After the wreck.

After the car wreck, the police officer gave me a lift home. I thanked him and wished him well, and he was completely nice to me too. I went in the house and talked to Chris and got a hug and emailed Nina: call me! We email each other all the time, and I didn't know her phone number. When we had our plans interrupted by a car crash, Tonya and I had been on our way over to pick up Nina and go to see the 3:55 show of "Sideways." I guess we went sideways. Tonya ended up going to the hospital in the ambulance with the driver of the other car, and I signed the release refusing treatment. I'll go to the hospital later if I have to, but right now I just wanted to go home.

Nina called me up, and I told her the story. She asked me what she could do, and I said to go over and help Tonya at the hospital. Later, Nina called from the hospital. The place was busy, and she was afraid they'd be there a long time. I invited them to come over afterwards and said I had a lot of steak in the refrigerator. I'd make a dinner. Nina was into that and said both she and Tonya had been talking about going home and making scrambled eggs -- which would be quite a comedown from last night's glorious dinner.

Not that long after, they came by. Tonya was on crutches! An ankle sprain. I got out the two extra thick steaks and sliced them into thinner steaks, making four steaks for Tonya, Nina, Chris, and me. I had a lot of salad greens, and I opened a bottle of wine. We were going to cook and eat and watch a movie to cheer us all up. And we did cook and talk a lot and blog and watch a movie that really did cheer us up quite a bit. What movie? "Serial Mom"!

Here's how we looked, crutches and all -- in the oft-blogged-about, but never-before-seen Althousian "big room" -- as we were getting set up to eat steak and lift our spirits with a movie about a murderous mother.

Cognac.

I laughed a long, long time at this, from Tonya's post about Thursday's dinner with Nina, Jeremy, and me:

I also learned a few interesting things about the other bloggers. First, the other bloggers like to have a good time. They are my kind of people because I am always, always, always down for having a good time. Second, Ann drinks cognac. I don't think I've ever seen anyone even order a cognac. My only association with cognac is remembering that it was a favorite drink of former DC mayor Marion ("The bitch set me up!") Barry.

Tonya surmises that I have little else in common with Mayor Barry. Probably Barry would have stayed with the group if it started out going out to dinner in an expensive restaurant and then decided to top off the night by going dancing in a club that was playing hip-hop music. I, however, defected.

As to drinking cognac: it was after dinner. We had gone to a bar to kill some time waiting for the club to open. The others ordered Cosmopolitans and Margueritas, which seems just crazy to me. Those are cocktails. Why would you order that after dinner? I find that weird. Tonya finds it weird that anyone ever drinks cognac. Oh, well. Perhaps all can agree "The bitch set me up" will be funny forever.

Sunday morning Madison profblogs.

Jeremy's trying to round up lefties who don't like Barbara Ehrenreich's NYT op-eds.

Nina bought a bunch of blueberries and baked them into a beautiful tart and then dropped it on the floor--pictures here.

Gordon is seriously into the Tour de France.

Tonya's talking about Prince and how the tickets to the big Chicago show say "Wear purple," but "Nobody wears purple anymore." I'm reading this as I'm dressed from head to toe in purple! No, I don't have my shoes on yet.

And me, my "Change the federal marshals' dress code?" post from yesterday got a nice Instapundit link this morning. The post reads in its entirety: "ANN ALTHOUSE is striking fear into terrorists." Yeah! Fear my blouse!!!

Well, as link-clickers flow over here, I'm going to put on my purple suede sandals and head out into the cool July sunshine to find my way to a nice café for a little bout of exam grading.

Is Stone Reader a good documentary? Tonya is praising the film Stone Reader, so I feel compelled to dissent and say that this is a ridiculous excuse for a documentary, though people who enjoy the pacing of, say, NPR radio may enjoy it. (Sideswipe at NPR: This morning they went on and on about people in India who made clay pottery. Why they kneaded the clay by hand and used a potter's wheel! We listened our way through each supposedly bizarrely primitive step of the pottery process that will be familiar to anyone who ever took a ceramics class.)

Stone Reader is the dragged out search for an author of a book the filmmaker read and loved a long time ago. Tonya writes: "You must see this film if you are a bibliophile." I'd say if you're a bibliophile, just read, don't waste time watching a movie about how long it takes to find an author--with numerous pointless shots of things like raking leaves (you know, time is passing, and the author is still not found) and the filmmaker's son opening his new Harry Potter book and interviews with people who might know where the missing author is that go on and on and then conclude with the news that the interviewee does not know (and, yeah, I know Citizen Kane kind of proceeds in that way--"Rosebud? Never heard of it!"--but this is not Citizen Kane). Read the customer review "10% actual content, 90% padding" at Amazon. And check out the inflated price of the DVD--which I paid. (Sure, it has a lot of special features, but what consolation is that? There's no special feature that gives me two hours of my life back.)

Stone Reader feels like a 2-hour public service announcement about the benefits of reading. Can a good movie be made about reading? What movies are there about reading? I can think of The Neverending Story and The Princess Bride, which use the device of reading a book to enter into a story (which Alice in Wonderland does too). I can think of really only one decent movie that really is (pretty much) about reading: La Lectrice. It's hard enough to do a film about writing, but reading? Reminds me of that episode of Seinfeld--The Pitch--where George and Jerry pitch the idea of the show about nothing:

JERRY: ..Well, as I was saying, I would play myself, and, as a comedian, living in New York, I have a friend, a neighbor, and an ex-girlfriend, which is all true.

GEORGE: Yeah, but nothing happens on the show. You see, it's just like life. You know, you eat, you go shopping, you read.. You eat, you read, You go shopping.

RUSSELL: You read? You read on the show?