fine whine

Four years of high school Latin, even in light of high marks earned, doesn't count for much at all. Likewise two to three odd years of grade school French via videos of Madame, Merci et Mou and coloring-book worksheets--these too I had and I still only comprehend English. This marks me as particularly American, I suspect, but even more detrimental is the effect this has on my film-watching ability, particularly for films that didn't happen to be recorded in the only language I've ever taken the time to achieve fluency. With my watching of Run Lola run the other day I seem to have gotten on a sort-of foreign film kick. I checked out a couple more Tom Tyker films from the library, as well as Wenders's American friend, which stars Dennis Hopper as a somewhat talented Mister Ripley (as it were). He was in Ticker which I threw in today as I worked on finishing our dining room table (Yeah, the movie sucks but I think Tom Sizemoer's criminally underused in Hollywood), and Anthony Minghella directed the second most recent take on the same story (Ripley, not Ticker, and he makes an appearance as producer on Tykwer's Heaven which is apparently in Italian. I can't wait.

The broken English of this entry's title, "Please advise without late", struck me as, well, cute when I saw it in my email. We've done a lot of exploratory work with overseas vendors and some of them have English as a third or fifth language. Needless to say I've had some fun puzzling through the word mashups, particularly from one woman who seems to lose more control over grammar the more hectic their business gets.

At least that's what it looks like to me, the guy who didn't even pick up the Spanish that Sesame Street beats us over the head with.