Sicko
I have too much to say about this one, but not now.
3 of 5 stars.
Le Tour 2007: C’est lui
The farce that is pro cycling ends. The current leader of the tour gets fired by his team. He wins today’s stage, but loses it all out.
I am so disappointed. I love watching the tour. I love watching pro cycling. Even if it’s boring to others, I find it exciting personally. I always wondered how they do it. Now we know.
Vinokourov out. Rasmussen out. Who’s next? Is even Lance Armstrong innocent? We know Landis was caught. It puts everyone in the sport in a bad position. It puts the sport in a bad position. WTF?! It’s sad.
Up until today le Tour was awesome. The alps. Rasmussen in yellow. The first time trial. The Pyrannees. Rasmussen v. Contador. Everything was exciting. The cycling was phenomenal. WTF? How did it come to this?
They really need to clean this sport up. I am sad again.
Caribbean Cruise 2005: Horsepower
July 7, 2007
7:10 Ready for horses. Yesterday rode a bike on Water Island. Stacey was a guide and Jim was a hippy. Short ride about 3 miles. Ended up on Honeymoon beach. Swam in a thunderstorm.
Vote Moe
While I don't think any in the final four are worthy of being the best
character ever, I urge you to vote Moe to keep the hegemony of Homerism
out of the office.http://redeye.chicagotribune.com/red-simpsons-tourney,0,536877.specialTroy McClure should've cleaned up here. You remember him from such
polls as "The top 5 lawyerisms," "Mince or Mice," and "Who's afraid of
Yolanda Wolf?"
Caribbean Cruise 2005: Honest Perry
July 6, 2005
7:37 Bought a piece of art at the auction yesterday. How am I going to bring it home? I am getting heavier with all the eating. Well, we’re in the St. Thomas US V.I. Will be biking today.1:15 Toured St. Thomas. Perry was our guide. Megan’s Bay public beach. Blacknbeard and Bluebeard. Not too much pirates.
Expelliarmus
Home with the rest of the muggles. Harry may be dead. Or may not be. I’ll have to wait to read the book. All over the world, little kids and the older versions are diving into the last book and finding some fun. Yet it must be a bitter ending. Years for this and it ends for them this tonight.
Sad.
It’s so final.
Caribbean Cruise 2005: Ocean Passage
July 5, 2005
Ran again. 17 laps (2+2). Good to see things in the morning. What is there to do on this day at sea?
Caribbean Cruise 2005: The Bahamas
July 4, 2005
7:51 Breakfast. Again. Wakeup early and ran (or ran/walked) 15 laps at 6:00 am. The sign says 9 laps is a mile.Breakfasted at 7:00 and was seated with Jerry and Lorraine from Boston. Coming alone meaans you will be seated w/others.
Nassau. Going to another Blue Lagoon
9:45 Missed the boat again! Confusion on getting off the boat. Forgot my ID. How do we get off this ship!
Waiting now for the boats to the Blue Lagoon. Should be any moment.
8:43 Formal dinner and I am full. Blue Lagoon supremely disappointing. No food. No drink until the end. What a ripoff of $40. A luke warm stream
Caribbean Cruise 2005: Valor
Because everyone seems to be out on vacation, going to vacation, or coming back. Here’s my journal from the cruise the family took to the Eastern Caribbean Islands. Like my last travel log for the European Cruise, I’ll post an entry at least once a day. Then after that I may go on vacation myself.
July 3, 2005
9:25 Reagan National. Waiting for boarding. We’ve been delayed. Hopefully we won’t miss the boat. Security is a hassle. Take my shoes off? I knew I should’ve stuck with the slippers.10:13 Super late. Just barely made it onto the ship. Literally, the last ones to board. Except we did not miss the lifeboat drill.
Watched Miami recede into the distance before having a pre-dinner snack. Eating has started. Off to dinner.
Adventures From My Netflix Queue: War in the Philippines
Now this post isn’t about one movie per se. It’s about two movies that I had put in my queue a while back expecting them to get to me during the fourth of July week, but I lost one of them in the mail and the other was stuck in the short wait queue.
Both deal with the US armed services in the Philippines in 1942 as they made their gallant stand on the Bataan peninsula. One is about the army nurses who served close to the front and helped put the soldiers together to keep fighting. The other is about the navy in particular the PT boat captains that tried to keep the Japanese from closing the supply lines. I had wanted to see these films just for the patriotic feelings it would give me. One did the other not so much.
So Proudly We Hail! was stuck in mail hell. I had to wait that extra week before getting this disc because it was lost in the mail. It would’ve been a great flick to have seen on the fourth, but you can’t have it all.
So Proudly We Hail! was about a set of green army nurses shipping off to Hawaii in December, but routed to the Philippines once Pearl Harbor happened. The unit is lead by Claudette Colbert and they pick up Veronica Lake from a torpedoed ship. Paulette Goddard falls is the third star of the film. She falls in with a hick from the sticks whom she names Kansas. Colbert falls for a corpsman played by Superman, George Reeves. Lake has a dead fiancee who perished at Pearl Harbor, a wicked hatred for the Japanese and a death wish. These nurses care for the wounded throughout those desperate days until they are ordered to the Rock, Corregidor, and finally, flown out to safety in Australia. The film is about the ladies with love in their hearts and a soft gentle hand to ease the pain of the soldiers.
What a movie! It is best to watch and remember that the movie was released in 1943 so the memories were very recent to the audience. And it ends with hope. Will the lovers re-unite? You have to remember Gen. MacArthur’s return in 1944 had not happened yet so the women were separated from the men the loved without knowing if they went on the Death March.
I’ll admit to tearing up at the finale, because I expected a happy ending. Seems I forgot that the ending wasn’t written yet. They’ll keep hope alive was the most I can feel.
4 of 5 stars.
They Were Expendable is a John Ford movie with John Wayne. I expected action. With a title like that I expected some final defensive stand on the Bataan peninsula. Sadly, no.
They Were Expendable was about the PT boat captains who harassed the Japanese. It was also about PT 41 who’s commander won a CMH for helping to transport Gen MacArthur from the Philippines. This was more of a conventional story. Too trite, because I needed John Wayne to start kicking ass onscreen. The only neat part was the PT boat attacks. That’s what I wanted to see, but there was not enough of it.
Again, this film had an army nurse played by Donna Reed (sigh). She falls for John Wayne. Unlike So Proudly We Hail. It is the nurse that we don’t know what happened to her. Is she one of the few that made it off Corregidor? Or did she get caught in the retreat from Bataan? Since I saw this movie after the other, I expected them to meet in Australia (Wayne was sent there to help get the plan set up for more PT boat usage), but they didn’t. Sad.
2 of 5 stars.