June 2009 Archives

Prior to seeing it, the biggest obstacle in liking this movie was probably Tom Cruise.  It was hard to imagine him as Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, the key to the Hitler assassination plot.  After seeing it, that remains the biggest issue with the movie.  The dancing old man from Tropic Thunder, Risky Business, Cocktail and Mission Impossible, all seem to come to mind before him being a serious, real-life character.  Probably did not help that ESPN's Bill Simmons dubbed him "der Maverick" in a podcast as an homage to Top Gun.

Many World War II movies use Europeans to play Nazis.  That would have helped here, since Cruise employed his American accent throughout the 120 minutes.  Not that putting a fake German accent would have done better, so the point should have been, don't use Tom Cruise here.

Aside from Cruise, the movie still lacked some storyline.  While we are told early on about von Stauffenberg's reasons to participate in the plot, we are not told how he got there.  The first 45 minutes or so appear to set up the big event, but watching the whole movie, you realize none of it was necessary as you would understand just as much if it weren't there.  Watching it with The Sports Freak, from the DC Sports Page, he noted that the movie could have been helped by reminding the audience of other key events happening in the war.  We are only given a sparse timeline.  With it, we are not sure if the plot took a week, a month, or a year to get in place.

While Valkyrie did not satisfy, it was still good to see a World War II movie.  If you are a history buff, you should consider renting it.  There are excellent actors in the movie, like Tom Wilkinson (Ben Franklin from HBO's John Adams) and Eddie Izzard, among other recognizable faces.  Just ignore the fact that Tom Cruise is there.

My mother was only 56 when the cancer took her life.  It was a long year starting with her diagnosis in August 2006, which we found it had returned.  She had originally been diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in the 90's and fought it off.  After the recurrence, months of chemotherapy, doctors appointments, and two trips to San Francisco to visit her ailing mother, and then attend the funeral, then we had to a face a terrible week.  On the weekend, we went to the outlet mall and had a great Sunday brunch.  By Tuesday, she couldn't get out of bed, and the following Sunday we lost her.

She was a hard working person who worked many different jobs.  Finally, her last few years, she worked in retail and had time to spend on her hobbies.  One she was really good at and that was Chinese art/calligraphy.  She had intended to sell most of these paintings, but we decided to keep them in our family.

These are some of the places that deserve support in the fight against cancer.

• John Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, where my mother got most of her chemotherapy.  It is also where our Cousin H works.  She graciously took time off from her job that last week to help us with our mother.  Also helped us get in contact with Dr. Richard Ambinder who worked on the treatment for our mother.
• Hospice of Frederick County who do not charge for their services but helped in decision making and home hospice care.
• National Foundation for Cancer Research - working hard to raise funds for research.
• Leukemia & Lymphoma Society because this is the form of cancer my mother had.

I'm sure there are many others, but these get my support every year.  Some places do not just need money.  Many hospices will be happy to get your volunteer time or even a box of tissues.

And I did it well for years.  Mutual funds at first, then I graduated to dividend reinvestment programs direct from the companies themselves.  I owned Dial Corp, you know, the company that made Dial soap.  Soap!  Finally I got a real investment account from E-Trade.  I became a high flyer with my $1,000 account.  A funny thing happened along the way.  Stocks soared, I earned more and invested more.  All of a sudden, I'm watching stock prices every five minutes. Arrive at work, check messages for a bit, then check My Yahoo page for latest 15 minute delayed quotes.  Run a report, check the prices again.  Go to lunch, come back, check stocks before getting back to business.  4:30 rolls around, check for any end of day deals.  Finish work, head to happy hour and go home to check closing prices.  Repeat.

Then 2008 came around.  Does anybody but the media and those that work in the market check prices anymore?  I just realized I haven't looked at my dismal portfolio since Thanksgiving.  Sure, I hear or see prices in passing, but I'm not hung up on it.  What's the price of Apple today?  Who knows, who cares.  Sure the recession sucks, but it helped me in one aspect.  I saved time checking stocks.  Unfortunately that time got filled pretty quickly with Twitter and other time-sucking activities on the Internet.  Market please come back.  At least that obsession earned me money.