I
really liked this film. It brought up interesting questions about
freedom vs. security, issues of loyalty, etc. A good action film that
is thoughtful too.

Secondhand Lions: (On
DVD) – Nice film. I am a sucker for happy endings, and moreover for
films that portray larger-than-life modern myths (Like Willy Wonka or
Big Fish).

Emperor’s Club: (On
DVD) –  This is a teacher film, which makes me more likely to enjoy
it. This has the added touch of being more complicated than the
take-troubled-kid-and-make-him-love-learning type of movie that
Hollywood can turn out. A very good film.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding: (ON DVD) A very funny film, worth watching just to see the father. Much fun for anyone who knows any strongly ethnic family.

The Man Who Came to Dinner:
(On DVD) This is a taped Broadway play, but they did a nice job. The
sound is fine, and the camera angles work well. Nathan Lane leads a
wonderful cast in a play that is funny even by itself. I am sure I
missed many references to 30’s and 40’s Hollywood, but it is a great
play/film.

X-Men III: The Last Stand:
I also enjoyed this film. Some had told me it was merely okay, but I
thought it was good (probably a 6 or 7 out of 10). It did not blow me
away, but I found it entertaining, and it was a good fix for an old
comic book junkie like myself. I had a good time seeing all the comic
references (the Danger Room, Wolverine trashing a Sentinel, Trask being
part of the President’s cabinet, etc.).

Sliding Doors: (On
DVD) I liked it – it is an interesting look at how things can pivot on
a small choice. The movie follows two time lines, and does so in a
fairly effortless way. I have to say I despise a couple of the
characters, but I liked the concept and how the director pulled it off.

On plays:

I have already given my two cents’ worth on “Too True to Be Good” and
“The Invisible Man,” so I won’t bore you with those. In addition to
those, I saw Porthouse Theater’s
production of “Our Town.” I thought it was okay. I thought the first
act was a little long and dragged in several places. The second act was
better, and the third act was interesting, although the director choose
to ignore two stage directions from Wilder – one to have the Narrator
wind his watch and one for the town clock to sound. Since
these come at the end of the play, one would think Wilder thought they
were important, but they were left out for some reason. I did not think
the play was fantastic, but I did enjoy myself.

We will be seeing Macbeth at Stan Hywet
this week. I expect that will be great – I have seen Shakespeare at
Stan Hywet before and have liked everything I have seen there.

Lastly, I have been listening to the radio adaptation of Lord of the
Rings and of a taped version of  Huckleberry Finn (one of my
favorite novels) while I have been running. Listening to books while
exercising has been a great way to pass time running.

So, there you have it. That has been my entertainment for the summer.
I’m sure my more literary friends have read a lot more, but I squeeze
reading in where I can.

One of the better discoveries Mer and I have made in recent months is the Cinemark Movies 10
theater in Canton. For those of you in the NE Ohio area, take note!
This was THE movie theater in the late eighties and nineties in the
Canton area, but newer theaters were built next to (now popular) strip
malls, so this theater has become the bargain theater. It is still
fairly new, and is nice. It has surround sound and big screens – the
only down sides is that it is not stadium seating and at least some of
the theaters are smallish. But, they are still very nice on the whole.
We saw “V” and “X-Men 3” there, and it was great. The best part is the
price – $1.50 on Fridays and Saturdays, $1.00 the rest of the week, and
(I hope you are sitting down, Shannon) 50 CENTS on Mondays. Yes, you
have to wait a little more time for the movie to get to the theater,
but how can you go wrong for a dollar or a dollar fifty? Even an okay
movie is much better at those prices, even if just to get into air
conditioning. A date evening for $3.00! Wow!

As part of the ongoing what-I-did-on-my-summer-vacation, I’ll wrap it up with our overnight stay at Niagara-on-the-Lake. Niagara-on-the-Lake is a beautiful small town on Lake Ontario. It is the home of the Shaw Festival, a theater festival where they celebrate George Bernard Shaw‘s
plays, and any other (non-Shaw) play written during Shaw’s considerable
lifetime (1856-1950). The productions are excellent, and the theaters
are small, which makes for some great theater.

