Time and a quirky film

Forty-two years ago, two friends and I were talking about movies. I said something that has haunted me since.

First, a little setup. One of the friends was, even then, a movie snob. Except he would never call them movies. They were films. The other was decidedly less so, although he did and still does approach movies with more reverence and attention than I give them. I think his secret is watching more closely and analytically while still losing himself in the plot.

The first friend, the snob -- and he was a condescending person in many other ways, as well -- went on to study, teach and write about film.

Me? I usually just let a movie wash over me. Unless, over the years, I find myself drawn back to it. Only then do I start to notice the hows and whys, the lighting, the acting, the direction.

For example, I have gone back again and again to movies such as "Casablanca," most anything by Hitchcock except his early British efforts, movies in which Cary Grant plays Cary Grant, "Charade," "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," "How to Steal a Million," "Gone With the Wind," "Gosford Park," "Nashville," "The Best Years of Our Lives," "To Kill a Mockingbird," "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming," and "High Society."

That's not a complete list. Although it shows that my interests range wide.

But I digress.

Forty-two years ago, I told my two friends that I had seen and liked "The Sterile Cuckoo," a 1969 movie starring a then almost-unknown Liza Minnelli and directed by Alan J. Pakula (who would later direct "All the President's Men" and "Sophie's Choice").

They laughed and mocked my taste. They said my judgment was frivolous and unstudied.

Minnelli was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role for "The Sterile Cuckoo." (She lost to Maggie Smith in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie"). Critics said Minnelli's performance was commendable, but that the direction was flawed. I thought she was very young, talented, awkward, and gangly -- perfect for the part -- yet she had an un-self-conscious elegance and grace.

My opinion of the movie became a joke, and it continued over the years. I might say something at dinner or at a party, and one of those two friends would say, "But you liked 'Sterile Cuckoo'!" It always got a laugh, eventually even from me: I learned to play the non-sophisticate in their game.

Recently, one of the friends took the joke up a notch and sent me a DVD of -- you guessed it -- "The Sterile Cuckoo." I was nearly afraid to watch it. Would I still (gasp!) like it? Or this time would I look at it as a waste of time?

Eventually, I popped the DVD into the player.

Here's a slightly edited version of what I wrote later via email to the friend who sent it to me:

I think what I identified with at the time was the neediness in Minnelli's character. Always feeling like an outsider, unsure but determined to appear confident. A tendency to latch on to people. An inclination to exaggerate stories to make an impression. A lack of self-esteem. "Yeah, I know what that's like" was something I said to myself a lot on first seeing the movie.

But it held my interest 42 years later. Watching it today, I was still filled with compassion for the character and for the me that found something relevant in the movie in 1970.

It's quite a daring story for its time. Boy meets girl. Both are virgins. They have sex. In the end, he walks away. It's not a difficult plot. But remember the times and remember how young love was most often depicted in movies in those times.

Minnelli, about whom I knew little then ("Cabaret" hit the big screen two years later), demonstrated her remarkable presence and potential.

The male lead was as dull as dishwater.

Today ... well the movie is an artifact, not all that memorable but interesting as Minnelli's first major movie role. I am not at all embarrassed for having liked it a lot ... in 1970.

I'm glad that a movie that I liked long ago still holds something for me.

"The Sterile Cuckoo" has met the test of time. For me, anyway.

Snow again

When snow falls -- even as little as we had yesterday afternoon -- I stay home, where it's warm and safe.

Sometimes I build a fire in the woodstove just because watching the flames reminds me of my childhood, when snowfalls made everything seem somehow more special. My mom used to slow-cook a soup or a stew and make yeast rolls or cornbread, because she thought it warmed her family. She was, I think, correct.

Sometimes I do the same. You can get creative and make a soup or stew using most anything you have on hand. The secret is in the broth (a slow process) and the simmering of the whole concatenation all day in a big pot on the back burner. The aroma that fills the house is almost as good as the taste of whatever eventually comes out of the pot. Almost.

I stay at home because I don't like being on the streets and roads. What worries me is not my driving. I'm troubled by all the other drivers.

Richmonders don't know how to drive in the snow. Not even with as little snow as we had yesterday afternoon. Some don't slow down much. Most fail to plan ahead or anticipate what other drivers might do. There's a litany of things Richmonders don't know about safe driving when the streets are snowy or slushy or icy.

