Two days ago, I turned thirty-five. The Bible held somewhere (Proverbs, maybe?) that we were "allotted three score and ten," that is, seventy years, but the Bible also talks a great deal about smiting people hip and thigh with the jawbones of asses and such, so it's important not to read too much into things. Nevertheless, it strikes me that thirty-five, the "halfway point," is a good place to stop and take stock of my life so far.

I was born and bred in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and very early on developed a passion for history, which has stayed with me and arguably broadened even though I cut short the academic career on which I had determined as earily as high school. The reasons for this decision were several: unlikelihood of funding, disillusionment with the academic world, and a slight jerking around by superior forces (with an apology, I hasten to add), and growing disenchantment with my environment (in this case, Akron, Ohio). Moving to Ann Arbor, I had planned to go to library school, in order to make my master's degree more marketable (I still had ambitions to get my doctorate eventually, but it now seems so long ago), but soon realized that I just didn't understand library school and couldn't really get a handle on how one was supposed to study and develop theories on different ways of arranging information (this is said with all due respect to librarians, who I greatly admire; I have a similar sort of cognitive dissonance when it comes to acting).

I fell into cooking through a mix of fascination, intent and convenience. I'd worked at a fair number of restaurants over the years, and became intrigued by the work cooks did. About a year after I started working at Cafe du Jour (whose recent demise turned out to be more ignoble than I imagined), I managed to shift back into the kicthen, and then found myself, in a way. I often think that if the place had been better run and I were slightly better paid, it would have been a near-ideal situation. As it happened, despite my love for what I did, I had to make a change. Though I'm much better compensated at my present job, and have vastly increased opportunities to learn, I do miss the responsibility I had at my old job, but try to concentrate on the positive.

It's useless to deny that I'm at a much different place at thirty-five than I long thought I would be. Indeed, by certain contemporary standards, I could be considered a failure: I don't own a house (and have no desire to, except that it might be easier to do a vegetable garden), I don't have a car (mine became too expensive to maintain in grad school, and given the looming specters of peak oil and climate change, I figured I'd probably be better off without one), and I work an hourly service-sector job (which, given conditions across the country and especially in Michigan, I'm lucky to have). Thankfully, I don't consider myself one. Judged by present-day global and world-historical (and probably future) standards, I'm actually in an extremely enviable place right now. Though it's not an excuse for complacency, it's a useful thing to keep in perspective. Things aren't too bad, and I have to admit I'm thankful.

The Thief of Bagdad (1924): I saw the 1940 version of The Thief of Bagdad, with Conrad Veidt and Sabu (partially directed by a young Michael Powell) years ago, and I have to say that it was one of the few times I've ever seen a remake come close to the quality of the original, let alone equal it.l Douglas Fairbanks wrote, produced, and starred in the original 1924 fantasy epic, and it's infused throughout with his energy and enthusiasm. Thief Ahmed (Fairbanks) falls in love with the princess on a burglary of the Caliph's palace, and after his unmasking as a fake prince in pursuit of her hand, has to win her over by triumphing over a number of supernatural and all-too-human obstacles. It's a spectacular classic, chock-full of the finest special effects available for the time, representing invisibility cloaks, flying horses, talking trees, and more. Fairbanks is a force of energy as Ahmed, and his at times over-the-top charisma combines with art director William Cameron Menzies to create a near-unique monument of the silent era. The best part is that character doesn't give way to effects--the story is always involving, with Ahmed's acquisitory zeal nicely linked to the main villain's, and the female characters bracingly defined (literally, in Anna May Wong's case) and refreshingly active for early fantasy heroines. It's a wonderful film to watch on one's birthday.

The Pied Piper (1972): I first read about Jacques Demy's sleeper in high school, with Leonard Maltin's necessarily brief review hinting at a grim, Angela Carter-like deglamorization of the already chilling German folktale. For years, it seemed unavailable until I found out about its Region 1 release last week. It was a fascinating experience, a sometimes depressingly realistic account of the Black Death in the small German city of Hamelin. At times it seems like a combination of Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" and Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, with folk-pop singer Donovan's enigmatic performance as the title character adding more than a frisson of weirdness to the proceedings. The Piper drops in on a tangled web of social and political shenanigans involving the Church (Peter Vaughan's Bishop), the nobles (Donald Pleasance's Baron) and the townsfolk (Roy Kinnear's Burgomeister). A cathedral needs to be built, wars are fought by the Pope in Avignon against the Holy Roman Emperor, and life's a mess for everyone else, including the party of traveling players with whom the Piper falls in. The Black Death has been kept out of Hamelin, but a Jewish alchemist (Michael Hordern) and his crippled assistant (Jack Wild) warn that the danger still looms. An onslaught of rats drives the authorities to drastic actions and macabre consequences. The Pied Piper has had a generally negative critical appraisal over the years that I can't quite understand. Producer David Puttnam apparently disowned it, which seems rather odd given his stable of worthy but slightly dull prestige pictures of the early 1980s like Chariots of Fire. Demy was more famously known for gorgeous, bittersweet romances like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), and though The Pied Piper somewhat qualifies, in other ways it's as different from Demy's earlier work as night from day. It was supposed to be some sort of family film, hence its "G" rating, but the adult treatment of the Middle Ages' dark side and the generally pessimistic tone (manifested in Peter Eyre's slightly fey pilgrim who eventually loses his faith in everything, if he ever really had any) clash with the film's supposed audience. The two impulses do sit rather uneasily alongside each other, but for me this adds to rather than detracts from the movie's power. Nothing is certain and nothing is really safe, and every time something happens that one doesn't really expect, the message is driven home even further. It helps, too, that the acting is pretty fantastic all around. Donovan's offbeat casting proves extremely effective; his songs may become annoying and creepy, but then so is the story of the Pied Piper--it's a perfect fit. Wild, so irritating in H.R. Pufnstuf, is outstanding as young Gavin (Gavin? In 14th century Germany?), the alchemist's assistant. John Hurt, as the Baron's son, is a terrifically nasty villain, and Michael Hordern gives one of his best performances as old Melias the alchemist, as genuinely moving and expert in The Pied Piper as he is obnoxious and miscast in Demons of the Mind. The realistically grimy set design is brought to life by Peter Suchitzky's photography, much of it filmed in the picturesque medieval city of Rothenburg-an-der-Tauber. Even the rats are real, with rat trainer John Holmes marshalling some quite unnerving scenes of rats marching in formation behind the Piper en route to their fate in the Weser River. Not a family film to be trundled out on the holidays, The Pied Piper is a perfect example of a cinematic curio--you can't quite fit it anywhere among its cheerier fellows, and I think that's its genius.