1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 77: The daytrippers

You’ll enjoy this movie only if you can stomach its matriarch, Rita (Anne Meara).

“She’s an insufferable scold,” complains Roger Ebert,

and since she’s onscreen or nearby for almost the entire film, her presence becomes unbearable. It has been said that you should never marry anyone you are not prepared to take a three-day bus trip with. I wouldn’t even get into a cab with Rita. … I do not mean to criticize Meara herself. She is, almost by definition, superb at her assignment here, which is to create an insufferable mother. The film’s problem is that she does it so well.

Four people spend the day with Rita: her husband (Pat McNamara); their daughters, Eliza (Hope Davis) and Jo (Parker Posey); and Jo’s boyfriend (Liev Schreiber). They drive from Long Island into the City to track down Eliza’s office-worker husband, Louis (Stanley Tucci), who might be cheating on her. Eliza has found what appears to be a love note among Louis’s possessions. Her family members don’t take this red flag very seriously. Their trip to the City is basically a joyride. Well, who hasn’t devised some spurious errand in order to get out of the house on the day after Thanksgiving?

What ensues – a surreal excursion through darkest Manhattan – isn’t so different from Scorsese’s After Hours; only, it happens in daytime, with a station-wagonful of family members gnawing on one another. Still, I must disagree with Ebert. These people actually behave pretty civilly toward each other, all things considered. Rita is a bit monstrous, yes, but I’ve met worse. It takes a lot of aggravation before the seams in this family tear; and when they do, it’s not all Rita’s fault. Rita herself is pretty hilarious, compulsively overstepping social boundaries: usurping strangers’ hospitality, getting personal details wrong (she tells a young woman who insists on being called Cassandra, “I bet a lot of people call you Sandy”; no, they don’t, but try getting that into Rita’s brain). In a grim comedy like this one, these little outrages are the point. But you have to be in the mood.

Rita isn’t even the most insufferable character. That prize is shared by Jo’s pretentious boyfriend (an aspiring novelist) and various yuppies (career literati). Here the movie twists the knife. You’d expect hamfisted suburbanite Rita to bulldoze these people, but no, she’s in their thrall and blind to the plight of her unfortunately-paired daughters, who see the world with clearer eyes.

But maybe you don’t want to endure this Rita character for more than a few minutes. Then I recommend you see Meara in this episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Talk of a lousy mother!

It amuses me to recall that Ben Stiller is Meara’s child.

Celtic 4, Chelsea 1

I’m sunburnt because yesterday I attended the pre-season “friendly” between these clubs, at Notre Dame Stadium. Chelsea’s fans came in droves; Celtic’s, who were fewer, cheered better. The Chelsea faithful commenced their exodus after Celtic’s fourth goal.

Martin watched Cameron Carter-Vickers, his compatriot, perform flawlessly for Celtic.

David’s aunt- and uncle-in-law, who’ve been visiting from Honduras, saw their compatriot, Luis Palma, score Celtic’s third goal.

Kasper Schmeichel was Celtic’s best performer. As for Chelsea, Raheem Stirling, of all people, was the brightest spark. He fizzled out ten minutes after coming on.

David, Stephen, and I had hoped to see Moisés Caicedo, but he was absent. So were Cucurella, Fernández, Palmer, and others. Trevoh Chalobah, whom I consider the club’s best defender, is in the doghouse and didn’t make the trip.

I know it’s the preseason and teams aren’t giving it their all, but this was the first time I’d seen players look worse live than on TV.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I also have terrible heartburn today. I ate serving after serving of chili at my niece Belladonna’s birthday party. She is two. She is a winsome little thing.

Guayaquil

Guayaquil’s founding is observed on this day.

Here’s my favorite rendition of Guayaquil de mis amores:

Good night, friends! It’s been a rough few weeks, writing-wise. Next month I’ll do better.

LOTR appendices

I mentioned I’d been reading them, daily, in small doses. The drudgery paid off this weekend when I got to Appendices C and D.

Appendix D is about the Hobbits’ calendar. Each month has thirty days. A given date always falls on the same day of the week, year after year.

But some of our months have more than thirty days, you might complain. Do the Hobbits just ignore certain days? Or do the heavens over Middle Earth have very tidy properties? Is Tolkien another Dante?

Extra days are included in the Hobbits’ calendar; but, sensibly, they aren’t grouped with any month or week. Consider this 61-day sequence: 30 month-days (the “Forelithe” month); a non-month, non-week holiday (“Midyear’s Day,” a.k.a. “Overlithe”); and then 30 more month-days (the “Afterlithe” month).

Tolkien comments:

It will be noted if one glances at a Shire Calendar, that the only weekday on which no month began was Friday. It thus became a jesting idiom in the Shire to speak of “on Friday the first” when referring to a day that did not exist, or to a day on which very unlikely events such as the flying of pigs or (in the Shire) the walking of trees might occur.

