OCEAN'S ELEVEN

Frank Sinatra (propositioning estranged wife Angie Dickinson): "What's wrong with a little hey-hey?"--OCEAN'S ELEVEN

This afternoon we went out to Future Shop and bought a new Hewlett-Packard inkjet printer for my computer.  They had a lot of Canon models there, but my previous printer was a Canon and a headache.

This evening I saw Lewis Milestone's original Rat Pack version of OCEAN'S ELEVEN (for the second time) at the Event Screen.  It's overlong but has some cool dialogue. ("Happy burial, dead dog.") It may have started out as a Las Vegas heist comedy, but it's really just an excuse for Sinatra and friends to have fun together.  The best performance is from Richard Conte as the "electrician" dying of cancer ("the Big Casino"). Saul Bass' opening credits are worth seeing on the big screen.

With WILD ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN finished, I've resumed reading the animals issue of LAPHAM'S QUARTERLY.  So far, among others, I've read selections from John Steinbeck's THE GRAPES OF WRATH (the turtle crossing the highway), Herman Melville's MOBY-DICK, T.H. White's THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING (young Arthur being transformed into a fish), William Butler Yeats' "Leda and the Swan" and a LaFontaine fable about the gnat fighting the lion.