Poem for Saturday, 'Rivals', Richmond Critters

Magdalen Walks
By Oscar Wilde

The little white clouds are racing over the sky,
   And the fields are strewn with the gold of the flower of March,
   The daffodil breaks under foot, and the tasselled larch
Sways and swings as the thrush goes hurrying by.

A delicate odour is borne on the wings of the morning breeze,
   The odour of deep wet grass, and of brown new-furrowed earth,
   The birds are singing for joy of the Spring's glad birth,
Hopping from branch to branch on the rocking trees.

And all the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of Spring,
   And the rose-bud breaks into pink on the climbing briar,
   And the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire
Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring.

And the plane to the pine-tree is whispering some tale of love
   Till it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green,
   And the gloom of the wych-elm's hollow is lit with the iris sheen
Of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove.

See! the lark starts up from his bed in the meadow there,
   Breaking the gossamer threads and the nets of dew,
   And flashing adown the river, a flame of blue!
The kingfisher flies like an arrow, and wounds the air.

--------

Paul worked from home on Friday because of construction at his office, so we got to have breakfast and lunch together. Meanwhile I wrote a review of "Rivals" and did some editing and had cats meowing piteously because they took the fact that we were both home to mean that it must be time to eat. We chatted with Daniel about Mother's Day plans and with Adam about his weekend plans which apparently require us to drive him to the movies at a time when we expect to be at a play.

We had dinner with my parents, then watched Nikita, which had a plot so shark-jumpingly ridiculous that I stopped caring whether or not it got picked up for a third season just as the news arrived that it had. I am really bummed that, as expected, both Harry's Law and Awake have been canceled -- guess I won't be watching anything on NBC next season, not that they'll care since I am over 30. Don't the advertisers realize that my demographic has more money to spend on the cars they advertise than teenagers do?

Speaking of teenagers, we then watched The Social Network, which has finally appeared on Starz On Demand. I did not expect to like it but I did expect to be impressed with the directing, which lots of people went on about in their reviews. To them I say, WTF -- a lot of it looked like television cuts and except for the crew sequence there wasn't one really unique sequence in the film. The screenplay was all right but Sorkin's written much better. Timberlake was more memorable than Eisenberg but there wasn't one character I admired or rooted for at all. I won't be watching that again. Some animals from Lewis Ginter Botanic Garden: