CelebrateThem Now.

"I never knew a girl who was ruined by a book. "

-James Walker

Zero Expectations Results in Pleasant Surprise

My favorite moment in the film A Lot Like Love is this one. After his girlfriend ditches him, Oliver(Ashton Kutcher) flees his formerly well-ordered life to meet up with Emily(Amanda Peet), a girl he met and befriended years earlier. In a very When Harry Met Sally type relationship the two keep meeting up, though more deliberately in this movie than in the Reiner film. This is their third encounter and Emily tries to comfort him over pancakes when she is faced with a ghost from her own past that leaves her equally unsettled. What results is an impromptu road trip to somewhere north....

Perhaps the reason I love this scene is that I have longed to do this very thing about a hundred times in my life... walk out the door, get in the car, and start driving.... if I'd had a willing travel buddy I might have been more inclined to act on this impulse. The whole idea appeals but the icing on the cake is when Oliver keeps trying to talk about his failed relationship in this confessional searching way and Emily just gives him this look and turns up the radio... and the song is "If You Leave Me Now" by Chicago. Oliver is not to be put off his story and he gives her a sidelong glance and proceeds... Emily turns up the radio and starts to sing along in a lovely off-key way. He continues to talk, realizing he's fighting a losing battle. She turns up the music and before long he's singing along. It was this great moment when it was okay to just be... not to analyze the relationships, the failures. No words could fix anything at that point. Turning up the radio and singing along with Peter Cetera seemed the best thing to do... the perfect thing.

"I got a fever. And the only prescription is more....baseball?"

Fever Pitch was better than I expected. I'd watched the 1997 Colin Firth version that is also based on the book by Nick Hornby, an author I adore. I expected less from this one in part because I am not a fan of Jimmy Fallon and had a hard time imagining him as a sympathetic character in a romantic comedy. I don't mind Drew Barrymore and I guess she did a good job because I can't even remember who played the female lead in the film version set in Britain. Drew was quite cute and likeable and seemed willing to make this relationship work. I was going to watch the older movie again in an effort to make a quality comparison but I haven't really had the time and now I am more interested in seeing other newer films.... The Farrelly brothers did a decent job and frankly landed on a really cool opportunity. In the book by Hornby a man is obsessed with Arsenal, a football (soccer) team in Britain that is the losingest of the losers but it's a lifetime commitment and one that dictates the protagonist's life to the point of interfering with other commitments like the sort between a man and a woman.

In the 2005 film, Fever Pitch is set in Boston and the obsession is with the Red Sox. There are other slight differences but the Americanization of the film didn't bother me as much as I expected it would. The grand thing, the truly amazing part, is that opportunity I mentioned above. They were in the midst of filming a movie about the Red Sox winning the World Series and the Red Sox actually were in the World Series... AND WON! And for the first time in about a hundred years... okay I exaggerate... but baseball fans know something about the "Curse of the Bambino" and the last time the Red Sox won a World Series.... It was fun to watch and I found myself thinking for a second or two that I could maybe even handle that kind of lifestyle... and then I snapped out of it. Let's not get crazy.

Manna from Heaven..... Food from the Soil

Every year our town celebrates the potato with a world record breaking french fry feed-- though I am wondering if anyone in the world is actually challenging us on this! This year they served about 10,000 people. (Exactly, how do they determine that?) While I find the whole thing a bit odd, free food is something I can really get behind. Therefore, I felt it was my duty to round up Marci and her kids and head to the park to partake. Here are some pics.

No Will and No Grace makes TV a dull thing

As soon as I posted that I've been "watching" Will and Grace reruns, they went away. Damn you WB and WGN (another WB station?), no one wants to watch your Home Improvement and Yes, Dear crap! Will and Grace was my evening ritual. I would settle in with a nice little supper and relax to the antics of "Just Jack" and Karen's deadpan banter... shake my head at the latest dramas that Will and Grace have stumbled upon... usually the low point of the show. Still it was something. Until I mentioned it here and poof... a new crappy rerun line-up. I searched for a replacement in that time slot... nothing. I may never eat or relax again.




UPDATE: I simply have to postpone my meal time/TV time until 9 pm or 11pm depending on the station... This show has been moved not removed. Sigh. Currently watching Seinfeld. TBS. It will do.

