The Darjeeling Limited

K and I decided to rent The Darjeeling Limited this weekend. We had both heard, or assumed, it was supposed to be ‘hilarious’. It wasn’t hilarious; funny, yes, hilarious, no.

I had completely forgotten about this movie but within five minutes I asked, “This looks just like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.” Of course it was, it was another Wes Anderson movie. Many of the familiar faces from Life Aquatic are back again in Anderson’s latest character study.

Owen Wilson plays the oldest Whitman brother who brings his two younger brothers together under false pretenses. On a side note, could Anderson have cast 3 bigger noses? Wilson, Adrian Brody and Jason Schwartzman’s noses practically fill the screen at times. Brody’s character is in a loveless marriage but is expecting his first child, and Jason Schwartzman plays a guy who constantly checks his ex-girlfriend’s answering machine. The brothers have not seen each other for a year, since their father’s funeral, and the animosity rears its ugly head early in their meeting.

The characters seem cold and aren’t developed too much so you never get a sense of who they are. Only Brody’s character starts to show some depth in a small grieving Indian village. Owen Wilson is great as the ‘planner’, or control freak, if you will (even down to ordering for everyone). Of course a lot of this has to do with the way Wes Anderson makes his movies. You get a sense that he doesn’t want to reveal too much about his characters, by keeping them close to his vest.

Those familiar with the 70’s kung fu movies may recognize the camera zooms in several scenes. The slow motion bits set to music were a nice bit. Bill Murray has a brief bit at the beginning of the movie as well as one later on. Anjelica Huston also has a small part as the brothers’ mother. And you’ll get an understanding of where Wilson’s characters flaws come from.

Overall, it was an enjoyable movie, but not memorable. On some level, maybe I just don’t get Wes Anderson. I will say that he makes a colorful movie, notice the train and clothing of its employees, with India as its backdrop.

Photo Friday

This is in, of course, St. Louis on July 4th 2006. I thought the storm clouds really made the color pop on everything else.

The Yard of Yards

We have begun the daunting, but enjoyable, task of re-landscaping our front yard. Just over 12 months ago we purchased our home from a widow who was no longer to keep up with the day to day routine of taking care of a 3000+ sqft house as well as the yard.
Or what you could call a yard. K and I spent the first few months getting the interior in a satisfactory condition for three kids and one animal. With that completed (somewhat) it was time to tackle the front yard.

It was a mess.

My first task was to remove the yard of ivy. What we’ve gathered from numerous conversations with the neighbors is that the previous owner decided to let it go ‘natural’. I guess natural for her was to create a safe haven for rodents of no particular shape or size. She planted ivy throughout the yard, which had completely covered anything that resembled grass and was choking the life out of two of the trees. The ivy climbing the trees was as large around as a shipyard rope. Not wanting to destroy our lawnmower with ivy I decided the best approach was the oldest approach: by hand. Word to the wise – invest in a good pair of leather gloves; they’ll save your hands. I would yank out the ivy as deep as I could and then use a limb pruner to finish it off.
This took WEEKS to accomplish and was no easy task. All the stooping and pulling has had its toll on my lower back. It will never be the same. But the yard? Oh yes, we finally had a yard. I planted an fescue mix called “Tulsa II”, specifically for our area, and it was beautiful as you can tell from the photos, but it did not withstand our summer heat with the amount of sun it received. So it will be Bermuda grass this Spring.

You can also see from the photo that there was a ledge that tiered the yard into two separate areas. Only problem was the mortar was terribly sub-par and was crumbling all over. K and I decided it was to come down. So there was another weekend of hard labor and back pain but it was done. And the neighbors cheered as they walked by, “you guys are doing a terrific job! It’s looking so much better!” It doesn’t help that we have the neighborhood matriarch living next door, constantly asking, “What are you cleaning up next?”

I was not looking forward to leveling out the ledge that the brick wall left. I was looking at probably two weekends worth of work. But miraculously, our neighbor got a new “toy”, a tractor, with a box blade attachment and they volunteered to level out the yard. YES!! Two weeks ago they leveled it out and I planted some annual rye grass to make the dirt hill pretty and green.

Now can someone tell me how to make money doing this kind of work?

