I was stunned to see that in the top post of a search of my archive this morning, 2 days after re-watching "My Dinner With Andre," and one day after blogging "A big theme in this movie is whether, when things connect up, it's not just a coincidence but something mystical and important...."
What do you think? Mystical and important?!
I don't know, but what I was searching for was the topic of habit. In the movie, there's some discussion — blogged here yesterday — of the problem of doing things out of habit. There is, one person thought, "a great danger" of "fall[ing] into a trance" and no longer "seeing, feeling, remembering."
What do you think? Mystical and important?!
I don't know, but what I was searching for was the topic of habit. In the movie, there's some discussion — blogged here yesterday — of the problem of doing things out of habit. There is, one person thought, "a great danger" of "fall[ing] into a trance" and no longer "seeing, feeling, remembering."
Well, I was just wishing I'd created a tag for "habit," because it would collect some good material, and it's a topic I want to think about. I like my habits. I think my habits are good. Blogging every day, going out for the sunrise, getting a good night's sleep. And because they are habits, I have special power to do them. Otherwise, I'd fritter away my energy wondering, Do I really want to blog today? Do I have anything that really ought to be published right this moment?
Anyway, in that old "declining NYT habit" post from 20 years ago, I was contemplating "some blogger meme that involves listing your five favorite things in six categories — the five senses plus 'kinetic sensation.'" Remember blogger memes? Everyone answering the same question. I didn't want to go to all that trouble at the time, but...
Anyway, in that old "declining NYT habit" post from 20 years ago, I was contemplating "some blogger meme that involves listing your five favorite things in six categories — the five senses plus 'kinetic sensation.'" Remember blogger memes? Everyone answering the same question. I didn't want to go to all that trouble at the time, but...
... for sight, the one that springs immediately to my mind is: the sight of the New York Times on my front walk in the morning. [Make mental note to watch "My Dinner with Andre" again soon.]
I was thinking of the passage in "My Dinner with Andre" where Wallace Shawn says:
I just don't know how anybody could enjoy anything more than I enjoy, uh, reading Charlton Heston's autobiography or, uh, you know, uh, getting up in the morning and having the cup of cold coffee that's been waiting for me all night still there for me to drink in the morning, and no cockroach or fly has died in it overnight.... I just don't think I feel the need for anything more than all this. Whereas...you know, you seem to be saying that, uh...it's...it's inconceivable that anybody could be having a meaningful life today, and, you know, everyone is totally destroyed, and we all need to live in these outposts, but I mean, you know, I just can't believe, even for you, I mean, don't you find... isn't it pleasant just to get up in the morning, and there's Chiquita, there are the children, uh, and The Times is delivered, you can read it. I mean, maybe you'll direct a play, maybe you won't direct a play, but forget about the play that you may or may not direct. Why is it necessary to... why not lean back and just enjoy these details, I mean, and there'd be a delicious cup of coffee and a piece of coffeecake. I mean, why is it necessary to have more than this or to even think about having more than this....
I know, Wallace Shawn saying "inconceivable" became a thing. "Princess Bride" came 6 years after "Andre." Is there some kind of mystical and important connection between these 2 movies?
I don't know, but I'm seeing that I have a tag not only for "My Dinner with Andre" — a movie I've talked about a lot for 40+ years — but for "Princess Bride." That's nice. My habit of making tags is a good one, and there, I have the delight of seeing that my exercise of the habit, some time in the past, paid off this morning, but that doesn't erase my longing for the tag called "habit."
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I think reading the New York Times is a very bad habit. They are a decisive force in America, purposefully dividing us politically. What’s worse, they are seem driven by unnamed and malicious people and ideology. It’s best they end up in the dustbin of history.
How many times do you think you have watched “My Dinner with Andre?”
Did your hear that Pope Francis has decided to allow priests to date nuns?
It’s ok as long as they don’t get in the habit.
I’m a creature of habit—if my morning routine changes even a little, I forget things. On the whole, I think that’s good to make some activities rote so I don’t expend mental energy on them.
But at the same time, I find repetition depressing. I’m learning the piano and Spanish, but progress is so slow! Day after day of plugging away for such tiny incremental gains. Or jogging and going to the gym—day after day of exercise not even to progress, but simply to stay where I am. I have to drive the same streets in and out of my neighbourhood to go anywhere and that part of the drive feels like limbo—I’ve left the house but my trip hasn’t started yet, not until I get through this barrier that stands between me and the world.