Yesterday afternoon, I had an appointment in Carytown, and it started snowing while I was inside. By the time I walked out 90 minutes later, snow covered the streets and was falling hard. You couldn't go six blocks without seeing some driver who had run into something, either another car, a ditch, a tree, or a lamp pole. Local police reported 60 snow-related accidents in three hours.

I made it home safely. But slowly.

I lived in a German mountain village for three years in the late 1960s. I learned how to drive in the snow and ice because the roads were snowy or icy all winter.

You can see a live image of the streets of that village, Bitburg, by clicking here. As I write this, it's the middle of the night in Bitburg. There's snow against the village gutters and the streets look icy. The temperature is 27 degrees.

Summers were glorious in the Eifel Mountains in Germany -- while they lasted. We always thought we were lucky if the temperature reached as much as 80 degrees on July 4. It reminded me a lot of the Appalachian region of Virginia. But the winters were cold. Very cold.

By the time I got home yesterday evening, it was dusk. The temperatures were falling further below freezing. It was good to walk into a warm house.

It was even better to have a bowl of rich beef, carrot and tomato stew. (I used a few of my home-frozen bags of Hanovers from last summer.) I made the stew the night before with a heavy hand on the garlic, basil and oregano.

I built a fire in the woodstove.

Life felt almost as good and safe as it was when I was a child.

Almost.

Christmas traditions

Everybody has his or her own special Christmas traditions. They come in many forms, and they’re repeated in homes around the world. Others are more quirky.

Some don’t emerge to be recognized as traditions until somebody says, “We’ve been doing this for a long time. It must be a tradition.”

When I was a little boy, the tradition was that the tree didn’t go up until after my sister and I had gone to bed on Christmas Eve. “Santa brings the tree and decorates it,” my parents told us. (It was only later that I realized my parents, children of the Depression who made the most of every penny, knew that trees were discounted late on Christmas Eve.)

But Christmas morning was all the more exciting for us kids because of that tradition. We saw the tree for the first time on Christmas morning, beautifully decorated and lit -- and surrounded with presents.

After all the gifts had been opened and the wrapping and ribbons discarded (into the trash, not the fireplace, my mother insisted), we’d begin sniffing for the aroma of Christmas dinner. (I later learned that the first whiff of the feast to come was of celery and onion sautéing in butter for the stuffing.) The dinner was a set affair: roasted turkey, giblet gravy, cornbread and sausage stuffing, cranberry sauce, a relish tray, candied yams, green beans cooked to death with a chunk of country ham, a Waldorf salad (which was my father’s only creative contribution to the feast) and a choice of homemade pumpkin or pecan pie. Or even a slice of each.

As my sister and I grew to be teenagers, I got involved playing a Roman soldier in the city’s annual Christmas Eve pageant at the Carillon at Byrd Park. Afterwards, the family would have a special Christmas Eve dinner: oyster stew, ham biscuits, baked beans, cole slaw and potato salad. Then we’d open the presents. I took to going to midnight service with friends.

The next morning we’d sleep in and then have Christmas dinner.

The “new” tradition stayed the same until the early 2000s, when the only members of my immediate family who were left were my mother and me.

After she died in 2007, my niece and nephew began inviting me to holiday gatherings, mostly at my nephew’s house where Becky, my nephew’s wife, and Terry, my niece, both cooked for a gathering of about a dozen. Both women are amazing cooks, and I quickly grew to love this “new” (to me) tradition. Becky, like my mother, has a wizard way with homemade yeast rolls, which I dearly love.

In the late 1970s, still another tradition evolved, and I didn’t recognize it as one of my important and even cherished Christmas customs for many years.

A group of us, mostly friends I have known forever, began to celebrate the holiday with a Christmas-night dinner at a Chinese restaurant. If you’ve ever wanted to go out for dinner on Christmas night, you know that most of Richmond’s restaurants are closed -- except for Chinese restaurants. For more than three decades, my friend Jerry Williams has organized reservations for the 12 of us. (He even makes place cards to make sure we don’t sit next to the same people we sat next to last year. Thanks, Jerry!)

Chinese restaurants all over town are packed on Christmas night, and the service is always slow, but that’s become part of the charm.

