There can be no doubt \u00e2\u20ac\u201d no doubt whatsoever \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that Sandra Bullock ranks second in the pulchritude department. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gorgeous, just a step below Katherine Zeta Jones.<\/p>\n
But let me explain:<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not one of those callow teenybopper reviewers who go gaga over anyone who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s relatively attractive. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve given up on inviting Marilyn Monroe into my dreams, to make room for KZJ, and in her absence, Sandra Bullock.<\/p>\n
But the more I type these three names, the more I feel like the kind of dizzy fan I criticize.<\/p>\n
So let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s end all this discussion about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153crushes\u00e2\u20ac\u009d held by septuagenarians.<\/p>\n
Except for the following:<\/p>\n
My wife and I saw \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Gravity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (not the 3-D version) recently at a multi-plex theater in Santa Fe. Because of its two fine actors, George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, we looked forward to about 100 minutes of great dialogue, splendid special effects and a tight plot.<\/p>\n
We got none of the above. In order to make the flick about two space travelers appear somewhat realistic, the directors apparently tweaked the cast\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s voices in such a way that we, the forgiving audience, would feel as if we were right in the space vehicle with Georgie and Sandy. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like listening through a poorly tuned loudspeaker.<\/p>\n
All right, after a seeming eternity of dodging space rocks, the pair talk about the perils of space travel. Some of the bigger chunks that hit the space module cause some loop-de-loops: One or the other character is ejected and, tethered by a thick life-support hose, makes his or her way back into the vehicle. And that, folks, is about all that happens. I say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153about all\u00e2\u20ac\u009d because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d rather not reveal the plot, inasmuch as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Gravity is one of the most highly touted movies featured in this past Sunday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Oscars Awards ceremony. You might still want to watch it.<\/p>\n
Finally, let me explain how our ten-dollar price of admission served us: The 100-minute plot could have been compressed into one of those Superman serials we watched as kids at the Serf (remember when Las Vegas had three indoor theaters plus a drive-in here and there)? The dialogue wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t by any means profound, and remember the voices seemed distorted, the way that might sound in real outer space.<\/p>\n
You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re probably familiar with the expression, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Cut to the chase.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d One of the definitions is to skip the slow-moving action and go directly to the chase scene, with cops going after the bad guys, which now ends so many movies. Well, the 15 to 20 people with us in that Regal theater that day waited for the chase but instead simply got one, two, or three more episodes in which one or the other character did some outer-space flips.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a truism that many prefer movies to end with the chase scene, instead of on a muted note, or, as the poet T.S. Elliot wrote in a poem in 1925, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This is the way the world ends\/ Not with a bang but a whimper.<\/p>\n
At 10 cents a minute, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Gravity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d gave us very little bang for our 10 bucks.<\/p>\n
And that makes us whimper.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s enjoyable not only to note the use of various expressions we hear every day but also to explore why such expressions originated and why they mean what they do.<\/p>\n
Quite a few columns ago, I wrote on the meaning of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have your cake and eat it too.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d For most years of my life, I wondered, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153why not?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Why can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t I have both? Why can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t I buy a cake, enjoy looking at it and then eat it?<\/p>\n
A friend alerted me to the obvious: If you eat the cake, you no longer have it. Further, based on my partial understanding of the expression, I realized that cake has almost nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n
The metaphor behind this deals with one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inability, for example, to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153have it both ways.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t, for example enjoy a large salary and yet spend most of your year on vacation. Well, maybe if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in Congress.<\/p>\n
But back to expressions:<\/p>\n
I heard the question, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How many times can you take that to the well?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It came in the context of a couple of typos that I swear were deliberate and which nevertheless some readers thought was a misspelling. My sister, Dorothy Maestas, who never lets a typo go unpunished, and Alice Chambers mentioned I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d written \u00e2\u20ac\u0153alright\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in place of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153all right,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in a recent column. I plead guilty. And Mary Byers once pointed out that instead of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153included\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d written \u00e2\u20ac\u0153inclueded.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
How do I convince them the typos were on purpose?<\/p>\n
Many of my columns are on language and its correct usage. But what if I were to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m aware of the typos and just put them in to see if anyone would notice\u00e2\u20ac\u009d?<\/p>\n
Now that prompts the question of how many times we can take that trick to the well. Would it be ethical to claim that I made errors on purpose, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153just to see if anyone was paying attention\u00e2\u20ac\u009d?<\/p>\n
Today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s technology makes it difficult to misspell words, at least among those who use a spell-checker.<\/p>\n
Instead of misspellings, what we get are substitutions. Newspaper headlines abound in substituted words, which sometimes are worse than a simple typo.<\/p>\n
But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve already conceited that point.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
The books kept rolling in. The past weekend\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s annual book sale, put on by the local AAUW chapter, netted close to $2,000 that will go toward scholarships for women.<\/p>\n
The second day, as closing time approached, my wife, who buys used books by the carload, asked a worker, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you sold any books yet?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Bonnie was reacting to the fact that hundreds of boxes still lined the walls and filled the tables of Sala de Madrid.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the AAUW group wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t able to sell all they received. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll keep. Meanwhile, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great that groups such as this still exist. They keep literacy foremost and help defray tuition expense for deserving women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There can be no doubt \u00e2\u20ac\u201d no doubt whatsoever \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that Sandra Bullock ranks second in the pulchritude department. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gorgeous, just a step below Katherine Zeta Jones. But let me explain: I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not one of those callow teenybopper reviewers who go gaga over anyone who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s relatively attractive. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve given up on inviting Marilyn Monroe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1191,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190\/revisions\/1191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}