Italian G

 My son captured one of the pictures of me that Janet sent home, and labelled it in his phone, "Italian Dad."  It's not that picture, but another one that Janet snapped when I wasn't paying attention (I like to take the pictures, mainly to control the narrative, which is probably just the historian in me). 

This is a funny picture because it was right after I had accidentally shaved off my beard (I'll recount that misadventure some other time). Happily, the light behind my head helped hide the evidence. And I wasn't trying to cover up the crime, but instead was interrupted while trying to decide which pizza to order. 

Another Middling Success

 And the second box arrived. Again, up to this point we don't have a mailroom, so you just have to wait around for the blessed call to come. There just be some way to include a note on the order to just leave the package outside the door, although I can also understand why a delivery company wouldn't be too excited about that option. Of course, I could also learn the Sicilian (or maybe Italian) exchange for "thanks, could you just leave it outside the door?" Usually, midday, considering that "sono in pensione" and most things are closed during siesta anyway, I'm hanging around the apartment, it's not big of a deal, since our deliveries have tended to come early afternoon. 

If it made sense that the first item out of the other box was a cryptid t-shirt, it makes even more sense that CFL merch would pop out first with this one. This box included my Alouettes sweatshirt and a couple long sleeve t-shirts, so I guess I'm already ready for winter in Sicily. Now, on the other hand, flying back to Vermont for a winter visit . . .

One Year, Really?

 My oldest and dearest friend, Jack, just sent me this picture. He snapped it exactly one year ago, when Janet and I, taking advantage of the short holiday, had flown from Vermont down to Florida to see Jack and his wife Julie. Beyond how happy (and fat) I look, the thing that struck me about this picture is what a difference a year makes. In that one short year since the picture was snapped, Jack's company went bankrupt and he quickly found another job in Colorado, close to one daughter and his only grandson - and I retired, we moved to Sicily, and my grandson is due to arrive in late December. This is not a profound statement, but life is awfully strange.

Janet commented that I looked awfully happy, which I was. And why shouldn't I be happy, of course, sitting on a beach with my dear friend, and well-lubricated with adult scholarly beverages.

Poshification

 When Kevin and I head off for our CFL Trips of Excellent, the one common theme is that our choices are not posh. We did eat a really nice steak dinner in Calgary on the Summer of 2025 Elks/Roughriders trip, but it wasn't that posh of a place in the great scheme of things (although the steak was amazing). However, on the Winnipeg leg of this last summer's trip, we had to poshify the trip because our friend Cyndi was along for the first section of the trip. I don't hold it against her, mainly because of her patrician roots are hard to overcome. Here are a couple pictures I snapped at the crazy nice restaurant where we ate in Winnipeg (and I've completely forgotten the name, which speaks to my yellow clay Hoosier hillbilly roots).

Now, it was a seriously good steak.

I think this very un-Scudder drink was meant to be an homage to the excellent Debi Zale, who is a huge fan of artist formerly known as Prince.

An Occasional Middling Success

 I lament my consistent and embarrassing run of clumsy failures since moving to Sicily, but there have been a few marginal successes. Here's a picture of Janet holding up our first delivery to the new place. Once we were certain of our address (or fairly certain, which is actually true even today), and moved in, I asked Ali to send a couple small boxes of my clothes that we had left behind, with the goal of mailing them as an experiment. They were mailed the same day, and a couple weeks later the first one arrived. Inexplicably, the second one left the US a week after its sister, so it's still in transit. It's certainly not a seamless process here, since we don't have a mailbox and the buzzer is still not clearly linked to our apartment (although it's a sweat buzzer, with a camera). I taped a note below the buzzer with our names, what might be our apartment number, and my Italian phone number. We were walking back from the gym when we received a call on the Italian phone, and it was the very nice postal guy calling us from outside the apartment (I knew this because I handed the phone to my wife, who speaks much better Italian than me). We hurried back to the apartment and met the guy outside our door, and it was a beautiful handoff. Since then we have had a couple other deliveries, and we're getting into the swing of things. When I lived in Mumbai, part of the mailing address was "Next to the Overpass," which I thought was a joke at my expense, but it was actually a suggestion from the post office, and it helped immensely.

