Beauty is in the eye -- just one -- of the beholder

How about those best-laid plans.

I set out to resume regular blogging this year, and I said I would do my best to post something 3-4 times a week. So of course today I'm writing for the first time in 11 days.

It's the eye, of course. It's difficult to get used to seeing with only one eye, and it's particularly rough on my depth perception. I feel a little like Governor LePetomane in "Blazing Saddles," trying to put his pen back into its holder.

[the Governor is having trouble putting his pen back into its holder]
Hedley Lamarr: Think of your secretary...
[the pen goes straight in]
Governor: Thank you. That's a good one.

It has been nearly three weeks since my little stroke gave me double vision, and it has actually gotten a little worse before it will get better.

When I stared into the bathroom mirror with the patch off, my right eye looked normal in its positioning, but the left was pinned as far to the inside, as crossed as it could possibly be.

Neither Snake nor Rooster, but I do have the patch

Talk about annoying.

A little less than a week ago, my distance vision started getting a little more blurry than usual.

Then on Saturday, that blurry vision turned into double vision. By Monday morning, everything outside of about 18 inches away was coming up twice, side by side.

If I covered my left eye, I could see almost normally, but of course that was nothing more than a short-term fix.

So I went to the doctor and he told me I had had a stroke.

Editor's note: No he didn't.

Well ...

Trump channels Nixon in his state of the union

The president had been there before and knew what he was doing.

It wasn't, as they say, his first rodeo.

“Mr. Speaker, and Mr. President, and my distinguished colleagues and our guests: I would like to add a personal word with regard to an issue that has been of great concern to all Americans over the past year,

“I refer, of course, to the investigations of the so-called Watergate affair. As you know, I have provided to the special prosecutor voluntarily a great deal of material. I believe that I have provided all the material that he needs to conclude his investigations and to proceed to prosecute the guilty and to clear the innocent.

"I believe the time has come to bring that investigation and the other investigations of this matter to an end. One year of Watergate is enough.”

'Stan & Ollie' shows why Laurel and Hardy live on

Stan & Ollie

Thursday I saw a movie in a theater for just the third time in eight years.

I saw the last Harry Potter movie in 2011, largely because I had just seen the one prior to it on DVD and I didn't want to wait six months for the next DVD.

I took my wife to see "A Dog's Purpose" in 2017 because it was based on a book we both loved.

And yesterday I drove over to the 16-plex in McDonough for a matinee showing of "Stan & Ollie," the BBC movie about Laurel and Hardy's final tour of England in 1953.

I had been eager to see the movie since I first saw the trailer. I have always liked John C. Reilly, and seeing him as Oliver Hardy just blew me away. The only problem was that his voice is so distinctive and there were times I had trouble getting past that.

British actor Steve Coogan was outstanding as Stan Laurel. I hadn't seen him in too many things before, although he had a small role as the Roman centurion in the three "Night at the Museum" movies.

Coogan and Reilly, Laurel and Hardy

I hadn't realized that Laurel was very much the senior partner. He was paid significantly more than Hardy because he wrote the scripts and supervised much of the productions.

If there was one thing apparent as their careers wound down, it was the love the two men felt for each other.

Their films were completely a product of their time. While Marx Brothers movies and others that relied on wordplay hold up very well, the slapstick in movies like "Way Out West" goes on almost to the point of being painful to watch.

But the rest -- the little dances and songs -- have a sweetness to them that long outlives the two men.

And they were the best.

Better than Abbott and Costello, better than Martin and Lewis, better than any other duos. It's why people still watch and enjoy their films 80 years or more after they were made.

Yes, it was a fine mess.

A very fine mess.

What on earth is so interesting about Uniontown?

Uniontown, Pa.

I have never been to Uniontown, Pa.

In fact, other than driving through the area on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I don't recall ever being in southwestern Pennsylvania other than changing planes in Pittsburgh one time in 1984.

It's a small city a little less than an hour south of Pittsburgh and definitely part of what they call the Rust Belt. Some famous people were born there, most notably General George Marshall and mystery writer John Dickson Carr.