Meredith and I went to Stratford, Canada (the Shakespeare Festival) and
to Niagara-on-the-Lake as the first 8 days of our honeymoon (the rest
were spent in romantic Philadelphia with my brother). I know seeing
lots of theater on your honeymoon is not everyone’s cup of tea, but it
worked for us. We have talked about going back lots, but have never
managed it until this one-night stay over vacation. Since we had to be
in Michigan on Saturday for a wedding, Meredith suggested breaking the
Maine-to-Michigan trip up into a Middlebury stage and a
Niagara-on-the-Lake stage, which was a brilliant idea. So, we finally
got back to the Shaw Festival, almost eight years later.

Even though we spent only about 30 hours in town, we went for two walks
along the lake, which is lined with very nice homes. It seems as if all
of the homes in Niagara-on-the-Lake are cute, AND they are all
individual – no housing development cookie-cutter homes here. Both days’
walks were fine, and you could just make out the skyline of Toronto on
the other side of the lake (the CN Tower sure helps with that!).

We also got to wander the cute downtown shops, which I recommend
highly. They had a decent gelato (Italian ice cream) stand in a (wait
for it, Jolene) coffee shop, an Irish import store AND a Scottish
import store. We ate in a pub-ish basement, where we had some good food
(many of the other restaurants are upscale, so I don’t like the food).

But the main reason for us to go was to see plays. We saw two plays – one Thursday night, and one Friday afternoon.

The Thursday play was Shaw’s “Too True to be Good,” an improbable play
about an ex-preacher and his former lover convincing a rich young woman
to be “kidnapped” so all three can share the ransom money, and they all
head off to Arabia where they lounge about a military base with a
private based on Lawrence of Arabia, one of Shaw’s good friends.

Meredith’s concise and witty review was the title – the play was
too true to be good. It had some great one-liners (Shaw is very funny),
but the play was really long and almost nothing happened. It was like
what I have heard about “Waiting for Godot” – lots of talk, and no plot
or action. Add to this that Shaw used the play to squeeze in dozens of
rants that make the Cheerful Ranter
look like an amateur, and the play started to get tedious. I am a huge
theater nut, and even I began to wonder when the play would end. It
could have been a great short play if it were edited down.  Don’t
get me wrong – the production was fantastic; the acting and staging
were first rate. I just think it is not a very good play. One thing
Sonotmu has taught me about improv is that relationships drive scenes,
and that is what audiences find most interesting. I think that is what
is wrong with “To True to Be Good” – the characters are flat,and the
relationships are canned or non-existant. You just don’t care what
happens to these people. It is too much satire to be taken as a serious
play (meaning dealing with serious issues in a serious way – not a
judgement on the nature of satire, which I love), and Shaw breaks the
satire time and again, so it does not make good satire either. Lastly,
the issues Shaw raises are not subtle at all – he preaches at you for
over two hours.

If you want to see an excellent Shaw play that is more consistent, see
“Mrs. Warren’s Profession” – I saw that a few years ago, and I
recommend it.

The play we saw on Friday was a stage adaptation of H.G. Wells‘
“The Invisible Man” (see picture on left). This play was fantastic. I
was fascinated by how they would stage the production. I saw two
choices: 1) use illusion to portray the Invisible Man, or 2) have the
actor on stage at all times, but have times when the other actors could
not see him. This production chose to use illusion, and it was very
effective. They had things floating on stage, a police man fighting with
an “empty” shirt, a man dragged by his shirt collar across the stage,
and two occasions where a coat was laid over the Invisible Man on stage.
It was most impressive. More impressive was the adaptation. I have not
read Wells’ story, but the play brought up questions about what it
means to be human, the nature of community, the price of power and
knowledge, ideas of loyalty, the dangers of being short sighted, and
other ideas. I was completely sucked in to the story – the plot and
characters were strong, and the acting was magnificent. I loved this
play.

So, that is what we did on vacation. It was great. Now, I’m
back to the reality of network wires, switches, servers, and so on. I
hope to get a few weekends away yet this summer – one to L.A. for my
niece’s baptism, and maybe a weekend in Chicago to see The Flying Buttresses, my brother and his wife’s improv group.

Meredith and I went to Middlebury College
in Vermont, where we met. We decided on the way back from Maine that we
should swing by the campus again. It was only the second time in 12
years we had been back. Vermont is GORGEOUS. Almost every corner we
went around driving to Midd elicited sighs, followed by “Why don’t we
live here?” There are mountains, and
small cute towns, and small streams, and picturesque farms everywhere.
As much as I love Maine, I could be quite happy living in Vermont, if
a) there were jobs,  b) my family was not a million miles from
Vermont, and c) if Vermont were not a million miles from everywhere.