So, although the second box is still in transit, we'll consider this a success. For the moment, we're ignoring the fact that it cost $220 to mail two small boxes of my own possessions to me (thank God DOGE fixed the government . . .). The fact that it two (or three) weeks to get here, and was so expensive, was not the fault of the Italian postal service.

And, of course, the first shirt I pulled out was even more (as if I needed more) cryptid merch.

Potemkin Village

 Here's a great picture of Janet trying to will the elevator into working - or, more accurately starting to work. When we moved into our new place we knew that the elevator wasn't hooked up yet, although we did receive one of those classic Sicilian shrugs that said it would happen soon (the Sicilian equivalent of "bukrah inshallah"). It's been two and a half weeks, and we're still waiting. Actually, it's not that big a deal, and it's more of a source of amusement than anything else. The four floors up and down, several times a day, are a bit of a challenge for my aged and infirm legs, but, as I said to someone the other day, "I need the exercise," and, for that matter, since I walk a couple miles every day, I can honestly say that I couldn't have held up two months ago when we arrived. It's a small price to pay for an apartment that we absolutely love.

We've started referring to it as our own personal Potemkin Village (for those of you who remember your Russian history).

The Sunset Pictures Have to Go Somewhere

 My friends at home have long since grown tired of me sending beautiful sunset pictures from here in Terrasini (although I can't believe that I'll ever catch up on the number of stunning sunset pictures that I've sent from the Wadi Rum or Zanzibar). So, they have to go somewhere. One of the biggest selling points as we considered the new apartment was the view from our balcony. Oddly, we haven't watched the sunset from the widow's walk off the bedroom (one floor up), which has less to do with aesthetics than Janet being wigged out by heights. That said, I think it will become her go-to place for morning meditation.

We're definitely enjoying the addition of clouds to the Sicilian skies.

Now More Than Ever

 The other day we dropped our ballots in the mail, as this wasn't going to be my first election since 1980 that I didn't vote. The nice lady at the post office gave an appropriately Sicilian non-committal shrug when Janet asked if they would arrive in time to be counted, but we should be fine.

It would have been a pity to not vote in the last free (well, semi-free) election in US history.

Moon Over the Tyrrhenian Sea

 Here's a picture I snapped from the balcony of our new place the other morning. I'm an old man, and old men get up at 5:00 rather they want to or not. After six weeks behind frosted glass in the sensory deprivation experiment that was our first apartment, having access to natural light and a balcony has made all the difference in the world to our mood.

We'd enjoyed a beautiful full moon, and it was so lovely to see it still firmly in the sky early in the morning. Before I head out for my morning walk, I usually find myself reading on the balcony, drinking coffee, and waiting for the day to come into itself.

Worship Is of Three Kinds

 "Worship is of three kinds: some people worship God out of fear, and that is the worship of slaves; other people worship God seeking reward, and that is the worship of hirelings; and some people worship God out of love, and that is the worship of those who are free, and that is the most excellent worship."

Jafar al-Sadiq

Every time I reread this passage I am moved, and I've probably featured it on posts somewhere along the way. It is from Jafar al-Sadiq, a very important figure in the Shia branch of Islam. To me, if you're praying and you're only doing so because you're afraid - or simply because you want something from God - then I don't really understand the point of your faith (or any faith, for that matter). Why would you worship a God (no matter how you define the divine) whose relationship with you is either a glorified Stockholm syndrome or the equivalent of Amazon? We're only free when, well, we're free to determine our path. If we're not free in that most intimate moment with the divine, then the moment is stripped of its beauty and meaning.

Assettati Redux

 I wanted to toss up a few more pictures from the Assettati restaurant here in Terrasini. Salvatore definitely has a winner there. The other day we ran into our friends Gregg and Richard, and we immediately started talking about how great Assettati is. We're now about a twenty minute walk away, but it's time well spent.

