Film Review: "Pat and Mike"

Earlier this week when I was working on my paper d. got Pat and Mike to keep him company. Well I'm glad he didn't watch it then, because this is a Kate Hepburn and Spencer Tracy movie I liked more than Adam's Rib.

Kate plays a "girl athlete" and Spencer plays her manager; the inevitable happens, but not quite as you'd expect given the standard formula. There's a handshake, near the end, that had me nearly dying with laughter.

Oh, and there's the scene where Kate shoves Spencer aside in order to very effectively beat up a pair of mobsters. Then we get the reenactment for the police, where she does it again, very prim and upper-crust.

And there's the jealous other guy, and the other jealous guy, who happens to be the very attractive young boxer who Spencer still manages but isn't paying attention to, now that he's got the "girl dynamo." Great chemistry all around, and fairly real characters, if a bit flat.

But I wish they still made movies with as much overall panache.

I should start a collection, top-notch feminist movies from the 50s. This, and Adams Rib, and... hm.

Plumbing and landscaping, ct'd

So, we had the owner of Bodhi Tree Landscaping come and consult on our yard, and frankly I'm underwhelmed. He suggested we might consider using roundup to wipe out the front yard, which goes completely counter to his website's claim of pesticide-free installations. All I can figure is that he pegged us as wanting the fast route. And the do-it-yourself route, even though we did say a few times we don't want to do it ourselves, we've been not-doing-it-ourselves for 7 years.

He didn't have any photos of some of the ground-cover he suggested we consider. He said we were at the very start of figuring this out, and we should talk it over amongst ourselves and get back to him when we had a course of action for him. Um, hello?

Perhaps if I had more assertively tried to put money into his hands, he might've tried harder, but I really thought he was gong to re-offer what he said on the phone, an hour consultation for $50 or so; he didn't, and I suggested it, and for whatever reason he didn't want to. Oh well.

So that's Bodhi Tree.

---

On Tuesday, the city came back and gave our house a colonoscopy. The pipe looks fine (except the city's portion has the remains of tree roots, almost certainly from the tree the city removed two years ago). And they put a stake in the lawn at our property line. The city will replace their pipe, possibly next summer, and they will pay for any sewer-line repairs between now and then. The two guys who came were mid-50s seen-it-all guys. The more assertive one said Hammonds Plumbing is owned by a crook, and he sees them in court almost every week. Hm. I'll pass it on to you all, but I'm not sure I wouldn't hire them again; they did show up on Saturday morning early and did call the city for me.

And now it's bedtime for Bonzo. And me, too.