"I tell you, the past is a bucket of ashes." (Sandberg)

...Tuesday is Rhoda's Canasta game. Canasta is the big game around here and it requires a minimum of effort. I also like to play that game, but I don't have a regular day for it. Once in a while we both play with neighbors on this catwalk; (that is, we don't play on the catwalk; but with the neighbors in their kitchen). Well, while RH+ is playing, I sometimes just go to a movie by myself--which is what I did today. I went to see a movie called "Taken". It's about this ex-CIA or Special Forces guy whose seventeen year old daughter is kidnapped while trying to follow a band across Europe with her friend, who is also kidnapped by the slave traders. The kidnappers are Albanian guys who sell girls to the highest bidder--who are usually well-heeled Sheiks. This doesn't sit well with the father who flies to Europe in order to rescue his daughter. Of course he finds the Albanians and uses his karate skills and a gun to kill about two dozen of them. The film doesn't exactly show these skills, but Pop finally finds his daughter in bed with a Sheik just about to be deflowered. He shoots the Sheik and takes his daughter home to her mother and step father.

...This is a 21st Century action movie. But I wonder what happened to movies like "It Happened one Night" or "Gone With the Wind" or "Tarzan the Ape Man"? I do miss movies with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. No one can dance like they do--even the dancers on that TV show. Those "dancers" are more like acrobats. Fred and Ginger were real dancers. So, like Petrucchio sings in "Kiss Me Kate" ..."Where is the life which late I read, where is it now? Totally dead." I mean, lets bring back Charley Chaplin and the Marx brothers. But movies aren't the only arts that have disappeared. Whatever happened to the guy who wheeled a cart along the street and who scraped ice and syrup into your paper cup? What happened to pinochle? To ringalivio and Johnny on the pony? To ten steps to Germany? Hide and Seek? Spin the bottle? Stickball? Well, I'm afraid they all have disappeared for good. Kids are too busy sending text messages on their Ipods, their PCs or whatever to play better games.