OK, so they're not Maine lobsters, but the Mediterranean produces its own delicious varieties.

There are actually other things on the menu (the pizza is great - and I haven't even gotten around to the burgers yet), but I find it hard not to order seafood every time (and I'm never disappointed).

The other night we arrived around 7:30 (about an hour too early to eat in Sicily, unless you're going to Pizzeria TUSA) and we just about had the place to ourselves. By the time we rolled out at 9:00 the line stretched down the street. It does your heart good when someone who cares deeply about what they're doing is appreciated.

Help at the Gym

 One of the first things we did when we moved here a couple months was join a local gym, Le Club Active. At the time, it was about a twenty minute walk up the hill, at this was during our most broiling heat, so it was necessarily an early morning adventure. Now, however, the gym is a two minute walk, and the weather has broken, so this is a much easier chore. It's a pretty good gym. As it turns out there are a couple other gyms, practically one on top of each other, so we have other choices if we decide to swap. Most of the expat crew seems to belong to that one, so I suspect we'll stick with it for a while. Much as when I lived in Abu Dhabi and Mumbai, having a gym membership and a related schedule helped a lot.

The front desk staff does seem rather disinterested.

So I Got That Going For Me

 On one of my morning walks when we still lived down the hill, and after a blessed rain at night, I walked out on to the Longomare to discover, first off, a rainbow that stretched completely from end to the other - beginning in the sea and ending in the sea - and a few moments, later, when the original arc began to fade, a double rainbow. I'm assuming that's good luck.

My morning walks always seem to end up down by the sea, for the obvious reason,

You Never Know

 We don't make it to the Piazza Duomo as consistently as we did when we first arrived for all sorts of reasons, but it's still a beautiful place to walk through or hangout. Essentially, you don't know what you're going to see when you're there. A couple weeks ago, I think on an errand when I was carrying stuff up the hill from the old apartment to the new, I passed near the beautiful church and saw a wedding taking place. We've seen several wedding take place there, and what a beautiful spot, but I had never seen one that featured soldiers as part of the ceremony.

Pizzeria TUSA

 We're settling into our new place, and that, of course, means having our favorite local restaurant. It has quickly become the Pizzeria TUSA, which is a beloved institution here in Terrasini. It was founded in 1940, which is, beyond the 86 years in business, an amazing thing to consider when you think that it was founded in Mussolini's Italy in the shadow of World War II. It's still going strong. It's one of the few places where you can show up at 6:00 and get fed without a sad look of pity at you being such a rube for wanting to eat that early. The pizza is absolutely fantastic, and the atmosphere it amazing. Friendly folks and great food - it's easy to see why they've been serving pizza for so long. Highly recommended.

Janet is loving her pistachio pizza.

Spiaggia Cala Rossa

 Terrasini is sort of a glorified beach town (including the fair, which packed up for the season a couple weeks ago). Because of the nature of the rocky shore, there is not one long sandy beach, but rather a series of smaller beaches, carved out of the rocky shoreline. I'll be sure to include pictures of some of the others, but today I'll post a couple pictures of our newest discovery, the Spiaggia Cala Rossa. We're now living off of Via Cala Rossa, so I'm officially declaring Spiaggia Cala Rossa to be "our" beach. It's about a twenty minute walk to get there from our apartment, which means that after our walk all of the beaches are all equidistant. The biggest challenge to getting to the Spiaggia Cala Rossa is not the twenty minutes, but rather the climb down when you get there. Considering how beautiful it is, as well as generally peaceful and secluded, it's a worthy trek down and up.

It's not as horrible as it looks, made easier by the fact that it's shaded the entire way. I just tell myself that with every step I'm getting in better shape.

This is my go-to spot for peace and quiet, as there normally seems to be around five people there at any one time. However, on my last two trips I was joined by dozens of elementary school kids on a cleanup day (bless them for that) and on the next trip ten scuba divers.

