Here’s a poem by Robin Chapman, from Wisconsin, that needs no introduction, because we’ve all known an elderly person who’s much like this one.
Time
My neighbor, 87, rings the doorbell to ask if I might have seen her clipping shears that went missing a decade ago, with a little red paint on their shaft, or the iron turkey bank and the porcelain coffee cup that disappeared a while back when her friend, now dead, called the police to break in to see if she were ill, and have we had trouble with our phone line, hers is dead and her car and driver’s license are missing though she can drive perfectly well, just memory problems, and her son is coming this morning to take her up to Sheboygan, where she was born and where the family has its burial lots, to wait on assisted living space, and she just wanted to say we’d been good neighbors all these how many? years, and how lucky I am to have found such a nice man and could she borrow a screwdriver, the door lock to her house is jammed.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation ( www.poetryfoundation.org ), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 2012 by Robin Chapman, whose most recent book of poems is the eelgrass meadow, Tebot Bach, 2011. Poem reprinted from the Alaska Quarterly Review, Volume 28, nos. 1&2 (Spring/Summer 2011) by permission of Robin Chapman and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
It’s hard to believe that until now the comedy team of Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, fantastic cut-ups in “Wedding Crashers,” has not reunited since 2005. Fittingly, I had to look that up on Google. Or maybe it was Bing.
According to “The Internship,” Google, depicted as a Disneyland-style workplace for geeks and nerds, may be the happiest employment place. After all, the Silicon Valley headquarters comes complete with a beach volleyball court, an indoor slide and free food in the cafeteria.
The movie’s high concept is to take two borderline middle-aged Luddites and stick them smack into the middle of the high-tech corporate culture of Google, where smug young techies toil away at the latest app.
Billy (Vince Vaughn) and Nick (Owen Wilson) are salesmen of high-end wristwatches, but their crusty boss (John Goodman) informs them that they are “dinosaurs” for trying to sell watches in the age of smartphones.
Suddenly out of work and with no prospects, Billy and Nick flounder on their separate ways. Nick flails at efforts to sell mattresses for his sister’s obnoxious boyfriend (Will Farrell in a cameo role).
One of them hits upon the idea of enrolling in an online university so they can become college students qualified to enter the summer internship competition program at the Google campus.
This inspired thought is fraught with peril since neither Billy nor Nick has any real knowledge of computers, particularly how to write code or design applications. I feel their pain.
They commandeer a public computer away from school kids at the public library to do an online interview with the Google staff. Speaking loudly and mugging for the camera, they come across ridiculously funny.
It appears that a “diversity” program at Google includes the enlistment of clueless white guys who spend much of their time making 1980’s pop cultural references, often to “Flashdance.”
Once they arrive at the Google headquarters, Billy and Nick discover that they need to join a team of fellow interns in order to enter competitions that will determine the recipients of full-time positions.
Billy and Nick, though affable characters, prove to be about as popular with the interns half their age as lecherous old men at a beach party hosted by hot college girls.
Fortunately for them, a few of the interns are such social outcasts that even fellow geeks and nerds have avoided them. Reluctantly, Billy and Nick are accepted by default into a small group.
The de facto leader, if you will, is Lyle (Josh Brener) who desperately tries to fit in by uttering ill-fitting slang words. Then there’s Stuart (Dylan O’Brien), the sullen loner openly contemptuous of the old guys.
The token Asian is Yo-Yo (Tobit Raphael), a guy so rattled by his domineering mother that he plucks his eyebrows as a form of punishment for his self-diagnosed failures.
The only female in the group is Neha (Tiya Sircar), a bright, intelligent beauty who overcomes her social awkwardness and sexual insecurity with helpful platonic advice from Nick.
As a team, these disparate characters have about as much chance of winning a competition as a one-legged man in a potato sack race. Initially, the college kids all feel that Billy and Nick are holding them back.
Things start to turn around after a Quidditch match goes badly in the first half. With Billy and Nick inspiring the group with a pop culture pep talk, they nearly score an upset victory.
We’ve seen this before in films like “Revenge of the Nerds.” Here, the outcast kids are taunted by the snotty British jerk Graham (Max Minghella), who claims to be both physically and mental superior to his classmates.
Billy and Nick are subjected to pranks as well, such as being tricked into looking for Professor Xavier and finding a wheelchair-bound lookalike at Stanford who takes great offense to their insensitivity to his resemblance to a fictional “X-Men” character.
