“Walk Hard: The Lars Walker Story.” That’s me tonight. Got my second evening walk of the year in, and it left me more winded than the one I took last week, if I remember correctly. I’m not sure why.

And it was cold. Not cold overall. The landlocked portion of the walk was pleasant. According to the thermometer on my porch, we got up to around 70° (that’s 20° for you soccer fans, though it may be an anomaly, caused by the sun beating on the Astroturf). But going past Crystal Lake, the wind was as bitter as a Pennsylvania voter. There’s still a skin of ice on the lake, and it has its effect.

I apologize for introducing a political note in a book blog, but I want to comment on Barack Obama’s “bitterness” statements. It seems as if all weekend I heard the recording over and over, in various degrees of context. And I think I caught something I haven’t heard anybody else mention.

I’m certain Obama is astonished at the response his words have raised, because he sincerely didn’t intend to say anything offensive. In fact, it’s my impression that his intention was to defend middle class Pennsylvanians, in his own fashion, and he can’t figure out how anybody could take it amiss.

Because in Obama’s world, the kindest, most uplifting thing you can do for another human being is to bestow the status of Victim on him. And what he was trying to say was that the Pennsylvanians are victims too—victims of the economy—and therefore we should cut them some slack if they’re not enlightened enough to vote for him.

What he can’t understand—what is entirely outside his conceptual framework—is the idea that there are people out there who aren’t actually pleased to be labeled victims.

Man, I’m wasted.

Let me rephrase that.

I’m very, very tired, and have been all day. I drank three cups of tea today, which is two more than my usual consumption.

You know how I said yesterday that events had all the earmarks of giving me one of those nights where I don’t get to bed at all?

Sometimes I scare myself. Turned out I was pretty close.

The flight arrival, originally scheduled for 7:30 p.m., got moved back to 8:30 p.m. A while later I checked the airline website again, and now the plane was expected around 11:00.

And then it was midnight.

Then 1:00.

I finally set out for the airport, at midnight. I figured I’d leave about the same time the plane took off from Chicago, since it takes me about as long to get to the airport on a dirty night as it takes to fly here from the city of big shoulders.

And the weather was dirty. Snow mixed with rain. Slushy highways. I drove around 35 or 40 mph all the way.

When I got there, I found that arrival had been moved back again, to 2:00 a.m.

At that point the regression mercifully ceased. I sat by the baggage claim and read a Dean Koontz (The Funhouse—early work, not his best) until Moloch and Mrs. Moloch showed up, and then I drove them back to my place. By that time they’d been thrown off their circadian rhythms so drastically that they figured they might as well just drive home. The weather had lifted, and the roads were supposed to get better the further south you went.

So I got to sleep at about 3:00 a.m.

For all I know, I have my fingers on the wrong keys and am typing pure gibberish.

This is not a post. This is just a filler to substitute for a post.

The weather today turned out to be both rain and snow. Precipitation full of ambivalence. The radio advises me to take about twice the time I’d ordinarily plan for any travel tonight.

On the bright side, the flight is delayed. (No, it’s not on American. Bet the plane’s full of bumped American passengers, though.)

This has all the earmarks of a night in which I may not get to bed at all.

It’s spring, but the wrong kind. More April in Bergen than Paris.

The weekend was nice. The weekend was great. As I drove around, spending too much money on stuff I’d put off buying for too long, I actually had to roll my car window down a little, to cool off. It got up to about 70° (that’s about 20° for you Celsius types).

But yesterday and today have been cool and overcast, with some rain. “Cool” in this case means temps in the 40s, which would have seemed tropical a couple weeks back. So I’m being unreasonable. I admit it freely.

My motives, however, are honorable. I want to go out and take my evening walks. And in my present health condition, still dragging the corpse of the flu around behind me, I refuse to tempt fate by walking in a chill breeze. Especially if it’s drizzling.

And I’ve come to the conclusion that working out on my ski machine in the basement actually causes me to get sick. Maybe there’s mold in the air down there.

Or maybe I’m just sick of the ski machine.

In any case, I watch for the sun as the watchman on the city wall waits for the dawn.

I’m sure that’s a biblical citation, but I can’t find it in my Cruden’s.

I bet I could find it if the sun was shining.

Charlton Heston’s great ordeal ended on Saturday. Our condolences to family and friends. There must be some relief in the knowledge that he’s found rest at last, and there’s no shame in that. They’ve had plenty of time to say goodbye. Now is the time to commemorate an admirable life and a body of work that will live as long as our civilization is remembered.

Alas, I’ll never get the chance to see him play Sigfod Oski in the film version of Wolf Time, as I once dreamed.

“The Ten Commandments” was the first movie I ever saw in a theater (our family had seen “Around the World in Eighty Days” a while before that, but in a drive-in). My folks had to warn Moloch and me not to tell Grandma Walker we’d gone, because she didn’t approve of movies. Biblical movies didn’t make it any better—rather worse; they were a kind of blasphemy.

My major memories of that experience were the quality of the music (I’d never heard anything like it before), and the shots of the red clouds on Mount Sinai.

Later, my mom took Moloch and me (and maybe Baal, I’m not sure) to see “Ben Hur.” So I think I can say I saw both movies in their first runs. In actual theaters.

One of my favorite novelists, Stephen Hunter (who’s also film critic for The Washington Post) wrote an appreciation (hat tip: Powerline). I have to say I have a higher opinion of Heston’s movies, particularly of “The Ten Commandments” than he does.

I’m not one of those who watch TTC every year when they broadcast it on TV, but I did watch it again a couple years back. I recognized a certain stilted, pageant-like quality in the production, but I was also impressed with the way the screenplay (and Heston’s performance) delivered a faith lesson through Moses’ story. First you have the hot-shot young prince who thinks he can change the world with a single, dramatic action. When this fails, and he becomes a refugee, he thinks he’s learned his lesson. A small life and small goals are plenty for him now.

Then the burning bush appears, and he’s faced with the challenge of doing God’s work in God’s way. We feel his fear, his self-doubt and see how much hard work faith is. The powerful way Moses comes through in the end, looking just like Michelangelo’s sculpture (minus the horns) doesn’t diminish the fact that he’s earned his confidence through a series of very hard lessons.

I think it goes without saying that there’s no actor out there today the least bit like Charlton Heston. If they had the audacity to remake “Commandments” or “Ben Hur” today, they’d inevitably have to cast someone with a shorter shadow. But then the moviemakers would make the part smaller too. In the 21st Century, we look for heroes who make us feel better by comparison, not heroes who make us want to be greater than we are.