Dove Vai

 As is very well-documented, I'm dreadful at learning new languages. The only bit of slack that I'll allow myself in this particular situation is that we need to learn Italian for when/if Janet gets her citizenship (or even more when/if I get my citizenship), but we're living in Sicily where folks speak Sicilian. It's tough, because we want to more fully immerse ourselves into the local community, but we have to put our effort into Italian at the beginning because the citizenship test will not be given in Sicilian. Our hope is that someday we'll come to Sicilian by way of Italian (it's two separate languages, obviously, but I still think that Sicilian will naturally make more sense coming by way of Italian than by way of English). It's frustrating, but it's not the Sicilians fault. Some day, inshallah. I do have my little victories, although they come by way of my brutish Italian and not any Sicilian so far. I had a small one the other day. I was leaving the apartment for my morning walk, and just as I reached the end of Via Giuseppe Verdi I saw two women pushing a baby carriage. I opened with "Buongiorno," which more people are greeting me with as we're here longer and it's becoming clear to them that we're not just quickly passing through. They didn't respond, but then I didn't really expect them to (why would anyone willingly respond to the strange, lurking old man with the cane?). Anyway, a couple blocks up the road they were looking at their phone, and clearly were a little turned around. One of the women backtracked and started talking to me, but I couldn't only respond, "So un po' di Italiano." Essentially, I was apologizing by saying that I only know a little Italian. The woman said, "Spanish?", and I could only respond, "English." I held my hand up as a plea to wait, and then, after pausing to think, said, "Dove vai? Supermercato?" It was close enough to "Where are you going? The supermarket?" She replied, "Cafe." "Ah," I said with a smile, "vamos." I figured she'd appreciate the Spanish. We walked up a block and I directed them to walk towards the Deco and then veer right. We were all reasonably happy, and the day was already proving to be a success.

Cryptozoology Bowl 2026

 One of the high points of the Twin Peaks Football League (and, really, the entire social season) is the annual Cryptozoology Bowl between the Shackleton Shockers (coached by the excellent Andy Burkhardt) and the woebegone Springfield Buffalo (coached by a very old and foolish man, could be anyone). Last weekend the SB took a fearful beating at the hands of the undefeated Shockers, and this meant that it was time to pay off the winner. As we've discussed previously here, that means that the loser gifts the winner some sort of cryptozoological merchandise. I was so certain of my impending doom that I handed Andy's gift in my Amazon queue before the game was ever played.

He's clearly loving the Scylla and Charybdis t-shirt, and who wouldn't? It's a challenge to find a t-shirt that celebrates both cryptozoology AND Sicily, so I had better win next year.

Assettati

 One of the things that I was hoping would happen when we got settled was finding great little restaurants, away from the main tourist thoroughfare. We tend to not eat in the Piazza Duomo very often, although the vibe up there is pretty cool. One night we stumbled into a little place around the corner from our apartment, and about a hundred feet from La Sirenella. It's called Assettati (which is sort of Italian/Sicilian for "you sit"). As it turned it, it had just been purchased by a guy name Salvatore, who grew up here in Terrasini, but then twenty years working in and running restaurants in Philadelphia of all places. It may not have been our intention, but Assettati quickly has become our go-to place (and we'd eat there more if Janet was playing the responsible party and directing us to other restaurants or eating at home - which is clearly crazy talk). Anyway, it's absolutely wonderful, and I think we've eaten there six times (it will be seven in a couple hours) in the six weeks we've been here. Highly recommended.

Too Many Sunset Pictures

 Yeah, I need to stop posting so many sunset pictures, but, seriously, one of the advantages of living in this sleepy little beach town is amazing sunsets every night. We're moving into our new apartment tomorrow, and even though we won't be right on the water any more, we'll at least have a balcony to sit, enjoy a homemade Aperol Spritz, and revel in this beautiful world.

Those two jagged rocks, which I've carefully and clumsily centered to capture the sun, are an iconic image of Terrasini.

