I am finally in a financial position to treat myself to a present. Congrats on getting the job three months ago, Jane! I am getting this Cole Haan bag.

But not for a couple of weeks. I’m going to get it during a cardholder’s rewards event at Nordstrom and rack up a crapload of points. That’s right, a crapload.

It will be a cute spring bag and the messenger strap definitely sold me on it.

I will also be stocking up on socks. And stockings. You’re welcome.

Last weekend Brian and I watched a movie called “Gregory’s Girl.” It came out in 1980 and is supposed to be some kind of British romantic comedy “classic.”

I have gone through sincere periods of Anglophilia in my time, and have a true appreciation of British music, film, and television. But this movie sucked. It was soooooo dated and corny and awkward and poorly edited and much of it made no sense at all. God it was bad. Why do people praise this movie so much? It was just average, at best. The music was absolutely awful, the kind of stuff that conjures up memories of the very worst of 1970s background music. The main character has a Jam poster on his wall; they couldn’t afford to get a song by them into the film?

So many things in the movie are never explained. Am I supposed to truly believe that at a tryout of ten Scottish boys and one Scottish girl, the boys are so rubbish — at the most popular sport in Britain, the sport invented by the British — that the girl is picked for the team? Really? Really. I mean, I believe in girls’ athletics, I really do, but wow what a hackneyed device it was. Why did we need the subplot about the desperate friend striking out with every girl in the lunchroom and then… deciding to hitchhike to Venezuela from Scotland? Why does Dorothy flake out on Gregory at the end? The last time we see her she is dancing (?) with the creepy male coach in the locker room. Can’t help but wonder what that was all about. But we never know. Why does Gregory like her so much, apart from her sexy appearance? Because she seems very dull and deeply ambivalent, if not hostile, about him. Also (spoiler, like you care), I don’t even know if we found out the name of the girl he ends up with at the end, she had about 45 seconds of screen time up until the last scene.

This movie could have been so much better. I can name many others in the teen romance genre that were miles ahead of this thing. But I won’t because I’m sick of typing about it.

Tivo kept recording for another 30 minutes, so we were also treated to a rather excruciating one reel short from 1930. It was hosted by Jack Benny in his second-ever screen appearance, dolled up in a lot of masculine eye makeup. It was the style of the time.

The short featured eight song writers of the day, all on stage at once with their own pianos. A few of them spoke in Yiddish. Benny keeps making weird jokes about each one. There are long awkward pauses after each “joke”, where I guess the audience in the cinema is supposed to “laugh.” A young lady comes out to sing a song about how her man abuses her but she loves him anyway (“Mean to Me”). Then she is abused by Jack Benny. At that point we could take no more and made Tivo delete it.