: to make an assumption for the sake of argument
: hypothesize
- My beautiful, talented, brilliant wife has a birthday tomorrow. Hooray! And of course I'll age incrementally by one two days after that. (And Julia's mother, Linda, celebrates her birthday today!) We're downplaying our big days this year, planning instead for Italy and possible larger news coming down the pipe...
- Good weekend for all of us, good time in Milledgeville. I'm looking forward to the weather cooling off a bit - but not too much - so that Gabriel can play outside more without being harassed by mosquitoes and gnats.
- I made it a goal of mind a few months back to learn as many languages as I can - not expertly, I assure you, but just enough to be able to read and competently speak them. Up first: Italian. Granted, being proficient in Italian will help for next summer, but it's a language I do want to learn. It should take me a year and a half or so. Then I'll move on to the next language - right now, I think it will be German or Chinese. I figure one new language every two years or so.
- What a busy next few months Julia has: Durham, possibly Chicago, Seattle, any other locales for job interviews (Maryland? Tacoma? New Zealand?)
- Not so good with my NFL picks, for the second weekend in a row: 5-11. Dreadful. And the Seattle-Green Bay fiasco last night? Just inconceivably bad.
- Happy birthday, William Faulkner, one of the greatest writers in American history - and, at times, one of the worst.
- I'm looking forward to watching last night's premiere of Castle, one of TV's most likable, entertaining shows.
- I'm glad that Homeland cleaned up at the Emmys the other night. Outstanding show, and I can't wait for the second season to start this Sunday. I was fine with Modern Family winning again too, because I still think it's consistently very funny.
What Bird Was Seen In Bulloch County This Week?
Black-throated blue warbler
Information on the bird: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/black-throated_blue_warbler/id
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Pressing on with my list of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time:
Robert Shaw
as Quint in Jaws (1975)
A scene stealer if there ever was one, Shaw gobbles up the scenery without showboating in the great summer blockbuster (one could reasonably argue that Jaws was the first summer blockbuster/movie event) as the salty, rascally, intractable old fisherman who assumes - wrongly, finally - that he's up against an ordinary fish. Shaw is funny and colorful, enjoying the hell out of the part, but his sober, practically improvised, four-minute monologue on the fate of the shipmen of the U.S.S. Indianapolis is as good as it gets - and as frightening as anything in the film. In a weak year for Supporting Actor nominees (Brad Dourif for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Chris Sarandon for Dog Day Afternoon, Burgess Meredith for Day of the Locust, Jack Warden for Shampoo, and winner George Burns for The Sunshine Boys), it was grand larceny that Shaw wasn't even nominated. Other than maybe Dourif's work, who even remembers these performances?
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And a birthday wish out into the galaxy of undead souls for Mark Rothko.
No. 5/No.22
oil on canvas
1950
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Images courtesy of:
http://www.bird-friends.com/pics/BlackThroatedBlueWarbler/BlackThroatedBlueWarbler0LR.jpg
http://www.wearysloth.com/Gallery/ActorsS/15731-9838.gif
http://www.greatmodernpictures.com/rothc05.jpg
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