I can now understand why middle-aged men suddenly feel the need to get sports cars, motorcycles or a pilot license. After years of contemplation I finally went out today to buy a pair of non-black, non-brown, non-grey shoes, and yes, they are not white, either. This turned out to be more difficult than expected, as the shoe industry seems to cater mostly to women, who enjoy a much, much wider selection. In particular, non-black, non-brown, non-grey men's shoes are in almost all stores limited to sneakers. No luck with leather shoes, and I had to settle for Converse's canvas. For now. I'll keep looking.

Cissy goes over my Discas queue, so here is what the female touch turned my original list into:

1. Do the Right Thing (no time to watch it, requeued)
2. Bottle Rocket (7 points)
3. Densha Otoko (6 points)
4. Huckabees (8 points)
5. Jersey Girl (6 points)
6. Crying Game (8 points)
7. Alfie (7 points)
8. Eros (4 points)
9. Breakfast at Tiffany's (7 points)
10. Tokyo Tower (I skipped that one and replaced it with Orange County from the regular rental store, 6 points)

Part One of the Baroque Cycle contains:

• Discussions about history with young Benjamin Franklin.
• A water-powered computer at the Massachusetts Bay Colony Institute of Technologickal Arts.
• Murder at Trinity College.
• A voyage back to Europe from Boston.
• Room-sharing with Isaac Newton.
• Natural Philosophy during the Plague Year outside of London.
• Pirates in Plymouth Bay.
• London burning.
• Meetings of the Royal Society.
• The unseen flows of precious metals.
• War against the Dutch.
• Suspicious and dangerous activities involving gunpowder.
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz coming to London.
• Dying of the stone.
• Bankruptcy.
• A mistress.
• Two boys in the execution relief business.
• Chasing an ostrich through the Turkish camp before Vienna.
• Abduction from Qwghlm by a band of Barbary Corsairs led by a very perverted Personage.
• The Leipzig Trade Fair.
• Leibniz trying to find investors for his mines in the Harz Mountains.
• Walpurgisnacht.
• Amsterdam, the financial centre of the world.
• Paris, smelliest city of the world.
• Disputes about diplomatic protocol between the Ambassadors of England and France.
• Ice skating in The Hague.
• Staging a civil war to manipulate the stock market.
• Persecution turns Huguenots into galley slaves.
• Sanity succumbing to syphilis.
• The politest man in France.
• The Vagabond King crashing the Sun King's party.
• Would-be slave-traders enslaved by the Barbary Corsairs.
• Performing spying and other services to William of Orange.
• The death bed of Charles II.
• Rising in rank at the court of Versailles.
• A dispute between Leibniz and Newton that splits the scientific community in two camps.
• Sand-sailers on the beach.
• A soldier with a grudge.
• Sex on Huygen's dinner table.
• Defending the Protestant Defender.
• Being tortured by a secret court at Westminster Palace.
• Imprisonment in the Tower of London.
• A comprehensive report to Louis XIV by His Royal Cryptanalyst.
• James II in a bar fight.
• The central role of childbirth in the political sphere.
• Being cut for the stone by the world's foremost surgeon.