Open Wheel Wednesday

I was able to scrounge up a few fender-less racing tidbits for this week:

• IRL: The ex-Champcar teams have completed their pre-season testing at Homestead. And leading the time sheets was none other than a non-ex-Champcar racer Marty Roth, followed by Jay Howard. Yes there were a few IRL guys there as well. It looks as if the Champcar guys are going to be a few ticks off on the ovals and may be lapped traffic for a few races. Look for Newman-Haas-Lanigan’s Wilson & Rahal to come up to speed by mid-season, followed closely by KV Racing. It’s going to be a long haul this year. And why would Wilson be running the McDonald’s livery and not Rahal? Need to have the American running those colors; think of the marketing possibilities….
• IRL: Danica Patrick doesn’t like the new weight rules. Go figure. Using weight ballast to even out her weight advantage will do her in, unless the IRL gives her ‘the call’. Quit whining and race Danica.
• IRL: I cannot wait to see the races televised in HD.
• F1: It looks like Fernando Alonso is going to have a rough year with Renault if that car doesn’t get better. I look for him to be moving to Ferrari or somewhere else by 2009.

What happened to the Easter in Easter?

I read my previous post and got myself all fired up.

The whole spring holiday thing is the latest in a long line of events in which our society is being secularized (unfortunately, I’m not smart enough to know if that is even a word). First we lost Christmas; it’s now Happy Holidays. No sign of Christ in that at all. Can’t have a cross bigger than a menorah. Can’t have a menorah bigger than a tree (not a Christmas tree, mind you). C’mon give me a BREAK. Now it’s Easter. It’s the new spring holiday? Here’s a little definition of Easter: It is the day in which Jesus Christ rose from the tomb on the third day, after his crucifixion, which was in fulfillment of the scriptures. THAT’S what Easter is. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about the Easter Bunny(especially the one that lays Cadbury eggs), but when people start stripping the religious meaning out of a holiday that IS RELIGIOUS, something is very wrong. When will it end?

What is our country becoming? Must we continue to water down every religious holiday to appease the secular progressives on their way to ridding America of Christianity? Not only that but also revise history books to take out any references of Christianity and what role it played in the formation of our great country? Oh that’s right; we have to leave all that ‘churchy stuff’ out for the atheists in the schools. You even have talk show hosts like Oprah praising all the New Age mumbo jumbo through ‘A Course in Miracles’, which basically tells you that you are equal to God.

As our moral compass becomes less and less defined we will continue to erode the moral fabric of our nation. Things that were once taboo or immoral will become the norm. Does it sound alarmist to talk like this? Sure, but we need to realize that we’re heading down the same path that Rome did and it fell. It may not happen in our lifetime or our children’s lifetime but I think what happens in today’s society will surely lead us in that direction.

Frontage Road Free For All

If it were not for frontage roads, over Easter weekend (oh sorry, that’s not PC enough – spring holiday – so now we have to water down one of the two most important Christian holidays for non-Christians??), you may have read in the paper about a man whose head popped off while he was in traffic.

For our trip down to San Antonio, K and I planned to stay overnight at her sisters’ house in Waco. Leave T-town at 4-ish and get to Waco at 10pm. No problem. Unless you run into a major interstate that has been shut down to one lane due to a flat bed semi being tossed over like a empty box by the wind. And it was WINDY. I felt like we were the port a john after a bean chili eating contest.

Jumping off the highway at the first opportunity was the best decision we ever made. It probably shaved a good 40 minutes off our delay. The same thing happened near downtown Ft. Worth (this time due to construction). Again we hit the frontage roads. Although when the nicest building you see is the gentleman’s club then you’ve probably found the bad part of town. We still arrived in Waco almost 7 ½ hours after we began our journey.

Friday was the same story, different towns. Austin was absolutely terrible near downtown. The difference? No frontage roads and lack of knowledge of the area. With that traffic, don’t count on me as a return visitor unless it’s for Austin City Limits Music Festival or SXSW.

It just reaffirms my opinion that Texas should go ahead and secede from the Union like they want to (said somewhat tongue in cheek).

Photo Friday

I'm leaving for San Antonio within the hour so I'm throwing my Friday picture out there early. This was taken on the North side of Chicago in July of 06. I could move there in a heartbeat.