Movies in 2026 246

 

La tete d'un homme (Julien Duvivier, 1935)

At least I was able to finish out on a good movie, Julien Duvivier's 1935 film Un tete d'un homme. 

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Cemetery Man (Michele Saovi, 1994)

Sadly, this experiment is coming to an end. The Criterion Channel, acting oddly corporate, has decided that since I'm travelling overseas I can no longer access the website. The lockdown is so complete I couldn't even get into my account to check my status or to send an email asking for assistance, which led to me searching for an email address where I could send them a note - and cancel my subscription. This pains me because I've been a member of the Criterion Channel for years, and I'd hate to think how many thousands of dollars I've spent at the Criterion Collection, but it's hard to justify paying for a subscription that is blocked. I guess the Criterion Channel was to good to be true in a grossly corporatized America. I guess I've have to start conveying my DVDs over on my next trip home.

Another Path

 Here's a picture of my lovely wifey. I don't need any other reason that that to post it, but it's also a nice shot of the path that runs from the area around La Sirenetta up to our Via Trento, the street of our current apartment. We almost always take the more direct trek along the road, but then we remember that if you go around the other way you get a lovely view of the ocean.

And, yes, we're definitely taking a different trek.

Something Like a Change of Season

 Yesterday I mentioned that the weather had broken a tad here, replacing the endless and tortuous days of blazing heat, wilting humidity, and a particular cruel sun with days that are a little more livable. Part of that relates to a few rain showers, which, again, is the first rain that Sicily has seen since early May. When we woke up to rain one morning, Janet and I walked down to La Sirenetta simply to drink coffee and watch it rain. We've also seen the arrival of some clouds, which were a no show for the first month+ of our time here. We may actually survive after all.

Here's a picture I snapped from inside La Sirenetta, just sitting and watching the rain as if I'd never seen it before. When I taught in Abu Dhabi I don't think it rains for a year straight, and the professors would talk about a time when it actually rained and the students ran outside en masse simply to stand in the rain. I felt just about like that the other day.

I took this picture one night on our passegietta along the longomare. It was so creepy. What looks to be buildings or rock formations or giant cacti or robots in the background were clouds. All hell broke loose in the middle of the night in a wild storm.

I don't normally post (or take) pictures of clouds, but their appearance after weeks of cloudless skies is almost disconcerting. 

A Worthy Subject for a Dominic Starnone Novel

 Janet snapped this picture the other evening when we were out for our nightly passegiata. Normally, I do my best to eliminate every picture that she takes of me, but I couldn't find any reason to complain about this one. 

My brother Eric opined that I looked awfully happy, and I could only respond that we were on our way in search of pizza - how could I not be happy.

Oh, and I recently read the wonderful Dominic Starnone novel, The Old Man By the Sea. 

La Colazione Italiana

 The other day I was on my daily walk and was surprised to find La Sirenetta was closed for the day (I stop there every morning - so expect a lot of La Sirenetta stories as I get caught up). Consequently, I decided to try a place that I walk by every morning. I always refer to it as the posh place, although that's not it's official name. Seriously, is this a beautiful place to have your morning coffee and cornetto or what?

The only disappointing aspect of the story was that, when repeating the story to my friends back home, I proposed that by being closed La Sirenetta might have Wally Pipped itself, and no one got the reference. This speaks to a profound loss of cultural intelligence.

Movies in 2026 244

 

Penance (Kyoshi Kurosawa, 2012)

This is another one of those films that I would have never seen without the good graces of the Criterion Channel: Kyoshi Kurosawa's 2012 Penance. I'm not a huge Kurosawa fan, or maybe it would be better to say that I like his films although I don't like them as much as I think I should. It's not that I want to say I like Kyoshi Kurosawa films because I want people to think that I'm a sophisticated consumer of films, but rather that in some ways I like the idea of Kyoshi Kurosawa more than the reality of his films. They are always creepy and unique, but they're also awfully slow moving (which is almost never a problem for me, obviously). In this case it is especially true because Penance is a series of five interrelated films, each a little over an hour long, which tells the story of a group of girls who witness the disappearance of another young girl, although none of them can remember the face of the man who took her. The murdered girl's mother blames them and curses them all to do penance for their crime in not remembering. I'm in the middle of the five films, so I suppose I should have waited until the end, but I'm so far behind in my posts that I took the opportunity to mention Penance, although it's more of a placeholder at this point. At this point I'd say it's worth checking out, although I don't know if I would give it a glowing recommendation yet. More later.

