RIP Deborah Kerr 1921 - 2007

When I heard about the death of Deborah Kerr I let out a little gasp. The reason being that I have this undying affection/obsession with classic movie stars. Whenever one of them leaves us for good I feel the link we have to classic movies slipping farther and farther away.

I've personally only seen Deborah in three of her movies: "The Prisoner of Zenda", "From Here to Eternity" and "The King and I", I still feel that she made a big contribution to the movie industry.

In "From Here to Eternity" Deborah and Burt Lancaster snog in the sand while the tide rolls over them. The scene itself is white hot and apparently I'm not the only one with this opinion. The MPAA banned photos of the kiss with the surf washing over Lancaster and Kerr as they thought it was too erotic. Many film prints had shortened versions of the scene because projectionists would cut out frames as souvenirs.

The thing about this scene is that with Deborah Kerr the public had come to expect to see her as a virtuous woman, a mother, a 'good girl'. And yet here she was, playing against type, having an affair with a man her husband worked with. It shows her true strength as an actor, to be believable in a role you might not be able to imagine her in.

I'm sad that she's gone but I'm very happy that she left something behind for us to remember her by.

The Golf Cart Incident Part 2

Cont. from Part I

Meanwhile I'm distracted by the young buck crashing around in the bush just to the side of the road. He's so obscured by brush that I can barely make him out. He must hear me talking about him because he freezes and you can only see his rack when he dips down to take a mouthful of grass.

With that little interlude over, my uncle rides back with no connector. My hopes start to fade until he announces he'll just strip the wire and wrap it around the battrery to provide contact.

Yes! I can already feel the wind whipping by as I captain the cart around the island. He comes back, attaches the connector and ITS ALIVE! I wipe my damp brow and grin like a madwoman. Crises averted. We can now continue our trip around the island.

My uncle decides to go and visit a friend after hearing the cart is supposed to sit two people, not four. Oops. Meanwhile, his partner hops on the bike and I captain the cart and chauffeur my grandmother around.

I'm thinking, this is the life. This is the way people were meant to travel. In silence without a sputtering motor and a cranky transmission. That is, until I try to gun the thing and find that I could run faster than the carts top speed. Oh well. We have a leisurely drive. We check the notice boards, I climb apple trees and pick some fresh fruit for tea, pick up some free magazines left out by neighbours and I do get to feel the wind in my hair.

Too soon though, we're back. By now the fire has almost died and we have no kindling. Only large chunks of damp wood. I figure 13 years of camping should have taught me something about making fires. We find some kindling but its too big. I valiantly offer to go and chop them into smaller pieces, thinking nothing of it. But as I descend the stairs and walk into the workshop where we keep the axe I start to worry.

What if I chop off a finger or my entire hand? That's ridiculous. And so my fear of sharp objects comes into full form. Don't get me wrong. Axes and knives have their purpose and are nice and shiny but, well you know. Besides, I've never really chopped wood before, a skill I've never acquired but I now feel should be taught to all daughters in order to avert this very crisis.

I had a great time at the cabin, depite the weather and the hiccup with the golf cart. I can't wait to go back!

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Update: Marion Jones has handed back her five medals. Good on her for taking the initiative to hand them in herself.

The Golf Cart Incident Part I

Monday we went over to our cabin on a nearby island. The idea was to visit with old neighbours, take a quick walk and winterize the place. I hadn't been over to the cabin in five or six years and while it looked similar as we approached the dock, things had changed. They were small differences but I still noticed. The old comfy pull-out couch I was used to lazing on in the sun was gone. Replaced by a newer version. The place looked smaller, the walls were bare of paintings.

The trip over was not pretty though. In fact, it was freezing. The sky was clouded over when I had expected a nice day. The sea was almost black and inside the cabin was just as cold as outside. But as soon as we lit a fire, the cabin became cozy. Lunch was leftover turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce and stuffing.

We had planned to go for a walk when a neighbour came over to offer her golf cart as a means of transportation. At this point I started to dry wash my hands. I've never driven a golf cart before and here was my chance. So while we let the hot water tank drain, the four of us hopped on the cart. We checked out a new house that looked like a giant church being built and had just gotten around the corner when the battery died.

What? We'd only been on the thing five minutes. How could this happen and why didn't our neighbour warn us? More importantly, was I going to miss out on my chance to drive the thing? After several incredulous exclamations we checked under the hood several times as we could miraculously fix the problem. Did the lights work? Yup. What about the connections? Seem fine, though some looked a bit corroded.

At this point I started to panic. The thing really did seem to be dead and now we had to decide who would run back to tell the neighbour and who would stay with the cart and kick its tires in frustration. In the end we stupidly decided to push the thing back. Of course, this meant going back up the hill we'd come from. After several minutes of grunting and sweating we had the darn thing back up at the top and the neighbour gave the thing a once over.

She couldn't seem to find anything out of place. That is, until I pointed out a connection that seemed to be growing some psychedelic green funk. Turns out that corrosion had eaten through the copper wires that provided contact for the battery.

Aha! My deductive skills and reasoning had perhaps saved the day. I could only cross my fingers when our neighbour said she'd seen another connector hanging up by the fire hall. But, that was back the way we had come. So my poor uncle hops on an old bike, the kind with only one gear, and pedals like mad back down the hill.

Will he come back with the connector? Will he come back at all? You'll have to wait until Friday to find out.

Marian Jones - Doping Scandal

The worst thing about this entire incident isn't that she took performance enhancing drugs. Yes, cheating in an international sports exhibition is bad but whats worse is that she lied about it, not just to the public but to federal investigators, grand juries, twice. For years she denied she used drugs and said she never would. She even wrote about it in her autobiography. And now to hear that she did is more infuriating than if she just admitted to it when the question was first raised.

Why athletes do it? Yes, they may want to win at any cost but taking drugs isn't the answer. Say an athlete does use drugs and does win a gold medal. Surely on some level they must know they didn't really win the race. The drugs did. Personally, that would bother me. I would want to win on my own terms or not at all.

The people I feel sorry for are the children, the athletes of tomorrow and especially America's future athletes that looked up to her as a role model. What are they supposed to think and who are they to look to? How can they put their trust in another athlete after this?

And what about the athletes at the Sydney Olympics? Would they still have finished in the same place had Jones not taken any drugs? Will they be compensated now?

What Jones did was selfish and I sincerely hope they strip her of the medals she won due to her drugs use at the Sydney Olympics. There should be consequences because when one athlete cheats the whole sport suffers.

This should be a message to professional athletes who will do anything to win, not only can drugs screw up your body, they can ruin your life. Jones' career is over and her reputation will be tarnished forever. What she did may fade into the background but the public has a long memory. I was just a toddler during the 1988 Olympics but I know who Ben Johnson is and what he did. What Marian Jones did will follow her for the rest of her life.