So, how was your Thanksgiving?
Used to be that the 'Fesser and the cinetrix would find ourselves, on winter holidays, piloting a car through a blinding snowstorm, considering holing up behind the New Hampshire state liquor store and warming ourselves with bourbon as we vainly attempted, yet again, to MAKE EVERYBODY HAPPY[TM] by trying to be in multiple places at once. Of course, with the 'Fesser's dad now part of the celestial imperium, the cinetrix wouldn't trade a fuckin' moment, snow be damned, but there were times when it was pretty grim.
Or so I thought, until I had to relinquish myself to the airlines. Oh, airlines. Seriously--what the fuck? I've seen better run bar fights. The 'Fesser and I started off our travels faced with a cancelled flight, which pooched our subsequent flight and, well, I don't have to tell you. An hour late, we were booked on an entirely different airline to a different city. Boston, to be precise. Which meant we took the jitney [not that one] on our final leg to home and hearth.
I've extolled the virtues of this particular outfit elsewhere on Pullquote, with its civilized no-cell phone policy [that's right. No inane "I'm on the bus" overheard calls], free bottled waters and bagged pretzels, and even electrical outlets for ye olde laptop. This operation also offers a movie, so you can imagine the cinetrix's bemused delight when she learned the evening's prescient entertainment would be A Prairie Home Companion, a scant two days after Altman left us.
I hadn't seen it, and I doubt I ever would have under other circumstances. See, I hate that toad-faced, smug scourge of the public airwaves [you may know him as Garrison Keillor] so much that the 'Fesser and I often find ourselves leaping through space and time, Matrix bullet-stizz, to shut off the radio the moment the simpy American Public Media music begins. But, I was on a bus [cue Replacements, if we must work the Twin Cities vibe. Mmmmm.... 'Mats].
So I watched. And, I'll admit it, I cried. See, in the middle of the final broadcast of this hokey midwestern radio show, someone dies. Someone who's had a good long run of it, but still. The cinetrix remembers reading in all of the Altman eulogizing that this one was about death, you know, so she wasn't totally unprepared. But when Chuck Akers shuffles off whilst awaiting his lady love, I lost it. It'd been a long day, and we were on our way to the first Thanksgiving without the 'Fesser's dad. So I wept, quietly, wearing headphones on a northbound bus.
I often tell my students that the how of watching a movie is in many ways as important as the what and the why. Most of the time I mean to emphasize to slackers that the screenings are not optional. But I really do believe it. And it was all brought home to me on that goddamned bus.
So, thanks, Mister Altman. I thought the bits with Virginia Madsen were mostly awful, but you got me with Chuck's passing. And I needed it right then, Garrison Keillor be damned.
My father-in-law was a big NPR supporter and a fan of selected bad jokes, so it seems kinda fitting to leave you back where we began:
Dusty: Hey, uh... hey, Lefty. What did the elephant say to the naked man?
Lefty: What'd he say?
Dusty: It's cute, but can you really breathe through that thing?
Me, I always step on the punchline.
