AUSTIN, Texas, July 31, 2004 — Watched a film for the festival. Watched Woody Allen's Interiors and Crimes and Misdemeanors while listening to KMFA. Listened to a CD of one of the gals we heard last night and listened to Frank Sinatra sing Cole Porter and listened to Rhapsody playing music I've selected from my youth and some I've selected for my funeral.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 30, 2004 — Watched a couple of films for the festival screening. Listened to some live music.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 28, 2004 — I listened to John Edwards whole speech. (OK, I was sort of reading and working crossword puzzles, too.) He is going to fix everything with the other John. But you won't have to pay more taxes. Unless you are a 'wealthiest American.' He personally has a tax dodge involving Subchapter S corporations, paying himself 'dividends' from his corp instead of salary to avoid Medicare tax, the tax that has no ceiling even though, you would think, it isn't a tax but, like Social Security, a payment against future benefits. Which should be actuarily figured out like insurance so that, at some point, you wouldn't have to pay more. But it isn't. They figure it so that every dollar of earned income is taxed. Fine. He says everyone should have hope regardless of their circumstances. He is himself a perfect example of starting with nothing and making it. Which is easier if you are male, white and reasonably good-looking. But, I'm female and, while I didn't do as well as Mr. Edwards, I did pretty well starting with nothing. As did some of my black friends. And Hispanic friends. So...when did this opportunity disappear? Just asking. Some will always succeed more than others. Unless you want a socialist society where we just take from the successful and hand it over to the less so until everything is equal. But, wait, John doesn't really want to do that, does he? Or why would he avoid that medicare tax on part of his income? Wouldn't he get in and vote to pay that tax on all income even dividends? The other thing John said that was interesting is that those terrorists better watch out because he was gonna hunt them down. Um, OK. You know, when you can't find Osama Bin Laden what it says to me is that hundreds, nay thousands, of people are hiding him. That is scary.

I saw a great documentary in the AFF screening but I can't talk about it.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 27, 2004 — Some AFF films. Navy NCIS. An old Crossing Jordan.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 26, 2004 — Watched some of the convention. Watched a CSI: Miami.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 25, 2004 — Six Feet Under. I'm getting tired of this one. The characters seem to be in a loop, going through the same motions, maybe with new friends or partners. I watched a couple of festival entries, too.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 24, 2004 — Night and Day...the fictionalized biography of Cole Porter from 1946, starring Cary Grant.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 23, 2004 — Films for the festival. Part of The Cook, The Thief, The Wife and Her Lover. I couldn't actually finish this one.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 22, 2004 — Films for the festival. Part of The Cook, The Thief, The Wife and Her Lover. CSI and Without a Trace. An old episode of Northern Exposure and one of M*A*S*H and some news programs and some sports channel about the Tour de France.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 21, 2004 —A moview about James Joyce's wife called Nora. Some films for the festival.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 20, 2004 — Bits of old M*A*S*H episodes. FFP doesn't like these. He asks, "What is this: the M*A*S*H channel?" Sometimes they show Northern Exposure, I point out, or Magnum P.I.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 19, 2004 — Watched Larry King to see what old Martha Stewart had to say. I never liked her but I like her better as a felon. Odd, that. Not that I necessarily think she's guilty of anything.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 18, 2004 — Watched some of the Olympic Trials and a new episode of Six Feet Under. (Which we didn't like. The abduction of David by the hitchhiker was just too violent and maddening. We are such wimps.)

