1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 21: Ed’s next move

You twisted your ankle
I carried you
You got a divorce
So I married you
You fell off a cliff
So I buried you
I wish there were more bad times
To see you through

These lyrics are by Ed’s Redeeming Qualities, a band of four or five urban hippies. Some of them wear overalls and strum little guitars. One guy plays the clarinet.

A pretty girl named Lee (Callie Thorne) sings and plays the violin.

(“They sound like the music from Juno,” Karin says.)

We don’t know much about Lee, except that she is in this band. Eventually, we’ll learn about her unhappy dating history, but that’s almost an afterthought, something to provide a little turmoil for the movie’s last scenes.

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Ed (Matt Ross) doesn’t know much about Lee, either, except that she’s willing to give him the time of day.

On occasion.

Barely.

About him, we know more. He’s moved to New York to work in a genetics lab. He studies how to modify the genes of rice plants. The work is very interesting, he tells new acquaintances.

His only previous scientific discovery was accidental. He worries that it ought not to have been credited to him.

He had a painful breakup at home, in Wisconsin. His girlfriend didn’t like it that he’d mapped out the rest of his life before the age of twenty-five (he’d even reserved himself a burial plot).

It isn’t that Ed loves to be in control. It’s that he’s terrified of not being in control.

It’s a foible he’s been working on. His move to New York is a deliberate exercise in character improvement.

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He’s also trying to get better at talking to women (just one woman, really).

Ed and Lee first spot each other at a party. Later, they recognize each other in a diner and introduce themselves. Then Ed talks too much about the book Lee is reading (Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams). She leaves.

Another day, they both witness a traffic accident. They leave their phone numbers for the victim. Ed gets Lee’s number and calls her.

This time, she’s more interested.

She becomes more patient with him.

This is a movie about a nice man working to make himself nicer; about nice people such as Lee and Ray (Ed’s flatmate) cutting him a little slack; and about the nice diner workers who encourage them.

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One scene in the first half of the movie is pretty bad. Ed walks through the Wisconsin countryside with his old girlfriend. Interpreters go with them: a woman to translate “womanspeak” to Ed, and a man to translate “manspeak” to Ed’s girlfriend. It’s like a fantastical scene out of Annie Hall.

It’s bad because the rest of the movie is realistic. Even though he is so awkward, Ed really could attract such a girl as Lee. Lee really could choose to ignore him, then talk to him, then kiss him, then leave him, then come back to him. That wouldn’t be a strange path for a relationship to take.

Lee really could go over to Ed’s apartment, and Ed’s cat really could vomit on her leg. These things happen.

People really do kiss each other as clumsily as Ed and Lee do in this movie. People kiss each other while ill, or while falling off of furniture.

Whether you’d enjoy a movie like Ed’s Next Move depends on whether you’d enjoy watching realistically attractive, awkward people stumble through the early stages of courtship. Not because you cruelly enjoy watching people stumble, but because these characters’ stumblings are, themselves, rather nice.

Binging

“You’re not a complicated guy, are you, Dick.” – Logan Echolls, Veronica Mars

This series keeps raising itself out of the grave. The movie appeared long after the show’s initial demise, and the newest TV season has been released half a decade after the movie. The actors are the same. Apparently, they can’t get enough of this blend of high school soap opera and detective fiction.

Neither can I. It’s my third viewing. In 2011, I watched the three TV seasons that, to date, had been released. A few years later, I viewed seasons 1 and 2 again, with Stephen. The Veronica Mars movie was released in 2014. I didn’t view it. But now that Hulu has released season 4 of the TV show, my goal is to work through all this material with Karin – we’re in the middle of season 2 – and then, maybe, we’ll glance at the spinoff, Play It Again, Dick, which Karin discovered on the Internet. (Dick focuses on a minor character; it, too, boasts appearances by most of the actors from the main program.)

Dick Casablancas really isn’t a complicated guy, but it’s fun to watch him plunge into pleasure-seeking. He has a parachute: his trust fund. There are lots of characters with trust funds in Veronica Mars, lots of very rich emancipated minors, and one of the interesting themes is the recklessness that their wealth affords them. It rubs off on their poorer high school classmates, with whom they feud.

Veronica (Kristen Bell) isn’t rich – she’s the daughter of a hardworking private detective. She pursues the same line of work, mostly inside her high school and its environs in Neptune, Southern California. She’s very clever. But she’s infected with the heedlessness of her rich schoolmates when, really, she ought to listen to her father.