This year was no exception.

And so this year I pay tribute to this tradition and these old friends, a few of whom I see only several times a year. But I know I’ll always see them Christmas night.

In the picture above (which was taken by the receptionist at Peking on West Broad Street), you can see most of them. From left to right, they are Robyn, me, Jill, Jim, Danielle, Jane, Alan, Jerry, Shenandoah, Mark, John, and Barry.

By the way, there is a reason why Barry looms large at the forefront. He was in the bathroom when the receptionist took the picture of the rest of us. Mark -- who is our photo archivist -- took a separate picture of Barry and then worked some digital magic.

Traditions.

Old or new, you’ve gotta love ’em. They make the holidays memorable.

My James Bond journey

In preparation for seeing "Skyfall," I have set myself the task of watching all 22 James Bond films to see how the series has morphed over the 50 years since "Dr. No" debuted.

That's not such a hard task when you subscribe to Netflix, although the vagaries of the system make it onerous to watch them in their exact order. There's what Netflix calls a "very long wait" for the first two films. ("From Russia with Love" was the second.)

The Bond series is the longest continually-running series in film history.

The British secret agent with a license to kill, created by spook-turned -novelist Ian Fleming, took the world by storm in 1962. I was in college, and we all thought that Bond was absolutely the coolest spy who ever was. We'd line up to see the latest film at one of the downtown movie "palaces." I seem to remember most of them played in those days at the Loew's Theatre on Grace Street, now Richmond's CenterStage.

In the past few days, I've seen "Thunderball," "You Only Live Twice," "Goldfinger" and "Diamonds Are Forever." ("Dr. No" was shipped to me today, and "From Russia With Love" is now at the top of my Netflix queue.)

At this point, "Diamonds Are Forever" is my clear favorite, followed closely by "Goldfinger."

Why?

First off, both have title songs sung by venerable Welsh recording artist Shirley Bassey. (She also sang the title song for "Moonraker," but that was yet to come.) Nobody can belt a Bond theme like Bassey.

Both feature Sean Connery as Bond -- although it must be said that Connery was the only actor to have played Bond at the time "Diamonds" was filmed.

Both feature strong, evil antagonists -- Auric Goldfinger in "Goldfinger" and Ernst Stavro Blofeld in "Diamonds."

And both films feature strong supporting casts.

In "Goldfinger," Toshiyuki Sakata created one of the series most memorable thugs, Oddjob, who famously used his sharpened, steel-brimmed bowler hat to gruesome effect before Bond used that same hat to turn the tables. Oddjob's final scene is one that those who have seen "Goldfinger" will not soon forget.

Both have strong and tenacious female characters whom Bond manages to seduce in one way or another. In "Goldfinger," it's Honor Blackman. In "Diamonds," it's Jill St. John.

But what's come to be so clear to me as I rewatch these old favorites is the punchiness, the naughtiness and the crispness of the dialogue.

In "Goldfinger," when Blackman's character introduces herself to Bond as "Pussy Galore," Bond says, almost as an aside, "I must be dreaming."

In "Diamonds," in which St. John plays a diamond thief, she pops in and out of her first scene in a blonde wig and then as a brunette before confessing that she is a redhead. "Which do you prefer?" she asks. Bond replies, "Well, as long as the collar and cuffs match...."

And when Bond meets a woman at a casino craps table, she introduces herself as "Plenty O'Toole." Bond's reply? "Named after your father perhaps?"

And it's not just the women who have the good lines. And the memorable lines are not all naughty. Some are chilling.

In "Goldfinger," as Bond is strapped to a table with a laser cutter moving toward the family jewels, Bond asks Goldfinger, "Do you expect me to talk?" Goldfinger says, "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die."

But what makes "Diamonds" stand out for me is the two inseparable smugglers who might just be the oddest characters in the whole series. Putter Smith plays Mr. Kidd, and Bruce Glover plays Mr. Wint. Neither has ever had a better film role. They play dangerous and quirky bad guys who, from first frame to last, try their damnedest to kill Bond -- in fascinating ways. They meet their own ends at Bond's hands in the final setpiece, in which they try -- but fail -- to bomb Bond with a bombe glacée.

Yep, "Diamonds" and "Goldfinger" are my favorites -- so far.

