Let’s Change the Subject and Talk About… Killer Bees

Sunday afternoons, various members of the Ford and Fitzgerald clans gather at the Swamp House (K’s term for our cottage at Paradise Palms) for coffee and conversation. We do our best to avoid politics because… well, I don’t have to explain how that can go these days.

The usual topics range from updates on siblings and cousins to books and movies, sports, and what’s new in the gardens. What was new in the gardens this week was Uncle R’s campaign against a recent influx of bees.

Apparently, the two owl houses R and I had put high up in a copse of melaleuca trees several years ago had been taken over by the bees when, for whatever reason, the owls decided to relocate. There were, according to R, thousands of them. But they are not sweet little honeybees.

They are a dangerously aggressive species called Africanized honeybees – or, as some prefer to refer to them, “killer bees.”

Africanized Honeybee (Apis mellifera scutellata)

Killer bees! Finally, the whole family had something we could fear together! A threat that was frightening to all of us equally, regardless of what we thought of Trump or Biden or DeSantis!

And, oh, what a marvelous conversation it was, all of us united against a common enemy!

Here’s a sampling of some of what I learned from that conversation (most of it from R), fact-checked on Wikipedia for your edification:

* The killer bee is a hybrid species. It is the result of a 1956 effort in Brazil to mate bees from southern Africa with Brazilian bees to increase honey production.

* Apparently (and this is documented, although it sounds like the plot of a bad movie), a handful of those hybrid bees escaped quarantine, then quickly spread throughout Central and South America and then to Mexico and the US.

* Killer bees are meaner than “regular” bees. Much meaner. Melittologists (scientists specializing in the study of bees) don’t like using terms like “mean.” They point out that all the little fellers are doing is protecting their turf. So they prefer to describe them as “highly defensive.”

R explained what that means in practice. He told us that when he had an exterminator take down their nest, a band of several hundred escaped. Somehow aware that he was behind the attack on their headquarters, they set up an encampment in the eaves of a nearby barn and proceeded to launch vicious attacks against him whenever he came within twenty yards of their bivouac.

Sounds farfetched. And, indeed, R, an Irishman like yours truly, is not entirely loath to dressing up a story now and then. But when I fact-checked him, I discovered that it was probably true. Killer bees have even been known to chase people they consider to be their enemies for more than a quarter of a mile. And according to one source, they have killed “more than 1,000 humans and an unknown number of horses and other animals over the years.”

If you want to enjoy a surprisingly good movie about killer bees, I can recommend The Swarm (French, with subtitles).

Watch the trailer here.

My Oscar Predictions: How Did I Do?

Plus: My Take on Some Categories You’ve Never Heard Of

I know you are dying to hear my thoughts on the Oscars and to find out, if you don’t know already, how my predictions panned out. So, here you go…

Best Movie: Yes, I said Everything Everywhere would take home the Oscar. A no-brainer (even though it really should not have won).

Best Director: I was right. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert won for Everything Everywhere. Alas, one of the greatest directors of our time (Spielberg) lost to them.

Best Cinematography: I knew James Friend would win because he did such amazing work on All Quiet. I would have preferred Frank van den Eeden, because of the riveting depth he gave to Close. But he wasn’t even nominated.

Best Actor: This Oscar should have gone to Bill Nighy in Living or Paul Mescal in Aftersun. (Although Austin Butler was pretty good, too, as Elvis.) But, as I predicted, it went, of course, to Brendan Fraser.

Best Actress: Michelle Yeoh was, along with everyone else in Everything Everywhere, the odds-on favorite. And she won. Ho hum. She wasn’t bad. But Cate Blanchett and Andrea Riseborough were better. (I liked Yeoh’s comment in her acceptance speech: “Ladies, never let anyone tell you that you are past your prime.”)

Best Supporting Actor: I said that Ke Huy Quan would win, and he did. But not because of his performance. It was because the Academy wants a sweep and is nostalgic for a comeback story. My pick would have been Brendan Gleeson. Actually, I think Barry Keoghan was even better.

Best Supporting Actress: All of the nominees were very good. (It was the best group in this category that I can remember.) I correctly said the Oscar would go to Jamie Lee Curtis, even though I would have given it to Kerry Condon.

Best Original Screenplay: I predicted The Banshees, though I would have preferred Triangle of Sadness. But the Oscar went to Everything Everywhere. How I got that wrong, I can’t explain. I guess I thought they had to give Banshees something.

Best Adapted Screenplay: I correctly predicted that All Quiet (which should have won) would be beat out by Women Talking, because Hollywood believes that sort of script deserves to win something.

Best Animated Feature: I was right again. The Oscar went to Pinocchio. A worthy choice, although I think Puss in Bootswas equal to it.

Best Documentary Feature: This one was easy. Navalny was destined to win. It was very good. But I thought All the Beauty and the Bloodshed was a tad better.

Best International Feature: Another easy call. Because All Quiet was also nominated for Best Picture, there was no chance that a better film, Argentina, 1986, would get more votes in this lesser category.

My Score: 11 out of 12 

Bonus Categories 

Most Common Adjective of the Night: Beautiful

 Second Most Common Adjective: Incredible

Best Mindless Moment: Lady Gaga explaining why her track for Top Gun (“Hold My Hand”) is important and more meaningful than the mediocre lyrics suggest.

