Kanlaon

Finally, hubby got to fulfill his most earnest Thanksgiving wish: to watch the new James Bond movie. And to watch it at a time when it would not interfere with the great football games taking place Thanksgiving Day. And so there we were, hubby, son, and self, seated in the downtown cinema for the 6:30 p.m. show. Seated directly behind us was a whole row of young-ish men, who were having a “boys night out,” obviously, and chuckling at all the previews (They seemed to like Clive Owen’s “The International.” Self adores Clive Owen, but why is Naomi Watts in the preview for all of one minute?)

Self is here to declare that all those people who derided this version as “not very good Bond” are talking through their hats. For this was indeed a very good Bond, mabye not as good as the Bond/Vesper Lynd installment (Olga Kurylenko doesn’t have the acting chops of Eva Green, after all), but still very good. There were a lot of slap-boxing fight scenes (reminiscent of the Bourne movies); there was a lot of fancy inter-cutting of scenes of local color with scenes of mayhem (a horse thingamajig in Siena, Italy intercut with fancy rooftop chase scenes; Austrian opera intercut with more chase scenes); there were a lot of really atmospheric shots of Haiti; and there was a hotel of surreal modernity (fantastic!) right in the middle of the Bolivian desert. A young woman named Gemma Arterton (22 years old) who was recently featured in Vanity Fair was on-screen for maybe five minutes. Tim Piggot-Smith of “Jewel in the Crown,” which Penny and self were so ga-ga over during our Stanford days, makes a brief cameo appearance, and he is sadly fat.

Afterwards, since self was so exceedingly thrilled by the two hours spent ogling Daniel Craig’s biceps, she wanted to bite the bullet and plunk down $5 for a treat at Marble Slab Creamery. Alas, tonight of all nights, when self had girded her loins to plunk down the money, the shop was dark. So self had to settle for Beard Papa. They have a new type of cream puff called “cookie crunch” and, my, it was heavenly! Self could hardly wait to get home to begin noshing on it.

So, right now, self is in heaven. She is happy she turned down a half-hearted invitation from uncle in Daly City to join them (“It’s a pot-luck,” he informed self, when he called her around 4 p.m. to say she was being invited over) on the morrow. Son expressed a desire to see his cousins, but self explained that an invitation extended the day before Thanksgiving, from an uncle who is Dearest Mum’s BFF, is really no invitation at all, and son accepted this explanation without comment.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.