Sink Me!

Back in the halcyon days of 1982, the Barger family had been on the VCR bandwagon for a while because Dad worked for RCA and when VCR’s first came out in the mid-to late-70’s, he was able to get one and pay for it through payroll deduction.   Consequently, when the “Made for TV” movie of the book, The Scarlet Pimpernel, starring Anthony Andrews and Jane Seymour was advertised, we set said VCR to record the movie.  I’m guessing that we were away from the house for some reason the night it was on because I don’t know why else we would have recorded it – I doubt we had a premonition of the vital importance the movie would play in our lives – and it wasn’t like now where I record everything just in case I’m not going to be able to watch it live. 

Now, some of you out there may know the story.  We recorded this movie, mostly because at the time I had a thing for Anthony Andrews similar to the thing I currently have for Gerard Butler.  We watched it - it’s a really enjoyable movie!  And we watched it again.  And again.  When I say “we,” I’m pretty much referring to me and Holly, who was, even though she was “away” at UE, she was close enough to be home every so often, and you have to remember, kids, this was back in the days before cable.  There were literally the three networks and PBS.  So if there was nothing on, “Hey, let’s watch the Scarlet Pimpernel!”

For those of you who either a) know that I have another sister; or b) are savvy enough to have read my Cast of Characters on the right of this page, yes, there is another sister - Haley.  But she went “away” to school at DePauw in Greencastle and I know from my own painful, personal experience, having attended DPU for a couple of years myself, it was too far for casual visits home (or vice versa – humpf!).  I’m sure we shared this Masterpiece-of-Made-for-TV-Moviedom with Haley, but I don’t recall that she quite appreciated it (at least not at the time) for the work of art that it truly is.  I am sure that she has since drunk the Kool-Aid and adores the movie like the rest of the family, but…  My point is, I’m not purposefully excluding her from this story.  Back to the main plot.  

Now, for a little background, as it were, regarding The Scarlet Pimpernel:

The Scarlet Pimpernel is a piece of “classical literature.”  As we’ve discussed previously, I’m shallow, so I don’t really like “deep” thoughts or the type of literature that inspires them.  But this is my kind of “literature” with “the odd death-defying leap and a modest amount of dental torture” along with beheadings and such.  Written by the Baroness Emma Orczy.  It takes place during the French Revolution.  Oddly enough, another of my favorite pieces of “literature” takes place during this time period – A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens – so I’m thinking that makes me a blood-thirsty thing.  Hmm.. another topic for therapy?  Or, maybe I should just start a list of words that describe me.  I’ve got two so far:  “shallow” and “blood-thirsty.”   

Anyway, the hero is Sir Percy, an Englishman, who disguises himself and his band of merry men and traipses into Revolutionary France and rescues some of the French aristocrats from getting their noggins knocked off on the guillotine.  Meanwhile he meets and falls in love with a French actress, marries her, thinks she had someone sent to the chopper, so he has to hide his true (?) identity from her lest she send him to the chopper.  Misunderstandings ensue until it all comes out in the end.  (NOTE: I do NOT like books/stories/movies, etc that do not end happily.)

Enough background, back to the future!  Or, 1982.  Holly and I, and probably some varying combo of the ‘Rents proceed to watch this movie time and time again.  I can’t really say how many times we watched it through completely, I’d guess about 20 times, knowing that it was probably more like between 5 and 10.  At some point, Dad said that enough was enough and decreed that we were going to tape over this movie.  Now, keep in mind, it was a three hour movie (with commercials).  At first, we might have taped over the first hour (say, for example, an episode of Magnum PI).  Later, we would watch that episode of Magnum, and when it was over, the movie would pick up an hour into it, and we’d watch it to the end!  I have no clue how long this went on or how many times we proceeded to watch the continuously shortened.   I do know that at one point, there was only 15 minutes of the movie left.  The thing was, after enough time went by, it got to the point where we didn't realize which tape it was, so whenever we came across those precious 15 minutes, there was joy and happy laughter, and we’d plop down immediately and finish the movie.  Ultimately, the whole movie was taped over or the tape shredded or whatever.  Obviously I now own it on DVD.

