I love it when things just work out. Yesterday morning I was wishing that I didn’t have rehearsal so I could go to the public library and watch a screening of North by Northwest. By late afternoon, one of my two cast members let me know he couldn’t be at rehearsal (he’s a trial lawyer, and a trial was going late into the evening) – but in the meantime I decided that it would e better to get home and do gardening work before todays thunderstorms hit. I dug a new flowerbed (1 ft by 150 ft of hummingbird and butterfly flowers along a white wooden fence), weeded, mixed compost into a few more vegetable beds, and other odds and ends. After dark, I went inside, started some rice cooking and flicked through the channels. On TCM the funny “host” was just saying “and now, North by Northwest.” Ahh… I really enjoy that movie. As the IMDB entry points out, I particularly enjoy the dialogue that is banal today but shocking for the day.

Eve Kendall: It’s going to be a long night.
Roger Thornhill: True.
Eve: And I don’t particularly like the book I’ve started.
Roger: Ah.
Eve: You know what I mean?
Roger: Ah, let me think. Yes, I know exactly what you mean.

Unfortunately for me, I’m much more like Ruben Bolling’s Louis than Roger Thornhill in conversations like that.