Hell Heat

 Happily, the weather has broken here a bit. In fact, it has even rained three times this week, which is apparently the first rain that Terrasini had received since a sprinkling on 9 May. We're at the stage now where the high is in the low 80s, although the temperature difference between high and low is astonishingly small (often as little as seven degrees). When we arrived in middle August we suffered through a series of 98 degree days, with a heat index routinely around 110. That alone doesn't begin to explain how routinely miserable it was, mainly because the sun, in a cloudless sky, was simply unrelenting. Just brutal. 

There's just something about this picture, which I snapped one night on the lungomare when we first started taking our evening passegiata. It looks like we're all being queued up to be fed to the ravenous sun god (which is sort of what Sicily is like in July and August). 

Need Bread?

 This odd picture reminds me, in an appropriately strange way, of the United Arab Emirates. I sometimes will try to explain to my friends that in the truly posh Emirati malls there were vending machines where you could buy small gold ingots; you know, for those days when you're shopping and you really feel you should bring home some gold. I'm not certain that my friends believe me, although I've shown them pictures (and, for that matter, it's celebrated somewhere on the pages of this blog, infirm with years and creaking under the weight of over three-thousand posts). In this case the vending machine wasn't dispersing gold ingots, but instead bread. I haven't tried it yet, but I'll let you know if it's good.

Because you know, when you really need some bread, walking on the backstreets of Terrasini, at three o'clock in the morning.

Movies in 2026 243

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (Lou Adler, 1982)

Here's one of those movies that I had always heard about, but never actually taken the opportunity to watch: Lou Adler's 1982 Ladies and Gentlemen, the Famous Stains. I mainly associate Adler with the music industry, so I guess it's not that strange that he would have directed this effort. It didn't receive much initial love, although critics have been kinder in their criticism over the decades. Mainly, today, it's odd to see how Diane Lane and Laura Dern haven't aged, and how Ray Winstone has aged (although he's, typically very good in this movie). It's the story of Lane's band as she, chameleon-like, searches for the right persona to make it big. I don't think I would recommend it heartily, but there are some nice peculiar moments, and you could do worse things with your time. 

Oranges

 Here's a picture of Janet not stealing an orange on the walk home the other day.  We're still trying to adjust to a very different climate, one that features palm trees and oranges and prickly pears (I'll tell that story soon) - as compared to evergreen and tons of snow.

Janet is mainly mugging for her husband here, and not actually swiping oranges. Plus, the orange is about a month shy of being ripe. And we're not even talking about the famous Sicilian blood orange, which won't ripen until mid-winter.

Movies in 2026 242

 

Summer 1993 (Carla Simon, 2017)

And another Carla Simon movie, and I liked this one quite a bit as well. This film, earlier than her recent film Romeria, explores a similar earlier event: the time right after her father and mother died of AIDS. This one, Summer 1993, covers the time when she as a young girl moves to live with her uncle's family. It is very touching, and also gets at the paranoia relating to the early days of the AIDS years. Highly recommended.

Movies in 2026 241

 

Romeria (Carla Simon, 2025)

I don't know if I'll recapture the film-watching momentum that I had earlier in the year (waiting out the Vermont winter is a great impetus to watch movies, exploring a beautiful new Sicilian world less so), but I'm happy to finally get wifi and access once again to movies. The other day I watched Carla Simon's new film, Romeria, and was very impressed. Carla Simon is a very talented Spanish director, and one of those folks that I would have never discovered without the Criterion Channel. The film is a semi-autobiographical account of a young woman trying to uncover the truth (in an almost Proustian fashion) of the mysteries and family lies surrounding the death of her parents from AIDS. It's very powerful, and highly recommended.

