I was in the grocery store, at the prepared foods counter and the server was acting really friendly. It was after work, I was a little tired, so I was looking for something easy to fix. I chose shepherds pie. The pieces were so big that Anne and I could just split one serving. So the server is acting so very friendly, that I manage to raise myself from my end of day lethargy. As she hands me the pie, she says, “Have a good evening, Mr. De Niro.” Then it all clicked, months ago this same serving lady had told me that she thought that I looked like Robert De Niro, the movie actor. Both then and now she had tried to convince her co-worker of this observation. I’m just glad she sees me as the De Niro in Heat and not in The Untouchables. De Niro put on thirty pounds to play Al Capone.
This is not the first time that people have ascribed my likeness to that of someone in show business. During college, my roommate tagged me with the nickname Radar, as in Corporal “Radar” O’Reilly the character of the clerk as played by Gary Burghoff in the TV show Mash. Even further removed in time, the woman that agreed to become my spovely-louse, use to see a likeness in me with the young Dustin Hoffman, young as in Little Big Man. So far these movie star comparisons have been with actors that were at least contemporary. One can only wonder what comparisons await me in my golden years.
OK Folks, it is movie time again! As many of you might remember I entered the Saint Louis Post Dispatched Movie Contest last year. My entry was this gnome movie. I did not win, but I think that I did have some influence on the contest. Last year, I used the front page of the go! section, it had a gnome on it so I ran with it. The requirement last year was to just feature a copy of the newspaper in the video. This year the requirement is to use the front page of the go! section, just like I did last year. . I have a concept of what I want to produce. Submissions are due Monday morning. Wish me luck!
Today at work I came upon two fellow engineers in conversation. The engineer of interest was describing how he had converted his Volkswagen diesel to run on cooking oil. He can get his VW to run on one-third diesel and two-thirds cooking oil. He gets about forty-five miles per gallon regardless. Since he only has to pay for the diesel, he figures his gas mileage at about 135 MPG. He is Catholic, as many in Saint Louis are. So he collects most of his cooking oil from Knights of Columbus fish fries. When asked it there fishy smell, he replied, “No, it smells more like chicken.” He did say that cats seemed to follow him around, but I think at this point he was just pulling my chain. He plans a road trip next year to Florida. He’ll fill up his trunk with cooking oil and head down to the Keys.
I have a bet with a third engineer at work. It has to do with gas, but it has more to do with economics. The bet is for a gallon of gas. If gas first hits five dollars a gallon, he will buy me a gallon of gas. If gas first hits $1.50 a gallon then I have to buy him a gallon of gas. My fellow gambler is a bit of a bear, as in the stock market connotation. He thinks that we are on the brink of the next great depression. This last year has only been a prelude of worst to come. I’m betting that he is wrong.
Monday was the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. With it also fell the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union and the Cold War. I remembered a gift that I had received the following Christmas of that year from Alice and Chris. It was a certified sample of the Berlin Wall. It came in a cardboard box. Inside the box was a certificate of authenticity. Inside a cloth bag was a one or two ounce sample of concrete and stone. It was just a crumbled reminder of a hated symbol of Communism.
The year was 1989. Dan was four and Dave was two. And Anne and I were twenty years younger too. We all were living in the same house where at least Anne and I still live. That was then, this is now. Dan and Dave have grown to manhood. Anne and I are now twenty years older, but at least we are still together. It is good to remember history. It is even better to reflect upon your victories, both large and small.
Friday morning, on my way to work, I made my usual stop at the Starbucks at the corner of Hanley and Wydown. Earlier in the week, the manager had introduced me to a new Latté Lady, “This is Mark. He always orders a Grande Latté and sometimes he orders biscotti. He hardly ever complains.” I guess that was a compliment?
One of the other Latté Ladies is moving to New York City. There have been snippets of conversation about it for weeks. I asked her Friday, what she planned on doing there. She wants to appear on Broadway. I recounted our spring trip there this year and mentioned that we had seen Exit the King with Geoffrey Rush. She had heard of it, but when I also mentioned “… and Susan Sarandon.”, she visibly brightened. I forgot to tell her that we stayed only a block away from 42nd Street. 
On Friday night, Anne and I went to go see the play, Sleuth. It is a British mystery of sorts. The play originally aired in the early 1970s. Since then at least a couple of movie adaptations have also been made. The Rep made a decent production of the play, but I still came away somewhat disappointed. Sleuth like Amadeus, the Reps’ previous production, are both ancient properties. Neither of them are indicative of the Rep’s history of bring hot, cutting edge productions to Saint Louis. Both productions are more indicative of another Saint Louis theatrical institution, the Muny. Don’t get me wrong, I love musical theater and I love the Muny for what it is, but I would hate to see the Rep take that road towards mediocrity.
In other news …
Saturday night, long after le Marquis had gone to bed, Anne was still up. When she switched off the TV at one in the morning, she could still here the sounds of heavy machinery working late into the night on The New I-64. After October’s month of rain, the construction crews were making the most of this weekend’s warm and dry weather. After two years, the project now has less than a month to go. The construction crews are racing to finish early and collect a rather lucrative bonus for doing so. They must have computed that it will be more profitable to pay overtime and run around the clock shifts and finish early then it would be to just finish on time. In another more immediate sign that the road construction project is drawing to a close the Big Bend Boulevard Bridge is scheduled to reopen some time this week. This will ease Anne’s work commute and reduce the traffic in the neighborhood.
On Sunday, Anne biked to Maplewood and spent the afternoon passing out flyers for the school board. I biked to the Park. It was mobbed and because one of my batteries was not charged, my camera would not work. Somewhat discouraged, I left early and only got ten miles. Anne got eight miles.
Saturday we drove across the wide Missouri. Really, it is still in flood. Anne and I bicycled on the Katy Trail. The weather was gorgeous. With a high of seventy-eight degrees and cloudless skies, you could not ask for a better Indian summer afternoon. We started at Weldon Spring and biked to Augusta. There we lunched at the Augusta Brewery. We like it because it is at the bottom of the hill that Augusta is built on. It was crowded, with about half cyclists and half drivers. We got twenty-one miles.
At Matson I saw a flyer for a mystery novel called, Peril on the Katy Trail by Robert Shoop. The teaser line goes like this: A woman who can’t remember a man who can’t forget and a person who desperately needs to kill them both! The rest of the novel’s description sounds somewhat cheesy, but I must admit, I still find interesting:
The Katy Trail is a 225-mile long biking trail from Clinton to St. Charles, Missouri. It’s one of the most beautiful bike trails in the world. Samuel an ex-Navy SEAL is just trying to get away from it all. Into his life drops Misty, a mysterious woman with amnesia. She just happens to have a shotgun-toting man chasing her. Samuel has no choice. His sense of honor forces him to protect her. Thus begins one of the wildest bicycle rides in history.
Last month the League of American Bicyclists named Saint Louis a Bicycle Friendly Community (bronze level). Saint Louis was one of fifteen cities so named. The seventy miles of on street bike paths in Bike Saint Louis program were instrumental in garnering this recognition.
