It’s yet another rainy day. Woke up and it was pouring out. Last night it rained too. Rain rain rain. It’s tiresome. I hope it’s not like this when Annemarie and Earl come over from Arcata next month.
It’s always like this in Arcata and I think that coming east is an escape from that crappy weather for Annemarie and Earl. At the moment it has stopped raining but more is expected.
Last night was yet another mellow evening. Instead of the usual viewing fare, I watched The Public Enemy starring James Cagney and Jean Harlow.
It’s a classic, pre-code movie from 1931, the story of Tommy Powers rise to power in the world of criminal enterprise. I had never seen it before from start to finish and it was a good movie.
Just a little unbelievable was a scene where Cagney and his accomplice are running from a policeman who just shoots at them over and over while blowing his police whistle.
The chase goes around a corner where off camera the policeman is shot and Cagney and company run off.
It’s also the movie where Cagney smashes a grapefruit in a moll’s face. The moll by the way is not Jean Harlow but Mae Clarke. That is the classic scene.
As I watched the movie, there was a scene where Cagney and his buddy pay a visit to Putty Nose, someone who had done them wrong years before.
They want revenge and catch up with Putty Nose outside his home. They drag him in and Putty Nose realizes whats going on and tries to reason with them.
As I watched I wondered if that was where a line that was sampled by Coldcut on the remix for Eric B. and Rakim’s Paid in Full. ‘Back in the club, why you kids used to laugh at this song’.
Sure enough a minute later Putty Nose comes up with the line launching into the song and getting killed right before the chorus. I was surprised that I figured out where the line was from a moment before it was said.
Perhaps Tommy Powers mother was a little too loving, always willing to turn away when Tommy was up to no good, or when Tommy was getting the strap from his policeman father.
After that I watched some of Bill Maher from last week. I’m pretty sure that they use canned laughter a lot on the show since some of the jokes are just not funny at all.
And I’m not that fond of Bill Maher either, he’s too smarmy and way too fond of himself. PJ O’Rourke is another one I don’t get. He also laughs the hardest at his own jokes.
I’m sure he might have been funny back in the day when he was working at National Lampoon, but nowadays he’s merely a lampoon of himself.
The weather forecast is more rain. It’s supposed to be nice on Sunday, so no major bicycle ride on Saturday. Then again the weather forecast is wrong half the time but even that makes me wary. I suppose I will have to just wait and see.
Nothing to report on the work front. Nothing has changed. Still no info.
Tonight promises to be another quiet night. Which is better than pandemonium I guess. Bill just gave me the brush off, so maybe it won’t be so quiet after all.