Places

Cabin John Regional Park

This summer, Ligia and I visited Cabin John Regional Park here in Potomac, MD. It’s a lesser known park, and it doesn’t really get as many visitors as it deserves, but it’s a pretty beautiful place. To discover that beauty, you need to get off the beaten path, as is the case with many things in life.

We did get off the beaten path when we visited it, so much so that we got lost, and getting back onto the path was an adventure in itself. At least we got some good photos out of it.

This tree almost looks like someone with their legs in the air.

There was a nice little brook running through the forest, and some of its riverbed was exposed. Not only did we find beautiful pebbles, but we also found some great sand patterns.

The light reflected beautifully off the water’s surface.

Lichen grew abundantly on a fallen tree trunk.

We also found thick moss, colored a deep green, growing on another fallen tree trunk.

After almost two hours of wandering the forest, we were relieved to find the path once more.

Reviews

Troy (2004)

Troy (2004) Just finished watching Troy for the first time (yes, I know I’m about two years behind with my movie watching…) and several thoughts are on my mind.

First, how do you tackle a subject as epic as the Battle of Troy? How you handle Homer? How you you compress 9 years of fighting and conflict into a movie, even one that’s 2 hours and 43 minutes long? I would say it’s impossible to carry off, and given the circumstances, I think the director did a great job. I wasn’t happy about the shortcuts taken to shorten the battle, but how else do you compress 9 years into a movie? You take out about 8 or so of them by coming up with the wooden horse a little early, that’s how… What’s more, Homer’s poems are almost hallowed in academia. Yes, they’re dusty, but hallowed. Any re-interpretation of Homer’s work is bound to draw criticism, and from pretty vocal voices at that…

The subject matter itself is depressing. We know how it ends, and it ends miserably for everyone involved. There’s no happy ending anywhere. Mass audiences don’t like that, and they show it by not going to the movie. There are few epic movies to be made these days, since most of them have already been filmed, and plenty have even been re-made. The Battle of Troy (the Iliad) was one of few remaining unfilmed literary works. I can understand the excitement of filming “fresh” material, but if I wanted to make a movie from Homer’s poems and this was choice A, I would have picked choice B, the Odyssey. Now that’s a far better choice: happy ending, hope, though dim, is still in sight, glorious return home to a faithful and beautiful wife — now that’s my kind of movie!

It’s hard to carry a movie on the shoulders of a star that can’t act in a dramatic role. I know that’s really harsh, but I had the hardest time finding Brad Pitt believable in the role of Achilles. He didn’t act, he posed. When he didn’t pose, he glowered and frowned, and generally tried to fill a role that even he knew was beyond him. I could see it on his face. At no time was it more visible than in the scene where Peter O’Toole, as King Priam, begs for Hector’s body, so he could give his son a proper burial. The marked contrast between Peter O’Toole’s and Brad Pitt’s acting was, how shall I put it, very, very noticeable! Peter O’Toole was King Priam, and Brad Pitt was Brad Pitt, dressed in set clothes, trying desperately to find a way to act the scene.

The actors and actresses that really carried the movie but probably didn’t get “star” pay are listed here: Peter O’Toole, Brian Cox, Eric Bana, Sean Bean, and Saffron Burrows. What can I say, Peter O’Toole is amazingly believable, as usual. He is a true actor and a master of his craft. Brian Cox was so believable as Agamemnon, I wanted to string him up for his behavior in all of the scenes he was in. Eric Bana, what a wonderful performance as Hector! He let Hector’s honor, sense of duty, love for his wife and anguish at the role he had to play show through so well, that he was the real hero of the movie. Sean Bean, what a wonderful job as Odysseus, or Ullyssees (as this mythological character is known in Romania). I’m really impressed with Sean Bean. His performances are consistently great, at least in the movies I’ve seen. If I ever get to be in a movie, I’d love to be in one with Sean Bean. Great acting, Sean! I’ve always found Saffron Burrows charming and delightful in her performances. It’s a pity she doesn’t get cast in more principal roles. She seems to be stuck in supporting roles, and when she does get placed in larger roles, it’s usually in crappy movies like Deep Blue Sea, which I wouldn’t watch if I was alone on a deserted island and that was the only DVD around.

No, I didn’t forget Orlando Bloom as Paris. But he just didn’t stand out in this movie, certainly not like he stood out in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or the Pirates of the Carribean, another soon-to-be trilogy. Maybe it was the script or the direction, or maybe he couldn’t get into the role, but I just couldn’t see him as more than a supporting character. And I also didn’t forget Helen, or “the problem of Helen”, as people put it when the movie came out. How do you find the most beautiful woman on earth? Seriously, people have differing tastes, and beauty varies in different nations and different ages. Plus, it’s really hard to find a really beautiful woman that can act. This is not a stereotype, and no, I’m not talking about blondes. I dare you to go out there and find the most beautiful woman, and see how well she talks, expresses herself, and how healthy (mentally) she is. Most likely, she’ll be caught up in herself, emotionally stilted. And it’s a given that she won’t be able to act. In hindsight, I didn’t like Diane Kruger as Helen, but hey, I didn’t do the casting, and I understand how difficult it really is to find a true “Helen”.

