At the Movies . . .

I owe a photo credit to someone for the image at right. Thank you. I want to meet everyone in this photo. When was the last time you saw a man in a suit and tie at the movies??

And why does this photo reminds me of my mom? I have no idea. I don't remember seeing any 3-D movies with her.

My most recent experience with 3-D -- "Journey to the Center of the Earth" -- with that George of the Jungle guy, well, it was nowhere near as fun as when we had the paper 3-D "glasses" like the ones you see here.

My movie story goes like this: Mom and I were looking forward to seeing Sophia Loren or maybe Marilyn Monroe in How To Marry a Millionaire. Or at least that's what we thought we bought tickets for. I was in 5th or 6th grade so I was not the one buying.

As it turns out, we watched 3 hours of a "Von Trapp Family" documentary, supposedly the real story behind the "Sound of Music."

But no music, no singing, no Julie Andrews, no children in the meadow. Nada. But mom and I sat through the entire thing sure that the next feature was "Millionaire."

A whole different context to that word these days . . . yikes! Game show or location India. Either one is missing the movie stardust that sprinkles down from the white shoulders of Loren or Monroe.

But did I learned my lesson about the dwindling possibilities of double features? No.

A decade later when I was a freshman at GWU, I rode the bus to Capitol Hill to see a 3-hour Warhol film. Sat there glued to my seat (literally and figuratively). Because I was sure as soon as I got up to pee or buy popcorn all hell would break loose.

This after watching Warhol's actress clip her bangs one bang at a time for 90 minutes! Ah! The idea of "knowing better" is a lost art, at least in my family. I stayed in the theater for almost 4 hours, still sure I would see "Spartacus" the very next second.

Rockin' Robins

A rack of robins perched in the neighbor's yard this morning. Maybe a dozen of them in the woody branches of the crape myrtle at the end of the street.

These robins were coming home fluffy and strong from their winter in Texas or Florida. I guess they don't follow the Monarchs to Mexico any more.

You could tell the robins from Texas. They were wearing little red cowboy boots and lassoing the starlings and tieing them to the fenceposts.

Well, from my rearview mirror as I backed up, those Texas robins acted like they owned the place. The Florida robins were pretending to be asleep.

I don't drive backwards on purpose, you know, I live in a cul-de-sac -- the French term for "bottom of the bag." Sometimes it feels like that around here, like we're at land's end -- no not in Cabo Land's End, in an industrial parking lot.

The PODS are here.

You know what PODS are -- white metal "rooms" half in the road, half in the sidewalk -- places where my neighbors store all the stuff that's supposed to be in their house. Yes, it's temporary --maybe a month or 6 months or a year.

The plan is each house is getting some work done -- painting or cleaning or revarnishing the floors. And the best way to do that work is have all the stuff out in a POD, leaving the actual house empty.

There is a thin promise that the POD stuff will get carried back in, and the POD returned to PODville.

Problem is the street is now a village of PODS. All but two families have one. They're the width of a car parking spot on one side; on the other side, they block everything else.

In the 1930s nobody had a POD. Everybody had sheds, and when things got bad they moved into the shed and their rich aunt moved into the main house and made them cinnamon toast on Sundays. Isn't that how it was?