Things I love

Random musings about things that I greatly enjoy.

Movies. Especially seeing movies in the theater.

Talking about movies, great, terrible or just fun and interesting with friends.

Reading.

Exploring.

Hunting and sometimes fishing.

Irony.

Photography.

Making fun of my own mistakes.

Wearing comfortable jeans and brand new socks.

Milkshakes.

Dogs and cats.

Mowing lawns and the smell of the freshly cut grass.

Cooking including making bread and cutting meat. And grilling.

Early mornings, when I can wake up, that are sunny and cool.

Getting jobs done.

Finding things I'd forgotten I'd lost.

Baseball. Especially the New York Yankees. And competitions. And winning, or watching somebody enjoy winning.

Skiing.

Good bourbon, single malt scotch, draft beer.

Anitheroes.

Classic rock, hard rock, and metal. And Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, The Rolling Stones, The Who, AC/DC, Metallica and Guns n' Roses.

Waylong Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash and Willy Nelson. or songs that they could have sung.

Comfortably dingy bars and fancy restaurants.

Indiana Jones, Han Solo, Robert Mitchum, W.C. Fields, all the Marx Brothers (and Zeppo too), Abbot and Costello, King Kong, Henry Fonda, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Leslie Fiedler, Roger Ebert, Sam Peckinpah, Jim Henson, John Milius, Walter, Hill, John Ford, John Carpenter, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, Willem Dafoe, Paul Newman, Herman Melville, James Ellroy, Ernest Hemingway, Ty Cobb, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Derek Jeter, Ted Kennedy, Roger Corman, Joe Dante, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickins, Clint Eastwood, Don Siegel, Bruce Campbell, Kate Winslett, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, The Simpsons, Lost, Norm MacDonald, Paul Verhoeven, Vincent Price, James Coburn and Charles Bronson, James Cagney, Jack Nicholson, Harry Dean Stanton, Bill Murray, Sigourney Weaver, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Michaelangelo, Toshiro Mifune, Akira Kurasawa, Kurtwood Smith, Claude Rains, Lauren Bacall, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Susan Sarandon, Slash, Pete Townsend, Etta James, Patsy Cline, Johnny Carson, Conan O'Brian, and antiques.

Something for Ted Murphy

Tonight's post is brief. Today, my co-workers and I learned that one of our colleagues died. This was unexpected and obviously, the news brought a mixture of shock, disbelief, sadness, loss and grief.

Ted Murphy was a man that I didn't know well but one that I respected and enjoyed working with during the few years that we shared a roof- and a boss. Prior to and during his last assignment at my place of work, Ted had the opportunity to channel his deep love of cinema into the role of reviewer. Ted was a man of great and strong opinions. Those opinions, like all good ones, were a mixture of thought, knowledge, and gut reaction. He was never shy to share his. His opinions, like many good ones, were often correct.

When we had the opportunity to talk together about movies, acting, performers or many other things I enjoyed listening to Ted because he always had much to say on a subject and was always well prepared to back his argument. Ted often lead me to either rethink my original stance on a topic or to agree with him while still finding great wonder in the different ways in which we reached a shared opinion. He was well versed in cinema, theatre and life. Ted was uncompromising, attentive to details and always passionate about his likes and dislikes. All of these were boons to his work at our office and to his work as a reviewer.

I'd like to direct anyone interested to a link to his reviews posted at rottentomatoes.com as well as his website, Murphy's Movie Reviews. As with true review of a work of art, agreeing or disagreeing is worth less than reading and coming away with more information and thoughts than you had before seeing a review, especially if you have seen the work being reviewed. This is true with movies, theatre, television and even with a baseball umpire's strike zone. I hope that you will take a moment to avail yourselves to some of Ted's reviews.

Thanks.

http://www.murphysmoviereviews.net/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/author/author-3521/