The View from the End of the Lane

 Our apartment here in Terrasini is an odd little place. It's not that it's bad, per se, and there are parts of it which are really nice. It was recently renovated and it's pretty solid. The problem is that it's a tiny one bedroom, which simply doesn't begin to serve the needs of two people who are either working/writing or writing. Plus, it's down near the water in the midst of the old fishermen's village, which is charming, and I love it, but it also leaves a twenty-minute walk up the hill to go shopping or find any shops. This wouldn't be a problem if you aren't a sixty-six year old man who walks with a cane (although I'm getting around better than I thought I would). However, the biggest problem may simply be something which would be hard to fix: it's a first floor apartment, which means that there's no balcony and the doors/windows are covered with frosted glass. We often feel like Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner, part of this great experiment. We could be anyplace in the world for all we'd ever know from inside the apartment. However, then you'll open the door, turn left, and there's the Mediterranean Sea (which, oddly, makes the painfully sanitized environment inside the apartment even worse). Yes, in many ways this qualifies as the very definition of #FirstWorldProblem, but it's still not what we were hoping for. So, I guess I'll stick with too far too walk to buy groceries as the biggest reason why we're moving to a different apartment later in the month.

Here's the view from the end of our little lane. It's an amazing world that almost startles us every day when we open up the door and escape the science experiment.

Movies in 2026 240

 

Pigs and Battleships (Shohei Imamura, 1962)

And I'm way behind in my year-long capture of movies watched, not so much in movies recorded, but instead on movies watched. Just recently I started downloading movies from the Criterion Channel, in lieu of streaming (for the last month we've acted as wifi vampires at several local coffeeshops. The first movie I downloaded was Shohei Imamura's essential 1962 film Pigs and Battleships. It's a film I've watched many times, not only because I used it in my Japanese film noir class, but also because it is a wonderful film. Essential viewing.

Made It

 Well, that was a challenge, but we made it. Actually, we arrived here in Terrasini on 13 August, it just took a month to get wireless set up. But, much more on that later. It's enough right now to mark that we're here safe and sound. Many, many more stories to come.

I snapped this on one of our first mornings here, looking back over the harbor towards the mountains. Our apartment is in the midst of those white houses up on the hill. Again, much more later.

Movies in 2026 239

 

Un Carnet de Bal (Julien Duvivier, 1937)

Last night I once again delved into the Julien Duvivier collection on the Criterion Channel, and once again I was not disappointed. Un Carnet de Bal didn't feel quite like some of Duvivier's classic poetic realism films, but it was still quite good. Marie Bell stars as Christine Surgere, a recent and young widow who fells that life now has no meaning, while also coming to grips with the fact that she'd been lonely her entire married life. She decides to pursue men who had signed her dance card on her first ball when she was sixteen years old, beginning an odyssey populated by old (hopeful) lovers, played by a legion of famous French actors: Harry Baur (as Alain Regnault), Pierre Blanchar (as Thierry Raynal). Fernandel (as Fabien Coutissol), Louis Jouvet (as Pierre Verdier), etc. You see this structure fairly often as told from the male perspective, so it was interesting to see it told from a woman's perspective. Her discovered former dance partners - romanticized in her memory and imagination - are leading very different lifestyles, some quite life-affirming and some quite disturbing. The ending is both redemptive and more than a bit disturbing. Highly recommended.

Movies in 2026 238

 

Any Number Can Win (Henri Verneuil, 1963)

The other night I rewatched a film that showcased the alpha and omega of French cinematic cool: Jean Gabin and Alain Delon. They starred together (in, I think, for the only time) in the classic heist film Any Number Can Win. The film focuses on Mister Charles (Gabin), a wizened and world weary criminal just out of jail, and his impetuous young partner (Francis Verlot), who try one last big score. It ends badly, mainly because of some bad luck (as had haunted Mister Charles on his two other failed scores) but mainly because of the headstrong carelessness of Francis. The ending is classic, and is the relationship between these two legendary French actors. Highly recommended.