Three Thoughts from T-Rah to Brighten my Day

Setting: crowded coffee shop

I am browsing the DSM-IV looking to see if I have any disorders. Vaginismus sounds like a good one. T shoots me a handwritten slip of paper... three thoughts to turn my frowny face into one filled with mirth and glee (what follows is what she wrote)


1. Today at school little Adam said to me, "You didn't brush your hair or decorate your eyes today."

2. Last night during Nat's power hour, completely drunk at 12:35 am she said this, "I can drink cause I took a pregnancy test and it was positively negative."

3. Every once in awhile the man over there whips out a hunk of wood (actual tree bark, you sicko) and starts carving with this miniscule knife. It looks like a "carve by number" because he is following along in a book.

Carnage and Carrion.... Can't Believe It

This entry is taken entirely from this blog. I don't know if that is permissable, but I thought her post was pretty profound. --Carm

Barn’s burnt down, now I can see the moon.
This is my favorite quote. I first saw it printed in white on a black quotable card, hanging on Mary’s dorm room wall at NYU.

Weeks ago a dead deer was sprawled out on the side of Route 10, it’s head cramped against the divider and it’s stomach, slit open, guts pouring onto the sun bathed black top. For days this corpse laid there alone. I passed it nightly, cursing the scent that wafted into my car as I was parked in traffic near the body. Soon after a fawn joined the deer, broken neck, jammed up against the divider, soaking in the July heat. The next night I looked for the fawn, he was gone, the deer still remained, untouched in it's place. I became disgusted.

“If these were people, no one would leave them on the side of the road like this.”

I was wrong.

In the downtown business district here, on a dry stretch of Union Street, past the Omni Bank automated teller machine, across from a parking garage offering "early bird" rates: a corpse. Its feet jut from a damp blue tarp. Its knees rise in rigor mortis.

Six National Guardsmen walked up to it on Tuesday afternoon and two blessed themselves with the sign of the cross. One soldier took a parting snapshot like some visiting conventioneer, and they walked away. New Orleans, September 2005.

Hours passed, the dusk of curfew crept, the body remained. A Louisiana state trooper around the corner knew all about it: murder victim, bludgeoned, one of several in that area. The police marked it with traffic cones maybe four days ago, he said, and then he joked that if you wanted to kill someone here, this was a good time.

Night came, then this morning, then noon, and another sun beat down on a dead son of the Crescent City.

That a corpse lies on Union Street may not shock; in the wake of last week's hurricane, there are surely hundreds, probably thousands. What is remarkable is that on a downtown street in a major American city, a corpse can decompose for days, like carrion, and that is acceptable.

...................

On Clouet Street, where a days-old fire continues to burn where a warehouse once stood, a man on a bicycle wheels up through the smoke to introduce himself as Strangebone. The nights without power or water have been tough, especially since the police took away the gun he was carrying - "They beat me and threatened to kill me," he says - but there are benefits to this new world.

"You're able to see the stars," he says. "It's wonderful." [NYT]

Mamma Mia... Here I go Again....

It's already been two weeks since I went to Winnipeg to see Mamma Mia. Pam and I left early that Saturday morning. She hadn't been there for ages and so we had a little ground to cover. We started with lunch at The Forks and we enrjoyed a bit of Pakistani food before venturing out to browse the shops. In the pavillion area there was a ballroom dance competition and we watched for awhile. We paused to take in Oodena Celebration Circle (a circular shallow bowl in harmony with the solar system, earth, wind, and water defined by limestone monoliths supporting sighting armatures for naked eye astronomy.), the Path of Time monument that just "looked cool" and then we walked across the new bridge... which Pam aptly pointed out looks a lot like the one in Sevilla. Interestingly enough, I have actually been there and seen that! As we walked across the bridge I noticed a unique feature on the side of the bridge designated for automobile traffic. It had a story or legend carved from one end of the bridge to the other. At first I thought it was just "pretty" and then I realized it actually told a story. It's little details like that which make me very happy.



When we'd had enough of strolling we set out for the exchange district determined to find a few music shops and book stores and indeed we did. Both of us were successful in finding used cds in a store called Into the Music. I bought a White Stripes CD and one of Bond theme songs. I thought it was appropriate considering my quest to watch all the films.