AUSTIN, Texas, July 17, 2004 — Portrait of the Artist as a Yound Man, Alice's Restaurant and miscelleanous TV.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 16, 2004 — Part of a film called Gas, Food, Lodging which I didn't really like and won't finish watching. Bits of M*A*S*H episodes, several shorts to review for the film festival. I went to see Delovely which just opened in Austin. I give it a thumbs up. But, of course, I love Cole Porter music.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 15, 2004 — Bits of M*A*S*H episodes, films I'm reviewing for the Austin Film Festival, the movie Caberet with Liza Minelli and Michael York. The end of The Heart of Me.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 14, 2004 — bits of M*A*S*H and Northern Exposure and Law and Order.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 13, 2004 — The All Star Major League Baseball game. With one eye anyway. A short and a feature...reviewed for Austin Film Festival.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 12, 2004 — Six Feet Under.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 11, 2004 — Six Feet Under.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 10, 2004 — Hollywood Shuffle. FFP ordered this one. Funny, but glad I didn't pay money at the movies. Faherheit 451. I love it. The 'modern' aspect is understated and so it holds up. Almost anyway. I see from the Internet Movie Database that this one is being remade. Hmm. We browsed some other stuff on TV.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 9, 2004 — Previewed films for the Austin Film Festival. Watched Paradise Found about Gaugin. Not a great movie but I enjoyed the talk about the impressionists. Part of Tortilla Soup. In my opinion it is a poor imitation of Eat Drink Man Woman.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 8, 2004 — Previewed films for the Austin Film Festival. Saw a musical called Debbie Does Dallas at Arts on Real. They (allegedly) used the dialog from the porn movie, added musical numbers and substituted funny X-rated but not that explicit action for the hard core penetration. It was pretty funny because of the dialog and the actors were hilarious but it wore a little thin by Act II. I don't know if the dialog or 'story line' was accurate to the film because I'm pretty sure I never saw it. FFP thought he'd seen it but he couldn't remember the dialog. (Imagine that?) You can't say that we don't see an eclectic bunch of stuff, can you?

AUSTIN, Texas, July 7, 2004 — Some more Christo stuff. A premier of the HBO sports movie, Hitler's Pawn. Sports and politics? Don't mix? Of course, they do. Sports and every other part of life is caught up in politics. Especially in a dictatorship but not only there. This is a small story among many other, more tragic ones. (Including the husband of the subject.) To think, Hitler's Olympic Team in 1936 had, on its women's high jump team, the bronze medal winner, a man posing as a woman and an empty slot for which a Jewish woman was trained and then told she "didn't qualify." Bizarre. But as Margaret Lambert says, there were much worse tragedies, her husband lost his parents and thirty relatives. She got her husband (to be) out by scrounging two thousand dollars for a visa.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 6, 2004 — Some more Christo documentary. Hitler's Pawn, an HBO Sports Movie about

AUSTIN, Texas, July 5, 2004 — Crime TV, His Secret Life, some Christo documentary and a part of a documentary (Last Dance) about Maurice Sendak and the Pilobolus dance company producing a dance about the Holocaust called The Selection.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 4, 2004 — Wimby Men's Final. Part of a movie about French Resistance. And...Fahrenheit 9/11. An elderly couple behind us said the theater should be thrilled to have them because they never go to movies. It's amazing that Michael Moore got rights to all the footage that he did. Who took the 9/11 stuff? Guess I should have stayed for the credits and permissions. I think he proves his points: Bush is silly and perhaps lazy, there was a report about Bin Laden's desire to fly planes into things, the Patriot Act is a violation of rights but doesn't make us safer and Saddam probably didn't have weapons of mass destruction. His conclusion (not in the movie but in his press) is that you should elect Kerry. Implication: all will be well. Bush (and his dad and advisors and cronies) are alone responsible for evil. Saddam and his cronies should have been left alone, the Taliban is evil but we collaborated with them and then didn't send enough guys to kill them. There is this strange undertone of Xenophobia for anyone a Bush shook hands with while glorifying other equally bad people. Michael knows the truth, I think, that mankind is mostly evil, Democrats, Republicans, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims. He quotes George Orwell in something like "war is meant to be continuous." He knows that power and greed require war. He doesn't want to openly admit that changing regimes here probably won't change that just as the new regime in Iraq is unlikely to be above motivations of greed and power. If he admitted it, then he wouldn't have a moral imperative for you in the press if not the movie to vote out the 'bad' and vote in the 'good.' The film is cleverly edited although he lingers too long on the family of the soldier who was killed.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 3, 2004 — A documentary about a Blues Joint...not sure of title something like 'Last Juke Joint.' I think the place might have been in Mississippi.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 2, 2004 — Watched a little Wimbledon and a documentary about Christo in Paris and his wrapping of Pont Neuf.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 1, 2004 — I watched some Wimbledon on TV.