"This story takes place in the days when a siren was a brunette instead of a warning, and if a Frenchman turned out the light it was not on account of an air raid!"
     -- Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)

There's a reason classic films are often "better" than recent fare. They had mystery, they had subtlety. They had moody lighting, directorial elegance, and studio style. (Real studios, that is. None of this Sony-owns-all-your-corporate-base business.) They had women who could act their way out of a paper bag -- and who were given the roles to do so, too. And consarn it, they could deliver. Not that I'm an old film fogey or anything; I just have some idea of what I like. From any age, nation, or finances, I hope that I've garnered enough open film-mindedness to like different things. And I hope you have too. If you haven't, well, tsk-tsk. If you only ever have filmfluff, my modern little newbies, how will you know what filmsteak tastes like?

That being said, I haven't been to a movie theater since long-past forever. I do wish they still had movie palaces, though, with their orchestras and balconies and people running 'round in cloche hats. We need more time around here, is what. More time for delivery, less air raids.

"Are you married, Christa?"
"Pssssssh -- what? Uh, no. I mean, ha-ha! No!"

Why did my workmates even have to ask? Do I look like I'm old enough to be married? Nuuuh-uh. I just graduated, man, and besides, stylish threads do not a married person make.

The Rabbitty-Jessica thinker-cynic in me wanted to grin, "I'm not married; I'm just quiet that way." Lately, after all, I've been wondering why there are so many good people out there -- usually females, for we've been over their leading-niceness before -- people who don't really "have anyone where they belong," and I have since reasoned that such people might very well be one of two things. One, they are probably shy, which means they'll respond to anything shocking, such as actual attention, or actual compliments, or actual . . . actualization, with one of seemingly endless variations on "EEP!" That, or two: they probably come off as merry and brainy and random, and can be amused by almost everything -- which means that others who have less of a capacity for jest-detection wind up believing that the jesters don't care.

Some of those good people, too, have the funkytown pleasure of being both shy and sparkly, quite often at the same time, and with no readily-apparent correlation between. This makes them "doubly unlucky," I guess, although that phrase is none too optimistic. D'ah well. Eep.