IntenseDebate - SgtMom

13 years ago @ Big Hollywood - The Public Isn't Homop... · 0 replies · +2 points

Yep - we really appreciated what a good actor he was!

13 years ago @ Big Journalism - Christmas Eve Open Thr... · 1 reply · +1 points

Thanks, everyone. It doesn't look good at all. Bro-in-law just called (midday Sunday) - my sister and brothers have gone with my mother to the hospital. I am working out a way to get there from Texas to San Diego as soon as poss, but flights are booked solid for the next few days, or are so expensive as to be impossible. Even tAmtrack is booked solid until after New Years.

Just as I finished writing the above, my youngest brother called: Dad passed on about ten minutes ago. Everyone in the family but my daughter and I were there. Dad would have been 80, a week from tomorrow.
This all happened so very suddenly, just within the space of two weeks.

14 years ago @ Big Journalism - Christmas Eve Open Thr... · 1 reply · +2 points

Thanks, all.
Watched the movie, did feel a bit better. There is no emoticon for smiling a bit while feeling you are going to dissolve into tears any moment ...

14 years ago @ Big Journalism - Christmas Eve Open Thr... · 8 replies · +5 points

We're going to sit down and watch this movie tonight.
Hoping it will cheer us up a bit. My Dad was put in the hospital last week, having a bad combination of walking pneumonia, symptoms of congestive heart failure and some kind of leaking aneurysm in his skull. They operated last Friday, and he was doing well all this week ... but this evening we find out that the pneumonia has roared back, and he is sedated and on a breathing -assist thingy.
He and the rest of the family are in California and I am in Texas and won't be able to travel home until after New Years.

Yep, Merry Christmas, y'all.

14 years ago @ Big Hollywood - Top 25 Left-Wing Films... · 0 replies · +8 points

No, when it got to that part, my opinion of them as ultimately self-centered, careless a-holes was pretty much confirmed. Abandoning the pet was cold-hearted and deliberate.

14 years ago @ Big Hollywood - Top 25 Left-Wing Films... · 3 replies · +15 points

In fairness to the director, he might have calculated that scene to establish how essentially self-centered the characters of the parents were. I couldn't bring myself to care for them at all, after that.

14 years ago @ Big Hollywood - Top 25 Left-Wing Films... · 14 replies · +32 points

I remember seeing this (on VHS, I think) a couple of years after it came out ... and being particularly appalled at one of the opening scenes - of them leaving town ... and slowing down long enough to dump the family dog on the road. No matter how charming and likable and supposedly principled the characters of the parents were ... they dropped off their pet on the side of the road like a sack of garbage.

14 years ago @ Big Hollywood - Andrew Klavan Intervie... · 0 replies · +1 points

I have both Houston and Lamar as characters in the latest ... and oh, yes - it was an epic rivalry; they were both absolutely fascinating characters, very much larger than life and almost complete opposites, save for that both of them had a fair amount of personal courage.
I come down on the side of Houston, BTW - he had just enough Bad Boy in him to tickle my fancy. Lamar was too much of the goody-goody.

14 years ago @ Big Hollywood - Andrew Klavan Intervie... · 2 replies · +1 points

Sure - PM me through my website - www.celiahayes.com. There's a link to my email addy. You might also want to check out the Independent Author's Guild, at www.independentauthorsguild.com. A lot of us founding members were writers who had done a historical novel through POD or a teensy regional press - and we decided to get together and pool our various expertise and connections.

Jane Long was also the niece of James Wilkerson who was a piece of work all on his own, too. I had not read Mirabeau Lamar's bio of her - but when I did a talk at the Fort Bend County museum last year, I had quite a few people tell me that people who became embroiled by an interest in Texas history became either partisans of Lamar, or partisans of Houston!

14 years ago @ Big Hollywood - Andrew Klavan Intervie... · 5 replies · +2 points

Thanks, Edski - my next one is coming out on San Jacinto Day, April 21, 2011 - Daughter of Texas. It's about all the other stuff that was going on in the Texas Revolution --- besides the Alamo!

The great stories are out there - all you have to do is just pick one, and get cracking!

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