I remember seeing the movie The Snake Pit, made in 1948. It stars Olivia deHavilland as a woman who finds herself in an insane asylum and doesn't know how she got there. I don't really remember anything else about it except the final scene, which is an overhead shot of the women in the exercise yard and it looks like...a snake pit.
I thought about that today when I took the puppies up to Petco. They were all there today, all the puppies.
(See the video of the day to get a better feel for what it was like).
I packed our four up and stuck them in the car. They weren't sure what to make of it all.
Dexter (the hairy one with the big ears :)) came along, but wasn't going up for adoption. Instead, he was going to UCD to be neutered. I had to pack him and his medicine, since he's on a special blend that is helping him regrow all that fur. He looks like a dog, now, doesn't he!
The MFL puppies seemed to blend in ok with their siblings, but I noticed that whenever I looked at the cage, they seemed to be hanging out together. And at the end of the day there were fewer puppies--at least one was adopted and another family was filling out paperwork to adopt another, but all three of mine came home again, which I was happy about.
I do miss Dexter, though, and wonder how he's handling the trauma of being in a cage. He's been glued to my body ever since he came here and I know that he is definitely not a happy puppy tonight. I'll also miss having him sleep in my lap tonight.
So this evening I decided to be a good guy and we have, unfortunately, suffered the consequences. Several weeks ago, my editor forwarded a message from a guy who wanted The Enterprise to review a show. I thought, from his message, that this was a new theatre company starting up, and I was going to do a story about it and also review his show. (As it turns out, this company has been in existence for quite a long time, but it was the premiere of this musical.)
Well, I never did get around to the story and I actually forgot the opening performance and the second weekend I already had two shows to review and besides, Derrick was loaded with stuff and had no space to put a review. I apologized profusely to the guy and promised him that I would give plenty of space to their next production.
He was very sad because apparently no newspaper had shown any interest. He said that people had expressed sentiments like: "I expected community theater -- this is Broadway quality." and "This play should be running indefinitely in downtown Sacramento." He himself (the author) describes it as "This ambitious world premiere production of a big-cast, big-stage musical, by a local writing team with established reputations, would seem to merit a review, just to provide an assessment of the work." He also said he was 77 years old and probably this would be his very last play.
There was literally nothing I could do to get him reviewed in our paper, but I felt so bad about it all that I told him about my review blog and said that if it would make him feel better, I would review it for the blog. He was thrilled. It meant, of course, that I wasn't being paid to write the review. All I would get were tickets to the show, but at least my guilt would be assuaged. We went to the show tonight. It was held at a high school gymnasium and seats were hard back chairs that killed my back. That was just for starters.
Because I'm not being paid, I was sorely tempted to leave at intermission, but there were only 20 in the audience, and our absence would have been noted. I was also tempted to write and ask him if he's SURE he wants this review. I am reminded of a gawdawful play I saw years ago, written by the late Larry Linville, of M*A*S*H fame. He may have been a good actor, but he was a terrible playwright and not even the red carpet and the presence of his family and his friend Garry Berghoff in the audience could make it a good play.
This one isn't that bad, but let's just say that it's definitely not "Broadway quality"! Because it's amateur theatre, I will be kind in my review, but it may not be what he was hoping for.
And I'll never, ever, ever volunteer to do a freebee just to be a good guy again!
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