1

 Yes, 1, not 54. The last week has begun. As I was saying earlier, I was very touched by the sign with the player wearing 54 yesterday. Erik, the culprit, promised as a last week gift to not complain about Champlain or students, although we both know that I grouse about both far more than he ever does. My students were great on Monday, which may relate to a wonderful job by their professor, but I suspect only reflects either their being able to see the end of the semester - or some grudging happiness for their professor.

Thanks to Warren Moon for loaning me his #1 for the penultimate Countdown post. What can one say about Moon that hasn't already been said? He's the only player who appears in both the CFL and NFL Hall of Fame (the only other double occupants are coaches: Bud Grant and Marv Levy). He was born in Los Angeles, California, and played college ball first at West Los Angeles Community College and then more famously at Washington. Despite a stellar career at Washington, Moon went undrafted (I suspect he was a victim of the then long-lingering suspicion of Black quarterbacks, which seems insane now, but what fairly common until not that long ago). He signed with the Edmonton Eskimos, playing for six seasons, along the way winning five Grey Ciups, and winning the Most Outstanding Player Award in 1983. In 1982 he became the first quarterback in either league to throw for 5000 yards in a season. He then made his long-awaited arrival in the NFL, playing for the Houston Oilers for a decade, before brief stops with the Minnesota Vikings, Seattle Seahawks, and Kansas City Chiefs. I will be sporting his jersey on Thursday, the last active class day of my teaching career.

East Calais Posh

 There are many things about Vermont that I will not miss, but there are other things that I'll miss quite a bit. Some of the smaller, more obscure, things are what I'll miss the most. For example, I'll miss my Saturday morning routine of making the dump to the local dump transit station on Moscow Woods Road in East Calais. I get to check out the local smart set (the dump is also where people running for office often hang out on Saturday morning, because it's the one place where you are guaranteed to see a lot of people). While there, as I've celebrated elsewhere on this blog, I get to deliver dog treats to Willow (now, sadly, on the disabled list with knee surgery) and Misty as they hang out in their truck. Then I head around the corner to visit the East Calais General Store, which is a great store - and Jen, who runs it, is really great and always happy to help out with things. Inevitably, I grab a breakfast sandwich to supercharge for my next stop - the gym in Berlin for my Saturday morning workout (since it's a half-hour drive to Planet Fitness it's OK to wait to grab brekkie at the store). Since the weather has broken (a bit, it snowed on Sunday - and I drove through a whiteout on the way to school yesterday), I sat outside to revel in the nice weather and scenery.

You can't get more posh than a sausage and egg sandwich and a chocolate milk.

54?

 Apparently there is a movement (conspiracy?) to convince me to put off my retirement and stick around at Champlain for another year. I found this photo on my door this morning, covering up the picture of Davis Sanchez's #2. The logic is that with my diva twice a week schedule I only have classes 27 days a semester, so 54 would be my year. No one has admitted to this chicanery so far, but, truthfully, I was sincerely touched by it. Maybe they will remember me past June.

Thanks to Justin Lawrence for unofficially loaning me his #54 as for the Unofficial Countdown as part of the scheme to convince me to hang around for another year. Lawrence was born in Edmonton, Alberta, (and thus he is a National player) and played college ball at the University of Alberta before being a 5th round pick in the 2018 draft. Over the years he's played for the Calgary Stampeders, Toronto Argonauts, and currently for our hometown Montreal Alouettes. He's a three time Grey Cup champion, once each for the three clubs - which would inspire me to sign him, because he's both a good player and also clearly good luck.

Movies in 2026 123

 

The Ghost Breakers (George Marshall, 1940)

After the relative disappointment of Phantom Thread I decided not to think, and instead simply watch a movie that I loved from childhood: The Ghost Breakers. It stars Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard (who I obviously have such a cinematic crush on) in one of the first horror comedies, which have been a staple of Hollywood for decades. Is it a great movie, of course not, nor even a good one, but it's also a film that I'd watch every time it popped up on the TV, and I eventually just my own copy. It also stars Willie Best, in one of those demeaning roles that black actors had to play for decades, as Hope's (Larry Lawrence) valet Alex. Apparently Hope said that he thought Best was one of the best actors he ever worked with, and other actors over the years said similar things, but Best was stuck playing certain roles. Later in his life he had pot and heroin busts, and the bad publicity brought an early end to his career. It makes me wonder if someone has written his biography, if so, I may track it down. The other interesting black actor in the film was Noble Johnson, who faced many of the same obstacles. Because of his imposing size, Johnson played a greater variety of roles, although none of them that gave him many opportunties: a zombie in The Ghost Breakers, a native in King Kong , an Indian chief in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, etc. What I didn't know, and which is very interesting, is that Johnson founded the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, an African American film company that made, what at the time were called "race films." The challenges of keeping the company afloat proved to much and Johnson eventually closed it down and went back to character roles. Again, I need to track down a biography.

