Wednesday Miscellania

What better way to get over Hump Day than with random thoughts from me?

*sound of crickets chirping*

Yes...well...anyway...

The last movie I saw: The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. Terry Gilliam movies tend to be glossy messes overstuffed with imaginative, engaging visuals undercut by meandering, unfocused plots. They also tend to be star-crossed, with financing falls though, studios interfering with editing or, in this case, the lead actor, Heath Ledger, passing away mid-production.

Gilliam found a creative way around this sad problem, though: He cast three other high-profile actors--Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Ferrell--to fill in for Ledger in the scenes that take place within the imagination-made-sort-of-corporeal of the good doctor (Christopher Plummer). The device works reasonably well--Depp in particular gets Ledger's movements and vocal cadences down so minutely that it takes a moment to realize it isn't Ledger.

There are delights to be found here, including Tom Waits as a scruffy, smooth-talking Devil and Lily Cole as the gorgeous daughter the Devil here to collect from Parnassus. but the reality of Ledger's death impedes the fantasy and casts a pall over the whole production, especially since the script already contained musings on mortality ("Nothing is permanent," notes Depp's version of Ledger's character, Tony, "not even death").

Travel reading: Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. It amazes me that this book is nearly 30 years old. It further amazes me that, in all that time, I'd never read it. With all the graphic violence and psychological anguish on display, though, it was this passage that affected me the most:

[The note] said Birmingham police had found a cat buried behind the Jacobi's garage. The cat had a flower between its paws and was wrapped in a dish towel. The cat's name was written on the lid in a childish hand. It wore no collar. A string tied in a granny knot held the lid on.

In my case, there was no lid to tie on, only a towel--not a dish towel, but a royal blue bath towel I'd put in the "cat carrier" (really an orange milk crate with a hinged lid) so that Ms. Christopher would be reasonably comfortable. And it wasn't a flower between her paws, butt was her favorite kitty toys--one of those little burlap bags with the word "catnip" stenciled on the side that had long since its potency, though I'd rub it down with fresh catnip to make my Girlish Girl smile again.

Stealth Cattle Cars. This morning, I got a rude surprise on the CTA Brown Line. As I boarded the second car at Francisco, I looked around and realized that I was on a "Max Capacity" car--a car with seats removed to allow more standing passengers aboard, better known among regular riders as a "cattle car."

Usually, when I see that either the first two or last two cars of a train are "cattle cars" I dash to the closest "regular" car, but this time I didn't do that because I hadn't noticed the large orange signs indicating that it was a "Max Capacity" car. At the next stop, I got off and bunny-hopped to the third car of the train, only to discover that it was a "cattle car" as well. Furthermore, neither car had the typical "Max Capacity" signs on the outside of the car.

I didn't try scrambling down to the next car; I simply found a corner of the car, parked in it and fumed all the way into the Loop.

When I arrived at work, one of my coworkers who takes the Blue Line related a similar experience--she also wound up on a stealth "cattle car" and had to ride it all the way downtown.

Is it something CTA is only just doing because of the inclement weather (which usually drives up ridership temporarily), or is this a permanent shift in policy? If it's the latter--if I'm to play the part of livestock for every morning commute--then I'll be switching to Metra (the separate commuter rail system, which has two stops within long walking distance of La Casa del Terror) or trying to put together a carpool.

CTA may say that they don't have any options, that this is the best they can do. If that's truly the case, then their best isn't nearly good enough. Its true in retail, and it's true here as well: Serve the customer, or the customer will go somewhere else.