On the topic of meaningful connections, I recently saw a Korean movie called Past Lives about the Korean idea of reincarnation—that people build connections slowly across many lives. Dozens or hundreds of lives ago, you and Meade passed each other on the street or a path and caught each other’s eye. That created a connection. In a later life, you had a conversation or a friend in common and built another connection. And so it went until your paths became so interconnected that you married and merged your paths. In our future lives, we’ll do that with everyone in our lives—even the people we don’t like in this life. Love/hate, it’s all connections.
I should have put the shoes habit bit here rather than the overnight thread. Someone in there also correctly said that Althouse seemed to have an affinity for her habits and here it is, confirmed by the host herself.
"How many times do you think you have watched “My Dinner with Andre?”"
I saw it during its first theater run in 1981, and I went back the next day, bringing other people, so that's 2.
I bought the first videotape of the movie, which was really badly made, but maybe 2 or 3.
I bought the good DVD of it when it came out, so maybe 2 more.
I watched it on Criterion the other day.
So maybe 8 times in 40+ years.
I often think of it in connection to something else, so that causes me to blog about it. I have a full transcript to cut and paste from.
I'm not that big of a rewatcher of movies, but I do have a tendency to rewatch a movie the day after the first time I see it.
Rewatched another one of those "One Night" movies last night: "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Another talk fest. Or, as I called it a minute after finishing it: "a fiesta of acting."
I love my routines. I thrive on my routines. My most time consuming routine is going outside and working in my plant beds. I might listen to a podcast or chat with a friend for a few minutes on the phone while I'm simultaneously weeding, mulching, taking a plant out, putting a new one in, thinking how to solve a little erosion problem and then acting on it to the limits of what my strength allows me. My brain is busy and yet it's also serene. I have read that there are bacteria in the soil that stimulate serotonin levels which are good for mental health. I feel blessed when I lose myself in these physical tasks.
My habit of making tags is a good one, and there, I have the delight of seeing that my exercise of the habit, some time in the past, paid off this morning,
Does that give you some insight into billions of people exercising their habit of Faith?
Today's SBF post, highlights a person that believes he is God and acts accordingly. How have his habits served him? Of course a person of faith would ask How has his faith in self, severed him?
,
Yesterday in the Autistic women that was seeking government sponsored suicide, several of us noted if she changed her perspective and simply looked for ways to serve others, not spend so much time looking inward. Not focusing on how SHE felt, her outlook on life, and her place in it would improve.
Want a good habit? List every day, 5 things you are grateful for. It is impossible to be agitated, sad, angry, with a grateful heart.
I liked Get Smart (2008), or Closed Circuit (2013), for occasional rewatching. Romcom disguised as action, so the usual romcom cringe cliches are missing.
Wallace Shawn‘s tombstone has to read:
Death? Inconceivable!
Never seen My Dinner with Andre. I keep imagining that Wallace Shawn is constantly flicking his wet lisp spittle into Andres food.
Ann: I encourage you and Meade to watch “The Mother and the Whore,” Jean Eustache’s 1973 film about a chauvinist (Jean-Pierre Léaud) who balances his relationships with several women in post-1968 Paris.
It is currently playing on Criterion and gets a 7.8 IMDb rating. If you like characters who talk, this is for you (seriously). Also, we were about the same age as the characters then — so it’s a nifty way for you to relive your early 20s!
Last week, I finally got around to watching Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” (2023). It was disappointing, cold, and revealed little about Napoleon’s military genius and character. I highly recommend Andrew Roberts 2014 biography “Napoleon” for those who wish to understand the life and times of Bonaparte.
I recall Wallace Shawn's character defending his and his wife's use of an electric blanket.
I can't imagine what led me to watch that movie as a 20-something, but I did. And now I want to rewatch it.
I know, Wallace Shawn saying "inconceivable" became a thing. "Princess Bride" came 6 years after "Andre." Is there some kind of mystical and important connection between these 2 movies?
"My Dinner with Andre the Giant" could have been the first combined sequel to two movies.
