Crude Oil Closes Above $99

Maybe it's just me, but "closing just above $99" certainly sounds like $100-oil.

Futures at the sidebar, at the very top.

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A Note To The Granddaughters

The Hunger Games phenomenon is absolutely fascinating. How does it happen? Or rather, how did it happen.

Our older granddaughter read the trilogy some time ago. I suppose she told me the first time what she was reading at the time, but I probably wasn't listening. Then, some time later, she told me she had read the trilogy three times. It still didn't sink in. So what? She read it three times. So what? She reads a lot of books, but she doesn't read many three times. (One exception: we read Black Beauty together and she read it alone and she says it remains one of her favorite books.)

But where did "it" come from? Where did The Hunger Games come from? A sleeper? The first movie comes out and I don't even know it. I heard later that our daughter and two granddaughters went to the movie. I don't know what my daughter thought of it, but the granddaughters loved it, especially the older one. She practically knew the books by heart, and here she was seeing, perhaps, for the first time, a movie of a book that she knew so well. [I will enjoy talking to her about that experience when I see her again when I return to Texas.]

The movie has become a franchise. I understand the second movie is better than the first. It's hard to believe. [I won't know until it comes out on DVD.] Again, our daughter and granddaughters went to the second movie but didn't say much. It was better than the first movie they said but they were "frustrated" with the ending. Apparently whatever develops in the second movie is not resolved by the end. A cliff-hanger, I guess.

But again, the phenomenon. The Hunger Games. How did it happen? The Academy apparently ignored it; few nominations and only one Award. Incredible. As I watch it for the second time, and the special features for the second time, this is clearly a movie that will stand the test of time. It is already more than it was. The myth is growing. At the supermarket today I see there is a glossy special edition of the first movie with five or six posters. I didn't buy it but something tells me I will buy it before the end of the year, as a gift to our older granddaughter.

I asked my wife the other day if she thought directors/producers knew when they had a hit on their hands. She didn't know; I certainly didn't know. It would have been wonderful to have heard Roger Ebert's commentary on this movie.