Sunday, December 19, 2004
Hit Flicks
An ongoing cine-file of flicks that make my list (dis-ordered):
1. Citizen Kane
2. Singin' in the Rain
3. Spider-Man
4. Seven
5. Casablanca
6. The Graduate
7. The Sound of Music
8. Chicago
9. Chinatown
10. Double Indemnity
11. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
12. The Godfather
13. Les Diaboliques
14. Ocean's 11 (2001)
15. Ringu
16. Rosemary's Baby
17. Seven Samurai
18. The Silence of the Lambs
19. The Sixth Sense
1. Citizen Kane
2. Singin' in the Rain
3. Spider-Man
4. Seven
5. Casablanca
6. The Graduate
7. The Sound of Music
8. Chicago
9. Chinatown
10. Double Indemnity
11. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
12. The Godfather
13. Les Diaboliques
14. Ocean's 11 (2001)
15. Ringu
16. Rosemary's Baby
17. Seven Samurai
18. The Silence of the Lambs
19. The Sixth Sense
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Better Days
Rochester on a Wednesday night is -3 degrees Celcius (or 30 degrees Fahrenheit), dark and economically depressed. Flew in on an American Eagle flight, so small there's no room to bring your roll-on travel bag on board, seats so restricted you only have room to tear open the bag of Cheddar mix snack gently, aisle so narrow that if your ego swelled a little for knowing that you lived in a better city, you'd get stuck.
Driving through the town, you see Pizza Huts that haven't been remodelled since the 1980s, restaurant names that don't sound right (Al's Green Pizzeria) and enough boarded up storefronts so that you wonder how much commerce really sees light of day. There are three big corporate giants here -- Kodak, Bausch & Lomb and Bird's Eye. The town moves along perhaps like a product off of one of the plants' assembly line conveyor belts -- with the business, slowly, no final destination really, but at least it's in motion.
The waitress at Don Pablo's Mexican Restaurant, next to our Courtyard by Marriott, next to the Interstate, asks where we're from. Chicago, we said. "Chicago," she replied. "Chicago."
"What are you folks doing in Rochester if you're from Chicago?"
Driving through the town, you see Pizza Huts that haven't been remodelled since the 1980s, restaurant names that don't sound right (Al's Green Pizzeria) and enough boarded up storefronts so that you wonder how much commerce really sees light of day. There are three big corporate giants here -- Kodak, Bausch & Lomb and Bird's Eye. The town moves along perhaps like a product off of one of the plants' assembly line conveyor belts -- with the business, slowly, no final destination really, but at least it's in motion.
The waitress at Don Pablo's Mexican Restaurant, next to our Courtyard by Marriott, next to the Interstate, asks where we're from. Chicago, we said. "Chicago," she replied. "Chicago."
"What are you folks doing in Rochester if you're from Chicago?"
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Santa Claus in a Cab
6.15pm at the bus-stop on Michigan and Walton. Cold, miserable, had to stay at work 20 minutes later than planned, just missed two buses for talking to Alex outside the building. Took out Los Angeles magazine from my bag, got annoyed at myself -- why did I bring with me a magazine I'd already finished reading the night before?
Cab pulls up, rolls down the window. "Two bucks takes you up the bus route." Two women at the crowded bus-stop nudge forward and hop into the cab. Two bucks to start heading home right now, all the way up Lake Shore Drive, no stopping till we get to Addison. Sold. I squeezed in, almost lost the day's crossword in the ske-shuffle.
We chitter chattered in the cab, four people and a Uruguayan cabbie who didn't know each other but just wanted to get home quick, and one of us would get paid $8 for it. The cabbie does this every evening going back to Rogers Park -- he likes the company, he says, after a day of ferrying around people who only talked into their cell phones. In the mornings he does the same thing -- cruise by Belmont and Sheridan and asks if people want to skip the 145 and take the express express downtown.
What's the difference between a cabbie, a priest and a psychiatrist, the cabbie wanted to know. Don't know? Well, he said, you see the same priest and psychiatrist all the time, but you see the same cabbie just once.
Well, my Chi-town is a really small city even if it does have big shoulders. So see ya tomorrow, buddy. Same time, same place.
Cab pulls up, rolls down the window. "Two bucks takes you up the bus route." Two women at the crowded bus-stop nudge forward and hop into the cab. Two bucks to start heading home right now, all the way up Lake Shore Drive, no stopping till we get to Addison. Sold. I squeezed in, almost lost the day's crossword in the ske-shuffle.
We chitter chattered in the cab, four people and a Uruguayan cabbie who didn't know each other but just wanted to get home quick, and one of us would get paid $8 for it. The cabbie does this every evening going back to Rogers Park -- he likes the company, he says, after a day of ferrying around people who only talked into their cell phones. In the mornings he does the same thing -- cruise by Belmont and Sheridan and asks if people want to skip the 145 and take the express express downtown.
What's the difference between a cabbie, a priest and a psychiatrist, the cabbie wanted to know. Don't know? Well, he said, you see the same priest and psychiatrist all the time, but you see the same cabbie just once.
Well, my Chi-town is a really small city even if it does have big shoulders. So see ya tomorrow, buddy. Same time, same place.