Movies in 2026 122

 

Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

I'm always beating the Paul Thomas Anderson drum, as compared to the Wes Anderson drum (as I've lamented in the past, my students love the latter's quirkiness and are put off by the former's complexity). I should point out that neither of them are close to being my favorite directors, I just tend to like PTA a lot more than WA. Having said that, last night I watched a Paul Thomas Anderson film that I simply thought was over-praised: Phantom Thread. It's odd, because when I break it down I like all the component parts: great performances by Vicky Krieps (as Alma Elson), Daniel Day-Lewis (as Reynolds Woodcock), and especially Lesley Manville (as Cyril Woodcock); beautifully filmed; a haunting soundtrack. I found the characters completely unlikeable, and not unlikeable in a way that would teach a valuable lesson. Instead, they were simply vaguely unlikeable, and not interesting enough to make me want to dig deeper into personalities. I'm clearly in the minority here because it's considered one of the great films over the last couple decades, but I just never warmed to it. Obviously, I'll give it another try at a later date, and it may simply be that I wasn't in the right mood at the right time. 

In the Feline Orbit

 Whenever Janet is out of town I, naturally, get a lot more attention from the cats. Mollie will usually track me down at some point, mainly because I'm a warm lap, but Cici may completely disappear unless she's bugging me to eat or she wants to climb on top of me at bed time as I read (standing in for Janet). However, when Janet is out of town they are a little more present. 

This is pretty normal, as Mollie follows me downstairs to watch movies. Cici has her own chair over by the pellet stove, if she deigns to come spend time with us. Oddly, neither of them came down last night at all, which may mean they didn't like the movie offerings.

This is the more traditional morning lineup, at least for Mollie, who, after an exhausting night of guarding the cabin, melts on me right after her breakfast. Cici is always keeping Janet company in bed, but, lacking company, she suffered the humiliation of joining us out in the living room (you can barely see her hidden away on the loveseat. 

Movies in 2026 121

 

Grand Illusion (Jan Renoir, 1937)

So, Friday night turned out to be quite a doubleheader: Emily Atef's More Than Ever and Jean Renoir's classic Grand Illusion.  It was a first viewing for More Than Ever, but I've seen Grand Illusion many times (and can't imagine a universe where I didn't want to watch it again). The other night I think the inspiration for Grand Illusion was that I'm considering films to show as part of the final exam for my Images of Fascism class, but I never need much inspiration to watch Renoir's classic. It's one of the great anti-war movies, which made it's release only two years before the outbreak of World War II all more emotionally jarring. Jean Gabin was great (I mean, he's Jean Gabin, FFS) as Lieutenant Marechal. If you've seen a great film several times you always find yourself noticing different things and reflecting upon different performances or aspects of the film. Dita Parlo gives an underappreciated performance as Elsa, the German farmwife, who is herself a widow of the war, and who takes in Marechal and Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio). I've always had this odd cinematic category of women in movies who play a character that I imagine myself cinematically living with: such as Stella (Jennifer Black) in Local Hero or Kate (Karen Silas) in Simple Men. I think that living with Elsa in the mountains is now part of that collection. As I was watching the film I began to consider the career of Marcel Dalio, who lived through the war and relocation, and eventually transitioning from leading roles to supporting roles, and the crazy variety of movies he's in: Grand Illusion, Casablanca, One Night in Lisbon, Flesh and Fantasy, Wilson, The Damned, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Flight to Tangier, Sabrina, Anything Goes, Pillow Talk, Donovan's Reef, Catch-22, etc. Most of these you wouldn't know he was there, but he's essentially ubiquitous. You know me, I'm never guilty of hyperbole, but if you haven't seen Grand Illusion, you can't be considered a civilized, let alone a sophisticated or educated, person.