WAR GAMES

"The boys, as they talked to the girls from Marcia Blaine school, stood on the far side of their bicycles holding the handlebars, which established a protective fence of bicycle between the sexes, and the impression that at any moment the boys were likely to be away"--opening sentence of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

"How could anybody get a D in Home Ec?"--War Games

Tuesday I finished the book about Vietnam.  The next day started Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie for my book club.

At opera rehearsal we staged The Magic Flute.  As Eric our director described Sarastro's followers, they remind me of the Manson Family!

Yesterday Moira and I had lunch with Puitak.  When I got home I had a huge headache!

Tonight at the Flashback Film Festival I saw John Badham's War Games (for the second time--I first saw it 35 years ago on the same day that my grandfather died).  Some of the details are shameless, like the general chewing Red Man tobacco and Matthew Broderick repeating Robert Redford's Sundance Kid line "I can't swim," but by the end it gets exciting. Ally Sheedy was cute!  I recognized Michael Madsen (of the Tarantino movies) as one of the missile silo operators in the first scene.  Maury Chaykin, in small role as a computer expert, looked just like Norbert Leo Butz as Kevin in Bloodline!

I must say that Americans were lucky to survive the Cold War, let alone "winning" and "losing." Even the early Reagan years were dicey:  the same year as this movie, there was a close call in Germany!

Last week I had a nightmare where I'd been adopted into a rich family like the Kennedys of Massachusetts, but realized that my new brother was a murderer and didn't know whom to tell because I was afraid he'd come after me next!