Saturday, another Western, a John Wayne “epic” replete with his ultra conservative values masquerading as an early frontiersman fighting, what else, more Apaches. “He can smell Injuns,” he says to the ingénue, referring to his dog. She doesn’t believe it. He says, “You can train ‘em.” “How?” she asks. “Ya gets yaself a puppy and a tame Injun. Ya gives the Injun a whip and he beats the puppy every day.” Right there is why I could never have made it in showbiz. Give me a script like that and I’d probably shove it right down the director’s throat. “Take that, pilgrum,” I might say. Anyway, I can see why guys liked this character. (As one prominent female writer said a while back – men suffer from testosterone poisoning.) But women? They’d have to be masochists.

I can hear Indians and drums in the background. Time for a walk.

Meanwhile, we finally got our Netflix up and running and I have yet to learn how to use it. Ed gets it up and looks for movies – he can pick the most Godawful stuff. The new stuff isn’t on yet. A lot of movies in the lists are bombs that never made it in the movie houses. I never heard of many of these actors. I’d use it, if I could ever learn how, to get old, old movies that I have liked, like “Bell, Book and Candle,” or “An American in Paris”. Have to say, tho, that a lot of those early plots are not so hot. Ya gotta go for the dances.

My most recent likes are anything that has Statham in it. I like his transporter movies. He’s great.

But I think Netflix is a disappointment. Also, once it’s on, you can’t click on the info button and get a date, or a synopsis. Ed also has a Bose unit. I hate it. That’s not strong enough for what I feel, but close enough. I have acute hearing. I don’t need a battle brought right into the family room. As for Ed, please explain why he can’t hear a well-modulated sentence, but wakes up and grumbles when I get into bed at 1 a.m.?

The final irritation about our set-up is that the connection sometimes fails and one has to keep trying to re-load. And then getting out of it to go back to regular viewing is a minefield of moves. Hiss, boo.

xx, Teal