An Hour of Sandra Bullock

I watched a special on VH1 last night about one of my favorite actresses, Sandra Bullock. I’d seen it before, but only bits and pieces of it, this time I got to see the whole thing. A full  hour of all kinds of stories, pictures and interesting information about this native Virginian from north Arlington.

There is something about Ms Bullock that really floats my boat. I haven’t seen her do a bad job in any of the roles that she has played over the last twenty-five years or so and I hope that she continues to entertain us me for a long time to come.

He’s Large!

There’s a scene in the movie, Popeye, where Olive Oil is hanging out with her girlfriends and she starts to sing a song about her fiancĂ©, Bluto. She tries to sing of his virtues, but the song ends up, “He’s large,” and the girls sing along like backup singers, “Large.” That was the polite way, back in the 1980’s, to describe guys like me. I’m large and I’m not all that worried about losing weight. I’m not fat. There is a difference between large and fat.

My problem with being large is finding clothes that fit. For some reason a lot of U. S. manufacturers have decided that men who are wide must also be short. If I can find clothes that fit me around the waist, the legs are too short. If I find a shirt that is large enough for my barrel chest, then the sleeves are too short. That is why I shop for Large Men’s Clothing online. I know the measurements that I need and I can usually get enough details from the web site to know if the clothes will fit me.

Enjoy the video, thanks to YouTube! I’ve always been a Popeye fan and was thrilled when this movie came out. I think it’s time to dig that movie out and watch it again, probably been ten years since I’ve seen in last!

Box Office Failure

One of my favorite action movies by someone other than Mel Gibson has got to be the original “Speed.” The movie had a great cast: Keanu Reeves – gorgeous, intense, the clean cut, cop-type everyone loves to love Dennis Hopper – one of the best bad guys EVER – Sandra Bullock – America’s darling – Jeff Daniels – Imaginative casting – from slapstick to a cop – and it worked! Can you believe it has been 19 years since that movie came out? IT was released in 1994. Now that certainly makes me feel so OLD!

One of the worst sequels of all time, Speed 2 was made with a lot of the same people, with the noticeable absence of Keanu Reeves, and released in 1997. It was a box office failure – and rightfully so. The movie was a money grab and had so many technical inconsistencies that it was neither believable nor entertaining. The set for the huge crash ending was supposed to be the Caribbean town of St. Martin, but according to Wikipedia, there is no town by the name in the movie and there is not town that looks anything like the scene in the movie. So I stand by my original comment that the Isla Moin Marina in Costa Rica was used as the basis of the movie set in Speed 2. Unless this town did not exist in 1996, in which case I wonder if the architect was inspired by the movie?