Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Old School


Twice, in the last few weeks, I have been referred to as "old school" (and I'm just certain the 'pointer-outers" meant that in the best possible way!) - once by a parking lot attendant (who I'm sure was skimming off the parking revenue, by not charging me for parking) - I gave him half the normal parking fee as a tip, saying: "What goes around, comes around." He replied: "Oh, Old School!"

Then (and this is not the 2nd 'old school' reference), upon re-reading Joe Reifer's blog posting on the "great sharpening debate" in which Joe says: "I appreciate humorous anecdotes from old school curmudgeons [Ed. Note: referring here, I think, to Brooks Jensen of Lenswork] as much as the next guy. Maybe even more. I’d actually like to be an old school curmudgeon myself one day." Well, that got me thinking - Joe, it's not too late to start on that path - and some training might be in order. The logical starting point would be to google anything on "The Curmudgeon's Hero" - Walter Matthau - especially his work with Jack Lemmon in the "Grumpy Old Men" series. Maybe even rent one of the flicks this weekend!

General tutorials to get you started . . .
http://www.stairwell.com/doc/matthau.html
http://www.infoplease.com/biography/var/waltermatthau.html

BTW, Matthau was once described in the English press as looking like "a bloodhound with a head cold."

2 comments:

Joe Reifer said...

Tim -

You are cracking me up. Thanks for the pointers. I'm going to start studying to be a curmudgeon as soon as I get out of this rocking chair and the whiskey is gone.

Cheers,

Joe

Joe Reifer said...

P.S. I did watch Hopscotch recently, and I'm a big fan of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.