Best Sentence in an Acceptance Speech: From Ruth E. Carter (who won Best Costume Design), referring to the passing of her mother, at 101, as “becoming an ancestor.”

Best German Moment: Edward Berger’s thank-you speech for All Quiet. (If you don’t get it, you don’t know the Germans.)

Another Great Thank-You Moment: Matthew Freud, accepting (with Charlie Mackesy), the award for Best Animated Short: “I know the protocol is to say thank you a lot, but I’m British, so instead I’ll say sorry.”

Lamest Speech: Bill Cramer, representing the Academy, talking about the awards that nobody is interested in.

Weirdest Commercial: Snapchat. What was that about?

Most Inclusive Commercial: Applebee’s. (And why not?)

Best Back-Walking Moments: The commercials about COVID (how it’s actually dangerous only for fat people) sponsored by Pfizer.

Most Narcissistic Statement: “Thank you so much to everyone who has unlocked my genius.” (Daniel Kwan in his acceptance speech for Best Director)

Most Pretentious Moment: There were too many to fairly choose from.

What a pleasant day Friday was for me. I had two tickets to see Hugh Eakin speak about Picasso’s War, his fantastic account of how modern art came to America, at the Norton Museum in nearby West Palm Beach. (You can read my review of the book here.)

K was out of town, so I asked M, Number Three Son and fellow art lover, to join me.

I was expecting an elderly, slightly disheveled Oxford-donnish fellow to appear. Instead, Mr. Eakin turned out to be a young-ish, bespectacled nebbish with an appropriately nebbish-y voice.

This is what he looks like:

This is what he sounds like.

It didn’t take me long to fall in love with the man, however. He was smartly funny in a self-effacing way that, for someone that went to both Harvard and Cambridge and has had a spectacular literary career, is both rare and adorable. Moreover, he had clearly done some serious research on his topic. He was able to answer every question thrown at him, including one of mine, with authority, grace, and detail.

Afterwards, I asked M if I could stop by to see Hudson, Number Five Grandson. M and his wife M keep a strict schedule for their one-year-old. The lights in his room are turned off promptly at eight o’clock. So, looking at his watch, M agreed, so long as I understood that there would only be time for me to assist him with Hudson’s bath and bedtime story.

When I got to their home, I realized that I was interrupting a dinner party. I apologized, but M and M assured me I was not intruding, and invited me to stay.

The bath and bedtime story were wonderfully rewarding in every sense that time spent with a one-year-old grandchild could be. Coming downstairs afterwards, I discovered that two of the three dinner guests were friends of M’s that I had known since they were in their early teens. Back then, they were all misfit kids that had found their way to a public but very exclusive high school for the arts (as had M). And now, they were very accomplished professionals with promising lives.

So, I stayed and enjoyed an excellent meal and some excellent Pinot Noir. And I went home feeling very lucky indeed.

Do You Remember Bob Ross?

When I was in my 30s, I occasionally watched a PBS instructional series on painting, starring a tall, White guy with an afro named Bob Ross. During the 11 years he appeared on The Joy of Painting, he recorded more than 400 videos.

Ross had a gentle, upbeat way of speaking – not unlike Mr. Rogers – that made him easy to watch and learn from. Plus, he used and taught techniques that were easy to replicate at home.

I thought my interest in him was esoteric. I’ve never known anyone else that watched him. In fact, I don’t think he or his show ever made their way into any conversation I’ve ever had.

When Netflix released a documentary about Ross in 2021, I was surprised to discover that there was more to him than “happy little clouds and trees.” Titled Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed, it was revealing and somewhat disturbing. And now it turns out that a feature film loosely based on his life – titled Paint – will be airing next month on Netflix. Another surprise. This one’s a comedy! And it will be starring Owen Wilson, of all people, as the Bob Ross-esque character.

Take a look at the trailer here.

What to Eat? What to Watch? 

Should we walk two blocks to our local eatery, Boheme Bistro, where Adel treats us like celebrities, and enjoy some great Lebanese food? Or walk half a block farther, to Burger Fi, for juicy cheeseburgers by the sea? Or… maybe we should stay home and watch a movie?

Those were the questions last Sunday evening. And since G, K’s sister, was our guest, we let her decide. She opted for staying home. Very happy with that decision, I brought trays and silverware and napkins into the TV room, and searched for a few Oscar-nominated movies to choose from.

Twenty minutes later, we were having fresh salad, cacio e pepe pasta, and a big bottle of well-balanced merlot. The choice of movie was The Whale, which, as I’m sure you know, is about a 600-pound man that deals with depression by eating himself to death.

The Whale, starring a fat-suited Brendan Fraser, is worth watching. It was tightly scripted and very well acted (earning Fraser his first-ever Oscar nomination). But there were things I didn’t like about it.

It was much more a stage play than it was a film. And not just a stage play, but one that was restricted to a single room. Filmed plays can sometimes be well done, but I’ve never seen one that wouldn’t have been better on stage.

The subject matter was important. And, for the most part, it was treated with the seriousness it deserved. That is to say, the film attempted to deal with the issues at stake in a reasonably balanced way.

But when it came to the secondary plot – the effort of the protagonist to encourage his students to write better essays – it failed miserably. Instead of an inspired argument for good writing, the audience gets a threadbare Hollywood cliché about expressing your passions.

Ugh!

Anyway, I didn’t hate it. And the pasta and wine (Prisoner) was fantastic!