Tuesday

Last night we had a dinner with some friends from Monterrey--at yet another middle eastern restaurant down the road from our unit. Everyone seemed more taken with Aladdin that I was. The food was fine, and I liked our gothic waiter, but it seemed more fast food oriented than the Lebanese places I've fallen in love with. Sunshine says it's a great place to eat lunch. I was served the largest damn falafel pocket pita I've ever seen: like a calzone full of salad. Today, after a short lunch of leftover slash untouched three-bean soup and fava bean patties, I watched John Huston's jocularly tragic misadventure the Man Who Would be King (1975),* which begins with an elaborate montage of vintage exotica in an India suspiciously akin to Morocco. Peachy (Michael Caine) steals a watch from a man on a train. That's just the kind of rascal Peachy is. The victim is young Rudyard Kipling (Christopher Plummer), sole reporter for the local branch of the Evening Star. Both men are Freemasons, a fact prompting Peachy to return the timepiece and introduce Kipling to his conspirator Dravot (Sean Connery), also a Freemason. The two man are poised to be deported from India, and, mercenary rascals that they are, they've concocted a plan to hike through Pakistan and brave the Khyber Pass into the Hindu Kush where savage tribesmen war with one another in a lawless wasteland suspiciously reminiscent of Morocco. This is just the right kind of environment for two rascals and a burro packed with rifles to meet with their fortune. And boy do they. Wonderful collaboration between Kipling and Huston examines the nature of leadership, the crossed purposes of religion and society, and man's ability to spite himself for all sorts of reasons. Filmed in Morocco. [Cavin]