All posts tagged: Random DJB Thoughts

Happy Father’s Day, Tom Brown

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This morning, our Sunday Forum at St. Alban’s Parish involved readings about fathers.  I decided on the spot to read a portion of a post I wrote  in 2010 on More to Come… on the occasion of what would have been my parents’ 60th anniversary and days before my father’s 85th birthday.  The original post was primarily about my father, and it seemed appropriate for Father’s Day. So here’s what I read in honor of Tom Brown.  (And yes, I teared up at the end and was thankful that Andrew and Claire were out in the hallway and weren’t embarrassed by their dad). My Mom was generally considered to be a saint, and dying at a relatively young age from cancer only cemented that view in all our minds….My father is a bit more complicated…which also makes him very interesting. Mother once described my father as having a mouth “always turned up in a perpetual smile” but apparently it wasn’t always so.  Several years ago Daddy sent us some thoughts he had written while on …

A Gem of a Day

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By just about any measure, it was a pretty wonderful day for a baseball game in the nation’s capital. Sunday of Memorial Day weekend…the start of summer. (Check.) Sunny skies with temps in the high sixties/low seventies throughout the afternoon. (Check.) A huge crowd at the yard.  Official attendance of 39,033.  (You look for these things when you’re scoring the game.) (Check.) Wonderful daughter along for the afternoon. (Check!) As we left home for the metro around noon for the 1:35 first pitch, Claire and I had on appropriate game-day attire.  (I think she still finds it amazing that someone who is 20 – her age – can play major league baseball, so I offered up the Harper shirt.) Strasburg was on the mound, and he was sharp! The Phillies were confused all day.  Eight strong innings and nine strikeouts later – with the only blemish being a balk on his next to last pitch allowing a man on third to score – he showed that despite the strange 3-5 W-L record this year, he’s …

Maybe I Should Come to the Office More Often

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I recently did the math. In one three month period this spring I am in the office less than one-third of the time.  True, I’ve been to some wonderful places, but if my two days in Washington this week are any indication, perhaps I should come to the office more often. When she was in fourth grade, my daughter told her class that her dad’s job was to “sign papers and go to meetings.” This hasn’t been one of those weeks. At the National Trust, we’ve been working hard to help Americans understand and protect the full story of our nation’s life together.  That  work was front and center yesterday and today. On Wednesday, our great friends at American Express announced a $1 million grant to the National Trust Historic Site Decatur House and our partners at the White House Historical Association.  The grant will help ensure that the site’s slave quarters – one of the few remaining urban examples of slave quarters – are preserved and used in the educational work at the site.  …

And the Winner Is…

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Wow! What a great year for movies. On the eve of the Academy Awards, I’ve seen eight of the nine nominees for Best Picture.  (You can read my earlier posts here, here, and here.)  The only missing nominee?  That would be Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. I saw Tarantino’s Inglourious Bastards with its similar fantasy-laden subject area and over-the-top, almost cartoonish violence a few years back, and I simply decided that Django wasn’t Best Picture quality in my book.  The fact that it is never mentioned in the top five contenders just confirms my decision. But this afternoon, I saw another controversial – but much more substantive – movie, Zero Dark Thirty.   Despite the controversy surrounding the movie, I’m here to say that it works on many levels and deserves the consideration for Best Picture.  Jessica Chastain is a real force, carrying the movie forward with her fine acting. In the end, however, I have to agree with Timothy Egan of the New York Times, who writes about the problems of  Zero Dark Thirty.  The lack …

