The cooler temps were great huh? The humidity gods were kind for a while. It must have been all those live Hog sacrifices we made every Saturday last fall.
Whatever the reason, it gave me a chance to catch up on some yard work I’ve been putting off for about three years that involves ivy. I think it’s Boston ivy, like the kind on the wall at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Not sure what covers the walls at Fenway, but the Cubs might want to think about changing to whatever the Sox used to exorcise their curse a few years ago.
I used to like my ivy, but then it went through some kind of aggressive mutation and began growing at an accelerated rate. When it took over part of the driveway, I figured I’d better do something before we were eaten alive. Remember Donald Sutherland being invaded by those body snatchers?
So I began my attack. And was winning, at least I thought until the next day, when I realized the enemy had enlisted the aid of his cousin, Poison. Now they are winning and the mutation is me.
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So me and the wife and my unsightly skin headed to a cool dark theater, where I would not be seen. It’s like when Kramer was smoking too many of those Cubans – or Dominicans?
“Look away! I’m hideous!”
The movie we chose was Pacific Rim, which was the third in a row of those summer blockbuster running and screaming flicks. In this one, there are these legions of monstrous creatures known as Kaiju, who through some kind of time warp have been breeding miles below the Earth’s surface and now are coming out and destroying major cities on the Pacific Rim. So mankind builds these giant machine monsters to fight them. The machines are controlled by a human pilot that rides in the head, and through a mind “drift” get the machine to do what they want, which is hopefully beat up the bad monsters. But this drifting causes the human pilots to feel sick and get nosebleeds, so they design the machines for two pilots, which takes some of the pressure off the one. Also, the two pilots need to be able to drift with each other, which means they need to be compatible.
This works for a while, until of course it doesn’t. So a new plan is devised to go to the bottom of the ocean floor and drop a big bomb in the portal, keeping the Kaijus down there and the world safe.
(Slight Spoiler Alert) When we walked out of the theater, I overheard a man tell his teenage son, “That was not realistic. If you come up that fast from that deep in the ocean, you get the bends.”
Right buddy, but everything else made perfect sense.
Actually, Kathy and I enjoyed Pacific Rim. The director is Guillermo del Toro, who did the amazing Pan’s Labyrinth, which I thought should have won Best Picture in 2006 but wasn’t even nominated. And it lost Best Foreign Film to The Lives of Others. They got it wrong that year.
•••
I would love my chances if I could make a double bogey on the 72nd hole of the British Open and still get to smooch the Claret Jug. Those of you who have ever swung a mashie will know of what I speak. So in honor of the classy pro from France, wherever you are, Jean, as the players make their way down the last hole on Sunday, Dieu vous bénisse.