Veronica is complicated. Some of the rich kids are, too. One is Dick’s friend, the aforementioned Logan Echolls, who makes sparks fly in unceasing confrontations with Veronica, with the local biker gang, and with his movie-star father. Another is Dick’s younger brother, Cassidy “Beaver” Casablancas, who uses his own trust fund to correct imbalances of power. Another is the outspoken Lilly Kane, Veronica’s best friend, whose murder is the focus of season 1.

Hardly anyone – except, perhaps, Veronica’s lunch buddy, Wallace – is unambiguously good. Veronica’s father is wise and brave, but it’d be a stretch to call him a straight arrow. Sunny Neptune is a snakepit. The teenagers circle each other, hissing.

Meanwhile, in each episode, Veronica solves a mystery.

Sometimes, she finds a missing dog (or goat, or parrot). Other times, she’s hired to get to the bottom of high school intrigue (Who sabotaged the election for student body president? Who spread the nasty rumors about the cheerleading captain?).

Occasionally, things are more serious. Veronica reunites long-lost relatives. She uncovers domestic abuse or serial murder or organized crime.

She taunts the corrupt sheriff and other local powers. At school, she attracts grudges – and when others wrong her, she takes fierce revenge.

Let it go, says her father.

Let it go, says Wallace, her friend.

Veronica doesn’t let it go. For all its fantasy, the series gets at the truth in the hard-boiled detective genre. It’s about enacting retributive justice in a world in which no one is blameless enough to throw stones.

The first episodes are bubble-gummy. Then darkness gradually descends.

A couple of field trips

It’s been a colicky few days for Samuel. Now, Karin & I get excited whenever he burps.

Laundry has piled up. Fortunately, there are excellent new washing and drying machines in our building. We put about fifty percent more laundry into each load than we used to.

That qualifies as news.

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I’ve been trying much of the day to read the last thirty-five pages of Ross Macdonald’s The Way Some People Die, to no avail. It isn’t the book’s fault, either.

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My cousin Matthew visited from Atlanta with Megan, his intended. Yesterday, Karin & I took Samuel to an event at Matthew’s parents’ house called “Muffins with Megan.” I’m afraid Samuel stole the limelight too long. Everyone noticed how well-nourished he is. No one noticed his colic. He slept peacefully. Very shrewd.

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He also slept peacefully on Friday, when, at last sufficiently weighty, he was secured to his mother with a Boppy ComfyFit Baby Carrier and transported around the shopping mall. At Barnes & Noble, I found an omnibus of novels by Margaret Millar, the wife of Kenneth Millar (“Ross Macdonald” was his pseudonym).

The volume had some good blurbs:

“Very original.” – Agatha Christie

“Stunningly original.” – Val McDermid

“She has few peers, and no superior in the art of bamboozlement.” – Julian Symons

And my favorite:

“I long ago changed my writing name to Ross Macdonald for obvious reasons.” – Kenneth Millar

Why the twerp Griezmann isn’t succeeding at F.C. Barcelona

This article points out what should have been obvious before Griezmann moved for €120 million from Atlético de Madrid. Griezmann is accustomed to playing directly behind another striker. At Barcelona, Messi is the only striker who is permitted to consistently drop behind another striker.

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Tonight, Karin & I celebrated three and a half years of marriage. We went to a burrito restaurant. We silently ate and admired our sleeping baby.

As November winds down, Karin dreads her return to her regular work schedule.

The good news is, I’m improving at giving Samuel the bottle.

Contrary to mystical prognostication, the missing copy of Picnic at Hanging Rock has been found (by Karin).

More parenting

My library copy of Picnic at Hanging Rock has gone missing. I’ve searched everywhere. There is no trace of the book. The plot of Picnic at Hanging Rock is happening to Picnic at Hanging Rock.

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Nicknames of Samuel:

• Sammie (or Sammy?)
• Sam
• Little Roasted Chicken
• Porkchop
• Lambchop
• Lambie Boy
• Little Lamb
• Little Laah (after his noise)
• Lambwood

The boy is increasingly comfortable by himself, in the day, awake. This bodes well.

At night, inevitably and almost immediately upon waking, he cries.

Today I fed him his first bottle. He didn’t take to it much. We are practicing for when Karin returns to her job.

