Ramping up

Apparently, cat ladders are a thing in Switzerland. In contrast to the indoor kitty condos of varying degrees of elaborateness that you see here in the States, the Swiss build ramps on the exterior of their residences (both single and multi-family) so their feline masters can get out and about, coming and going as they please.

The Guardian did a photo story (with most of the pix from a book about the phenomenon), which I just found fascinating. If you look at the photographs closely, you’ll see that people have installed catflaps in their windows.

That may solve the issue of having to continually open your door so your cat can go out or come back in. It also allows apartment dwellers to enjoy the blessing of receiving little gifts of dead mice, lizards and birds from their intrepid hunters.

Speaking of romance

In case you’ve been hanging out in a cave without any media access and only just now woke up to check the blogosphere, let me point out that today is Saint Valentine’s Day, the “you-vill-be-romantic-und-you-vill-enchoy-it” vortex of chocolate, jewelry and other forms of conspicuous consumption.

For something a little off the beaten rose-path, you could settle in with a bottle of bubbly and an elegant, witty romantic comedy.

To get a film with those two particular modifiers, you’re going to have to go back several decades, either chronologically or stylistically. Films like Friends with Benefits and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before may have some persons who are quite a treat to the eye, but it’s hard to really give a toss about them and their predicaments.

Go back to My Man Godfrey (1936; although the 1957 version with David Niven is acceptable), with William Powell and Carole Lombard. The premise may be far-fetched, but you just can’t get enough of the dialogue. (The underlying premise of the absurdly wealthy living cheek-by-jowl with the "forgotten men" laid low by the (last) Big Depression lends some bite to the fluff.)

Ditto The Thin Man (1934); Powell again and Myrna Loy. Plus—Nick and Nora drink like they just got out of Prohibition. Oh, wait...

Still on a Powell-Loy roll, Libeled Lady (1936) also includes Spencer Tracy and a very young and extremely funny Jean Harlow. Powell trying to bluff his way through fly-fishing is a treat; and the chemistry between him and Loy is electric.

Then there’s His Girl Friday (1940), in which Rosalind Russell shoots out some of the best and fastest dialogue in film history as she tries to fend off Cary Grant and get a scoop on an escaped death-row prisoner.

Ninotchka (1940) sees Greta Garbo, a dour Russian functionary sent to Paris to bring some discipline to the sale of tsarist jewels on behalf of the Soviet government, come under the spell of the City of Light (and that sly Melvyn Douglas). Garbo laughs.

Perhaps slightly off the rom-com beat is Topper (1937). I’m not talking the part about Cary Grant and Constance Bennett being a sexy and witty couple. It’s how they help the middle-aged Mr. and Mrs. Topper (Roland Young and a delicious Billie Burke) recapture romance in their marriage. Or—more likely—capture it for the first time.

And, here’s the thing: anyone can make a romance about 20-somethings who are drop-dead gorgeous and wear $850 designer shirts. (You can make a romance, but it’s not necessarily engaging.) But building a film around a woman d’un âge certain (not just a middle aged guy; because how many movies have we seen where Mel Gibson or Harrison Ford get it on with chicks 30 years their junior, in between cortisone shots or DUI arrests?), who has more history and more riding on the outcome of the romance… Now, there’s a story.

That’s the attraction of any Katharine Hepburn movie—Philadelphia Story, Pat and Mike, and my personal favorite: Desk Set. The scene where Hepburn gets looped at the office Christmas party and riffs on Spencer Tracy’s logic questions and then faces down the mainframe computer he’s installed in her research department is worth the price of admission on its own.

Everyone knows An Affair to Remember (1958)—largely because of the homage in Sleepless in Seattle (cute, but no cigar). Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant are the embodiment of class and style in the story of two people who’ve set themselves up with wealthy partners because they’ve been around the block a few times and opted for security over love. They meet on an ocean liner (courtesy of their partners’ money) and decide to take a chance—wagering everything they have against the possibility of love.

Now that’s romance. Really: the crapshoot of love.

Indiscreet (1958) pairs Grant with Ingrid Bergman, a combination it’s hard to top. The premise—Grant claims to be a married man unable to get a divorce as a defense against any woman’s aspirations to matrimony. When he falls for Bergman, a leading lady in all senses of the term, there’s a series of farcical events. Frankly, the plot’s a bit hard to swallow, but you don’t really care because the packaging is super.

Within the past 30 years, I rate Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990) very high on the truly romantic scale. First of all: Alan Rickman. You don’t really need more, but the story is about a deceased cellist (Rickman) returning from beyond to ease his lover (Juliet Stevenson) through her overpowering grief. The scene where he appears, playing his cello while she’s playing the piano, and she sobs—that’s one of the most affecting lovers’ reunions ever filmed.

Enchanted April (1992) has a fantastical (as in “imbued with fantasy”) air to it. Four Englishwomen (strangers to one another—already an anomaly in English society) pool resources to rent a villa in Italy for the month of April. The setting is the 1920s, not my favorite era, but it turns out to fit together absolutely perfectly. The magic of Italy takes hold, healing the wounds of each of the women. The ending is a bit pat—but not out of order in a romance.

Not a comedy, The Last of the Mohicans (1992) is still one of the best love stories going. Lyrically shot by Michael Mann (of all directors), it’s visually stunning and emotionally compelling. When Daniel Day-Lewis abjures Madeleine Stowe (Hawkeye/Cora Munro), about to be taken by the Huron, to “No matter whatever happens, stay alive. I will find you no matter what”—well, it’s utterly heart-melting. There can’t be a woman alive who wouldn’t want her man to give that sort of adoration.