Next stop was a bookstore I found advertised on the Internet: Aqua books. I was a little disappointed in the selection, but I also had a very specific list of titles I was looking for and they were more current whereas many of the books in this shop were a little older. I guess that's to be expected in a "used book shop." I think I've been spoiled by Half Price Books. Next we consulted our book walk map and we set out to find a shop called Red River Books. We found it and I felt hesitation walking in based solely on the crumbling cement in the entry way and the junk heaped in the corner. Still I was not prepared for what I was to find inside. I've never seen a bookstore like it. The picture gives only the nicest glimpse of the best part of the store. The shop is barely navigable with its stacks of books at every turn. The shelves are filled and the stacks are waiting. For a neat freak like me, it was very disconcerting and if I hadn't found a copy of Janet Evanovich's Ten Big Ones in the first five minutes of being in the store I might have run for the door. In the end, the most amusing bit was listening to the store staff talking to each other. I wanted to pull out a pocket tape recorder and capture that exchange. I could NEVER write dialogue like that. These girls were a riot and totally unaware. Their conversation was slightly crazy, funny, rude, and unbelievable.
And sadly, I can't remember a word of it.

Next we set out for Baked Expectations because I can't make a trip to the north without taking in my favorite dessert place. It was good that we had that dessert because our plan for tapas at Diablos didn't pan out. It would have been perfect. The restaurant is one that is actually about two blocks from Centennial Hall where we saw the show. We found parking in a lot and paid only four Canadian dollars. We strolled across the street to this restaurant and discovered signs that declared it was closed. The excitement at seeing Mamma Mia overshadowed our disappintment. As I tried to figure out how to describe the show, I found this description on the website: "A mother. A daughter. 3 possible dads. And a trip down the aisle you'll never forget! Writer Catherine Johnson's sunny, funny tale unfolds on a Greek island paradise. On the eve of her wedding, a daughter's quest to discover the identity of her father brings 3 men from her mother's past back to the island they last visited 20 years ago."

You can watch a preview here. And if you go to the official website, be sure to turn on the Mamma Mia radio to hear the songs from the show. As we drove home to the sounds of ABBA Gold, Pam mentioned that she would like to have a CD of the songs as they were done in the musical and I discovered the CD is available anywhere really. The actress who played Donna Sheridan, the mother in the musical, did a fantastic job and I loved the story and the way they wove the songs into the plot. There was one point in the show when Donna's friend was making her move on one of the three dads, the gun-shy Aussie. She establishes her interest in him, is rejected and before she gives up, she poses and says dramatically.... "If you change your mind." The room exploded with laughter. I realized then that this show might not be as much fun if the audience wasn't so familiar with ABBA hits. In case that wasn't clear, that phrase is the first line in the song "Take a Chance on Me" and she followed it up by singing the song. I wouldn't have enjoyed it less if she'd only spoken that one line at that moment; it was just that funny. One of my favorite numbers was the song that shares the title of the musical. Donna's trying to prepare for her daughter's wedding and suddenly discovers her secret past is knocking on her door... all three of them! She's overwhelmed, hiding under the covers and her friends do all they can to bring her out of it singing "Mamma Mia" with blow dryers as microphones. I think my very favorite is "Does Your Mother Know?" Another of Donna's friends sings this song to the groom's friend who has been hitting on her all night. The words, the choreography... it was a riot.

My own love for ABBA began when I was young. I first became aware of their songs on my Minipops album. There was a time when no one knew what I was talking about when I'd refer to this record. Then one day in college during a thrilling game of canasta I sang to myself, "Knowing me, and knowing you" and a friend of mine, sitting across the table absentmindedly sang in response, "Uh-huh..." and then both of us looked up and sang "there is nothing we can do..." and having recently purchased a copy of ABBA Gold and rediscovered the songs in their natural state I assumed that's how he knew the song too until I asked... "How do you know that song?" And he replied matter of factly, "Minipops." I almost died. It turns out that my British pal, Emma also grew up with the record. Looking back, I do find my love for that record to be disconcerting. Small children singing "Gimme, gimme, gimme a man after midnight...." Not long after ABBA resurfaced in my life I saw my first Toni Collette film, Muriel's Wedding. Imagine how thrilled I was when I learned about the musical. I can't believe I waited this long to see it. I highly recommend it.

