Maurice Grossman, Rest in Peace

3:44 a.m.

Up in the middle of the night. At 3 a.m., Mom called me instead of 911. Dad yelling that he's dying. This is unfortunately becoming familiar. Sugar's probably low. I told her to give him some juice. I didn't panic. Got some clothes on and drove over, not slowly but not dangerously fast, either. He looked "low." I got his testing supplies and checked his sugar. 44. He was alert enough to drink juice and eat cookies and ice cream. Came up to 57 after that, and would continue to rise. Twice we've had to call the paramedics to give him IV glucose. Those times his BG was in the 20s. Those times I was in a panic. He really looked like he was gonna die. He has bad CHF and a leaky mitral valve, low EF, etc etc etc. The ticker ain't gonna last. Mom is more scared than she tries to let on. Now it's not quite 4 a.m. Raining. Dog was waiting for me when I got home. I've got Miles Davis on. I'll go back to sleep for the next couple of hours.

I'm with Coco

That's all.

movies of the 2000s

I've been working on this for a week and I keep adding more. Lists like these will never be "right" or "finished" so I'm looking forward to your comments, additions, and disagreements

BEST WAR MOVIES
Letters from Iwo Jima
The Hurt Locker
runners up:
Inglourious Basterds
The Good Shepherd

BEST GANGSTER MOVIES
American Gangster
The Departed

BEST CRIME MOVIES
ZODIAC
No Country for Old Men
Traffic
Memento
Mystic River
Frozen River
Monster
In Bruges
Gone Baby Gone

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Avatar in Digital 3D
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

BEST movies from WRITER/DIRECTOR Tom McCarthy
The Station Agent, The Visitor

BEST LOVE STORIES
Brokeback Mountain
Love, Actually
Moulin Rouge

BEST SORT-OF ROMANTIC MOVIES, though not exactly love stories
Up In The Air
Lost In Translation
Paris, Je T'aime (romance with Paris)

BEST POLITICAL MOVIES
The Last King of Scotland
Breach

BEST COMEDIES
Sideways
The 40 Year Old Virgin
Little Miss Sunshine
Juno
Best In Show

BEST DOWNBEAT SO-CALLED COMEDY WITH AN UPBEAT ENDING
Happy-Go-Lucky

BEST COMING OF AGE MOVIES
Whale Rider
Wonder Boys
Almost Famous

BEST QUIET DEPRESSING MOVIE
Elephant

BEST FAMILY DRAMAS
The Savages
You Can Count On Me
Monsoon Wedding
About Schmidt

BEST TERRENCE MALICK FILM
The New World

BEST BIO-PIC
The Queen
Milk

BEST MOVIES ABOUT STUFF WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT OTHER COUNTRIES
Rabbit Proof Fence
Rwanda
Blood Diamond
Slumdog Millionaire

BEST CONFUSING INTERNATIONAL MOVIES
Syriana
Babel

BEST ANIMATED FILMS
Wall-E
The Incredibles
Finding Nemo

BEST PERSONAL DOWNFALL MOVIES
Breach
Shattered Glass
Michael Clayton

BEST DEPRESSING DRAMAS
In The Bedroom
21 Grams

Best movies with Senator McCarthy as villain
Good Night, and Good Luck
Julie & Julia

BEST COWBOY MOVIES
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
3:10 to Yuma

Best Meryl Streep performances
The Devil Wears Prada
Doubt
Julie & Julia

Best Phillip Seymour Hoffman performances
Charlie Wilson's war ("It was much funnier in the original Pashtu.")
Doubt
Love Liza

BEST FILMS NOT ELSEWHERE CATEGORIZED
Y tu mama tambien
Donnie Darko
Adaptation
Happy Accidents
High Fidelity

PROBABLY THE BEST MOVIES I HAVEN'T SEEN YET
25th Hour
Up In The Air
City of God
Snow Angels
The Lives of Others

reposted from Dr. Wes

from the blog of Dr. Wes
this is pretty cool.
http://drwes.blogspot.com/2010/01/song-american-heart-association-will.html

