Harp-y

Watching the Marx Brothers Night in Casablanca.

There is a wonderful Harpo routine:

( I love the swing bit.)

The Root of Alllllllll Evil=Comedy Central

I am soooooo disappointed. Comedy Central has managed to create a format in which Lewis Black is dull. Not funny.

Oh, the humanity…

St Val

I’ve been a bit off-center lately, what with the cataract surgery and all, and wasn’t really in the mood for a production. Jim had mentioned Marche as a Valentine’s evening meal site, but by the time we got around to checking them out, they were booked.

Just as well. Dedided to do dinner and a movie instead.

For the dinner part of the evening, we decided to avoid the crowds altogether by skipping anything with a white tablecloth. Just parked in the Belcourt lot and walked down the street to Savarino’s where the atmosphere may be a little spartan, but the food is fine. And the pastries… Definitely spoiled any appetite for popcorn and M&Ms.

‘D noticed the Belcourt film noir series would be in progress. There were a pile I have never seen on a real screen, although most of them were on The Big Show or whatever on the tube when I was growing up. Now there’s Turner Classic. Interesting to realize not all of them were in black and white. Thursday’s offering was In A Lonely Place, a Bogey, and one neither of us had even heard of, so it was a perfect choice. You can see why it’s not so popular as some of his other work, but it is good.

All in all a fine evening. Jim liked the Valentine I photoshopped for him.

It was a composite, and I turned its bits and pieces into magnets for some added fun

Solar Healing

I have a couple of places that aren’t healing right. Just scratches and scrapes, but they are inflamed, and have been for over a week or two. The most likely diagnosis is Too Much Medicine. All that crap in me and on me, small wonder the whole system is trying to collapse a piece at a time. The miracles of mod sci. I’m halfway tempted to try a little natural healing.

When I was in college back in the sixties, we had a single overworked nurse for the school clinic. She was an amazing character, and one who might have come straight out of central casting. Imagine Ma Kettle in starched white. Brusque, graying, and rawboned. She had been a medical missionary somewhere in Africa for a long time before settling into the wilds of East Tennessee, so she was accustomed to making do with what she had. I had occasion to learn about that.

One of my rare dates my Sophomore year was for a hayride. Fall, fine weather, and a flatbed truck with piles and bales of hay. We went out to some property on a hill outside Morristown for a bonfire with hot dogs, marshmallows, and the obligatory Kum Ba Yah. Heady stuff. It was the cave that was my downfall.

To make things interesting, and to keep our Baptist hormones busy, the organizers had included a little side trip into a local cave. Now, I was accustomed to seriously tamed caves, all lit and evened out. Walk-in and walk-out jobs. The Mammoth Cave short tour. Jewel cave near my grandfolks outside Dickson. Rock City and Ruby Falls. Roadside attractions, you understand. This, however, was a wild cave. No paving, no power. No nice, neat doorways.

I never made it inside. The entrance was at the bottom of a fairly large sinkhole, maybe eight feet deep, maybe less. The sides were almost straight, and the only way down was by way of a rope tied to a tree at the rim. It was a very rough rope. I had no idea of how to manage the climb. If you’ve ever seen what a rasp does to green wood, you might be able to imagine what happened to the palms of my hands. Had to be lifted and hauled back out of that pit. Humiliated.

The school nurse’s treatment for my hamburger paws was, after the initial cleaning and dusting with sulfa powder, a light gauze bandage and a daily visit to the clinic during which time I was examined and made to sit quietly by a window for half an hour with my bare palms in the sunlight. Every afternoon for about a week.  It worked. Those deep rope burns healed cleanly, quickly, and without a scar.

If it worked for that, it ought to work for a couple of little old scratches. Solar powered healing.