Ditat Deus indeed

Last night, I watched Raising Arizona against the base of this building, which freaked out Torgo when he was briefly in town last month:
(Every Thursday, there's a free outdoor theatre on the rooftop of a lower building.)

Of course, it being podunk Seattle, I went with one set of friends and ran into another group of friends, sitting two blankets away.

After three glasses of wine with a light dinner, though, I was more easily distracted by seagulls flying around the buildings downtown at dusk. (It was really cool. Seagulls rock. And they look neat soaring between skyscrapers against just-emerging stars.)

The movie, not so much. I know everybody loves the Coen Brothers, but I tend to be hit-or-miss with them, and this was definitely one of the misses. One of the friends I ran into muttered afterwards, "I hate campy." I don't, but this one wasn't my thing. Also, for some odd reason I thought the plot of the movie would be similar to Losing Isaiah, so I was a little thrown off.

For one, I'm not the biggest Nicolas Cage fan (except for National Treasure). In this one, he and Holly Hunter play a cop-and-felon couple who can't have children and so decide to take one quintuplet from a local business owner.
Inexplicably, everyone in the film has an unidentifiable and yet very strong Southern accent.

Secondly, the whole time I kept thinking that all the characters kidnapping a baby should have had to feed him and change his diaper and make him take a nap more frequently than they do. And the baby never cries! Obviously, this was on my mind only because I babysat for the first time ever last weekend (yes, ever -- never had younger relatives, never had an afterschool babysitting job). The stint lasted twice as long as anticipated, and I ended up having to change the neffy's diaper after all, which I'd previously managed to avoid for his entire five months of existence. And feed him. And walk around with a squirming 20-lb bundle. (Yet again, btw, "Flower of Scotland" seems to be the magic lullaby song.) Anyways, if I suffered while watching a pretty chill baby for a mere two hours, the various kidnappers and bank robbers and bounty hunters should have had to suffer more in the course of their adventures, with an even chiller fictional baby! Damn it...

Lastly, as is well documented, I dislike endings where "they get married and have kids and grandkids, and live happily ever after."

Then again, the seagulls were awfully distracting, so maybe I missed a lot of subtleties.

But now I have a default Thursday night outing for the rest of the summer!