Playing against the trend of no witty and engaging rom-coms in recent years is 2008’s Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. It’s charming and blessed with superior characters and dialogue. (Okay, Frances McDormand can do no wrong; simply by a narrowing or widening of an eye she can communicate utter despair or puppy-wriggling pleasure.) Again, it’s that last-chance-at-love hook that I find much more appealing than the usual ho-hum Drew Barrymore-Matthew McConaughey fluff.

I think my all-time favorite romance, however, is I Know Where I’m Going (1945). Yes, it’s a bit contrived, and you know what the “twist” is going to be. But Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey have such chemistry in their clash of wits, it just knocks you out. Hiller is the strong-willed city girl on her way to marry her wealthy, older industrialist fiancé (see the money-security options in An Affair to Remember), who has rented an island off the Scottish coast. The weather intervenes and puts her in the path of Torquil McNeil, who (it turns out) actually owns that island, but is land-rich and cash-poor.

Well, you know what’s going to happen, but getting there is just charming and well worth the time.

Any of these is worlds better than what any of the Lifetime/Hallmark channels are running for Valentine’s Day—which are all the same exact plot, many times with the same exact actors, filmed on the cheap in Vancouver simulating various US locales. Every once in a while I catch part of one of these; they are to the classics as Cold Duck is to Cordon Rouge.

They smell better

WMATA (like most public transportation organizations, tbf) has been struggling to turn itself around since long before I got here. We went through the dreaded SafeTrack year (plus) of major repairs to tracks throughout the system a couple of years ago. And they’ve recently embarked on an initiative hopefully (?) titled Back2Good that, among other things, refunds your fare if your journey is delayed by 10 minutes:

That’s down from the previous 15-minute promise.

I had several refunds on my card last month, and I’m so used to “schedule adjustment” and “train at the platform” delays that I hadn’t even noticed being late.

They’ve also been introducing their new 7000-series cars, which are always 8-car trains. I’ve noted before that these cars at least show signs of having been hosed down occasionally. I don’t think the old-style ones, with their threadbare carpeting, have ever been cleaned.

And I noticed a while back that Metro is capitalizing on this:

Um.

Shelter from the storm

We’ve had a spate of the dreaded wintery mix here in the District They Call Columbia. I got up at 0400 yesterday to find snow on the cars outside, but complicated with rain. The feds, schools and a lot of businesses (including my company) were on two-hour delayed start, but I was up, so I went in at my usual time anyhow. It’s always nice to work a few hours with no one else in the office.

At home I went into my default defense against inclement weather: lots and lots of candles. Here’s a shot of one that was melting in an interesting pattern:

Gratitude Monday: Tasting notes

A while ago I engaged in a rant about how someone had received a Christmas gift of Oregon wines. I was truly upset about her plan to just swill all four bottles in a night with her Women Who Wine pals—even though I acknowledged that once you’ve given the present, the recipient is entitled to do whatever s/he pleases with it.

Well, last week I got the measured judgments of the six WWW on the wines, and…

Here were the instructions:

1. Overall Score (1 to 10, 10 being high)

2. Would you buy this wine if it was priced between $15 to $20? Y/N

3. How does this wine compare to the other wines? Please compare reds to reds and whites to whites. Just write what you want below.

First of all, one of the participants doesn’t appear to have grasped point 1: her cards had no score on any of the wines.

Second—discounting Ms. No Score, the highest average rating was 7.5, for the Chardonnay. The Pinot Gris (or Pino Gris, as one of them wrote) got 4.0, the Pinot Noir 5.4 and the red blend got 3.8.

The price point elicited some interesting responses. The Char:

“Yes if on sale for 30% off at Basha’s” (Which, tbf, means no.) And “Maybe $15 but $7 is better.” Um

Only one person would buy the PG at $15, though there was another who would grudgingly fork over $8.

Ditto for the blend—the one yes stipulated that she wouldn’t go any higher than $15.

Two said they’d buy the PN at $15-$20, although one qualified her yes with “if friends who liked lighter reds wanted to try a ‘light’ pinot noir.” I really liked this sniff: “Doubtful. Does not compare w/ Santa Ynez Valley pino [sic]”

As for the “tasting notes”, on the Westrey Pinot Gris: “Too dry too oaky too not for me as compared to any wine I have ever tasted.”

The Twill Chardonnay: “This fruity light chardonay [sic] is not as dry as others I have tasted and usually do not like. Personally I like sweet sparkling white Moscato” I have to say I’m not quite sure about this one: “Josh, Chatau [sic] St [sic] Michelle This is a very lite wine”

If the PN was too “lite”, the Pour Me Red Wine Blend was excoriated for being too strong. Ms. Moscato’s comment was “As Red Blend I like one that is not as high in alcohol [evidently 14.6%; they were keeping track]. Like white sweet wines” Ms. Santa Ynez Valley just sniffed (again), “poor choice”

So what’s this got to do with Gratitude Monday? I’ve got over my strop about my gift not being used as intended, much less appreciated. It gave six women the opportunity to come together and pronounce the Judgment of the Desert. And those comments! Bwahahaha! I have completely let this go.

I hope the cheese and crackers made up for their disappointment in the wine.