Another Week: Number 155

It was a nasty week out there — temperatures were numbing, and the wind was rude. Occasionally, brief sunshine on the rooftops brought some melting, but those drips quickly refroze into ridiculously long and jagged icicles. A hawk stalked the shrubs in front of my house, swooping in to murder innocent sparrows a couple of times.

By habit, I typically bring my house keys with me when I go outside at all — because of the crazy notion that someone could sneak in behind my back and lock me out. On Monday, this worked out well because the melting snow had dripped directly onto the handle of my back storm door, freezing the latch button under a chunk of ice. Because I had my keys, I was able to unlock and use the front door.

On Sunday, the Chicago Bears lost to the Packers at Green Bay. It was another nail-biter until that interception with 22 seconds left. Oh, well — there will be a rematch in 13 days.

I walked zero miles this week.

I’ll Find You (2019)

Frequently, my mom wants to re-watch a movie she just saw in the last few days. On Monday night, it was I’ll Find You,  a 2019 drama about the Holocaust starring Leo Suter as a young singer and Adelaide Clemens as a young violinist. He’s Catholic, she’s Jewish, and they’re both living in Poland in 1939. Mom loved all the Polish names in the opening credits.

Theoretically, there’s a lot of story potential here — but on the screen, the movie races to connect each dot to the next, and most of the dialogue is exposition to keep things moving. The characters sound like puppets, and there’s very little reflection or feeling because we’re already headed to the next turn.

One exception is Stellan Skarsgård. He plays a renowned opera singer who must perform for the Nazis, and he manages to pump some personality into this otherwise mechanical odyssey, which is currently streaming on Prime.

Lives Less Ordinary: Hayley Williams’ grandpa, Rusty

Years ago, back when Amy was first going through chemotherapy, we used to watch the daily YouTube vlog by TeraBrite, a young couple named DJ and Sabrina from Melbourne, Florida, who also made music videos. Sabrina was a huge fan of Paramore and its lead singer, Hayley Williams.

And that’s pretty much all I knew about Hayley Williams until early Tuesday morning, when I listened to Williams on the BBC’s Lives Less Ordinary, talking about all the support she, as a young girl interested in music, got from her granda Rusty — and how she and her bandmate are returning the favor now by helping him release his own album.

This story is just thirty-some minutes of pure joy.

Kindness activist Samuel Weidenhofer

I saw an interview on CNN Wednesday morning, but they haven’t posted it to YouTube, so the Entertainment Tonight version and a different CNN report will have to do.

The original video went viral, and you have probably heard that it raised 1.77 million dollars for an 88-year-old veteran working at a Meijer store in Brighton, Michigan.

But what caught my attention was “kindness influencer” Samuel Weidenhofer.

One of my all-time favorite quotes is from Roger Ebert, on kindness:

“Kindness” covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.

— Roger Ebert, in Chapter 55 of Life Itself: A Memoir

Jay Kelly (2025)

On Saturday evening, my mom and I watched Jay Kelly, the new Noah Baumbach movie, which stars George Clooney as the titular 60-year-old movie star and Adam Sandler as his longtime manager.

The main question the film poses is whether Jay Kelly’s career has completely blotted out every last trace of his humanity. The story flashes back to Kelly’s early ruthlessness. We meet his dissociated daughters, his struggling mentor, his harried “people,” and an early conquest.

The cast is loaded with famous faces. The story moves back and forth in time, and flies from Los Angeles to Paris in a private jet, then boards a train to Tuscany. It bounces along in the swirling chaos of the entourage and bolts into the dark desolation of an Italian forest.

Clooney is … well, the movie even jokes about him only playing himself, but he’s very good at it. Jay Kelly is an engaging two hours and 12 minutes — but I was not crazy about its resolution. A rival actor being named “Ben Adcock” felt like a joke I didn’t really get.

My mom didn’t like all the “jumping around” in time and space.