Appendix C, “Family Trees,” is even funnier. A single Hobbit name is faintly amusing. Dozens laid out together are hilarious: Tolkien at his pedantic best.

I also like it that Tolkien underlines the names of those present at the Long-Expected Party, i.e. the beneficiaries of Bilbo’s practical joke.

You can browse the appendices here. Click on links in the table of contents.

Body-text fonts, pt. 29: Granjon

Not named for Claude Garamond, this very Garamond-inspired classic by George W. Jones is still used often in book publishing. … HOWEVER, its digitization needs beefing up (good luck trying to print the current ghostly version with a public photocopier).

The font’s heydey was the middle of the last century.

The roman:

The italic (look at the “k”):

Bonus:

I bought Samuel a “calligraphy for kids” book at Goodwill. Now he goes around discussing the “miniscule” letters. It’d been years since I’d heard anyone talk about the letras mayúsculas and minúsculas.

He has been teaching himself the punctuation marks. I lent him a pen to practice writing them. Then I found a cluster of dots written on a clean pillowcase.

It’s time for the boy to go to school.

Tournament honors

A young man tried to kill Trump but only wounded him slightly. Bystanders were hurt; one was shot dead. The attacker himself was killed. Investigators say his motive remains unclear.

Of course this tragedy is more important than soccer, but I don’t know what else to say about it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Congrats to Spain and Argentina for winning their respective tournaments.

Congrats to the Colombians for playing so well. They collapsed in the end. Their semifinal had been the more tiring one, and they’d rested a day less than the Argentinians.

Here is my Copa América “team of the tournament” (with honorable mentions in parentheses):

Martínez, ARG (Vargas, COL);

Nández, URU; Romero, ARG; Martínez, ARG; Mojica, COL (Sánchez, COL; Hincapié, ECU);

Ríos, COL; De Paul, ARG; Caicedo, ECU (Valverde, URU; Koné, CAN; Lerma, COL);

Rodríguez, COL; Martínez, ARG; Díaz, COL (Córdoba, COL; Rondón, VEN).

The Euros’ official “tournament team” is here. I mostly agree: I’d choose Mamardashvili (GEO) over Maignan (FRA), and maybe Carvajal (ESP) over Walker (ENG); and I wish I could make room for Çalhanoglu (TÜR), but not at the expense of any of the tremendous Spaniards.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I finished reading the First Movement (novels 1–3) of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. The pace is 20 pp./day, no more than 1 novel/month, for 12 months. Repetitious though much of it is – the narrator has to keep reminding us what his dozens of characters have been up to – its soap-operatic tidal wave swamps the intricacies of E. M. Forster, whose novels I’m also reading.

Sméagol has appeared in LOTR and is, in his way, delightful – a grotesque busybee. He, Sam, and Frodo have reached Mordor’s Black Gate. Two towers flank it. Are these the titular towers? I thought Orthanc was one, and also the Dark Tower. Is the question ever settled?

I finished reading the longest appendix (A).

Zuleika; LOTR; Farmer boy

One of my favorite chapter openings, almost as good as “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida”:

Her actual offspring does not suffice a very motherly woman. Such a woman was Mrs. Batch. Had she been blest with a dozen children, she must yet have regarded herself as also a mother to whatever two young gentlemen were lodging under her roof. …

The same is true of Karin: not with lodgers but with pets and strays.

This time, ’twas a spider. It spun its web on the prongs of our “Medusa” lamp.

Karin once feared spiders – maybe she still does – but she treated this one oh so tenderly. She brought it ants and flies.

Last night, she brought it a live Junebug. That cracked something inside of her. She was anguished for the Junebug: “It just fought so hard to live.”

She carefully removed the spider from our house.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Her actual offspring are with their grandfather tonight. A respite for us.

This morning I hazarded a library outing with them. They were loud, and I had to drag them home when Daniel wouldn’t stop running through the stacks. But it was gratifying that at first they shunned the e-⁠tablets. Samuel built with blocks from a Jenga-like game. Daniel filled, emptied, and refilled the Connect Four grid.

I kept an eye on them and read Tolkien. Pippin tries to sneak off with the palantír. Gandalf scolds him; then they ride away in the night, on Shadowfax.

As he fell slowly into sleep, Pippin had a strange feeling: he and Gandalf were still as stone, seated upon the statue of a running horse, while the world rolled away beneath his feet with a great noise of wind.

Thus ends LOTR bk. III. Tolkien is at his best in the concluding paragraphs of the “books.” So far, he has always concluded with a scene of hobbits. There are grand things in this story, but they are best viewed through hobbits’ eyes; they are too grand for anyone less humble. Tolkien himself may have been a bit of a hobbit, recording momentous and homely detail, for homely folk.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I also am reading the Little House books. Nine-year-old Almanzo, in Farmer Boy, isn’t quite a hobbit, but he is driven to and fro by industrious larger creatures. The temperatures are frigid; the work is hard; but all is worthwhile because it is fueld by mountains of rich food, described unstintingly.

