After watering the plants at the cemetery, I impulsively decided to go to the movies. The AC Press had run a review of The Last Exorcism yesterday and I checked listings to see it was appearing at the Towne theatre behind Boscov's. When I got to the box office, though, I saw it didn't open until tomorrow (which is now today because that was yesterday and...oh, never mind). Didn't see any others there in which I had the slightest interest, so drove down Tilton Road to the other theatre. Eat, Pray, Love was playing and I went to that. Found it okay, but uneven. The "travel" scenery was spectacular and made me want to drop everything and go, especially to India, where I've always had a hankering to visit. However, it seems to me Julia Roberts is getting a tad long in the tooth to be playing these "girl in search of herself" parts. Toward the end, there was a scene on the beach where she looked every year of her age, which is about 42, I think. Part of it was tedious and I was amused that I had to urge to switch channels at times, but it wasn't bad overall.
The damn commercials--I counted six of them--infuriated me. I PAID to get in, so where the hell do they get off subjecting me to that crap? Oh, I forgot: Commerce is king and we are its subjects; government places a distant second.
Went to the production meeting for Blithe Spirit with Frank last night. I agreed to work under Casey on publicity. We're all a little worried this project won't comes off, though. As Director Ellen V. announced, we're missing two of the three female leads, as both Lucille and Tara K. have withdrawn due to other commitments (read "family"). Also, I got an e-mail from Tara C., who directed Magnolias, to the effect that she's taken a job at one of the casinos and has to put the theatre company on hold. That means nobody now seems to be pursuing the dinner theatre shows, either. I hope this doesn't mean LETCO is coming to the end, but it feels like it, I'm afraid. We'll see. Tonight, I'll be at the LETCO booth at the Tuckerton Seaport Band Festival. Should be fun--and noisy.
WIDER: I'm continuing to read Andrew Bacevich's book Washington Rules, which explains step-by-step America's advance toward aggression and hubris. He points out that after WW II:
"A people who had long seen standing armies as a threat to liberty now came to believe that the preservation of liberty required them to lavish resources on the armed forces. During the Cold War, Americans worried ceaselessly about falling behind the Russians, even though the Pentagon consistently maintained a position of overall primacy. Once the Soviet threat disappeared, mere primacy no longer sufficed. With barely a whisper of national debate (emphasis added), unambiguous and perpetual global military supremacy emerged as an essential predicate to global leadership."
The phrase I put in bold seems to me highly significant. We rarely hear--and we've seldom heard, to my knowledge--a word of debate about the rightness or wrongness of this "global war on terror" and all its attendant evils. It seems a numb and listless populace either doesn't care, can't be pulled from its amusements, or believes our "leaders" must know what they're doing. So what's the result? Endless aggression and endless killing...