Loved the Atlanta Zoo! The family also really enjoyed the Silver Skillet, the Atlanta diner we went to that is famous in the city for its longevity, its good food, and its uniqueness that has been made the restaurant a prominent must for filmmakers, TV shows, Food Network featurettes.
http://www.thesilverskillet.com/
At the zoo, I always tend to seek out the birds before the animals. At the Atlanta Zoo, I saw some unique ones:
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| King Vulture |
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| Kori Bustard |
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| Ground Hornbill |
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| Wreathed Hornbill |
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| Cassowary |
Book Review
If you're like me and you're game for making your way through the entire oeuvre of Patricia Highsmith, I still wouldn't recommend paying any mind to her latter-day work Found in the Street (1986). It's a turgid, disappointing work, glacially paced, with unappealing characters. In NYC, a bizarre loner, Ralph, finds a missing wallet and returns it to its owner, Jack Sunderman, a book illustrator. Jack, who has a wife who works in an art gallery and a daughter (whom the childless Highsmith, with either cluelessness, contempt, or weak satire, miserably treats as an oh-by-the-way), meets a twenty-year old waitress who, it turns out, is being stalked by Ralph, who mistakenly thinks the free-spirited, ambitious Elsie is prostituting her life away. As Elsie becomes a model, all the characters become infatuated with her. Eventually, there's a murder.
There are moments here - great, squirmy moments, elegantly blunt lines - that are pure Highsmith, and she keeps us on edge with her typically slow-burning style. The joke's on us, though, as there's little to no payoff. The author likes to have a terrible act/crime/murder emerge out a surfeit of ordinariness and same old-same old days - but here the plot turns far too slowly. I kept browsing ahead, waiting for someone to get brutally whacked - for anything to happen, anything to dispel the boredom. We don't like or sympathize with any of the characters. Highsmith is a patient, often nasty writer, and she can be bleakly funny too, but I couldn't get over how cloddish and out-of-touch the whole thing feels, from the swinging morelessness of the setting to the flat characters; even Ralph, the most interesting character around, resembles an amalgamation of past Highsmith wackos. A disappointment all around from a great writer.
(**) out of 5
Movie Reviews
The Vow (2012)
Inspired by true events (which means at least 75% of it is made up), this romance stars Channing Tatum as the owner of a recording studio in Chicago. Rachel McAdams is his wife, an artist who is cut off from her family. When McAdams loses her recent memory in a car accident, Tatum has to get her to fall in love with him again, despite the fact that she has no idea who he is. Her family (led by Jessica Lange and Sam Neill) try to step in and separate the two, bringing McAdams back home with them in the suburbs. You know where it's all headed - of course, Rachel's love for Channing will be reunited - but, as usual for this type of film, the pleasure (if indeed you find any pleasure in it - or in romances in general) is in watching the characters get there. And the characters are very likable - Tatum, with his athletic physique and husky diction, is understated, earnest; the more polished McAdams is typically appealing. The movie doesn't really bear close scrutiny but it's an easy film to watch and the Chicago locations are always welcome.
(***) out of 4
New Year's Eve (2012)
As long as the schlocky Garry Marshall continues to make movies, we'll be okay if we get efforts as harmless and non-offensive as New Year's Day, which is more or less a follow-up to Marshall's 2010 charming and much fresher Valentine's Day. This movie's kind of dumb, sloppy, forced, but I don't really mind the sheer inconsequentialness of it all; it has a glossy, happy, fast-moving thrust, and there's always an interesting performer on screen. It's almost impossible not to sort-of enjoy, though it vanishes from mind pretty quickly. The cast: Hilary Swank as the woman responsible for the New Year's Eve Time Square ball dropping; Robert DeNiro as a dying man with a last wish to see the ceremony; Halle Berry is his doctor; Michelle Pfeiffer is a disgruntled, unhappy music company worker; Zac Efron is a courier who tries to fulfill Michelle's lifelist ("see Balie," etc.) in one day; Sarah Jessica Parker is the harried mother of teenage Abigail Breslin; Ashton Kutcher is a slacker who finds himself trapped in an elevator with backup singer Lea Michele; Katherine Heigl is a high-profile chef who hasn't gotten over last year's New Year's Eve dumping by Jon Bon Jovi; Jessica Biel and Sarah Paulson are pregnant and trying to earn the $25,000 prize awarded to the first mother who gives birth in the New Year; Carla Gugino is their doctor. Let's not forget about John Lithgow, Alyssa Milano, Sofia Vergara, Josh Duhamel, Common, Cary Elwes, Cherry Jones, James Belushi, and Ryan Seacrest either. If you don't like one storyline, the next one will be along in a minute.
(**)
All right, here's a soul number for the day.
"Soul Finger," by the Bar-Kays. Or shall I say "Soul Finger!!!" Written by Booker T. Jones and Steve Cropper, the song, off of the 1967 album of the same name, went to #17 on the Billboard Top 100 chart.
The Bar-Kays were formed in Memphis as a house band at Stax Records. The band did double-duty as a house band and a a self-contained group. Soul Finger was the only studio album the original line-up ever made together before the 1967 plane crash that killed Otis Redding and four members of the Bar-Kays, who were working as his backup band. They are similar to Booker T & the MGs - their songs are usually instrumentals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYqlOfzDsK8&feature=related
All right, I was a bit presumptuous by picking the NBA playoffs comprehensively and not on a round-to-round basis.
The second round is here now. I correctly predicted 5 of the 8 first-round winners - Atlanta disappointed me, Chicago tanked once Rose went down, and the Memphis-Clippers series could have gone either way for me and unfortunately went the way of the Clips.
In the East,
Miami will beat Indiana 4-2.
Boston will beat Philadelphia 4-2.
In the West,
San Antonio will beat the L.A. Clippers 4-1.
Oklahoma City will beat the L.A. Lakers 4-2.
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