Chipmunk Waffle Waffle Chipmunk

 All relationships - immediate family or friends or with your significant other - all have their own language, developed organically over time. Janet and I will often ask each other, "So, are you getting in the box?", which is a reference to the classic Italian film Mafioso. It essentially means, are you in or not? - or have you been drawn into something against your will? If you're not in on the formation of the linguistic shorthand it sounds like gibberish. Back in college my friends, when discussing beautiful women, would say, "She's some of it," which eventually evolved into "She's most of it," or "She's a remarkably high percentage of it." I don't think any of us remember who came up with the phrase - or, for that matter, exactly what "it" was. For years my Champlain friends and I would always say "phrasing" whenever anyone said something, unintentionally, which could be interpreted sexually. This was a direct reference to the TV show Archer, and we used the term faithfully, even folks who had never seen an episode. Recently, on one of my Thursday sleepovers at Kevin's, we were talking about the Minnesota radio station that Kevin loves (the one that has the They Might Be Giants marathon, that Kevin fixes his schedule around - like a true fan, he takes the day off from work to listen). Kevin will email them quite a bit, and they sometimes respond online, and I'm always telling him that I can foresee this as his post-retirement gig. Anyway, he was telling me about the teenage daughter of one of the station's biggest supporters, who will share emoticons as reviews of restaurants and movies (probably trying to help the terminally uncool older folks become slightly more cool). One of them was to type in Chipmunk Waffle Waffle Chipmunk, which was, at least at that moment, the highest ranking you could get. This quickly became shorthand between us on a text chain to affirm our support for a proposed plan.

This picture could stan in for a lot of the Thursday night excellence - watching the Phillies or CFL or listening to music. I can't tell you how much I'm going to miss this guy.

I have no idea why Chipmunk Waffle Waffle Chipmunk equates with highest approval rating, but it has become a standard means of communication - at least between two old dudes.

Movies in 2026 237

 

The Red Balloon (Albert Lamorisse, 1956)

For years I've heard of Albert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon but had somehow never seen it. Thankfully, the Criterion Channel never gives up on the exhausting chore of educating me (again, growing up in Indiana is hard to overcome). Last night I was finally able to watch it, and what a treasure it is. It tells the story of a young boy (played Lamorisse's son Pascal) who discovers a beautiful red balloon, who follows him around Paris. So many adults and other jealous children try to take the balloon away, and in the end finally destroy it. This leads to all the other balloons in Paris arriving and flying Pascal away. It's an extraordinary allegory of a child's innocence and hope and attraction to beauty, in the face of a cold materialistic world. There's also definitely a spiritual theme playing itself out. Essential viewing.

Movies in 2026 236

 

Pauline at the Beach (Eric Rohmer, 1983)

I know I've admitted before that I'm not that huge of a fan of French New Wave, which is probably more of a testament to my total lack of sophistication. The significance of the French New Wave is undeniable, but I simply go back and forth of so many of the films - loving some films from Jean-Luc Godard and Agnes Varda and Francois Truffaut and Jacques Demy and Alain Resnais, but also being left quite cold by others. Essentially, maybe I'll just fall back on the tried and true, I respect their work immense, but I just don't consistently like it. Similarly, I've been slow to come to the works of Eric Rohmer, and he, I think more than the others, is almost a day to day reflection of what kind of mood I'm in. Sometimes I think, "Please, for the love of god, will you just stop talking," and other days I'll think, "He's really sharing some essential truth here." Last night I re-watched his 1983 film Pauline at the Beach, which I liked a lot more than my first viewing. It focuses on fifteen year old Pauline (played by Amanda Langlet) who tries to figure out life and love and sex, and also why all of the actual adults in the film are such assholes. I would definitely recommend it.