Let the games begin!

It's Olympic season once again and at current writing, America stands third in total medal count! It's terribly partisan, but I don't even mind losing so much to, say, Australia or Canada; it's so much more palatable than losing to the Ukraine or Germany.

We were in the video store over the weekend picking out two more videos to check out. We are going to get our money's worth out of this month of unlimited movie rentals, by jingo! This relentless frenzy reminds me very much of our trip to England two years ago (there she goes talking about England again, just like Sir William about St. James), when Leah and I made the impulse decision to buy a week-long English Heritage Pass. We were standing outside Tintagel about to pay our 3 lb. admission fee, and the lady asked us where we were going next. 'Oh, we're going to visit Stonehenge...' 'Well, Stonehenge is 2 lbs. admission, so already you're more than half paying for a week-long pass.' And somehow she talked us into it, so we bought the pass, and thereafter spent the rest of our week dashing madly over the countryside in search of any and all castles on the English Heritage list. Here was how our itinerary fell out each day: Look at the map. Locate where our youth hostel was for that night. Observe what castles lay within a wide berth of our prospective route. Hit them all. It was great, really, because we got to see so many places that we probably wouldn't have bothered with if we had to pay admission. Anyway the similarity holds true. This is our chance to watch all those minor movies not worth our notice after all. For instance, yesterday we watched Jurassic Park, which I had never seen and hadn't ever really wanted to see but which Michael insisted was necessary. Hel-LO! I could see the plot coming a mile away! 'Let me guess,' I told Michael. 'The tropical storm is going to hit, wipe out their power, and the dinosaurs are going to break out through the now-not-electrified fences. Am I right?' No, but very close, as it turns out. And I don't know for sure, but I highly doubt that a human could survive a jolt of electricity strong enough to keep a dinosaur back.

So anyway there we were in the video store aisle, and I picked up King Solomon's Mines out of curiosity. The description on the back sealed its doom. Something about escorting a young girl across the African desert in search of her father...blah blah. Now, it's been a few years since last I read the book, but I DO know that there are no beautiful young girls, heiresses or otherwise, taking center stage throughout the majority of the book - just an ugly old crone who cackles and casts spells. And it irritates me excessively, this relentless pattern of extracting the element of an idea from a good book and re-shaping it to meet the film-maker's notion of what will sell. Obviously, this film-maker thought there had to be some kind of love interest in this story for it to succeed, and even though there was no hint of that in the book, one was manufactured and squeezed in there. Now, I have nothing against romance and all that, and I'm all for the dramatic and compelling power that a love story can weave over a tale - IF it's meant to be and IF it fits in nicely with the rest of the story. Some stories just don't lend themselves to the romance angle. Some stories simply don't require it.

So what great stories out there don't have a romance or overt love interest theme to carry them along? Right off, from the books on my 'favourite' shelf, which is where I keep my top classics, I can think of Lost Horizon, which is a very well-written and compelling story where a love interest does not play a primary role in the plot. Any other ideas?

Yesterday was Catherine's birthday. I remember this because five years ago I attended her 21st birthday party in Virginia, at the girls' townhouse, which was the first time I met her parents, who had come up for the weekend to throw her a party. Such elegant, wonderful people - I actually received a written invitation to her birthday party, a week before, from her parents in Georgia! Sara Roberts, who was NOT invited, nevertheless came because she was staying with us at the time. This was the same visit when we took Sara to Harper's Ferry. We had announced Sara's impending visit the week before, at Game Night, and invited anyone who wanted to join us to come along to Harper's Ferry. Darren stopped by my desk next week and mentioned that he'd like to come along. What I said was, 'How nice! What fun! Great!' What I thought was, 'Oh, Darren, you don't know what you're getting into. It's just going to be a bunch of girls, and you're the only guy who's said he's coming, and of course you're always welcome, but I think you'll just be bored.' Sure enough, he was the only guy, but somehow I don't think he was that bored. We had a great trip and a fun day, and the next day we were all together again at Catherine's party, and Sara...but this is impolitic, for I may be provoking her to retaliation, and such things may come out, as may shock my relations to hear.

Hmmm...that was a far-fetched ending for a post that was supposed to be about the Olympic games.