I’m not the type of person who can quote movies or television shows.  I’ve always been sort of in awe of people who can.  I have a lot of esoterica in my brain, but there's no room for memorizing stuff like that.  However, this is one movie that I can quote – one of my favorite quotes being, “..the north country in the middle of the night?  How bizarre.”  (I realize that probably meant nothing to most of you, but certain members of my family were chuckling as they read that.)

One other cool aspect of the movie is that it stars an incredibly young looking Ian McKellen.  To many, he may be Gandalf and/or Magneto.  To me he's the baddie who gets outwitted by the Scarlet Pimpernel!

There is more to my epic tale of the Scarlet Pimpernel, but I'm thinking this may be better as a two-parter, so I'll just end it here with a final quote from the movie:

They seek him here.   

They seek him there. 

Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.  

Is he in Heaven? Or is he in Hell?  

 That damned, elusive Pimpernel!

Review - The Bounty Hunter

(Disclaimer: If you haven’t seen this movie, there may be information in this review that might be considered a “spoiler” - although I consciously try not to put major spoiler info in my reviews. Proceed with caution.)

The Bounty Hunter is Gerard Butler's most recent movie and my regular readers know that my best fiend, Jennifer and I ALWAYS go out to eat and then go see the new GB movie – it’s a tradition! So Friday night (opening day), with full tummies and tickets in hand, we were ready for the movie!

First, let me interject that his last several movies have not been my favorites.

• The Ugly Truth – well, I don’t really care for Kathryn Hiegel, and I didn’t really like his character, although I liked him somewhat by the end of the movie, but frankly, the two characters spent so much of the movie being rotten (in general and to each other) that I didn’t care if they got together in the end or not. That’s not to say there weren’t funny moments - I did buy the DVD to place in the Gerard Butler wing of my DVD collection.


• Next came The Gamer – and it wasn’t bad. In fact, I recently watched it for the second time (this time on DVD) and I enjoyed it more. But again, it wasn’t as good as the movies that I fell in love with him were. (Did that make sense?)


• Law Abiding Citizen – to be honest, Jennifer and I didn’t go see this one. I bought the DVD, but haven’t watched it yet. I can’t judge. But the reviewers weren’t kind.

So back to The Bounty Hunter. I’ve seen previews for this movie, seen GB on Letterman and Regis, and I had very high hopes. And I like Jennifer Aniston. I even figure that if GB isn’t going to come sweep me off my feet and run away with me, I can be the bigger woman (after all, I AM the bigger of the two of us) and let her have him. What was my point? Oh, yes, I like her, so already this movie has more going for it than The Ugly Truth and P.S. I Love You (great book, so-so movie).

Now that I’ve rambled on sufficiently, how was the movie, you ask. It was really very good. It was funny, and touching, and not horribly predictable. We got to see GB wearing nothing but a towel!

Jennifer Aniston played Nicole, a reporter who was arrested for assaulting a police officer (don’t worry, there were very extenuating circumstances) and when the pursuit of a news story results in her missing her court hearing, her bail is revoked and GB’s character (Milo) is the former cop/current bounty hunter assigned to bring her in. As it turns out, Nicole and Milo also used to be married to each other and are now divorced. As you can see, there is plenty of room for hilarity to ensue!

By now, I’m sure everyone’s seen the clip of him finding her at the race track, but that was just one of the many funny moments in the course of his trying to catch her: he laid in wait for her at her apartment and tracked mud all over, ate Doritos and smudged Dorito fingers on her pristine white bedspread; he stuffed her in the trunk of his car; she lit his trunk on fire with a flare (who actually keeps flares in their trunk?), etc. While Milo is bringing her back to custody, bad guys make their appearance and try to kill Nicole, thus dragging Milo into her news story investigation.

Long rambling review short, The Bounty Hunger was a really good movie. It will definitely be a welcome addition to the Gerard Butler wing of my DVD collection. Two opposable thumbs up!

