New Tricks, A Ticker, and Two Tickets

This weekend we made it to our second movie in the theatre since Wyatt has been born. We chose wisely. Breach was the movie - starring Chris Cooper, best known for his work in Adaption & Seabiscuit. The movie is based on actual events concerning America's most dangerous spy, who was only recently uncovered. The agent, Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper), is an enigma and a paradox. His public career, his family, his personal habits of devotion, even his ardent morality turns out to be nothing more than a sham. Beneath the surface, lie a great many demons, which he manages eerily to conceal: sexual perversion, pride, self-loathing, jealousy, anger. There is a great scene at the end of the movie where Chris Cooper is questioned by Dennis Haysbert (24/Allstate dude, who Anna and I sat next to while watching The Incredibles in Pasadena). Haysbert asked Cooper the question that drives a great deal of the viewer's interest: why? Why did Agent Hanssen go down a path of complete corruption? The scene is somewhat similar to the great dialogue between Brad Pitt and Kevin Spacey in Se7en.

You would really have to be a mature, reflective, aware person to pull off the performance Cooper does in this movie.

Something else reinforced my appreciation for actors/actresses today. I found myself watching a documentary on the making of Rocky. It seems rather absurd to think of Sly Stallone as a mature, reflective person, but he surely has to be. Watching the documentary proved as much to me. Granted, the overall course of the Rocky series eventually trailed further and further from true theatre. But, the first Rocky was a work of art; it was full of drama, complex characters, and, best of all, it didn't opt for an unrealistic ending.

Now, all I have to do is convince Anna it is worth watching. She doesn't quite believe that it really did win the Oscar for Best Film in 1976.

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I'm currently wearing a heart monitor, and early today, I had the opportunity to view my heart through the sketchy gray-tones of an ultra-sound machine. Hopefully, this brief examination of my heart will lead to no news. I recently saw a doctor for a physical (first one in about five years), and I mentioned that my heart seemed to go out of sync once in a blue moon. He didn't seem too concerned about it, but he did want to observe for safety sake.

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Bought, Lost: Season 2 on DVD this weekend. I have only watched the first four episodes, but three out of the four were fantastic. The first two seasons of Lost will go down in history as some of the best seasons of television.

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Made two more songs using Mac's Garageband: "Down" and "You Should Have Been There." I wish there were some way to broadcast these silly little diddies, but I don't think it is possible. So, the music will have to stay confined to the Kendall household, but I'll be happy to play them for anyone visitors willing to listen.

Wes