Colombia 0, Ecuador 1

I recant.

We are AWESOME.

This is the best goal that Enner has scored for Ecuador.

We made a very good Colombian team look ordinary. We did it with the ball, the first half-hour – and without it the last hour, sans one player.

The Colombians created opportunities; but it was evident, early on, that they were going to have “one of those nights.” I sat back and watched them miss their tap-ins, point-blank shots, potshots … every kind of shot.

(I prayerfully sat back.)

We’ve conceded just four goals in twelve games.

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Karin and Samuel are ill. Daniel and “Pip” and I aren’t – yet.

The first snow fell last night. It’s time to start my winter reading:

• Dostoevsky, various
• Kafka, The Castle
• Jack London, various
• Christiane Ritter, A Woman in the Polar Night

I already have begun reading The Long Winter from the “Little House” series. The Ingallses endure a South Dakotan blizzard … in October.

Of toilets

The British famously named one of their scientific boats Boaty McBoatface; in the same spirit, I hereby christen our new toilet Flushton McFlushface – “Flushy,” for short. (Karin’s dad kindly installed it yesterday.)

“Flushy” resided some days in our parlor, inside a big box, and became like a piece of furniture to us – which, I suppose, is what it is. Samuel and Daniel played upon, and inside, the box.

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The Middle Ages weren’t always so-called. Likewise, our old toilet, previously unnamed, is now “Not Quite Flushy” because of its position in the History of Toilets – and because of its chief defect.

We carried it out to the front porch where, due to rain, churchgoing (ours, not the toilet’s), etc., it has remained. With luck, it’ll be immortalized by Google Street View. This afternoon it toppled onto its side. I don’t know if it was pushed by wind, urchins, or stray cats; or if a part of it simply crumbled.

I intend to break it into smaller pieces with a hammer, to fit it into the trash.

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Enough of toilets. For the second half of my reading year I’m plotting a march through Dostoevsky. Curious thing. His canon is crowned by the “five major novels.” Russians list them differently than do English speakers. Russians include The Adolescent; English speakers typically don’t. They might include Notes from the Underground (a novella) or reduce the list to four. It’s not as egregious as, e.g., Oregon’s having become the best college football team in the Midwest’s 18-team Big Ten Conference; but it’s gerrymandered, all right.

Anyway, I plan to read Notes, the Russians’ “five,” and probably The Double and The Gambler; so, either way, I’m covered.

P.S. See this useful webpage re: translations.

Moving, pt. 3

This organizing of my library is rather fraught. I’ve run out of shelves; worse, I must constantly say goodbye, for the time being, to this or that cherished volume. One of the books going into storage is called Ten Neglected Classics of Philosophy. They will continue to be neglected – which seems doubly cruel since, perhaps, they were on the verge of being attended to. … Also, the mere deciding is strenuous. Were I to pack away one book by Joyce Carey, I might as well pack them all. But what of, say, P.D. James? Should I keep available her omnibuses? If so, what of her mass-market paperbacks? And is my need for P.D. James lesser or greater than my need for, say, Colette or Ronald Firbank? Is this the year in which I begin to read through Dostoevsky? In philosophy, at least, things are more cut-and-dried. City of God and On the Plurality of Worlds must stay out no matter whether I manage to peek in them during the next couple of years.

On the familial front, little Samuel was just given a set of immunizations. He cried bitterly at this betrayal.

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 6: A close shave

Pale, bald, chatty Wallace lives with Gromit, his long-suffering pooch. Wallace invents gadgets. Every morning, his alarm clock triggers various mechanisms that lift him out of bed, dress him, and serve him breakfast.

Of course, as in any good Frankensteinian chiller, some of the machines will turn out to have minds of their own.

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In this movie, beasts also are intelligent. Gromit reads the newspaper – and Russian literature. There is also a herd of sheep whose members act together with astounding complexity and precision.

(The joke is that all these intelligent machines and beasts are mute, and must endure Wallace’s prattle.)

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This 31-minute work of clay animation is a sequel to A Grand Day Out and The Wrong Trousers (which should be viewed before A Close Shave). It precedes The Curse of the Were-Rabbit – which is of “feature” length – as well as another short movie, A Matter of Loaf and Death.

The four short movies can be regarded as a steadily darkening, unified whole. Reflect upon the titles. In the first movie, everything is innocent and, well, grand. In the second movie, something goes wrong: sin is introduced into the world, or at least into Wallace’s and Gromit’s household. In A Close Shave, things are nearly disastrous (but not quite). And in the last movie, things are downright deadly.

Wallace, the bumbling tinkerer, and Gromit, his loyal assistant, are basically unchanging. It’s the world around them that gets more sinister.

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At the heart of A Close Shave is Wallace’s courtship of Wendolene, a wool merchant. It’s a pathetic romance, the coming together of two sad sacks.

We smirk. We also worry: we’ve seen Wendolene commit a crime. We dread her designs upon her innocent lover. (Wallace may be tactless, but he is without malice.)

Wendolene’s dog, Preston, is much more ruthless than Gromit. What is his role in the crime?

Another character is Shaun, a sheep who unexpectedly comes to live in Wallace’s and Gromit’s house. It’s Shaun who’ll save the day.

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The setting is pure British kitchen sink. (“Kitchen-sink fantasy,” we might call it.) Everywhere is urban grime. Houses are tackily decorated. Wallace and Gromit support themselves by washing windows. Wendolene can be inferred to have suffered a domestic trauma.

Thankfully, there’s wit in every detail. Gromit, unjustly condemned to prison, reads Crime and Punishment. There are deft jokes of physical movement, as when a machine-gun is used to shoot porridge. Newspaper headlines drily comment on events; they often feature farm animals as protagonists, as if to remind soot-choked England of the countryside.

There’s also a keen appreciation of previous moviemaking. The lighting is lurid, as in a Hitchcockian effort from the 1960s. The camera peeks around corners and out from hiding-places.

And the physical acting – well, there is none; it’s all done with clay. And yet Gromit is as compelling as any human actor.

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P.S. In the United States, A Close Shave was first shown on December 29, 1995 – and so it missed having a 1996 release date. But just barely.

I’ll stipulate that, as far as this blogging series is concerned, if a part of a movie’s initial theatrical run in some country occurred in 1996, the movie is reviewable. This is a sufficient condition; I reserve the right not to make it a necessary one.