... Where Shall I Go, What Shall I Do? - Scarlett O'Hara

My aunt drives me crazy! She travels all over the world as a part of her job and feels free to email me pics of her travels when she daw-gone knows that I want to travel too. My current goal in life is to get a stamp in my new (but as of yet not used) passport!

The other day, she e-mailed me pictures from her current vacation on the beach in Florida. She tried to downplay how wonderful it was by saying it was cold and damp, but I could tell she was having a good time. And since it was 32 degrees here, I'm pretty sure I'd have swapped with her in a heartbeat despite how "cold" it was there.

Sometime this spring, she and mom are contemplating going out to San Diego to visit one of their sisters. I've been invited along, but I don't think I'll go because 1) Been there, done that (refer to my as of yet mental blog regarding the infamous train trip with Grandma Hollis out to San Diego); second, someone really ought to hang at home and take care of the livestock; and C) I have my own vacation plans in mind. (mwa-ah-ah-ah!)

I, Rosemary, am going to go somewhere this year. I have suggested to my fiend Jennifer who has not really had a vacation in several years, that she leave her hubby for a week or so and go on a Thelma and Louise-style trip with me (only without the driving off a cliff part - unless we get a rental... hmm.. mental note: investigate car rental rates) preferrably to the beach because we're both in need of some rest and relaxation. I don't know if she'll actually do it, but I've decided that since I'm now living rent-free and putting considerable bucks in my savings account, either way, Rose is going to take a vacation.

So where would I like to go? Well, the following list is my list of ideal vacations:

1) Egypt. Somewhere in the middle of reading Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody series, I decided that if I had to do it all again, I'd become an archeologist. Now, I readily admit that I don't like bugs, dirt, sweat, heat, mud, snakes, spiders, or the idea of working in a country where there are those who might be ideologically opposed to me, but I'm pretty sure that I'd have been a great archeologist. Probably would have found a tomb that would put ol'King Tut's to shame by now. But I digress. Since I can't do it all over and since I don't like bugs, dirt, sweat, etc, I'll have to go as a tourist. I'd love to see the Pyramids at Giza and the Sphinx. Just think of the blogs about that trip! Holly has told me she'd go with me, as she enjoys those books, too. Ah, excuse me while I Google the price of pith helmets!

2) The Beach. I came to the epiphany a while ago that I was meant to be born to sea-faring folk, or at a minimum to folk who live by the sea. Not that I'm saying the good Lord messed up by giving me to my current fam, but I'm just saying that somewhere along the line my ancestors moved west when they should have stayed closer to the water. There is nothing more wonderful to me than slowly wandering up and down the beach, with the water coming in and wabbling over my footies. I can't swim and I don't like seafood, except for Captain D's or Long John Sliver's, but I just need to return to the beach every so often. After certain amount of time passes, something deep in my soul starts yearning to sit in the sand and listen to the waves as then crash in and then go back out. Sigh...

3) England. I want to go to Europe, but I only speak English. I took French my freshman year in high school, but then the teacher quit and they hired a Spanish teacher and I cheesed, so I was NOT going to take Spanish even if it killed me! Humpf! So then in college, I took two semesters of Italian with my roommate Janna. But I didn't take anymore because 1) that's all DePauw offered and B) I transferred to University of Evansville, which didn't offer it at all. Unfortunately now, 26 and 21 years later, respectively, I can't speak either French or Italian... although I can generally hold my own with a menu at the Olive Garden. So I guess my point is that for my first trek to Europe, I think I ought to go to a country where we speak the same language, relatively speaking. That and I do love history, so I would enjoy going to the Tower of London and go see where the Battle of Hastings was fought! If I went in August, I could go see the island where Princess Diana is buried! (Do they still open it up for tours in August?) Oh, and I could go to Mrs. Miggins' coffee shop! And of course, since I'd be that close, I'd have to run over to see Scotland (the birth place of my beloved Gerard Butler) and Ireland.

Variety is the Spice of Life, eh?