July’s poem

… is my favorite in The Lord of the Rings, so far.

“What are you, I wonder? [said Treebeard.] I cannot place you. You do not seem to come in the old lists that I learned when I was young. But that was a long, long time ago, and they may have made new lists. Let me see! Let me see! How did it go?

Learn now the lore of Living Creatures!

First name the four, the free peoples:

Eldest of all, the elf-children;

Dwarf the delver, dark are his houses;

Ent the earthborn, old as mountains;

Man the mortal, master of horses:

Hm, hm, hm.

Beaver the builder, buck the leaper,

Bear bee-hunter, boar the fighter;

Hound is hungry, hare is fearful …

hm, hm.

Eagle in eyrie, ox in pasture,

Hart horn-crownéd; hawk is swiftest,

Swan the whitest, serpent coldest …

Hoom, hm; hoom, hm, how did it go? Room tum, room tum, roomty toom tum. It was a long list. But anyway you do not seem to fit in anywhere!”

“We always seem to have got left out of the old lists, and the old stories,” said Merry. “Yet we’ve been about for quite a long time. We’re hobbits.”

“Why not make a new line?” said Pippin.

“Half-grown hobbits, the hole-dwellers.

Put us in amongst the four, next to Man (the Big People) and you’ve got it.”

“Hm! Not bad, not bad,” said Treebeard. “That would do. So you live in holes, eh? It sounds very right and proper. … ”

The book perks up whenever Merry and, especially, Pippin come onto the scene.

I now rank the characters by how pleasing (and painless) they are to listen to.

1. Hobbits
2. Ents
3. Galadriel
4. Gandalf
5. Aragorn (as “Strider”)
6. Legolas
7. Gimli
8. Other wizards
9. Aragorn (as warrior-king)
10. Orcs
11. Other men
12. Other elves
13. Tom Bombadil

(I haven’t gotten to Sméagol yet.)

Who is the “Green Man” in this story? Is it Treebeard, Tom Bombadil, or both?

I also am reading the appendices, 3 pp./day. They go like this:

Slog slog slog WOW slog slog COOL slog WOW …

More results

Copa América quarterfinals

Argentina 1 (4), Ecuador 1 (2). We outplayed the world champions but lost the shootout. Pity.

We almost were knocked out by soccer kindergarteners, one Argentinian journalist complained.

Our coach, Félix Sánchez Bas, a Spaniard, resigned afterward. Rumor has it, his wife and children have been unhappy in Ecuador; they may even have been bullied by fans. I’m very sorry if this is the case. Sánchez is likely to take another job in Qatar.

Brazilians and Uruguayans are scoreless as of this writing. Canada beat Venezuela in another shootout, and Colombia thumped Panama, 5–0, in the Darién Classic.

UK general elections

Labour thumped the Tories. No Tories won seats in Wales.

Euros

Türkiye 2, Austria 1. A good game. Afterward, the Turkish goalscorer, Merih Demiral, was suspended. The Dutch eliminated the Turks today.

Spain 2, Germany 1. A good game. Alas, yellow cards were distributed willy-nilly, and various players were suspended. Spain’s is the only pleasing team left in these Euros.

The French are still tedious to watch, and the English are still putrid. Both teams have reached the semifinal round. Both could reach the final. Wouldn’t that be nice.

I liked what the Mexican commentators said about the English and Dutch fans: For all their color, they’re tepid once the game starts, probably because they’re already soused.

This would explain why the Turks outcheer pretty much everyone during the games.

Another “promotion to glory”

R.I.P., another dear Salvationist friend: Yvonne, Grace’s sister, Frank’s widow.

Her daughter made this collage:

I almost saw her in January – she was thinking of stopping over on a return trip from Chicago – but she was suddenly hospitalized. She ended up flying back home, to Ithaca.

No one I knew in that town was more hospitable than she. I spent many happy hours with her & Frank. She told me about where she’d lived … Argentina, Mexico, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Bronx … in spontaneous tidbits. She wasn’t the sort to curate her anecdotes.

The thing about soccer is, those guys run and run. … I was in Mexico during the 1986 World Cup. I watched all of it because I was laid up in bed.

Were you glad Argentina won?

No! That made me mad! They were such cheaters! The Germans were better.

She was still ticked off about it in 2022.

On politics:

Trump is what I call a New York bully.

So you voted against him?

No! I’d never vote for Hillary.

I never minded, she was so candid; her opinions, strong though they were, were informed by her own experience.

Of their respective families, she & Frank were the quiet ones. That’s probably why they liked me so well.

She collected nativity sets, played on her phone, and watched the Hallmark Channel and (with me) murder mysteries. She fed me a lot of raclette. She was good company.

She & Frank and their siblings and kids and grandkids were lovely together.