We wandered campus, talked to one of my profs for about 2 hours (he let
us out on the roof of the new science center so I could take pictures),
and had a great meal in town. We also got to see Midd’s new field
house, which included an indoor track that was in a big balloon. I had
never seen a building held up by air pressure. You
have to go through an airlock and everything to get inside. Oddly,
after leaving Midd on our way to Niagara-on-the-Lake and Michigan, we
saw two more of these “buildings.”

Anyway, Midd was fantastic. So, for those of you who, for some inexplicable reason, are going to another college, it is NOT too late! Transfer now! 

Since my mind is like a steel trap, I often forget to post some things.
So, here is Maine part 2 (or part 4, depending on how you want to count
entries).

While
we lived in several places growing up, the farm on the left is always
“home.” My dad now lives across the street in this house:

So, even though I poked fun at Livermore Falls, there are certainly
nice parts to it. We always sleep a LOT at Dad’s because it is so
quiet. It was cloudy while we were there, which is too bad, because on
clear nights you can see a ton of stars and can usually see the Milky
Way as well.

I also forgot to mention that we went to the Norland’s
(a living history center) Strawberry Shortcake festival. In addition to
eating fresh strawberries on fresh biscuits, we got to wander around the
center and got to try writing with quills and an ink bottle. And I
thought my handwriting could not get worse. Meredith, of course, was
great at it.

 I did mention that Rockland has a wonderful downtown, but I
forgot to mention that a couple of years ago someone decided to
renovate the downtown movie theater. They use it for films and concerts
now, and it is beautiful. To celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Strand opening,
they decided to show “Gone With the Wind.” Since I had never seen it,
Meredith and I decided that I could not pass up seeing it on the big
screen in its original format (the same excuse I raised to get Mer to
see “Star Wars” when it was re-released). So, we went and saw the film with
Meredith’s parents.

Now keep in mind that all I knew of the film was
* The famous line “Frankly, my dear..”
* The names of the major characters
* It took place during the Civil War
* It had passionate looking people embracing on every movie poster I had ever seen

So, first surprise observation: the film is very long. This is not in a
boring-bad way; it is simply long (over 3 hours with the real
intermission). So, I settled back and watched a well-shot film about
two great lovers who were going to somehow carve out America’s great
love during the Civil War. Well, I was very surprised. Scarlett was NOT
what I had expected from 30 years of chick-flick romances, and Rhett
was not a typical sensative 90’s guy either. I was left speechless for several
minutes after the ending. I NEVER expected the ending (which I won’t
give away to the other 3 people who have not seen the film). I don’t
think this film could be made today – it would never get by the test
audiences. All in all, it was a worthwhile thing, but it still leaves me
confused as to why these folks are held up as great lovers.

Oh – as far as the title of the blog, there is a book from Mammy’s point of view that is supposed to be funny, which I hope to read soon.

Those cunnin’ Mainers have figured out a way to stimulate the local economy by reviving the (pre-1567) sale of indulgences.

Oh! I forgot. For those of you who have met Meredith’s grandparents,
you know how wonderful they are. The are both in their eighties and are
sarcastic, funny, and sharp as tacks. They also love to play
boy-versus-girl SkipBo. They take this very seriously. So, we played
three days while we were there.

Day
1: The women jump out to an imtimidating 3-0 lead. It looked like the
skunk was going to make an appearance. We managed to win the last game
(finishing at 11:00 p.m.). Carelton threw the stuffed skunk that I had
gotten for Leona a few years ago across the room when we won.

Day 2: It was a short evening because we were all tired. We split the games.

Day
3: The skunk made an appearance! Normally, the skunk does not come out
for just two games, but it looked good. So, the total for the entire
week was 4-4.

Playing SkipBo with the grandparents is always a highlight for me. If
you get to Maine, try to look them up and play (contact me and I’ll get
you directions). It is MUCH fun.

In Maine, lobster is a delicacy. When cooked, this seafood turns bright red.

