We need the eggs

Annie Hall

(1977)

No apologies: a stay-at-home matinee with a double helping of popcorn for the only movie I'll see this birthday (my 59th, the director's 77th), after which I'm going to devote the rest of the day to a little reading and a lot of sports, including my first full screening and archival recording of an epochal event that occurred one half-year ago tonight. Don't worry, though: hyperconscious of creeping decay, I did my full Saturday workout this a.m.; decrepitude takes no holiday, so neither must I.

OK, I take it back: one apology, for using this forum to lay a rare passive-aggressive trip (no, really: ask her) on my daughter, who saw this--or maybe saw only part of it--years ago, was unimpressed, and has never given it a second chance:

Look, there are four ways this can go down: you can watch it now, be reconfirmed in your opinion that I have vastly overrated it, and not have me bother you about it anymore. Or you can watch it now, discover it to be every bit the painfully perfect dissection of love that I claim it to be, and henceforth share my delight in it, along with appropriate allusions to it. It can, in short, become yet another element of the private language of the best parent-child relationship I've ever experienced (and one of the best for you, too, I'm pretty sure).

Or you can not watch it again until after the reading of my will, where I will make that my only demand, and be reconfirmed in your opinion that I have vastly overrated it, which won't matter then. Or you can wait until after I'm gone to discover how wonderful it indeed is, and regret not having discovered that while I was still around to share in your delight.

I'm just sayin'. Love, Dad