Funny Girl

I'm going to ring in Easter Sunday -- the holiest day of my year -- with Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey. This movie has a lot of heart, a lot of relevance (both socially and spiritually, with all of its references to The Depression and redemption), and a lot of laughs. It boasts a wonderful cast, but without a doubt, my favorite is the luminous Carole Lombard.

Beautiful, graceful and stylish, she is also faster and funnier than any other actress I can think of. She is a physical and agile comedienne, unafraid to get mussed up as she leaps on beds or gets dumped in the shower (shown). She prattles her dialog off so quickly that she often finds herself charmingly out of breath. She's capable of being quiet, but not being still -- you can tell by the way her hands flutter and fly that standing by and doing/saying nothing is almost physically painful for her.

If you haven't seen this gem, or haven't seen it lately, please do. I promise you'll be glad you did. This synopsis is revised slightly from Amazon.com: "Classic screwball comedy with Carole Lombard as madcap heiress who hires William Powell as butler after finding him on garbage dump. Actually from a wealthy Boston family, marvelously funny Powell teaches them money isn't everything."

Maybe he knew what he was doing …

… and maybe he meant well. My cat, Reynaldo, that is.

I took a nap yesterday afternoon and this offended him. He seemed to believe that if I had taken a day off, I should spend it lavishing my undivided attention on him. He expressed his frustration by knocking over and scattering the magazines I had stacked carefully beside my coffee table.

He still had some frustration left in that skinny beige body, so he took off on my unanswered mail, bills, medical and charitable receipts -- knocking over all the folders and burrowing about, leaving no sense of order.

He announced his actions with noisy howls, but I unwisely tried to ignore him. I didn't realize how active he had been, and I'm overwhelmed by how much he "accomplished" in such a short period of time.

Oh well. What can I do but look at the bright side? I'm never going to reread that US magazine article about how that bitch Angelina stood p0or Jen up at a pre-Oscar bash. And I DO need to return these book club response forms. So maybe Reynaldo felt he was helping me finally handle some of this stuff. To paraphrase that old Viet Nam-era adage, perhaps he had to destroy my living room to save it.