The Blogger Updates Readers On Latest Doings, Depression, Football, Astaire-Rogers All Mentioned

Dear Readers -- I flatter myself -- Dear Reader: I thought it might be instructive to update you on my latest doings and comings and goings and happenings and so forth and what not and etc.

Today I will begin my fourth week of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation ( the photo above shows me in action). What each session (five days a week) amounts to is thirty-three minutes of a kind of tapping against one carefully selected spot in my head. There's a tap a second, very rhythmic and thus not -- as one would assume -- annoying as hell. Actually rather relaxing. The greatest difficulty is in not dozing off, a constant temptation. Sleeping disrupts the process so one has to stay awake. My doctor and the technicians are quite pleasant and make sure to my comfort and are amiable people with whom I can enjoy a chat. In the past ten days I've had far more depression-free days than normal and some of those days have found me quite cheerful indeed. I experienced a bump on the road yesterday, however, and spent the day in severe depression. I meet with the doctor this afternoon over zoom and will update him but I'm sure this is par for the course. Most patients don't start seeing real progress until after the fourth week so I may be ahead of the curve.

I continue to pound away at novel number three and am enjoying the process a great deal. I've made tremendous progress in the nine months I've been working on the book, but am clearly barely at the halfway point in the process. Meanwhile I'm doing publicity for novel number two with a couple of book talks upcoming and an ad running in a Finnish-American publication.

Saturday I saw my favorite college football team in action as the Golden Bears of California took on the Sacramento State Hornets. It's always fun to go to the stadium and cheer the Bears on and it's an especially good day when Cal actually wins (they do so more than half the time!) as happened Saturday. It was not an inspiring performance as our heroes gave up thirty points to a lower division school in a comfortable 42-30 victory. But a win is a win. Many of the traditions and ancillary pomp, pageantry and tradition is gone from the college-football going experience, and some has been curtailed by coronavirus necessitated restrictions. I wrote about this on my short lived Cal football blog which I retired Friday after a dozen posts. I was drawing less readers for that blog than for this one -- I know, hardly seems possible. I don't know how one has minus readers but somehow I did. Oh well, I gave it the old college try.

As I mentioned earlier, I was suffering from severe depression yesterday and as it was a Sunday and I'd scheduled no activities decided my best course of action was to watch movies (it was either stare at a screen or a stare at a spot on the floor). All three films selected were ones I'd recently recorded on TCM. I'd seen all three previously but none in several years.

First up was To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) Mulligan. It is the type of film that "everyone" has seen and pretty much everyone likes. It is based on a book that pretty much "everyone" has read and pretty much "everyone" likes. (There is a local film critic on a big city paper who once wrote that he didn't think so highly of the movie or Atticus Finch as a lawyer, because -- get this -- Finch lost the case. Yes, imagine an all-white jury in the Jim Crow south taking the word of two white people over that of one African American accused of rape.) TKAM is a movie worth repeat viewings, if for no other reason than to watch and admire Atticus (a well-deserved Oscar-winning performance by Gregory Peck). He's a wise and moral man and a good father, that's an impressive three-for-three. The characters that surround him, particularly his children, Scout and Jem are fully-realized and compliment him and one another. It is a multi-dimensional movie with many themes including growing up, racism, compassion and ignorance. It is not a feel good everything works out in the end kind of film, but it is ultimately satisfying and there is a kind of justice to it.

My second feature was Hugo (2011) Scorsese which I last saw in the theaters when it debuted ten years ago. It's a mixed bag, both a kids movie and the story of early cinema. It is highly stylized and computer-aided and as far as you can get from other Scorsese films such as Mean Streets. It is an engaging and fun film, in parts predictable and other parts surprising. Simply put it entertains for its two hour running time and then is easily forgotten, which is something of shame given what a powerful love letter to the birth of films that it could have been. It's one of the latter Scorsese films that has more glitz than soul.

Follow the Fleet

I concluded my movie marathon with my favorite of the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers films, Follow the Fleet (1936 Sandrich. For my money (what little there is of it) Fleet has the best dance numbers of any of their films and less ridiculous and implausible plot lines and holes. It does lack Edward Everett Horton and Eric Blore, who brought so much to some of the other Astaire-Rogers pairings. But it's fun to watch Randolph Scott in a very non-Western role. There's also a young and gorgeous Lucille Ball on hand delivering a few zingers. Best of all are the "Let Yourself Go" and climactic "Let's Face the Music and Dance" numbers, both of which are brilliant. "We Saw the Sea" is a fun song too. Fleet is better written then most Astaire-Rogers films and the pacing is excellent. The love story between the two stars is less sappy as for once they know each other at the start of the film. A great film for when depression hits.

I think I handled my depression rather well yesterday. If you can't beat it, make it join you watch some movies. For the record I also read the Sunday times and went for a walk. Not a wasted day at all. 

Today there is much writing to be done, some of which you are reading now. I also have a session of tap-tap-tap on my brain. Hopefully we'll get the sucker in fine working order and I won't have to spend many more days mired in misery.

That's my update. Catch ya later.