Given all of the issues I outlined above, it’s no wonder the movie didn’t do so well, and it’s still reviewed as average in most places. Yes, I know, it’s easy to analyze something in retrospect, but to be fair, I read one or two reviews when the movie came out, and that was it. I saw it for the first time today, and my impressions are fresh. I still think it’s a good movie, and in time, it’ll become a benchmark for what to do and what not to do in an epic modern production, but for now, it still has to drink its castor oil.

Thoughts

More petunia photos

I’m posting more petunia photos. Can’t help it, they look so good — the poor things are still going strong as I write this, and it’s already October. Ligia must have done something right taking care of them. Incidentally, she grew them from seeds she harvested from last year’s crop of petunias. You should have seen her taking care of these beauties from the time they were seedlings.

We thought we’d lose them a few weeks ago when these green butterfly larvae infested them. Those little nasties would eat both leaves and flowers, and there’d be no end of them! We’d pick them off the flowers and squish them, and there’d be more in the morning… Thankfully, they disappeared, and our petunias came back to life, more glorious than ever, as you can see.

Places

Camping in the Shenandoah National Park

This past weekend, close friends of ours and Ligia and I went camping in the Shenandoah National Park. It was a surreal experience. We left a little later than we’d planned, and caught the rush hour traffic heading west on Route 66. We rued our day as we slowly crawled through miles of clogged up highway, but when we got out of the Manassas area, the traffic improved.

At any rate, we’d been slowed down enough that we arrived on Skyline Drive after dark. Then, it started raining as we approached the park. As if that wasn’t enough, fog set in and we could barely see ahead of us. But after all, we were traveling on mountain tops, and it was the start of fall, so the weather can be pretty unpredictable and wet. After trudging around in the dark, we got to the camp, and found one of the few remaining spots for the night. We were shocked to find out that they were booked solid and there was a waiting list. Our friends, who wanted to stay for two nights, couldn’t.

We bought some firewood and headed to our camp site, dreading the experience that would follow: pitching our tents in the dark, in rain, and in strong wind. Fun isn’t the word to describe it. We turned on our headlights and kept them on as we unpacked the tents and raised them. I’ll spare you the muddy details, but you’d be amazed what four pairs of helping hands, working in unison, can accomplish when under pressure.

We got the tents up, then tried to eat. What to eat? We wanted to heat up the food, but we needed a fire. Have you ever tried to start a fire while it’s raining and windy? No copious amounts of lighter fluid and paper will help. It kept dying down, even though the wood was dry. Finally, I gave up and called in the reserves: our friends. They both tried it, persevered, and finally succeeded. We gave up warming the food and ate some cold sandwiches instead, as we sat and warmed ourselves by the fire.

Fireside chats? Not that night! After we got done eating, we went directly to bed, where another surprise awaited us. Our tents were summer tents, and while they held up very nicely in the wind and rain, they were, shall we say, constructed more for the purpose of aeration than insulation. Luckily, we’d brought plenty of covers, but our friends didn’t. Even though they didn’t admit it, methinks they froze their butts off during the night. And what a night! A gale wind blew the whole time, and waves of rain beat down on our tents. It was noisy and lousy, and cold. It took me a while to fall asleep, but thankfully, I stayed asleep till morning after that. We woke up early, with the wind still blowing outside. The rain had stopped, and I managed to get a fire going without help.

We ate our breakfast and had tea, then had two wonderful surprises. One was the Monarch butterflies, in various stages of development, attached to the exterior walls of the bathrooms. Why they picked the bathrooms I don’t know, but that’s where I found them.

I found the gold lining on their cocoons truly amazing. That’s actually what drew me to them in the first place. If I hadn’t seen the gold spots and crown lining, I’d have passed by them like many of the other people using the bathrooms. It’s no wonder they’re called Monarch butterflies. They sure look regal with those spots of gold, don’t they?

Then Ligia had the second surprise. She found a wild apple tree, and picked a few apples. (They were delicious, by the way.) What do you think she found on one of them? An Eyed Hawk Moth larva, of all things! What was it doing in the Appalachian mountains? It normally lives in Europe. I don’t know, but it was a beautiful thing to behold.

After our breakfast — and this time we could chat around the fire — we took off and went hiking on the Rose River Trail. Our goal: Rose River Falls. The trail was easy and beautiful. Here are a few photos from the hike:

Rose River turned out to be a brook in the forest — quite the optimistic name for a brook, isn’t it? 🙂

After the hike, we had a wonderful late lunch at the Skyland Lounge, then headed out on Skyland Drive, and stopped along the way at overlooks to take photos of the gorgeous vistas. Here are a few of them:

Was it a wonderful trip? You bet your britches it was, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat, even with all the nightmarish traffic and surreal weather.

Thoughts

The sky at sunset

The evening sky, in particular during those moments when the sun is just about to go down below the horizon, gets me every time. I took a series of photos last evening, and wanted to share the more notable ones with you. Photos are from North Bethesda, MD.