Why does Mojo bother, I wonder? Why doesn't she just give it up already? Why demand a minimum of mediocrity from a world so obviously not into excellence? Because Mojo, under the crusty facade of bitter, petty complaints, remains an optimist at heart. Either that, or she's just irretrievably stupid. Your call.

My Favorite Husband wasn't feeling well, and actually called me at the lieberry for me to bring home movies. Since we've seen just about everything, it was purty slim pickins. (I apologize for the slump into vernacular. You will realize why tomorrow.)

First was the sole good one, rewatching The Maltese Falcon, which we haven't seen in a couple of years. Lotta fun. We've been focusing on the old Warner Brothers stable lately, so you see the same people over and over. Bogart, Peter Lorre (did he EVER play anything other than the weaselly coward? I am a fan of one of his early German films, Fritz Lang's "M", and sure enough he's an unpleasant weaselly person in that one, too. ESPECIALLY unpleasant.) and Sydney Greenstreet in what is his film debut. His character's pretty cool.

And then we saw one of those star-packed war-is-not-pleasant-surprisingly-enough clichés called Thin Red Line. Well, my Favorite Husband saw it. I got quickly annoyed at the artsy-fartsy pretentiousness and wandered off to mow the lawn. But it was a LONG movie, and I came in frequently to take breaks and didn't seem to miss much. Viewers of this tripe get the privilege of listening in to everyone's thoughts as they go through their various missions and subplots. Whoopee.

So basically you're listening in on the thoughts of a bunch of jarheads, who just happen to wander about thinking philosophical and/or poetical thoughts about the nature of existence and conflict, instead of what I guess they would REALLY be thinking, which judging by the external situations would be more like "I'm-so-scared I'm-so-scared I'm-so-scared I wanna cigarette." But maybe that's just ME. I think *I*, for all my bravery, would take the "I'm-so-scared" route (minus the cigarettes, for Mojo does not smoke) and not really think of dwelling on "I wonder if Socrates was correct when he said blah-blah-blah? Is my life indeed a tenuous, golden thread wafting in a gathering, all-encompassing darkness?" or whatever they have these poor scared teenaged boys saying. Yes, the internal dialog really was that bad. Or am I the only one thinking, "Man, I could sure go for some Fritos right now" instead of far loftier sentiments?

Once THAT popped out of the machine we popped in something called Grey Owl with Pierce Brosnan as an English white boy pretending to be a "Red Indian", as the English used to call Native Americans (to differentiate from Indian Indians, also under English rule at the time). Flogging a message of environmentalism before it was trendy, back in the 30s. It's apparently based on a true story. Mojo has not problem with environmentalism, though of all the creatures one could exploit for ignorant people to think they're cute 'n' cuddly and therefore worthy of Not Killing I'd have to say beavers would be further down the line than, say...well, just about any other mammal.

The very very funny part was, they had this guy be Mister Master Tracker and guide, yet they had him running his traplines well into summer so he was catching (gasp!) BABY ANIMALS!!!!! Mojo is not a fan of trapping and wearing fur, but even *SHE* knows that you only trap fur animals in the WINTER. Their fur is worthless, otherwise. Plus the guy's trapline consists of a bunch of legholds laying on the ground every twenty feet or so, right out in the open. I'm sorry, I'm calling Darwin on this one--any animal who will walk right onto a trap like that is just sort of waiting to die anyway. Go ahead--ask a REAL trapper how many critters he catches flopping a trap on the ground and leaving it. You will have a very long wait for his response since the first ten minutes he will be laughing helplessly at your stupidity. Because even the tiniest ERMINE, with a brain the size of a LIMA BEAN, is smarter than THAT.

To cap it all off, the two main characters, both Grey Owl and his pony-pal lady friend (she has a Mohawk name, but she mostly goes by "Pony") are two of the most unpleasant human beings one could ever run across. She just sort of forces herself into his life through a truly annoying stubborn streak and is essentially a huge burden on him, since she knows absolutely nothing about survival or even how to react when standing on thin ice that's cracking all around you. (Hint: standing in one place with your feet close together is not the wisest of tactics.) But for the life of me I can't really see WHY she would want to force herself on him, since he spends the entire movie being very gruff and rude and condescending.

Anyway, HUGE SHOCK when it is slowly revealed that Pierce Brosnan ISN'T a "real" Native American!!!! WOW! Who'da THUNK it? What was the big giveaway, I wonder? The blue eyes? The pasty skin? The tight white butt as he comes out of the lake naked? Oh, sorry. I digress. At least the scenery was nice.

Finally we saw an early Cary Grant called My Favorite Wife with Irene Dunne. It was okay for its time. I probably would have enjoyed it a hair more if I didn't have my ultra-honest Favorite Husband sitting next to me saying helpful things like "All of this would be easily resolved if he just DEALT with the situation already!" and my gentle reminders of "If he did THAT there wouldn't be a movie." It's a silly brainless harum-scarum situation that turns suddenly cruel as things get needlessly prolonged. So as things progressed my Favorite Husband could add "NOW they're just being CRUEL" to his repertoire. Since apparently I couldn't see that for myself.

I also brought home (but we didn't have the time to see) Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte which I read about during my Psycho-Biddy/Hagsploitation research. I can't WAIT!!!

Mojo