November’s poem

… is by e e cummings.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

mouse)Won
derfully is
anyone else entirely who doesn’t
move(Moved more suddenly than)whose

tiniest smile?may Be
bigger than the fear of all
hearts never which have
(Per

aps)loved(or than
everyone that will Ever love)we
’ve
hidden him in A leaf

and,
Opening
beautiful earth
put(only)a Leaf among dark

ness.sunlight’s
thenlike?now
Disappears
some

thing(silent:
madeof‌imagination:
;the incredible soft)ness
(his ears(eyes

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

A medical test

The last few days, we’ve had an arctic chill – and, suddenly, it’s mid-winter. Snow covers fields; frozen slush obstinately sticks to parking lots; ice daggers dangle over doorways; temperatures touch the lowest (positive) Fahrenheit integers. It’s indistinguishable from January. It looks lovely from indoors.

Tonight, I’m sleeping at my grandparents’ house. A vacation from Samuel’s squalling!

No, not just that. I have tubes in my nostrils and belts and wires and boxes strapped around my chest. They’re to measure my breathing and help the doctors decide if I have a sleep disorder.

If results are positive, they’ll account for:

• my constant sleepiness during the day;
• my inability to read an article or watch an hour of TV without dozing off;
• my weight gain the last seven years;
• my athletic and intellectual decline;
• my general lack of success.

The idea to get tested arose because, when I was in the hospital with Karin and Samuel, various medical professionals observed me sleeping and, independently, said I should.

Actually, I’d thought of it before, and Karin had thought of it (as a joke?), but the hospital stay definitely was the catalyst.

Independiente del Valle 3, Colón de Santa Fe 1

A great triumph for Ecuador: Independiente del Valle, the modest but well-run club of Sangolquí, defeated Colón of Santa Fe, Argentina, in the final of the Copa Sudamericana – the continent’s most important club competition after the Copa Libertadores. (Independiente also played in the Copa Libertadores final of 2016.) Today’s match occurred in a “neutral” venue in Asunción, Paraguay, which of course was filled with Colón supporters. No matter: a deluge stymied the Argentinian players, while the Ecuadorians dribbled and passed expertly through the puddles. Independiente also blocked a penalty kick.

In Texas, Ada watched the game:

In South Bend, Samuel and Karin slept through the game:

Parental leave

These weeks of staying at home with Karin and Samuel have been among the happiest of my life. I’ve been able to watch plenty of TV – quality TV, like Midsomer Murders. And on my birthday, we viewed Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan, which delighted Karin.

We’ve also been eating handsomely. Our church created a “meal train” for us. The congregants have been taking turns bringing dinner.

Samuel has been eating better, too. His tongue tether was clipped by a doctor of the ear, nose, and throat. Now it’s easier for Samuel to latch on to the breast.

(On a wall in the doctor’s office was a satellite photo of San Francisco, California. “That’s how San Francisco looks?” asked Karin. That night, I showed her Dirty Harry.)

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We visited the public library in Mishawaka so that Karin’s former colleagues could admire our son. Browsing the stacks, I found a book that, many weeks ago, I’d asked South Bend’s librarians to procure via InterLibrary Loan (they never did). I was miffed to learn that the book hadn’t been far away – the two libraries are just minutes from one another. Perhaps the blood between them is poor.

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Having narrowly lost to Italy, Ecuador is out of the World Cup. It was interesting to watch the sixteen-year-olds: so talented, so boneheaded.

Earlier today, Karin & I viewed the first half of Mary Poppins. We turned Samuel toward the TV. It’d be nice if he would remember Mary Poppins as his first movie.

I hadn’t seen Mary Poppins for many years. It was startling how young, how fresh-faced, Julie Andrews looked. Karin did some research and learned that Julie Andrews was twenty-nine when the movie was released. I’m nine years older than Mary Poppins.

I’d always been impressed by her sternness. Now, she looks not long out of university.

(Give Bert a chance, Mary Poppins. Give Bert a chance.)

Another World Cup

Ecuador has been playing in its second World Cup of this year: the U-17 World Cup. We made it through the group stage with one defeat, against Nigeria, and two victories, against Australia and Hungary. On Thursday, we’ll play our first knockout game, against the Italians; should we progress, our next opponents will be either the Chileans or the Brazilians (the hosts).

This tournament is hardly the most prestigious or the most predictive of long-term success. Still, it matters. It generates some lovely “human interest” stories, such as this one about a man who walked many miles, over mountains, so his son could play.

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Karin will continue staying at home with Samuel all through November. I’ve been learning to care for the boy. Often, when I hold him, he doesn’t cry. He listens when I talk – and sometimes smiles.

Karin has been leaving him with me for short periods. Today she went shopping and then to the zoo to see South Bend’s new rhinoceros. The rhino stayed out of view. At home, I watched Lina Wertmüller’s World War II movie, Seven Beauties; Samuel slept.

Tomorrow, I’ll turn thirty-eight.