Today is Thursday, December 26, 2024. Elliot and I are back from our three-day holiday sojourn with “Jeff” and “Sandy” and their two daughters, plus three cats, in Easton, Pennsylvania. The three days, as I must say, certainly went by very fast.

We arrived in the late afternoon on Thursday and we left today after 12:15 or whereabouts. We stopped in town at the Quadrant Book Mart & Coffee Shop, on North 3rd Street. I even got to parallel park the new car since I was told by a local that the spot we easily got into around the corner from the coffee shop wasn’t a legitimate spot, so I parked the car in a legal spot instead, while Elliot walked to the shop after parking it initially. However, the major driving was done by Elliot all the way up and down from Easton. I did drive to Jackson Hole on Tuesday, though. That’s where we had breakfast before journeying to Pennsylvania. We made no other stops than where we ate breakfast. We got to Easton actually a half hour early, so we looked for a place to have coffee, and by golly, there wasn’t much open then since it was close to Christmas Eve. One place that looked open wasn’t, really, when we walked in to sample their high-priced coffee, and we were told by a worker there that they were closing at that time: it was almost 4.

We were forced to drive to a small shopping mall where we parked near a McDonald’s and that’s where I had a cup of coffee. I must say for $1.79 or whereabouts, the coffee was quite good. Then we made our way to Sandy and Rich’s ranch-style house.

We arrived right on time: about 4:30 or a little after and we went directly into the kitchen where Sandy was paying host to two students from Madagascar whom she invited for Christmas dinner (Sandy works at the local college, Lafayette, for the past 20 years in a tech capacity, but she also deals with foreign students as well). Soon the house filled up with two sisters and their families, cousins, one eight-year-old nephew, and various other guests. All in all, I was told there were 16 or 17 of us around the dinner table that night. This is more people than I have seen in quite some time.

We brought the kugel and the ricotta cheesecake, and from what I could ascertain, both were hits with those surrounding the dinner table. There was enough to eat, as there was lasagna cooked by Sandy, a very appetizing arugula salad, various vegetables, cookies, and Elliot’s noodle pudding and my cheesecake.

The next day we all enjoyed a hearty breakfast prepared by Sandy who is an excellent cook and baker. We had eggs, roasted potatoes, and hot, steaming coffee. Then four of us – Sandy and her two daughters, “Elly” and “Roxanne” – drove to a nature trail not too far away and we took a robust, scenic walk after parking Sandy’s Crosstrek in the parking lot. Elliot preferred to stay home and watch something on television.

By 3:30, we decided to drive to the historic Frank Banko Alehouse Cinemas, located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, located on the first floor of the ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks. The old, shuttered Bethlehem Steelworks Factory is just a stone’s throw from the movie house. We decided to see the new Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown starring the hottest star in Hollywood at the moment, Timothee Chalamet. Sandy particularly wanted to see the film and we couldn’t say no to this movie that has gotten Oscar buzz already.

After seeing the film in a packed house, no less, all I have to say is go see this marvelously acted chronicle of one of the 20th-century’s most acclaimed musicians and performers. From its start in 1961 when a complete unknown, Bob aka Robert Zimmerman from Hibbing, Minnesota, hitches a ride to New Jersey to see his musical idol, Woody Guthrie, who at that time was suffering from Huntington’s chorea, and his chance meeting with legendary folk singer Pete Seeger (here masterfully played by Edward Norton who gets his mannerisms and folksy nature down pat) at Guthrie’s bedside, the film takes you through the early and middle 60s and through the incredible transformation of this shambling, shy musician with an acoustic guitar to an icon of musical greatness.

The director James Mangold convincingly recreates the Greenwich Village of the early 60s as a young Dylan (he’s about 20 when he starts his musical pilgrimage in New York) first performs a song for the bedridden Guthrie (who’s lost his ability to speak and is in a wheelchair) and Seeger in the New Jersey hospital and is taken under the wing of Seeger who sees potential in this young songwriter. From there, he soon meets a young, politically active artist named Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) who is actually modeled after one of Dylan’s early New York City girlfriends named Suze Rotolo who wrote a book in 2008 about their relationship called A Freewheelin’ Time, which I’ve read some years back).

When Sylvie leaves the country on a painting trip, Dylan meets a more credentialed folksinger, Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), whose work was focused on political activism involving the growing United States military presence in Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and social injustice issues. It is here that Dylan’s music is strongly influenced by his new association with Baez.

Throughout the film, we are treated to Chalamet’s own singing voice and guitar playing, I think (my friend Jeff thinks that was not him strumming on a guitar, that it was done digitally somehow, but I don’t know for sure), as he sings all of the old standards Dylan is known for, songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are a-Changin,'” “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” Girl From the North Country,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” and many more.

One fault that I found with the film is that Chalamet as Dylan comes across as an enigma from start to finish. His early personal life is just hinted at very briefly, when he has an argument with his early girlfriend Sylvie about details from his past. She says she has told him everything about her past, but he hasn’t. This is when Chalamet says something to the effect that everyone lies about their past, this isn’t new. Also, Chalamet maintains an air of aloofness all throughout the 2 hours, 21 minutes of the film, even as his music speaks volumes about social injustice and the like. Chalamet’s voice is often a mumble and his emotions frequently come off as muted. However, this affectation would probably have been construed as a deliberate design by the filmmaker to maintain that mystery about Dylan even to this day, 60 years or more since he arrived on the musical scene.

The film still showcases remarkable acting from all of the principals in it, especially from Norton as Seeger and Chalamet as Dylan. Barbaro as Baez similarly captures the singer’s firebrand image and even sings a lot like her if you know her voice.

I couldn’t believe the auditorium was so crowded that Elliot, Sandy, and I had to split up. I sought a seat in the last row, while Sandy and Elliot found two separate seats in order to see the production. And this was Christmas evening. Maybe people were tired of those family dinners from the night before.

When we got home, we had leftovers for dinner and that was fine. Our hosts were exhausted from entertaining the evening before, so they went to bed quite early. I watched another horrible Christmas film on television called Four Christmases starring a heavy Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon. This Christmas rom-com doesn’t deserve even a reprise of what’s in it, just to announce that it wastes the talents of such powerhouse actors as Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen, Robert Duvall, and Jon Voight.

The next morning, we got up before our hosts, even, and that was a first. We waited for Sandy to wake up and then had breakfast together. We thought we would treat Sandy to breakfast, but she demurred. So she made an omelet and served the potatoes from two nights ago. We participated in the 20-year tradition of taking the Christmas photo of me, Jeff, and Elliot, which I think we started in 2006 or thereabouts. This is always a hoot; we like to see if any of us has aged since we first started taking this classic picture. I would say that we have all stood the test of time pretty well.

We left after 12 and said our goodbyes outside by the car and that’s when we drove to town to the Quadrant Book Mart & Coffee Shop.

I hope everyone had a good, safe holiday and lots of good food to eat. Also, let’s hope there were no quarrels about politics around the dinner table. That could come later.

And so it went!

These are the old smokestacks of the Bethlehem Steelworks by the cinema where we saw A Complete Unknown.