Weekend Excitement, The GodFather, Meet Joe Black

Well, it was certainly an interesting weekend. Arnold & Deb got a new dog last week...they got her from the animal shelter. She was spayed on Monday, they got her on Tuesday, and they were going away for Friday-Sunday, and didn't want to leave the dog alone for the whole weekend. So they asked me to housesit.

So Friday morning I headed up there, and spent the weekend at their house. I got quite a bit of work done - my Lesson Plan Site is almost ready to be transferred to its new server (a process I hope to complete either today or tomorrow).

On Saturday I flipped on the TV and poked through the channels to see what was on (A&D get a lot more channels than I do!). One of the movie channels was running a "gangster" weekend with all three of the GodFather movies. These are movies I've heard a lot about, but had never seen, so I decided to watch them while I worked. Turned out, it was an all day event, as each of the movies took four hours to run.

I had heard (somewhere along the line) that these movies "glorified" the mafia/gangster lifestyle. I found this to be very definitely not the case...they are movies about self-inflicted tragedy, loss, and despair.

It was fascinating to see some really great actors when they were still quite young...Robert Duvall, James Caan, Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro...and it was also interesting to see some bits of movie history that I'd heard about, but never seen: Marlon Brando's I'll make him an offer he can't refuse, the horse head scene, and the hit in the restaurant.

Later on in the weekend (after a fun trip to the emergency room that I'll tell you about in a bit...) I flipped the TV on again, and found Meet Joe Black. This was a nearly 3 hour movie about "Death" coming to earth to find out what life is like. When this first came out I thought it looked stupid, and so didn't bother watching it.

Actually, I was quite impressed with it. I think it worked really well because, like The Godfather movies, it used some very talented actors, including Anthony Hopkins (is there anyone who can play both good guys and bad guys as believably as Hopkins??), Brad Pitt, Claire Forlani (okay, Pitt and Forlani may get by on good looks as much as acting skills...), and Marcia Gay Harden (who, although she had a small role, is still a wonderful actress)

The other thing "Meet Joe Black" and "The Godfather" movies had in common was, they took time. These were not rushed movies - they took a very leisurely pace through the events, and let you get to know each character very well. But, of course, that only works if you've got a very talented cast. This is why in "The Godfather", the "hit" in the restaurant is such an intense scene. Most movie makers today would cut that whole scene down to about 20 seconds, focus on the shooting and the blood, and lose everything that made it so intense.

(for the record, all these movies I saw were edited for TV, so I make no promises that they aren't full of language/sex/violence!)

So, are you wondering about the trip to the emergency room?

Well, it wasn't me that needed to go to the emergency room. In fact, it wasn't a person. Arnold & Deb's new dog, who was spayed on Monday, started bleeding. And not just a few drops as you might expect a dog in heat to leave; she was leaving puddles as big around as the span of my hand on the floor. So, my folks and I put her in my car and drove her to the Animal Emergency Clinic in Lewiston, where we sat in the waiting room for quite awhile (it was a "triage unit", and there was at least one dog who had been in a car accident).

The doctor examined her and said that she probably had gotten a little too active (perhaps chasing the cat around the house?) and broken something loose from her surgery. But by that time the bleeding had mostly stopped, so they gave her some antibiotics and sent her home.

Yesterday I went to church with Jason & Ita in West Bethel (had a really nice time with them) and got back to Arnold & Deb's to find another huge puddle of blood on the floor, but the dog had (once again) mostly stopped bleeding, so I just cleaned up the mess and left it at that. When A&D got home, Deb looked at the floor and said, "I've seen worse from Ginger when she was in heat..."

Not surprising, considering I'd mopped up about 99% of the blood.