Judging the Cover

Get Behind Me Satan by The White Stripes


























The Woods by Sleater-Kinney


I love the music AND the covers. I realize it shouldn't be the basis for a purchase and it rarely is with me and music, but I really do like good cover art. Here are two I've listened to recently that I rather like. Oh, and the music? On Get Behind Me Satan (you know, every time I type that I type... "Get Behind Me Stan"..... do you suppose there's any significance to that?) I love so many of the tunes, but right now my very favorite is track 4 "Forever for Her (is Over for Me) with track five as a close second... "Little Ghost." On The Woods my current faves are track 5 "Modern Girl" and track 7 "Rollercoaster."

Typical

Yesterday after work I stopped off for groceries. I could blame it on the end of the week exhaustion, or my eagerness to get home, but I didn't check my eggs. Every time I buy a carton of eggs I check them for cracks. Even though I am likely to crack them by the time I get them home, I like to know I am to blame. Usually the cashier at the grocery store checks them too. I wasn't paying attention this time to notice if he did. When I got home I unpacked my groceries. This is what I found. I bought 11 eggs. Typical.

Cute as a Button

I was just listening to NPR the other day and heard about Jay Shafer and his tiny house company. I found it intriguing and promised to look into it... then I promptly forgot all about it.

Today in my Daily Candy e-mail, he was featured (do you suppose they listen to NPR as well?). I wonder what Thoreau would have thought of these houses... (far too elaborate, I'd imagine--though I'm sure he'd support the idea that "less" is where it's at) Something about these little living spaces makes me think of him. I love them. But anyone who knows me knows that while I long for simplicity I travel with a suitcase just for my shoes. I don't travel light and I don't live "light" either. Perhaps my thrill with these houses has more to do with the little girl in me wanting to "play house." I am a little afraid of being a property owner. So much commitment. But this... a shoebox disguised as a house I might be able to handle... as long as I had another house for all my stuff... a small warehouse on the grounds? Check out the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company.

.... my home and native land....

I wanted to post today. I had the day off. I have a list a mile long of great topics. I have funny ones. Informational ones. Even some pictures. But there's one thing I can't get off my mind.


An idiomatic phrase.


I wasn't satisfied a week ago with the way things have been going here in the US to say the very least. (Iraq, Supreme Court nominees) Go figure. Now, I actually feel hopeless and depressed for the the state of our country (Katrina aftermath, gas prices) and for its impact on the world. I wanted to rage earlier but a few e-mails later that anger was spent... no, I didn't write to Dubya... I figure enough other people are doing that. It's not as if that has any impact anyway. Instead I ranted to at least one sympathetic listener (and registered voter). Now, I just feel sad. Hurricane Katrina's relief ribbon is black and it's not (as some might believe) because every other color was taken. I think it's symbolic. It represents a dark time in our history. I wonder what it's like to live in Canada..... I already know their national anthem.

Read, Watch, Listen -- August in Review

Read in August

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Carumba! by Nina Marie Martinez
The Only Bush I Trust is My Own by Periel Aschenbrand
The Chill by Ross MacDonald

Carumba! and the Dahl book I mentioned before. The Aschenbrand one wasn't nearly as funny as I thought it might be. I am not sure I have EVER read a book with worse language. Periel goes out of her way to be crude, rude, and over the top. She makes some interesting points and at times flirts with funny but overall I felt the book was disappointing. I thought she could have done more with her material and perhaps she would need to be a different person to do so. In the realm of personality and writing ability. I am not saying I could do better but I am pretty sure there are all sorts of people who could. I wanted to love it. The title was hilarious. But I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. In fact, I'd be glad to sell my copy if anyone was interested.

On the other hand, The Chill was terrific. Typically, I am not much for the hardboiled detective genre. Still this book is one of the famous Lew Archer mysteries written by Ross MacDonald, an author who ranks among the most prominent of this type of writing. He shares company with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler from what I've been told, and soon I plan to read something by each of them. Not so much as to determine whether I deem them worthy but to see what I've been missing.