Like most people who grew up poor, I'm a person of frugal habits. That's all well and good when you're poor, but when you are no longer poor, frugal habits are absurd and burdensome. I walk two blocks extra, including up a steep hill, in order to buy salmon for a dollar less a pound. If I went around the corner and bought that salmon for a dollar or two extra, I'm sure I wouldn't die in the poor house. I suppose the walk is good exercise, and a dollar saved is a dollar earned, and all that. In any event, there's no way I can stop doing it and no way I can stop thinking of myself as stingy and stupid to keep doing it.....So that's the way it goes. If you've got a bad conscience, you'll feel bad about whatever you do. I'm reminded of Samuel Johnson. He worried that he would go to hell because he didn't believe in God.
Never seen My Dinner with Andre.
But I have wonder if the Charlton Heston line brought any laughs . . . my memory of those times is that his sort of Hollywood macho and wrongthink politics were punchlines by then.
I'll second Roger von Oech's recco for Roberts's book. His Masters and Commanders about the WWII Combined Chiefs of Staff--an organization utterly unique in history--was an eye-opener even for one well versed in the literature.
(Spellcheck is fine with Charlton but marks Heston, wrongthink, Oech and recco. Not very intelligent, I think.)
When I was young, I used to read and re-read certain adventure novels. The original Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies knew how to press that button. A big part of their appeal was that you felt like you were a twelve year old kid when you watched them and part of the twelve year old experience was re-watching them.....I saw some Hitchcock/Cary Grant movies when I was young. I thought that was the way glamorous adults behaved and that it was just a matter of time before I grew up and joined that world. As it turned out, my adult life was not spent in the south of France, and I never got a chance to flirt with Grace Kelly. Still, it was a fine fantasy and every so often it's pleasant to re visit it.
CJinPA
If you think that would be good, you should definitely check out My Breakfast with Blassi.
A habit is not a hardship nor an easily skipped activity. You just do it automatically. For which we can be thankful because it leads to good dental hygiene and strong muscles into our old age.
Bad habits are not going to help.
It’s on HBO, or is it MAX now.
Rewatched another one of those "One Night" movies last night: "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Another talk fest. Or, as I called it a minute after finishing it: "a fiesta of acting."
Can you imagine the expressions on George Segal’s and Sandy Dennis’s faces when they discovered they’d been hired to act opposite Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor?
Watched "My Dinner with Andre" once years ago, thought it was the most pretentious waste of time I'd ever endured. The only thing that ever made it worthwhile was the moment in "Waiting for Guffman" when Corky St. Clair shows off for the camera his "My Dinner with Andre" action figures.
Ann, have you ever seen this? If not, I think you’ll enjoy it.
Siskel and Ebert review My Dinner with Andre.
https://youtu.be/VLdihwpMRkw?si=7w8J20UXW7YOhMGP
I enjoy when past Dave does something for future Dave and present Dave finds it and appreciates it. It helps me very much now, as I prepare to lock down my home and accomplish extended overseas travel. I will leave things here in my home for me to appreciate and enjoy when I return.
Good habits are like this. Formed in the past, carried into the future, appreciated today.
What did you do for you in the past that you now appreciate today? It's worth a bit of smug self congratulation because that will help you to do for yourself in the future again now.
It's a good habit to form.
"Is there some kind of mystical and important connection between these 2 movies?"
The first time I ever heard of "My Dinner With Andre" was from MAD Magazine, where it was amusingly spoofed as "My Dinner With Andre the Giant". This was circa 1989 when I was thirteen. So I automatically picture Andre the Giant whenever the original movie is mentioned on this blog, because that was my introduction to it.
Furthermore, I was today years old when I found out the Wallace Shawn connection, so there is obviously a mystical link here that belies any of our understandings!
Interesting that you should post that thing about the NYT habit. I wandered by here for the first time in a long time, hoping hat what I would get would not be the same sad rewording of NYT and Washington Post articles. It seems, Professor, that you been unable to move on from a world in which those publications had some credibility and a cachet of worldliness and intelligence. But neither does any more, and your other source from today, WIRED, likewise lost its mojo about a decade ago.
Increasingly, reading your once-interesting blog feels like being stuck in the past. I just turned 65 and I am earnestly hoping that I don't end up in a similar intellectual cul-de-sac.
"A big theme in this movie is whether, when things connect up, it's not just a coincidence but something mystical and important." This is the core of what makes humans powerful. We recognize connections and take advantage of them. Some people think we take it too far. Christianity connects our doomed existence on this planet with God. Too far?
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