Jyms of Wyzdom for February 22, 2019

Hi, Folks! I’m back with some Wyzdom this week because I don’t know if I’ll be able to deliver next week because of that carpal tunnel procedure I have on Monday.

TCM @ Regal: I now feel completely happy with my decision not to show Wizard of Oz or Gone With the Wind in our spring Film Forum series, since they are both on the TCM schedule. They have scheduled GWTW for 4 dates: Feb. 28, Mar. 3, 17 and 18. And, sorry, I did not even mention last weekend’s showing of My Fair Lady, so I hope some of you got to that.

Movies: I goofed about my announcement that AMC would be showing all 8 of the Best Picture nominees. They may have shown them in the city, but not here in the little city. Bohemian Rhapsody is already out on DVD!

When one has reached eighty-one, one likes to sit back and let the world turn by itself, without trying to push it. [Playwright Sean O’Casey]

In our writer’s interest group, I have been working on numerous essays about my personal memories of various topics: movies, high school, working life, religious life, etc. I have tried not to read other memoirs, so no one could accuse me of plagiarism…but…then I was sorting books and came on two of the three memoirs by Reynolds Price, one of my all-time favorite novelists. I am now well along in the one written about his experiences as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford between 1955-58. I am realizing that, apart from any notion of copying his work, it is helping me to approach my own essays with new eyes and fear not the many troubling memories that pop up. Put it all in perspective; take the world view—might be my new mantra. If you have any inclination to do some writing, please join us on Thursday mornings at 10. There’s something about just being in a quiet room with other writers that gives us inspiration.

If you knew that you were going to die tonight, or merely that you would have to go away and never return, would you, looking upon men and things for the last time, see them in the same light that you have hitherto seen them? Would you not love as you never yet have loved? [Writer Maurice Maeterlinck]

Last week we celebrated Valentine’s Day and this week we had President’s Day. I remember when we had both Washington’s B’day and Lincoln’s B’day, and then congress decided to combine them and make it a commemoration of ALL our presidents, and later they added Martin Luther King Day in mid-January, and some people decided to give up observance of President’s Day in order to give more honor to diversity on the King anniversary. All well and good but do we really have to have a holiday every month? Sheesh!

The old days were the old days. And they were great days. But now is now. [Comedian Don Rickles]

Now Don Rickles knew a thing or two about insulting everyone and everything in his stand-up routines. Today, we get Lewis Black once a month on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah …priceless. Now there’s a memoir you should read: Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, relating his growing up in South Africa with a black mom and white dad who could never actually live together during apartheid. It’s a great story.

Opera: The next Met in HD is Gaetano Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment on Saturday, March 2 at 12:55 at the Regal cinema. It features Pretty Yende and Javier Camarena and Kathleen Turner as the Duchess.

When a man asks himself what is meant by action, he [proves he isn’t a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking. [Statesman Georges Clemenceau]

See you in a couple of weeks! Jim