While Billy and Nick bumble through most of the tech assignments, their worldly experience and charming ability to sell things prove to be a saving grace. This should come as no surprise.
The two middle-aged guys have some creative ways to loosen up their socially discomfited and gawky teammates, including a side trip to a San Francisco disco/strip club in Chinatown.
The humor, though, is mostly at the expense of Billy and Nick. Billy insists on developing a program for “on the line” instead of online. Nick clumsily works a charm offensive on a pretty mid-level manager (Rose Byrne).
“The Internship” doesn’t capture the manic lunacy of “Wedding Crashers,” but it makes good use of the affable charms of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson.
The film may seem like an unnecessary, even perhaps unwarranted love letter to Google, but there are things about this tech world culture that seem oddly amusing.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
COBB, Calif. – Join the Cobb Mountain Artists on Saturday, June 22, and Sunday, June 23, for their annual open studios, featuring the work of many fine artists who live and work in the incredibly beautiful Cobb area, along with invited guest artist.
Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days.
Featured this year will be functional and art pottery, painting, handmade books, glass art jewelry, ceramic sculpture, photography, stone jewelry and Zen calligraphy, wooden cutting boards, fabric clothing, and new this year, Italian illustrated cookbooks.
All artwork is original, handmade by the artist.
Maps to each studio will be available at Mountain High Coffee in Cobb and Hidden Valley, the Artisan Realm on Highway 175 in Cobb and the Loch Lomond Store.
For more information, call Gregg Lindsley at 707-490-7168, or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
CLEARLAKE, Calif. – Second Sunday Cinema will feature the documentary “Who Bombed Judi Bari?” on June 9.
The film will be shown at the Clearlake United Methodist Church at 14521 Pearl Ave in Clearlake.
Doors open at 5:30 p.m., with the film beginning at 6 p.m.
This excellent documentary revisits The Headwaters Summer of 1990, when Earth First! co-founders Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney found their nonviolent activism to save redwoods transformed when they were bombed in their car.
The pipe bomb under Bari's seat nearly killed her and injured Cherney. Almost immediately, the FBI and Oakland Police Department arrived and arrested them for "transporting explosives," and accused them of planning violent acts.
That case had to be dropped for lack of evidence – but the question remains: Who planted that bomb?
The FBI has apparently given up and wants to destroy all the evidence. The filmmakers have not given up, and are offering $50,000 to anyone whose information leads to the conviction of the real bomber.
This film's archival footage takes viewers back to the uplifting music and the dedication and raw courage of those who worked to successfully save this gorgeous grove.
The film offers the chance to meet Bari as she makes her legal deposition a very few weeks before her death from cancer in 1997.
Donations to the filmmakers, including Cherney, the producer, are very welcome.
This struggle is far from over. The chair of the Redwood Chapter of the Sierra Club, Victoria Brandon, will talk after the film on how we can work together to save the beautiful redwood forests of our Northern California coast.
For more information, call Shannon Tolson at 707-889-7355.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – “Art from the Heart,” an art show and sale to benefit Operation Tango Mike, will take place on Saturday, June 15.
The fundraiser will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Lakeport Senior Center, 527 Konocti Ave.
Lifelong artist Pat Skoog will show a variety of her works and a portion of sales proceeds will benefit Operation Tango Mike in sending care packages to deployed military personnel.
Light refreshments will be available.
For more information call 707-349-2838 or 707-263-1303, or e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – In June, Poets and Writers, a national organization that supports working writers, renewed their grant to the Lake County Arts Council and The Writers Circle.
This grant supports the free public writing workshop offered monthly in Lakeport at the Main Street Art Gallery, 325 N. Main St., at 6:30 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month.
The Lake County Arts Council sponsors the workshop, and former Lake County Poet Laureate Mary McMillan facilitates it.
Residents from all over Lake County are welcome to attend the Writers Circle and join other writers who share memoirs, fiction, essays or poems they have written – or just listen and get inspired.
More seasoned writers and writers just beginning join together to offer feedback, build skills and find new ideas.
Aged 19 to 90, some people come only one or two times, and others show up every month.
Poets and Writers provides this grant through a grant it has received from the James Irvine Foundation.
For more information contact Mary McMillan at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
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