Weekend wrap-up.

(Apologies to other Pony fans if I just gave anyone an earworm with my post title....)

Classes start tomorrow. Posts will probably come mid-morning for the next few weeks as I teach from 8 am until 10:45 am, and then have afternoon labs two days a week. I will need that 7 to 8 am hour to prep...

I knit a bit more on the various projects, some on the Hitchhiker scarf, some on the "Carousel" socks (and I really, really like the self-striping on this yarn; it's very pretty).

I'm contemplating "next sweaters." I do need to finish the Basketweave pullover some time, but I also want to start something new. I have it narrowed down to Norah Gaughan's Boxed Raglan (for which I bought the Berroco Lodge back this winter), the Tilted Duster (also a Norah Gaughan pattern! I guess I really like her designs), or the simple boxy sweater in Jane Brocket's knitting book. Ironically, all of the yarns I have for these are similar in shade - pale green for the boxy sweater, duck-egg green for the Tilted Duster, and sort of a deeper, jasper-green for the Boxed Raglan.

At this moment, I'm leaning towards doing a couple super-simple sweaters this summer - good for invigilating knitting, good for knitting while reading - I think I'll start the Boxed Raglan soon, and do the sweater from Jane Brocket's book after that. Both of these use a heavy-worsted to bulky weight yarn and so should be faster knits. (Or perhaps I'll work on those, and try to finish Basketweave, and then start the tilted duster....)

I also watched a couple movies this weekend - last night was "The Three Amigos" which I class in the "dumb but funny" genre (I like movies that are kind of dumb but that have their funny moments). Martin Short dancing at the fiesta got the biggest laugh out of me this go-round (It was a modification of his Ed Grimley dance...), but the "My Little Buttercup" bit and the "plethora of pinatas" discussion are also still entertaining.

Friday night I happened to catch "A New Leaf." This is a slightly older (1971) movie. I'd been wanting to see it for a while after someone mentioned that Warren Wagner (who had been my Systematic Botany prof, and who was my mom's Systematic Botany prof before me, may he rest in peace) was mentioned in it. (Yes, a weird reason for wanting to see a movie, but there aren't that many movies that reference well-known botanists).

In short: Walter Matthau plays Henry Graham, a dissolute playboy who can't really do anything much other than spend money (He drives a Ferrari that is always in the shop, dines at the club, has custom-tailored suits....) He finds he has run through his inheritance and his uncle gives him a loan on the condition that he has to marry within six weeks or else pay back ten times the amount. Well, Harry, being fairly much a scoundrel, hatches a plan: He will find an heiress, marry her, and then bump her off in such a way that no one would suspect him....and therefore, get her money without the pain of being married. (It is made clear that Harry is so selfish and self-centered that the thought of anyone around - especially a wife - horrifies him. At one point he whines about how she would be around, touching his artwork and messing with his life).

Well, after a couple false starts, he finds Henrietta Lowell, played by Elaine May. She is a shy, unconfident, intellectual, and socially graceless woman. (For all of my nattering about being socially awkward, I don't begin to touch Henrietta, the way May played her - for one thing, I can eat a meal without covering myself in crumbs). Henrietta is SO naive and so innocent to the ways of the world that she seems an easy conquest. Henry begins boning up on botany and biology (Henrietta, for all her wealth, teaches botany and does research at a small college) so he can impress her.

He is nearly running out of time, though - so after three days  (and two dates) he asks her to marry him. And, because she is the naive sort she is, she immediately says yes. (I think of myself, and how my response would be more on the order of, "Back the truck up, Lothario....after two dates?")

At one point Henry refers to her as "feral" - "Never have I seen one woman in whom every social grace was so lacking. Did I say she was primitive? I retract that. She's feral." Heh. Again....I see a little of myself in Henrietta (never-married, botanist, perhaps more than a little unworldly), but I would definitely say I was NOT "feral."

But Henry overcomes those objections.So they marry, and Henry begins reading a book on poisons, figuring some kind of pesticide could be made to look convincingly like an accident. But on their honeymoon, she discovers a new fern species, which she eventually names for him....Once they return home, he begins to look at her accounts and discovers her indolent staff of servants (hired by her lawyer, himself a crook) are padding their accounts.

So he fires 'em all, takes over the books himself, hires new, honest servants...he also begins to do her taxes. (Heh, he is shown in one scene using a JK Lasser tax book. Oh, I remember that: my dad used to use them every year for assistance in doing his taxes before he started using a program to do the taxes. I don't know if Lasser was a general guide or specific to college professors; I know there was one out there subtitled "Tax Guide for College Professors" that my dad used....)

He's still thinking murder, though - but is stymied when her old gardener tells him that she has him garden on the organic principle - no pesticides - "and it works, too!"

Before I resort to some spoilers - and in the next paragraph or so, you might want to skip it if you wish to avoid spoilers - I will note it was odd to see Walter Matthau, who I tend to think of as playing Oscar Madison type roles, playing a supposedly refined playboy. He did try to put on a Cary Grant type accent but I think it had limited success. (Elaine May seemed a lot more believable as the klutzy Henrietta). 

Oh, and the Warren Wagner reference - it's in there, very briefly. Henrietta mentions sending her purported new fern species off to "Wagner, at the University of Michigan...." and that's him. (Apparently a botanist was consulted for the movie to provide correct equipment - she carries a plant press like I do, and she also had one of those cool old tin oval boxes people used to carry for specimens they didn't want to press).

After here be spoilers:

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One thing I personally liked about the movie was that in its own way, it was a story of redemption. As time passes, Henry becomes more able to do things - he manages the household accounts, he does the taxes - things he had never taken care of before. And Henrietta becomes happier and more confident with him.

But there's still the question of whether he will go through with his original dastardly plan. Shortly before her summer field trip - on which she invites Henry, and he winds up fairly miserable on it - she floats the idea of his teaching history, seeing as his college degree was in history. She talks enthusiastically about how they could drive to school together in the mornings, how they could grade papers together in the faculty lounge....and, sigh, that's an image of a life I'd like to have had, if things had worked out differently. (It was how my parents did it, at least until my mother interrupted her career to be a stay at home mom).

Anyway, Henry demurs - perhaps he is still thinking of ending her life. And then, on the trip, the opportunity presents itself - like idiots, they have gone canoeing without life vests, and also like an idiot, Henrietta has gone out in a canoe even though she cannot swim. Predictably, the canoe tips over, he makes it to shore, leaving her clinging to a snag, and he briefly contemplates letting her drown. But then he sees an individual of the fern he named for her.....and he goes out into the river and saves her, and the movie ends with the two of them planning that cozy dual-professorial life that I mentioned before. And there's just such a sweetness to that (even if, yes, Henry was planning murder a few moments before...) And there is that redemption of the former useless playboy into someone who can take care of money, and on some level protect his wife (by firing the crooked staff), and who eventually, it is assumed, will become a good Instructor of History.....