Thursday, January 01, 2009

Hello 2009 and Goodbye 2008

We saw "Michael Clayton" on video last night, part of our gala New Year's celebration here on Dove Avenue. We would recommend this suspenseful film, starring George Clooney and others. (One of the villains is Tilda Swinton, who played the White Witch in the first Narnia film.) Clooney is a lawyer in a big Wall Street firm, and it was fun to see the stereotypes populating that "community." Great pace, tension, superb acting - you are happy to forgive the act of blessed Divine intervention on which the plot turns, especially if this is part of the point - that God sometimes does such things.)

Afterward, we watched on Channel 2, a PBS station here, a great live telecast from Lincoln Center of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, featuring the conductor Lorin Maazel and the mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, who is a Texas Tech graduate. Following that was a rebroadcast of a Great Performances video of a Chicago blues show called "Crossroads" featuring, among many others, Eric Clampton, B.B. King, Cheryl Crowe.

About 15 minutes before midnight, we switched over to watch the Times Square ball drop - there were two networks broadcasting the festivities, and one of them had Dick Clark as a host. He simply looked pitiful and exploited. But I guess part of the point of New Year's is to acknowledge time's inexorable march. The ball dropped on schedule, although poor Dick Clark was at least one second behind on his countdown for about 8 seconds, but finally caught up at about midnight minus 5.

I guess it's obvious that we survived midnight. That is, no bullets came through our roof. Given the way people are prone to celebrate the event by shooting up, that is vertically, up into the air, not out from one's position (get it?), we cannot assume that we are safe inside our homes here in South Florida. Here is the obligatory article about this practice that appears annually in the Miami Herald, although one must wonder why they published this year's article in the January 1 edition rather than the December 31 issue.

1 comment:

Macon said...

I enjoyed both Michael Clayton and shooting in the air. Though neither on New Year's Day.