Jen

 Management summarized:

Mike Cranshaw has a chance meeting with Sue Claussen when she checks into the roadside motel owned by Mike's parents in Arizona. A bottle of wine 'compliments of management' jump starts a cross-country journey and unique courtship between two different kinds of people who are both ultimately looking for the same thing: a sense of happiness. Mike sees something special in button downed Sue that inspires him to take a chance and hit the road to go after her. However, once he reaches Maryland, he finds that Sue has no place for an aimless dreamer in her carefully ordered life. Obsessed with making a difference in the world, Sue falls back in with her ex-boyfriend Jango, who promises her a chance to head his charity operations. Mike finally finds something worth fighting for and the two embark on an interesting journey to discover that their place in the world just might be together.

Sounds preposterous, and almost becomes so, but, it works okay. Steve Zahn plays the nerd who makes a move on Jennifer Aniston's Sue. I happen to like Aniston's work; here she pulls more substance out of a shallow character than many other actresses would. Woody Harrelson is preposterous in a crappy role he does justice to. Aniston can not make much happen with her role as Olivia in Friends with Money. The movie is silly,hangs on by a thread, but even Joan Cusak can't help Aniston salvage this mediocre film.

One hit wonders of the '50s & '60s.

Farmingdale Library called asking for two songs: Let me go lover! and I'll Always Love You. The second song is in sheet music; the first in this book.

Q 784.5 O

Songs:

Alley cat song -- Angel of the morning -- Apache -- Theme from Baby, the rain must fall -- The birds and the bees -- Bobby's girl -- Book of love -- Chantilly lace -- The deck of cards -- Dominique -- Eve of destruction -- Grazing in the grass -- Guitar boogie shuffle -- Happy, happy birthday baby -- Harper Valley P.T.A. -- I like it like that -- Israelites -- Leader of the laundromat -- Let me go lover! -- Love (can make you happy) -- May the bird of paradise fly up your nose -- More -- More today than yesterday -- Na na hey hey kiss him goodbye -- On top of spaghetti -- Pipeline -- Pretty little angel eyes -- Sea of love -- Silhouettes -- Stay -- Stranger on the shore -- Sukiyaki -- Tie me kangaroo down sport -- Who put the bomp (in the bomp ba bomp ba bomp) -- The worst that could happen.

Hot Time in the Old Town

Kohn, Edward P. (2010). Hot time in the old town: the great heat wave of 1896 and the making of Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Basic Books.

Byron Collection/Museum of the City of New York
COOLING OFF At Coney Island in the summer of 1896.

Moscow Express

Smith, Martin Cruz. (2010). Three stations: an Arkady Renko novel. New York : Simon & Schuster.

Reviewed by Olen Steinhauer in NY Times Book review section.

Last chance Harvey

Insipid, at best. Devoid of much anything. Oy.

Buena Vista Social Club

A classic. Quite enjoyable. Bravo, Ry Cooder.

P.S.

Laura Linney in a role I have never before seen: sexual. In this 2004 film, she plays the admission officer at the School of Fine Arts at Columbia University, a 39-year-old divorced woman who leads an unfulfilled life and remains friends with her ex-husband.

After processing the current year's admission applications, she finds a letter on the floor of her office as she is about to leave for the day, and is stunned to see its return address: F. Scott Feinstadt, the exact name of her high school sweetheart, who died twenty years back in a car accident. She phones the applicant and makes an appointment to see him the following Monday.

From the quick interview, to which she wore a dress with a very low neckline and revealing lots of chest, she invites him to her apartment and they have sex.

F. Scott is played rather irreverently, and quite well, by Topher Grace. Made me think of Mark Ruffalo.

The script was rather weak, and their two performances lifted the film beyond where that script woul dhave otherwise taken it. A review in Rotten Tomatoes has it about right: P.S. is at its best when it follows the tics and foibles of human behavior; Linney and Grace both give vivid, lively performances. But every time reincarnation rears its head, the movie flounders, particularly in clumsy scenes with Louise's predatory best friend (Marcia Gay Harden, Mystic River), who stole Louise's boy so long ago. Fortunately (or strangely), that element is almost a tacked-on subplot; center stage is the romance between Linney and Grace, which glows sweetly. Also featuring Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects, Miller's Crossing) and a woefully underused Paul Rudd (The Shape of Things, Clueless). --Bret Fetzer

Soccer explains world

Foer, Franklin. (2004). How soccer explains the world: an unlikely theory of globalization. New York: HarperCollins.

Fascinating, enjoyable book.

“Thanks to the immigration of Africans and Asians, Jews have been replaced as the primary objects of European hate.” p.71

Operation Mincemeat

Checking for Operation Mincemeat : Macintyre, Ben, and came across this:  Deathly Deception: The Real Story of Operation Mincemeat by Smyth, Denis.

Curiously, I read the original and saw the movie based on it after coming across a mention of it in one of David Ignatius's books.