The stuff that dreams are made of
Spent last night watching Turner Classic Movies. They played Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon in tribute to Peter Lorre. I'd forgotten how good Lorre is in The Maltese Falcon. They were talking before the start of the film how the director had been a fan of his, but even he was blown away by the rushes. One of my friends used to live in Dashiel Hammett's old apartment, and I've been to the corner of Stockton and Bush where Archer gets shot. (There's even a plaque on the wall there.) It's a little different than it appears in the film, but I somehow doubt they drove all the way up to San Francisco for shooting on location.
Casablanca surprised me with how much I liked it--for some reason I'd never seen the whole thing before. There's a ton of stuff going on, what with the looming spectre of the Nazis, the desperate search by a Hungarian couple for a visa to America, the love triangle between Rick, Ilsa, and Lazlo. Often made reference to, but sorta like how James Cagney never said, "You dirty rat," Humphrey Bogart never says, "Play it again, Sam." I did have an overwhelming urge for smoking and drinking by the end, of course.
Today we've been to breakfast, where the Kerry/Edwards button on my jacket prompted a nice conversation with one of the locals (Hi, Chris!) in the diner about the debates, how Bush is running the country into the ground, etc. There's a streak in Republicans that says they have the best handle on policy and thought because their wealth (on the whole) allows them more schooling, but the Teamster we talked to today had a better grasp of economics and labor policy than Alan Greenspan or Reagan/Bush and their voodoo economics.
The next debate after the Vice-Presidential snaps contest is domestic policy. I am going to love to see Bush attempt to explain how giving Bill Gates $90,000 to spend on outsourcing jobs to India is going to help the economy more than giving working families an extra $1500 to spend on fixing their houses and buying durable goods. (Most of the Bush tax "cut" goes to the richest 2%, who don't need it. The majority of Americans get about $200 in fed tax reduction, which then gets taken away in increased local taxes, increased cost of living, etc. He's putting money in your back pocket and taking it out of your front pocket.)
