TV Quote of the Day (‘New Girl,’ As Jess Is Mistaken for a Blind Date)

Sam Sweeney [played by David Walton]: “Hi—are you Katie? I'm Sam from CupidMatch.”

Jess [played by Zooey Deschanel] [stunned at the sight of this handsome stranger]: “And I'm the girl from my dreams of you.”—New Girl, Season 2, Episode 2, “Katie,” original air date Sept. 25, 2012, teleplay by Elizabeth Meriwether, directed by Larry Charles

Quote of the Day (Moliere, on Reason Vs. Love)

“Each day my reason tells me so;
But reason doesn't rule in love, you know.”—French playwright, actor, and theater manager Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, aka Moliere (1622-1673), The Misanthrope, translated by Richard Wilbur (1666)

The image accompanying this post, from a 2013 production of The Misanthrope at the University of Chicago’s Court Theatre, features Erik Hellman as Alceste, Moliere’s title character, and Grace Gealey as Celimene, the coquette who distracts him from reason.

This will not be a Happy Valentine’s Day for Alceste!

Quote of the Day (Bernard MacLaverty, on Love)

“What was love but a lifetime of conversations. And silences. Knowing when to be silent. Above all, knowing when to laugh.”— Irish novelist and short-story writer Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break: A Novel (2017)

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Rio Bravo,’ As Sassy Angie Dickinson Messes With John Wayne’s Head)

Feathers [played by Angie Dickinson, pictured]: “In case you make up your mind, I left my door open. Get a good night's sleep.”

John T. Chance [played by John Wayne]: “You're not helping me any.”—Rio Bravo (1959), screenplay by Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett based on a short story by B.H. McCampbell, directed by Howard Hawks

You know Rio Bravo, don’t you? It’s the classic western where The Duke discovers, courtesy of Angie Dickinson, that even a big, tough guy still has a thing or two to learn when it comes to women. Not a bad lesson, especially the morning after Super Bowl Sunday.

Happy Valentine’s Day, folks!

Quote of the Day (Roger Ebert, Reviewing ‘Valentine's Day’)

"Valentine's Day is being marketed as a Date Movie. I think it's more of a First-Date Movie. If your date likes it, do not date that person again."—Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert (1942-2013), review of Valentine's Day, quoted in Brandon Specktor, “Thumbs Up: Roger Ebert’s Funniest Zingers,” www.rd.com (Web site for Reader’s Digest)

(The photo shows Evert at the time of the release of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls--a dubious film credit that, to his credit, he refused to disown.)

 

Valentine Day’s Video: Carly Simon Live, ‘The Right Thing To Do’

This YouTube video, which I discovered this past weekend, comes from the 1987 HBO special "Carly Simon—Coming Around Again." "The Right Thing To Do" was, in a real sense, my introduction to the wondrous singer-songwriter Carly Simon, as it was the opening cut of the first LP of hers that I ever owned, No Secrets.

Unlike the monster single from that collection, “You’re So Vain,” the song is not interested in slapping down a caddish former lover. However, we don’t learn why the lover in this song merits such tenderness, and the one hint we receive about what he’s like is not reassuring. (“I know you’ve had some bad luck with ladies before/They drove you or they drove you crazy”). 

While Simon has not always pinpointed the subjects of her confessional songs, she readily admits that this one was about the early stages of her relationship with James Taylor--making all the more poignant the heartfelt yearning she still displays here, several years after the collapse of their marriage.

But Simon was in a good place when she sang this live: She was at the beginning of her second marriage, in the midst of a career resurgence following the album Coming Around Again, and about to start work on her Oscar-winning song from the film Working Girl, “Let the River Run.” That self-confidence may accounts for the fact that, after a long time, she was able to surmount her well-known crippling stage fright.

We have this video to remind us that she had nothing whatsoever to fear, either because of her voice or her audience.

Quote of the Day (Judith Shulevitz, on Dating as Hard Work in the Digital Era)

“The purpose of dating is not much clearer than its definition. Before the early 1900s, when people started ‘dating,’ they ‘called.’ That is, men called on women, and everyone more or less agreed on the point of the visit. The potential spouses assessed each other in the privacy of her home, her parents assessed his eligibility, and either they got engaged or he went on his way. Over the course of the 20th century, such encounters became more casual, but even tire kickers were expected to make a purchase sooner rather than later. Five decades ago, 72 percent of men and 87 percent of women had gotten married by the time they were 25. By 2012, the situation had basically reversed: 78 percent of men and 67 percent of women were unmarried at that age.”— Judith Shulevitz, “Dating, Disrupted: Why Is Finding Love in the App Era Such Hard Work?”, The Atlantic, November 2016

(Photo of Judith Shulevitz taken in May 2013 by Barbara Lemann.)

Quote of the Day (St. John of the Cross, on Love and Judgment)

“In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.”— St. John of the Cross (1542-1591), Dichos 64.