Vacations / Regina Coyula

With the heat, my summer option is to sit in front of the TV, but not in front of the summer programming which doesn’t interest me, rather to decide what I watch because in the end I have a TV for the halfway intelligent.

“24” with its thrilling season has been the thriller. And it’s not that I don’t know that later in the third season Jack Bauer will save the world once again with the help of Chloe alone, but he’ll still end up screwed; it’s that in this tacit agreement, I’m disposed to believe in Super Bauer if it’s told well.

Also the action movie, Die Hard, 5? 6? 7? Bruce Willis, Bauer’s putative uncle, does his thing in a Moscow unrecognizable for those left in the USSR.

Not everything is banal. movies like “Siberian Education” or “The Map in the Clouds” have added the dramatic note. Light humor comes at the hands of “Modern Family”; thanks for not putting canned laughter in “Breaking Bad,” excellent black humor, the best of the summer. “The Hammer and Tickle,” a Canadian documentary about USSR and Eastern European humor, made me laugh and made me think of copies, and the current drought of good jokes, in great measure due to the fact that so many of these jokes were island adaptations of the originals beyond what you see, over there.

But the best has been the arrival of Piura, the new puppy in the house. Perky, smart, loving, she’s already the boss of everyone. And like all my dogs, rescued. It’s an odd vacation idea to spend my days cleaning up pee and a good part of the night consoling a little puppy who’s afraid of the dark, but the dogcatcher understands me.

That’s been my vacation. It’s a really nice personal project that has grabbed my attention.

29 August 2014