(no subject)

In Roger Ebert's Answer Man column this week, a reader states that "the third installment of all trilogies is either a disappointment or just terrible, even if the second film was great." He goes on to ask why people make third installments, but my immediate thought was: Are there counterexamples? Trilogies where the third film is really good and/or better than the first two?

Ebert gives a couple of examples (and ignores the question as stated). Can you guys think of any others? I've mentioned that I liked the third Matrix best, but that wasn't saying much, and anyway I know nobody agrees with me. A good third movie in a series that went on beyond three would be fine, too. Was the third James Bond movie the best one? I don't even know what it was.

alumni review

I spent two years at a small liberal arts college in rural Massachusetts, and then two years at a different small liberal arts college in my hometown in rural Minnesota. It's not fair of me, but I'll blame these two half-durations for the fact that I made few lasting friends in college. Surely it couldn't be because I was too shy or distant to bond at the time, or too lazy or disorganized to stay in touch later.

Aside from a couple of people that were with me in both high school and college, I no longer know anyone I knew at my old schools. I remember some of my college classmates fondly, but in most cases can't even think of their last names. In the past couple of years I've had friendly encounters with a couple of people who I must have seen around campus--"you look familiar... you didn't go to...?"--but we didn't know each other in school, and we met later only by marvelous coincidence.

Despite all this haziness, each time a new issue of either of my alumni magazines arrives, I pore over the class notes for my year and the surrounding ones. I note with interest that my old anarchist friend has a second daughter, or that the campus conservative has become a full professor, or that someone named Greg, who might be the Greg I knew but might not, has moved to New York. But I think really I'm just hoping to find out what happened to the girl that made me stammer and blush and talk a lot about things I knew because somehow I thought that was the way to get her to like me. I guess I don't know why I still read the alumni magazine from the school she wasn't at.

Anyway, a small marker of the passing of time, from the latest issue: A guy who graduated the same year I did from the same college I did--I don't recognize his name or face--has been appointed principal of my high school.