Hitchcock on Screen

I had the pleasure Saturday of watching my first Alfred Hitchcock motion picture in a movie theater. I’ve seen most all of Hitchcock’s movies on television, and even own a dozen or so on DVD.

But there is something about the theater experience that made watching North By Northwest special. The film is 52 years old, so obviously society has changed. Cars looked ancient, we no longer go into phone booths to make calls, and hotel clerks don’t give out room numbers of guests any more. But Hitchcock’s techniques are timeless: his camera angles, crackling dialogue, crisp color cinematography, on-location shooting, attention to set details, Bernard Hermann’s wonderful score, Cary Grant in his prime and the insight into the human psyche. Particularly apt was the callous attitude of a CIA authority figure regarding the potential loss of life of innocent bystander Cary Grant caught in the middle of Cold War espionage.

North By Northwest is one of the few movies I can enjoy viewing again and again. A local non-profit theater is showing a Hitchcock film every Saturday this month. I don’t think I’ll go back, though. They are charging 2011 prices for admission.

Not Looking Forward to Old Age

A new book by Susan Jacoby confirms what I’ve been thinking lately: old age isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. For the past generation, scientists, doctors and other sages have told us we can maintain healthy living way beyond retirement years if we just eat right and exercise. That’s a lot of bunk. At 52 I’m already starting to deteriorate, although I walk every morning and avoid junk food.

“We need to face reality and base both our individual planning and our social policy on the assumption that by the time men and women reach their eighties and nineties, not the best but the worst years of their lives generally lie ahead,” Jacoby writes in Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age. Ninety really isn’t the new eighty.

Not that we don’t buy into the fantasy. A recent HarrisInteractive poll showed only 12 percent of Americans didn’t want to live until age 80. Fully one in four said they wanted to last until sometime in their 90s. Amazingly, an additional 37 percent want to live to be 100 or older.

I certainly don’t want to join the centennial club. There won’t be technological advances enough to keep my mind and body sharp. Those who make it to 85 these days have an almost one-in-two shot of landing in a nursing home as well as developing dementia.

The reason I’ve been thinking about this lately is because of the condition of my almost 93-year-old mother. She was spry at 89, able to drive a car and manage her checkbook. Then she broke her hip. Rehab didn’t go well. She began using a walker and still got around OK, but the short-term memory began to go. The situation worsened last summer when she fell three times, then had to move into a nursing home, with a wheelchair as her new mode of transportation. She has been in hospice care since last fall, after losing 15 pounds in four months. Most of her day now is spent in bed, no longer capable of writing letters, dialing the phone or controlling bodily functions. I imagine the end will bring a further loss of memory and more physical ailments.

It’s painful to see my mother so frail and helpless. I don’t want my children to have to remember me that way a few years down the road.

Baseball, Ego and Greed

As with most St. Louis Cardinals fans, I’ve come to revere the seemingly superhuman talents of Albert Pujols, who for the first decade of his career has put up numbers unmatched in the history of baseball.

For the spiritually inclined such as me, Pujols is even more appealing. He talks openly about his Christian faith, donates time and money to charitable causes, doesn’t brag about his God-given talents, and speaks fondly of the privilege of playing for the Cardinals. When he gets a hit, Pujols typically points to the sky as an acknowledgement that the glory should go to God. Thomas Nelson has just published a faith-based biography of the first baseman.

Which makes the breakdown of contract talks this spring all the more puzzling. Pujols is signed through this season, finishing up a contract that will pay him $16 million in 2011. That’s certainly more money than virtually everyone else in America makes.

Yet Pujols isn’t the highest paid player in baseball. And apparently because he feels he is the best player in the game, he thinks he should be compensated accordingly. The Cardinals offered a reported eight-year deal worth around $200 million, but Pujols rejected it. He is said to want a $300 million, 10-year contract.

So, it appears after the 2011 season Pujols will test the free-agent market. There may be teams out there willing to give him what he wants. But for the Cardinals, which don’t have the seemingly endless bankroll of the Yankees or Red Sox, it doesn’t make sense to tie up so much money in one player. It also could mean mutiny from the fan base to pay $30 million a year to Pujols at age 41 if his skills have greatly diminished. Most players have retired by that age.