But it's only four down, and 18 to go. It might be a while before I get to "Skyfall." And I might change my mind about my favorites.

Thanksgiving 2012

What's better than a good walk after a great Thanksgiving dinner?

Maybe a good nap, say I.

But if you're still a kid, who needs a nap? Not Lucy (left), age 2, Milagros, age 5, and Rowan, also 5. They were eager to burn off some calories yesterday afternoon after Thanksgiving Dinner at my nephew's house.

Lucy and Rowan are my great-great-nieces. Milagros is my great-niece. That's Lucy and Rowan's mom leading the kids off for a sunny afternoon stroll.


We all had good reason to feel stuffed.

My nephew's wife, Becky, is a great old-school cook. She roasted a 20-pound turkey to perfection; made yeast rolls along with mashed potatoes, gravy, and green beans; and served fresh pineapple and a good cranberry sauce. (My niece made the excellent stuffing, and even made a separate portion of it with no onions, just for me.) Becky also made four pies -- two chocolate and two lemon chess. I had a slice of lemon chess, and I swear it was the best lemon chess pie I have ever eaten.

My contribution to the festivities was a bottle of wine.

Becky loaded me up with leftovers as I departed for home and a nap. I had a slice of the chocolate pie last night. Tonight, I'll have Thanksgiving dinner all over again, and I'll finish with a slice of that delicious lemon chess pie.

Thank you Becky for hosting another family Thanksgiving. It was a joy to have so many of us around your table to enjoy the expertly prepared bounty of the season.

Got nuts?

That squirrel peeking out of the yellow pocket would stay there all day if my niece would let him. Which she doesn't.

But Grumpy takes what time he can get nestling in that hand-made pocket. My niece hangs it around her neck and shoulder like a purse.

Grumpy isn't very grumpy at all. In fact, he seems to be a very loving young squirrel. He happily eats corn, broccoli, sweet potato, green beans, sugar snap peas, fruit, pumpkin seeds -- pumpkin seeds are a favorite -- and acorns that are hand-fed to him and his brother. Both also eat squirrel formula from a syringe. I asked my niece when it might be simpler to feed them some sort of dry food. She told me she doesn't think Purina makes squirrel chow. (She says there is something called Henry's Healthy Blocks, which are a total nutrition product for squirrels in captivity if they don't like to eat anything else.)

Grumpy's brother is named Sleepy, and he's not a layabout at all. He scampers all over his multi-story cage, building and refining his nest and exploring. Grumpy and Sleepy were named, it should be noted, by the certified rehab volunteer who had them for two days before my niece stepped up to the plate.

They were about 5 weeks old when she decided she would help her overworked rehab friend and play mother to the squirrels. (Their nest was toppled when a crew cut down a tree following one of last summer's storms.)

She doesn't allow the adolescent squirrels the run the of the house, but occasionally she takes them out of their cage just to cuddle them and love them. I met them yesterday -- and petted them -- when I stopped by the house. They're adorable, really, just as inquisitive as kittens (but way quicker) and totally comfortable with people.

They're about three months old now.

The next big goal will be reached when they can crack a walnut all by themselves. My niece doesn't expect that to be anytime real soon. She thinks Sleepy and Grumpy will be spending the winter indoors.

Once they pass the walnut test and the weather warms up, my niece will return them to her animal-rehab friend. The friend has done this before and has squirrels she raised by hand living in trees in her back yard.

The friend keeps a bowl of nuts on the floor just inside her kitchen door.

Her squirrels use the cat-flap.

The other side of the mic

To celebrate the first anniversary of my "What's Your Story?" series, the folks at the Virginia Voice turned the tables on me.

They assigned another volunteer host, Patty Campbell, to interview me.

Patty stopped by my house on Northside with the station's digital recorder, and we sat in my living room while she asked me many of the same questions I ask other people on my half-hour weekly show. Just like I do, Patty asked me, in essence, who I am and how I came to be who I am.

It was interesting in the sense that I am often the interviewer but rarely the interviewee. As an interviewer, I'm confident and in control. As an interviewee, I felt much more vulnerable and a lot less in control.

But Patty, a radio veteran herself for going on 30 years, made it a pleasant experience.

You can read that previous paragraph to mean something like "I don't think I made a fool of myself."

If you have a half hour to spare, you can hear the interview by clicking here.