Thursday, April 16, 2009

Full circle

Today being my day off, I planned on going to the Samsung Lions game, even though I expect to see a game Sunday. That may seem redundant, but there's no reruns in baseball.

Anyway, it's cool and damp and breezy today, the game wouldn't be over till 9:30 or so, and shivering alone isn't as much fun as it's cracked up to be, so I caved and went to a movie instead.

I saw "Duplicity" with Julia Roberts. That is, she didn't go with me; she was in the movie. Almost all American movies that are shown here just have their titles, in English pronunciation, transliterated into Korean. This one, though, was retitled "Dual Spies", then transliterated. Be that as it may, maybe I've gotten too critical-- I always enjoy going to the movies, alone or otherwise, but I sure have seen a bunch of movies lately (e.g. Valkyrie and He's Just Not That Into You) that I have to admit were pretty good, but I didn't especially like. This one is certainly well made, but not fun enough to be a caper movie, not romantic enough to be a romance, and not with a clear enough plot to be suspenseful.

I never did think that Julia Roberts was all that attractive, except on the poster for Pretty Woman, and that wasn't even her body. She's no "how the hell does anybody think she's attractive" case like Sarah Jessica Parker, but unlike me, she's not getting any more gorgeous with age.

Speaking of which, it didn't occur to me until I was on the way down the endless escalators through the empty store beneath the theater that in 1990, when I went to meet friends in Iowa, see the Field of Dreams and stop off for games at Tiger Stadium and Wrigley Field, that I had tickets to see a game at Comiskey Park before they tore it down, and just as I drove into Chicago, I heard on the radio that the game had been postponed, even though it hadn't rained for several hours.

And what did I do on that cool, damp, breezy spring day nineteen years ago in Schaumberg, Illinois in lieu of going to the ballgame? I went to see Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Plus ca change, plus ca la meme chose.

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