A Weekend With Dad

I've had a busy weekend.

On Friday night, the eve of Black Friday (which sounds to me like a stock market crash, not a favorable shopping day), Dad and I went to see Lillian Hellman's Little Foxes. The streets were swarming with consumers, easily swayed by the lure of advertising. I should have realized what a certain young lady was doing the day after Thanksgiving. The play itself featured the intrigues of a Southern family more beholden to Mammon than mercy and kindness. The play was well executed, but the slew of plays about Southern decadance has somewhat diluted the dramatic impact of that milieu. Perhaps my overexposure to serious plays has leached the color for me.

On Saturday night, Dad and I went to the San Francisco Symphony's presentation of Charlie Chaplin's City Lights as it would have been at its premiere. A "silent" film, proeprly presented, was scarcely silent, since the score involved a thirty-piece orchestra. It was strange to hear laughter in such normally somber halls, but Chaplin's comic genius as actor, director, and composer shone. One could describe the plot either as cheap melodrama or as deeply tragic drama.

On Sunday afternoon, Dad and I went to see Borat! It was a good movie, but the joke only remained funny until halfway or two-thirds of the way through the film. It was a good thing Mom didn't come with us - she would have hated it.