SLEEP apnea

Dad had a panic attack, so I went over. Short PMHx is: 79 y.o. w/ CHF, DM, HTN, pacer/AICD, paroxysmal a-fib on Coumadin, DJD, GAD, OSA. Did I miss anything? For the last several months the SLEEP apnea (he says it with a stress on the word SLEEP) is torturing him. It's like two well-established forms of torture: suffocation and sleep deprivation. He has been an anxious person all his life, but it's worse, if that's even possible, with the OSA. There was nothing I could do for him, so we went outside, wrapped him in some blankets for the frigid 55 degree weather, and did some slow, deep breathing. We'll try to get him in to see "that SLEEP apnea lady" to see if she can adjust his CPAP. I wanted him to start at 12 cmwp, but she started him at 8 and inched him up to 10. Shoulda started him at 12 like I said.

2009 movies: Inglourious Basterds and Synecdoche, New York

I've started the annual catch up on movies before the awards season starts.

I finally saw Inglourious Basterds, or however you spell it. I thought it was great. I had already convinced myself that Quentin Tarantino would never come close to Pulp Fiction. I liked Jackie Brown and Kill Bill, very much, but it seemed like he was trying to recreate PF every time. I did not see any of his ultra-violent-for-the-sake-of-being-ultra-violent-isnt-that-fun films. (Apologies to QT & fans if those films were considered good, it's just not my cup of tea.) Inglourious Basterds was a step in a new direction, which is a good thing. A director needs range, just like an actor needs range. Not every character in every film should talk like Jules & Vincent. I wish QT hadn't felt the need to resort to some QT devices like "chapters" and PF-esque title font. The movie was terrific without those things. It wasn't even that violent, other than the baseball bat to the head scene. But if you're gonna bash someone's head in with a baseball bat, it should definitely be a justified Jew smashing in the head of an unremorseful Nazi. Contrary to what I thought from the ubiquitous clip of Brad Pitt saying Na-tzi with a short a, the film is mostly about the French and German characters, speaking French and German. The scene at the beginning where the French farmer is interrogated by the politely evil Nazi officer about where the Jews are hiding is one of the most painful scenes of that nature I've seen in years. Both actors were understated and powerful. If you haven't seen this film yet, put it on your Netflix queue!

Now, Synecdoche, New York. Not Schenectady, New York, a real city, but SYNECDOCHE, a real, if obscure, word meaning "a play on words in which a part may be used for the whole or the whole for a part." You can see where this is going. The beginning was good and somewhat realistic in its depiction of a married couple whose relationship has lost its luster. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a genius, and so is Katherine Keener. Keener is always realistic in her characters, which is why her character leaves after about the first third of the movie. Then it's just a descent into the tortured mind of the Hoffman character, which is a descent into the tortured mind of Charlie Kaufman, the writer-director. Kaufman is the disturbed genius behind the screenplays for Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It must suck to be Charlie. During the excruciating latter 2/3rds of the film, I thought, "My God, Vincent Van Gogh must have suffered terribly." Mental illness is something no one can understand who is not going through it. If this film had any value to me, it was to increase my empathy for the mentally ill. One of the several things I admired about the film was that the actresses had "real" bodies, a euphemism for being heavier than a bikini model. Samantha Morton has gained a lot of weight and it has kept her out of a number of roles, so it's good to see her back on film again.

These reviews explain Synecdoche and its "navel-gazing" better than I can:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2009/01/synecdoche_acting_and_reenacti.html#more
http://maguiresmovies.blogspot.com/2009/05/synecdoche-new-york.html

I like self-absorbed artsy fartsy independent films about artists making art as much as the next hippie liberal. But too much is too much. I trudged through the film waiting for it to end and when it finally did, I felt relief for the characters and for myself. But mostly for myself.