Misremembered, Impressed and I Haz a Sad

johnnyeponymous posted on FB his love for a song I never heard of by a duo I'd never heard of. Looked it up on YouTube, tried to play it but the volume was too low. In the recommendations column to the right was the ending of San Francisco, the 1936 Gable/MacDonald classic. It's IMHO one of the greatest movies ever made, and at the same time puts Jeanette through some vaudeville contortions which I don't think were her style at all.

My remembery was that the end of the movie is her singing the title song along with half the population of the city as they look down on the smoking remnants. What I was remembering was her appearance earlier in the movie in a singing contest. Here's the finale:

The final 2 minutes is IMHO pure cinematographic genius. So I looked up the director. IMDB says his name was Woodbridge Strong Van Dyke II aka Woody Van Dyke. Turns out he also directed most of the Eddy/MacDonald movies which I adore, and The Thin Man series, The Prisoner of Zenda, The Prizefighter and the Lady and about 90 others. That ending reminded me of scenes from The Grapes of Wrath, which is why I looked him up. But that was John Ford, another master of the close-up.

I haz a sad because in his bio, it says Van Dyke stopped MacDonald from committing suicide when she heard Eddy had married, but Van Dyke himself committed suicide after he was diagnosed with cancer.

---

Late morning, skipped the shower. Spook was hiding until treats time. Hgl was in the low 90's.

Traffic was bad only getting onto 101, most of the trip was okay.

Lots of people in the break room at breakfast time, past their breakfast times, working in small groups again.

The HVAC folks were at it again, but do not appear to have made significant progress.

Lots more work with that sekrit projekt, and also managed to finish most of a smoke test on a tiny new STB.

Boss actually came by for sync, which is good because I now have 6 projects in my queue, and can only do 2 at once. Then she changed the  sekrit projekt from automated tests to manual tests, which means only 1 at a time. But she also added a bunch of tests to the smoke test spreadsheet. They are manual tests which use my skills well, so I'm happy to do them. After sekrit projekt I need to cut and paste a lot of URLs into my video testing app.

Lunch was also busy, a lot of the localization people came into the break room to grab drinks and make rude noises with the espresso machines. There was a very tall slender woman who was wearing a knee-length dress yesterday, but was wearing stirrup pants today, and yes, her legs do go all the way up. (from a pickup line by the late Prof. Irwin Corey).

Nuked a Thai ginger beef and had a couple of almond cookies. Tried to read more Ivanhoe, but there were a lot of distractions.

Stuck around till almost 6, stopped at Grocery Outlet for TP, PT and Famous Amos. Also bought a big slab of corned beef, some fresh peeled garlic and a small box of mushrooms. And a couple of dark chocolate bars which were on sale.

Home, delivered was Sgt. Pepper. The digital remastered version. ( Read more... )

 

Threw the corned beef into the crock pot with garlic, onion, mushrooms, pickling spices and a little water.

Ran the toy train around the track a few times, and even got it hauling 4 of the 5 cars, but it was clear that the engine's wheels are out of line with the electrical pickup, the way it derails. Spook watched, and appeared to be jealous of the attention I was giving it.

It is now all packed back up and will be a Goodwill donation Real Soon Now. The box has a ton of stuff in it to dress the track display and I have no idea how to get it all back into the box in a way it would be returnable.

Lionel O guage is on its way. It ought to fit on the coffee table.

No mail today. Yesterday the only piece was for a cemetery plot. :-(

Plans for tomorrow:
Move into manual tests for SP
Whatever