Amour Enters the Conversation

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As we enter the homestretch of the quest to see all the Best Picture nominees, Candice and I are now through seven of the nine pictures…and the plot thickens.  That’s because today we had the opportunity to see the achingly sad yet well crafted French movie Amour. Candice and I had the afternoon free here in Southern California between a swim meet, lunch with Claire, and dinner with Claire’s swim team members, coaches, and parents.  We found that Amour was playing nearby, and took the chance to see this gem of a picture. The movie, about an elderly pair of music teachers and their life together after the wife suffers a stroke, hit so many deep emotions – many of them close to home.  There was less action in the entire movie than what I expect to see in five minutes of Django Unchained, but the emotional depths that are plumed are raw and rich. Emmanuelle Riva is wonderful as Anne, the wife, and well deserving of a Best Actress award this year.  She was …

Angels Stadium

My personal preseason

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This is my second installment of the things I do to get ready for the baseball season…which is necessary because pitchers and catchers report tomorrow. Why’s he calling me meat?  I’m the one driving a Porsche. Relax, all right? Don’t try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls – it’s more democratic. The world is made for people who aren’t cursed with self awareness. You just got lesson number one: don’t think; it can only hurt the ball club. You’re gonna have to learn your clichés. You’re gonna have to study them, you’re gonna have to know them. They’re your friends. Write this down: “We gotta play it one day at a time.” Man that ball got outta here in a hurry. I mean anything travels that far oughta have a damn stewardess on it, don’t you think? (Nuke) I ain’t pissing nothing away. I got a Porsche already; a 911 with a quadrophonic Blaupunkt. (Crash) Christ, you don’t need a quadrophonic Blaupunkt! What you need is …

To the Movies (an Update)

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Alert readers have been waiting for an update on the Browns’ choices for Best Picture of 2013.  Well, wait no longer! For others (who have better things to wait for) this is a follow-up post on our effort for the second year in a row to see all of the films nominated for Best Picture of the Year before the Oscars. We’re now two-thirds of the way home, having just come from a showing of Silver Linings Playbook and having seen Argo last weekend.  These were two very good movies. I don’t think they’ll win Best Picture, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t take home awards in other categories.  Bradley Cooper was excellent in the lead of Playbook, and I think I’m in love with Jennifer Lawrence.  Robert De Niro was – well, he’s Robert De Niro.  (He wasn’t on the screen a minute when Candice – she of the maiden name Colando – turned to me and said, “This is SUCH an Italian family!”) Alan Arkin was also terrific in Argo (but both De …

Academy Awards Here We Come (Again)

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Last year I broke a 57-year-old tradition and decided to see all the films nominated in  the Academy Awards Best Picture category.  We had a blast, updating More to Come… when I thought we’d seen the winner, as well as on the night of the awards. This year, Candice and I are back at it again. We thought we had an early start. Over the summer and fall we went to a couple of movies that, to our eye, had Best Picture possibilities.  We both loved The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Moonrise Kingdom. Shows what we know. But we quickly hit our stride, and after tonight’s viewing of Beasts of the Southern Wild at AFI Silver Theatre, we’ve now seen four of the nine Best Picture nominees. Since it is our most recent viewing, I’ll just say that Beasts of the Southern Wild is an interesting film, but best picture quality…ummm, I don’t think so.  And I’m sorry, but Quvenzhané Wallis did not deserve a nomination above Maggie Smith in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. …

Inaugurations: Here’s to the Optimists

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Today is Inauguration Day 2013.  Cue the oh-so-tired Washingtonians. Here are some real quotes from my “Facebook Friends” (before I deleted my account last evening). “OMG, the tourists are clogging up the Metro.” “I’m not going, that’s oh so 2009.” “The return of the economic destroyer in chief” (this obviously from a disgruntled Republican who has rewritten history). “Limousine gridlock.” The newspapers also get into the act. “Experts” who see the world through their lens and no other, have all the answers for what ails President Obama, the political parties, or the country as the second term begins. Well, I refuse to play that Washington game.  I have a son and four of his college classmates down on the mall today, and they are excited to be a part of history. Andrew and another friend from Washington have spent the last four days touring one friend from California and one from Vermont all around the city – hitting the hip neighborhoods, going to Evensong at the National Cathedral, watching the changing of the guard at …