A club has no recourse but to continue paying an underperforming or hurt player. St. Louis is on the hook to shell out $12 million this season to hurt star pitcher Adam Wainwright — even though he won’t play in any games.

The sentiment at the end of last season among many Cardinals fans was that Pujols must be resigned to play his entire career in St. Louis no matter what the cost. But now most enthusiasts are siding with the club. Greed and ego have their limitations.

Facebook Disconnect

I’m continually amused at the favorite choices of Facebook friends when it comes to what they watch, listen to and read.

Many of these mostly young people claim to be spiritually and morally conservative. Yet the movies and TV shows listed on the social networking site belie those beliefs. The salacious programs and motion pictures they watch promote premarital and extramarital sex, display horrific violence, and contain vulgar language.

Ironically, many of these same people often list tame contemporary Christian artists as their musicians of choice, and the Bible as the book they love.

There seems to be a disconnect here. While Scripture certainly contains accounts of sexual sin and gore, it’s balanced out with God’s ideals of love and purity. Not so with today’s media.

Spying on Others

I’m not so sure about this trend of putting everything about ourselves online. There are enough websites around trying to divulge information about us that we really wish others wouldn’t know.

I stumbled the other day on an Internet site that purportedly shows information about anyone. I looked myself up and there was a picture of my house, with the garage door open, no less. Yet not all the data were right. The listed value of my house was $15,000 less than I paid for it 12 years ago. And residents listed included my oldest son, who moved out when he married nine years ago, plus his wife, who never has lived with us.

It seems technological snooping has its limitations. Yet this website told me for a monthly fee of $2.95 I could find out the estimated income and hobbies of whomever I want to search for, plus see photos and videos of them.

All this sharing of information that is highly guarded as private in our society only seems to stir up jealousy. If I find out that my friend lives in a house valued at twice my property, or that my co-worker earns $25,000 more than me, I’m focused on the wrong things.

Not So Simplistic

I’ve had to chuckle at the editorial writers and cartoonists in the past week who have naively portrayed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as the epitome of evil and those demanding his ouster as fighters for democracy.

Early in the current struggle, many Americans applauded that social networking sites sparked a democratic revolution. They rejoiced that a henchman could be ousted without involving the U.S. military, as happened in nearby Iraq. Then came the clashes between forces hostile to Mubarak and those supporting him. In one 24-hour period, 400 reporters were injured in the melee.

Clearly, Mubarak can be labeled a dictator and even a thug. But there is a reason that five U.S. presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama have propped him up, currently pouring more than a billion dollars in military aid to Egypt. The alternative could be a great deal scarier.

If a banned Islamic terrorist group becomes part of the ruling coalition in Egypt it could have catastrophic consequences for the United States in efforts to contain terrorism. It’s unlikely that a new regime formed in the midst of chaos would be interested in protecting the religious freedoms of the already oppressed Christian minority in Egypt.

An orderly transition to a new leader is desirable. If an Islamic revolution happens in Egypt as it did in Iran more than 30 years ago, moderate Islam will no longer be tolerated.

Waiting at Starbucks

The other day a friend invited me to meet him at Starbucks. I had not been in a Starbucks for years. I don’t drink coffee. My friend was late because another appointment ran long, but while waiting for him, I came to understand a little about the genius behind the coffee-giant chain.

Most obviously, Starbucks has become a draw for twentysomethings with money to spare. Of the 40 or so people at the business during my 20 minutes of waiting, only one of them (besides me) was over 35. The store I went to is on a busy thoroughfare, not on a college campus. Yet Starbucks, playing Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett music, somehow has become a destination for studying collegians.

I imagine it mostly involves allowing young adults to be comfortable. Many of the patrons sat around with laptops and/or textbooks, as if they were studying in a dorm room. They felt no urge to move on; in fact, many of the people who were in the place when I arrived were still there when I left an hour and a half later. But, even though they may not interact with anyone, students feel more connected just sitting in a place that sells overpriced coffee to others just like them.

I had hot chocolate. It was good, but probably not worth $3.