Here's Looking at You, Kid

Al
Originally uploaded by Tokyorosa

The Photo

This is our last cat standing. His name is Al.

I don't write much about my own pets unless something unusual happens (see also: Groucho getting cancer, chemotherapy, dying), as blogging about pets is one of the surest ways to prove to people that one has absolutely no life. The other way is, of course, to blog about one's children.

I'm telling you about Al because, given my entirely self-imposed rule of generally posting a photo I've taken in the past 24 hours, this is the only real option. I only took two photos yesterday and this photo of Al was the better choice.

Here was my other option:

So you see now why I went with Al. That's the condiment tray at Saigon Restaurant, the Vietnamese restaurant that Dave loves. I always have a number sixty-four. I call it a number sixty-four because I can't pronounce the Vietnamese name, and the English name is, sadly, "pork chop with egg roll (2)."

Target, or, As Time Goes By

A trip to Target netted me a copy of Casablanca. I feel about Casablanca the way many people feel about The Beatles' "White Album": I will, no matter the technology, always have a copy of it at hand.

Of course I have the video, but I got the DVD because the video is in storage and I wanted to watch the movie just to hear this exchange between Humphrey Bogart's Rick Blaine and Paul Henreid's Victor Lazlo:

Rick Blaine: I congratulate you.
Victor Lazlo: What for?
Rick Blaine: Your work.
Victor Lazlo: I try my best.
Rick Blaine: We all try. You succeed.

It's a small piece of the movie, but I love it. I love the way Bogart says it, I love the way Henreid catches it. I love the moment. Love it.

I also love Peter Lorre, the man who plays Ugarte.

You didn't click on the link, I know, which would have saved you from the trouble of my having to tell you that Lorre has been in a handful of movies that, if you haven't seen, you should. He was in Fritz Lang's 1931 filmM, a film made brilliant by Lorre's intense and much-lauded portrayal of a sexually psychopathic child murderer. Oh, we like to think that we've long since become inured to news of sexual psychopaths who rape and murder children, but this film, made over seventy-five years ago, will still shock you.

Lorre was favored by Alfred Hitchcock, who gave him a part in The Man Who Knew Too Much. He was also in The Maltese Falcon. I mean, you should know this man's work.

I went on a rather long Peter Lorre jag a couple of years ago and saw a slew of his movies, including one called Beat the Devil that had a moment that made me pause the film, I was laughing so hard. Beat the Devil was directed by John Huston. Nobody knows who John Huston is anymore--just as no one knows Peter Lorre.

Aside from the brilliant filmography, you should know Peter Lorre if only because of his experience with the House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee's 1940's investigation of Communists in Hollywood. Lorre was asked by investigators for a list of suspicious persons he had met since coming to the US from Hungary, so he produced a list of everyone he knew.

That's a classy guy right there.