I sometimes wonder how present-day movies would play to audiences sixty years ago. It's not so much the language, minority roles, or subject matter I wonder about, though. What would a 1946 audience think of the special effects of, say, Mission To Mars (the 2000 version, of course), or the pace of the story in Lost In Translation?

Tonight, we rented a movie that probably would have been accepted in 1946: Around The World In 80 Days. It was an old-fashioned, grand scale family movie, with just barely enough crudity to avoid a G rating. It's too bad it wasn't very good.

What bothered me the most was that it was turned into a Jackie Chan movie - and I happen to be a fan of Jackie Chan movies. It's just that, with Jackie Chan getting top billing, it meant that Passepartout became the main character, and Philias Fogg became just an excuse to move the fight scenes to different locations.

I've never read the book (I know I should), and I barely remember the original 1956 movie. I knew, somehow, that this remake wasn't very faithful to either. Jules Verne probably didn't write that many martial arts fight scenes into his novel. It wasn't until I watched the deleted scenes, with commentaries, that I remembered that Philias Fogg wasn't a crazy-genius inventor in the 1956 movie. I kind of remember David Niven playing him as a snobbish, humorless Englishman getting his eyes opened to cultures beyond his own.

I completely forgot to watch episode 2 of The Long Way Round last night.

However, I didn't forget to go to the first class of the new yoga session tonight. There were a lot of familiar faces in the full class. Lisa, however, wasn't there. She was sick, and a teaching assistant named Amy taught the class. Amy did a fine job. We did Downward Facing Dog many times, with several variations. We chanted. We didn't do the Sun Salutation. I realized tonight that, for the first time, I've remembered a pose by its Sanskrit name: Uttanasana. (I can't do it without modification, but at least I didn't have to look around when Amy returned us to Uttanasana.)

I feel good right now.

I'm really not liking this working in the office. It was a nice change of pace - nice to sit behind a desk out of the clinic once in a while. Now it's feeling like my permanent job. I file papers, answer the phones, and listen to Golden Oldies from 8 to 4:30, Monday through Friday. There are people that like doing that sort of thing all day. Not me. I feel like a temporary employee helping out.

The song stuck in my head today is "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands," by Bob Dylan. It's a song I don't know all of the words to (and I wonder how many people could actually recite the entire lyrics from memory).

Last night, Phillip and I took a walk on Broadway, to look at people's Halloween costumes. It was colder out than we expected, neither one of us was dressed warmly enough, so we didn't walk far. My favorite of the costumes I saw was the couple dressed as The Devil and The Grim Reaper. They were both carrying signs that said, "A vote for Bush is a vote for me."

I've started reading one of the books that came in my Booklover's Basket. It's an advance uncorrected proof of Pyro, by Earl Emerson. According to the back page, Mr. Emerson is a lieutenant in the Seattle Fire Department, in addition to being an award-winning author of several detective novels. He lives in North Bend.

So far, I'm not fond of the simile-in-every-paragraph style of writing Earl Emerson is presenting to me. "...our mother struggled with a string of minimum-wage jobs that seemed to disappear as quickly as the gin she spilled on the carpet..." It is interesting, however, when he talks about the job of firefighting, and also when he throws in local references. When he writes about "Station 6, on the corner of Twenty-third and Yesler, catty-corner from the Douglass-Truth Library and directly west of the Catholic Community Services building" I know exactly which firehouse he's referring to (although I'm not sure why it's important for we the readers to know which library is close to the firehouse). Oh, I like this simile: "The north side of the bay housed the engine, the south side the truck, both pieces of apparatus stuffed into their tiny spaces like bratwurst into a glutton's mouth."

This could be an interesting book.