I still tear up every time I watch the scene in Casablanca when Paul Henreid’s Victor Laszlo gets the band at Rick’s American Cafe to play “La Marseillaise” and even Yvonne jumps up and starts singing. It’s a reminder that even the heartbroken and seemingly comfortable can’t stay on the sidelines forever when faced with evil. It comes for us all, eventually, and you can’t deny that no one is truly safe when we let that kind of ideology persist (although Rick also shows the importance of timing).
The movie is dear enough to me that I’ve even read a book about it, from film historian Noah Isenberg. I highly recommend We’ll Always Have Casablanca for any film nerd in your life. In theory, writing by committee shouldn’t work, but the script for Casablanca passed through many hands (the original screenplay is based on an unproduced play) and somehow came out perfect.
While the film itself is as precise as storytelling gets, as a car person there’s a couple of things you can’t help but notice. The protagonist Rick, played with mesmerizing pathos by Humphrey Bogart, runs up against a couple of characters who have, ahem, kind of lazy seeming names. Let’s see, there’s an Italian fixer played by the British actor Sydney Greenstreet. What can we name him? Oh, I know, Signor Ferrari! While people now typically associate the name with Ferrari, the carmaker, when the film came out it wasn’t yet a household name so this is probably a coincidence.
Ok, ok, there’s an even more important character, a Frenchman (also played by British actor, this time Claude Rains) who is both tenuous ally and rival of Rick. What should he be named? I’ve got it, Louis Renault! That one seems like less of a coincidence because Renault had been around for a number of years. Who names a character after a car? That seems a little obvious.
Anyway, our own… Mercedes Streeter is on an amazing mission to rescue some beagles, and that opened up member Zipn Zipn to share his own beagle story:
Thanks for the update! Keep ;em coming!
Our Beagle, Johnny B. Goode (also a rescue from a foster home) does some of the same behaivors. Sweetheart of a pup.
He’s incredibly strong and very dense (honestly he feels like he weighs 3x more than he should when you pick him up).
He was also was traumatized by something before we got him and still hides whenever there’s thunder / loud noises within 100 miles (we call him a k-9 barometer if his tail tucks in) and gets the shakes if it’s real stormy.
He has separation anxiety. Doesn’t like being alone but he’s gotten much better over the year we’ve had him.
He loves to jump up and put his paws on you when you’re sitting down, waiting to get petted, chin-rubbed, and he sort of grunts and tries to talk to you once you start and doesn’t want you to stop. Ever.
He comes up to me when it’s time for a walk, and since he can Houdini out of any simple color, we strap him into a complicated body harness to put the leash on him.. so it sticks his head in it and also helps you to put it on him. Smart animal.
Beagles are amazing, soulful animals. It sounds like Naomi has your number Mercedes…
I think it may be the start of a beautiful friendship!.
Based on some of her Slack posts, I think the odds that Mercedes comes back with 16 beagles aren’t as bad as you might guess.
A new Honda Accord is also coming, which is good timing for Honda’s CEO, who is in trouble for losing focus on China and instead spending too much time on links which, 96Z26 notes, is a uniquely Japanese problem:
We can oust people for focusing too much on golf and not having productive meetings with China? Why didn’t anyone tell me this???
What? I am shocked, shocked, to see golf being discussed in this establishment.
Top photo: Casablanca