Ok, so it’s been a while since I was blogging. What follows is the variety-pack version of what’s been up with Rose:

Farmtown Addiction: I’m still severely addicted to Farmtown. And I got the Sibs addicted and they took their spouses’ Facebook accounts and created extra farms… which I think is cheating, by the way, but… And mom suggested that Farmtown might be something fun to entertain Dad, so we got him a Facebook account and a farm set up. And we all enjoyed chatting while harvesting each others’ crops. Now that Dad’s gone, we are continuing to farm his property and once we get him to level 28, where you can buy river bits, we are going to turn it into Fuzzbutt’s Memorial Garden. It’ll have rambling hills and a river, and trees and flowers and park benches and bunnies and cats wandering around. Dad would be proud.

Vampire Wars: Haley now has me and Holly addicted to another FB application – Vampire Wars. Not as involved as Farmtown, but still fun. But I logged on this morning and find out that someone put me on the hitlist! Why? I can only assume it was because I have a nasty habit of attacking more than twice. Haley says it’s ok to attack twice… and she has a habit of naming people to the hitlist, so I’d think she’d know. But yeah! Humpf.. I thought about tracking the person who put me on the hitlist down and killing her (figuratively speaking) but I decided to let it go. The best part of Vampire Wars is the minions:

Minions and Tiaras: Ok, my regular readers who commit my ramblings to memory will recall, no doubt, that for Christmas I humbly asked Santa for minions and a tiara among other things. Well my birthday was last week (#41 – only one year away from #42!!), and my boss’s wife (Shannon) and kids trotted into the office with a balloon flying and kazoos trumpeting and what to my wondering eyes should appear in the gift bag? A tiara!! and matching earrings. (Ok, they were the cheap-o kind you buy for kids, but I was thrilled!) I put the tiara on and wore it the rest of the day!

I broke one of the clip-on earrings trying to get it out of the package, but I quickly covered up my faux pas with the faux jewels so the kids wouldn’t notice. Shannon told me that she was sorry but she didn’t know where to get me minions, so I told her that that was ok because thanks to Vampire Wars I have plenty of minions! In fact, I’d gotten my first college fraternity just that morning! That earned me an odd look. :) My goal now is to get me a lawfirm – mwahahaha!! Steve (Boss#1) asked what their specialty was and if they were hiring. I don’t think he gets it.

My peeps at work took good care of me for my birthday. I honestly didn’t expect much, as they’d put on all but a 4-course meal for my 40th birthday last year. But I got to my desk and there were cookies, and donuts, and banana bread, and chips and salsa. It was, needless to say, not a Weight Watchers sponsored event. But it was my party so I ate what I wanted! Then mom came into to town that evening and we went to Logan’s for my birthday meal - the first of many upcoming events without Dad. And we cried a few tears, but for the most part we just had a good time talking.

The Friday after my b-day, my fiend, Jennifer, (whose birthday is the day before mine) and I took off work and spent the day together for a mutual celebration. We went to Absolute Beauty and I got a pedicure (see picture) and she got a massage (no picture available). Then we hit Yen Ching and dined on Crab Rangoon and Garlic Chicken. Now for years, our absolute favorite Chinese restaurant was the Panda, but it closed and we don’t know where the chef went…(I think we’d have followed him/her anywhere. But we’ve found a strong contender in Yen Ching. Although they don’t put enough spice/heat to it, so we have to order extra spicy. Which means we have to order LARGE glasses of ice water to drink!

After our delicious dinner, we went to go see the new Gerard Butler movie, The Ugly Truth. Now, I think I’ve mentioned in these pages before that I would pay to watch Gerard Butler read the dictionary for two hours… especially if he’s using his Scottish accent…(let’s say it together: “if it’s not Scottish, it’s CRAP!”). So with that in mind it was an enjoyable movie. The language was a bit blue at times, so it earned it’s R rating. Personally, I was hoping to see a little skin (his, not Katherine Heigl’s) for the R, but… It was predictable and your basic romantic comedy, so without GB, I’d have probably suggested we go see Harry Potter again, but with GB, the DVD will find its way to the Gerard Butler wing of my DVD collection. Heck if I still have the Tales of the Mummy movie where his character literally is killed in the first 3 minutes, I’ll get this one!