Just got back from seeing the band my oldest son, Miles, plays bass in, BELL ENGINE, at The Gypsy Joynt in Great Barrington Mass. The snow as blowing across the road sideways and the roads impossible to discern where their edges were, the few cars out creeping through the countryside like overgrown tortoises.
Anyway, it's beautiful. My youngest and his nephew, my grandson, making plans for an early morning snowboarding at the local ski mountain Butternut. Life goes on as this difficult year for too many nears its end. But the landscape though dangerous in gorgeous in the street light, and the talent of my oldest son and his band show out in one of the best sets I've ever heard them play, and got me out onto the small dance floor for some serious boogieing which sort of embarrasses the teenagers (my youngest and his nephew and friend).
Hope your winter is as beautiful.
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Christmas in LA is disorienting and I've never really adjusted to it but a friend just sent me a photo of what was many years ago my parents home in Cleveland.
I agree, snow and Christmas can be beautiful but as I remember it, Cleveland in December is rarely attractive. The photo reminded me of what two-day old snow under an overcast sky looks like and it is just plain grim.
But on the positive side, I saw a few old (very old) Christmas movies in the past week and they were just wonderful.
"The Man Who Came To Dinner" and "Remember The Night" (written by George Kaufman and Preston Sturges respectively) are two that come to mind.
Yeah, it can get grim after days of city dirt etc. but up here in The Berkshires it's pretty perfect at the moment. The sun came out this afternoon while we were driving to Pittsfield through the country side with perfectly white snow on all the tree branches and roofs and hills and meadows etc. looking like a Christmas card.
I watched THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER the other night again and was taken with its peculiar Christmas message for that time and place or for that matter even now. And such dynamite performances for the most part, Bette Davis in a more subdued and subsidiary role, Ann Sheridan, one of my alltime and often overlooked favorite classic Hollywood stars (who played a great variety of types over her career) and Jimmy Durante always a unique presence on the screen, and Wooly Monty etc. The big factor for me as a kid was the actress who played the nurse, whose name eludes me at the moment. This was her first movie role, I think, and it made such a mark I think she may have been nominated for an Oscar for it, or at least got some critics award. I was fortunate to work with her at the end of her career when I had a recurring role on FATHER DOWLING MYSTERIES in which she played the priest's housekeeper. Hanging around the set with her and Tom Bosley was one of the great experiences of my acting career, listening to them talk about being Broadway character actors in the 1940s was like theater 101 for me. Mary Wickers that's her name. (I also got to hang around another star of that show, Tracy Nelson, who was a very sweet and humble and generous actor to work with.)
But I don't remember REMEMBER THE NIGHT. have to check it out.
whoops! Meant Monty Woolley of course.
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