So, we spent almost 2 full weeks in Maine. We split the time up between
my inland papermill-town home town (Livermore Falls) and the delightful
ocean-side charming town of Rockland. Livermore Falls is not all bad –
I get to see my family, eat my step-mom’s WONDERFUL cooking, and read a
lot. I mock it, but I did have a nice, quiet time in Livermore Falls.

Ahh,
but for Maine charm, Rockland is good for the soul. The weather cleared
up for us when we went to Rockland, and I could not have asked for a
nicer 5 days (a touch warm for my Mainer tastes, but I am picky).

Mer and I took the Vinalhaven ferry out to, well, Vinalhaven. I had
never been out to a Maine island before, and I really liked the 1 hour
15 minute trip out to the island. It was relaxing and very pretty.

There was a teenage boys baseball team on the ferry – I assume to go
play the Vinalhaven team. The ferry was crowded, and the whole team was
in the front of the boat. A couple of teenage girls were trying to make
their way to the front and were apologizing as they were going. In a
very happy moment for me, the coach saw the girls and told them not to
worry. He then yelled, “Hey, knuckleheads! Move! There are some ladies
coming forward!” The boys moved and spent most of the trip looking in
on the boat rather than looking out at the islands and water.

Vinalhaven
was nice. We made our way to a nature preserve near the town. Although
there are cars on the island, it is still pretty walkable. There is a
small family cemetery on the land, so I took a picture. I like old
cemeteries for some reason.

We made for a big rock on the ocean. I am also fascinated by big rocks –
I just HAVE to climb them. The walk over was muddy and rocky and not
the easiest thing to do, but we made it. While we were sitting on the
rock enjoying the sun and the water, a couple came up on a path that we
had not seen and walked by, continuing on the path that I had not seen.
They told us the path was scenic, so we decided to do it. The path was
very muddy in a few places, and the “path” was not much of one on
places (see Mer on the path we somehow missed on the way to the rock), but it was a great hike and was very worthwhile.

To this day, I am always surprised when I see a big sandy beach. The
coast of Maine is rocky, and to me, it is normal to swim where it hurts
your feet. What else would a beach look like? Although I did not go
swimming on this trip, I did like this stretch of coast on the island.

The last picture I’ll throw up from the island is this: it was breezy on the water side of the island:

Once we finished the trail, we made our way back to the ferry. What a
great few hours! It would be nice to be able to bike or moped around
the island someday – it is quite big.

On the Fourth of July, we went with Mer’s parents and grandparents to
Thomiston for the grandparents’ traditional celebration: watch the 5 k
race, eat breakfast at a local restaurant, watch the parade, and then
listen to the community band play for an hour or so. The added bonus
this year was I got to run in the race ($5 AND you still get a
t-shirt!).

I
was up against some of Maine’s most talented runners, so I was anxious.
Everyone looked lean while I just looked hungry (I put on 5 pounds on
vacation, 10 over the last 2 months). This was the first 5 k race I had
run in 5 years (I have focused mostly on marathons), so I was not sure
how I would do. I was pretty sure I could break 24 minutes since I had
been training at that pace. I REALLY wanted to break 21 minutes, but
that was going to be hard. I went out pretty strong. Unfortunately, it
was really humid, and the half-way turn around was up a long hill (not
steep, but really long). I was struggling by the turn around – I
actually had to get some water and walk for 50 or 75 feet while
drinking. I have never in 20+ years of running had to get water during
a 5 k race. Anyway,
the water helped (as well as the downhill), and I finished up pretty
well. As far as Mer could tell, I was near the back of the top 1/3. I
had a time of 23:17, which I was okay with since it was so humid.

At the finish line, they had a firehose spraying water, as well as cups of water to drink and dump on your head. After this, I went and found my family, but no one seemed too eager to hug me. How odd.

We then did the rest of the tradition – we ate in a restaurant, saw the
parade, and listened to the community band. It was a pleasant way to
spend the Fourth. The parade was an interesting mix of veterans,
churches, charities, businesses, politicians, and even a few war
protesters. It was a great reminder to me about part of what the Fourth
is about – free speech and freedom to assemble.

I’ll post more on our trip to Middlebury, Vermont and to
Niagra-on-the-Lake, Ontario later. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with
a picture of friendly Maine natives:

Whew. After 2 packed weeks, we are back in Ohio. I’ll try to post vacation stuff over the next few days.