Watched in August

Turner Classic Movies
Muppet Show Season 1

This month I recorded a number of movies on the Turner Classic Movies channel as TCM ran their annual "Summer Under the Stars" series. I only watched a handful here and there since I tend to prefer my movies viewed from beginning to end. One of those was The Thrill of it All starring James Garner and Doris Day. I don't like to view a film for the first time if it's already started. However HBO runs enough of their films enough times in a row it's almost certain if you miss part of a movie you can catch the bit you missed the next day. I watched Something's Got to Give with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson.... in this case it wasn't a first time viewing and I actually watched it over three separate occasions just by happening upon it. I purchased The Muppet Show Season One and watched the first disc of the set and loved every minute of it... (Permit me one observation. It was more violent than I remembered.) In addition, I watched the two Charlie and the Chocolate Factory films and The Wedding Date, as previously mentioned. However I also was disappointed by The Upside of Anger. I watched Million Dollar Baby for the first time on DVD. I did see it last winter in the theatre. I have never been a Clint Eastwood fan but that film changed that for me. Loved it. It deserved every Academy Award it received. In fact, I suspect the phrase "Mo cuishle" will become an icon like "rosebud." Perhaps that's stretching it, but the thought did occur to me. Finally, I started watching the Bond Films again.


Played in August

Eva Cassidy
Joni Mitchell
Langhorne Slim
Alison Krauss and Union Station

Eva Cassidy (a woman with as pure of voice as any I've heard) is always a good choice when I long for beautiful songs and to satisfy that mellow mood, Joni too. I organized my classroom and decorated bulletin boards to Alison Krauss and Union Station's Live CD.

The only new musician I absorbed is Langhorne Slim. I discovered him on a blog. Listened to his song "In the Midnight" in an MP3 format and decided I needed to hear more. When I was in Minneapolis I had a fun time at Barnes and Noble pulled up to the headphones with a stack of cds. They didn't stock Langhorne Slim but I was able to hear every song of his on their system. It works much the same way online, so I've learned since! I special ordered his cd, When the Sun's Gone Down, back home so I could keep at least some of my business local. His genre is the sort that is difficult for me to define. I can't quite put my finger on it. Here's how he's described elsewhere:

"The production sounds like an old blues record that finds beauty in the ragged worn history of American culture....Supposedly Slim is the bastard son of Hasil Adkins...Much like Daddy(?) and at times Rolling Stones circa "Exile On Main Street," Langhorne's one man road show relies on witty lyrics and a fucked up backwoods feel. Slim's stories are all that much more compelling due to the strength of his commanding voice. Slim sits a good three feet away from the microphone. His voice grabs a hold and sends the listener to wherever the story is flowing."

On that same trip to Minneapolis, I was still on a bluegrass high and listened to some old country (Patsy Cline and Connie Smith) and I picked up the RENT Broadway Soundtrack and listened to it on that drive but I haven't really played it over and over (which is what it takes to warrant a "feature" on the sidebar). I also listened to Jeff Buckley's Grace and The Who's Who's Next. ABBA was the group that accompanied me on the drive to Winnipeg to see Mamma Mia and Air Supply aided in the return trip. Then that led to Meat Loaf the next day and a The White Stripes album Elephant and Martin Sexton's album Wonder Bar. Music trends for me are very mood based and a rather fluid thing.

The Disappointment of Starbucks

Tonight I dragged my laptop out to Starbucks in order to meet a friend who had mountains of homework to do and I figured I'd get a chance to do a little blogging (I am falling behind... still want to write about Mamma Mia, fantasy football, my first week of school). I was wrong. Apparently Starbucks doesn't have wireless in our state because they contract with some company (T-mobile?) that doesn't service this region, therefore they can't actually get wireless because it would break contract to use a different provider. This seems absurd. So I ended up working on other things and not doing much of that either.

There was this group of guys and one girl talking loudly. Loudly enough that everyone in the entire place could hear every word of their conversation and it wasn't that interesting. Still I was unable to tune it out. We both breathed a sigh of relief when they finally began to move toward the door breaking up their little party. Still they lingered, loudly. Then, much to my dismay two of the men remained. What followed was a real heart to heart. Apparently the acoustics are really good there or these guys didn't mind a room full of people hearing about how much the one guy loved some girl named Kim. They were highly sentimental which might be nice in a film or in a pair of friends I know, but this was much like watching an unfamiliar soap opera for the first time. I was mildly horrified and fought to suppress laughter. I mean, there were times when I had an actual guffaw ready to break free and I managed to smother it into a snicker. Together, my study buddy and I tried to come up with legitimate reasons for why we were each laughing our asses off in the middle of the coffee shop when we, for the most part, were sitting together in silence. Much as we were annoyed by the incessant (did I mention loud?) chatter we also didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Go figure. Finally we gave up and went for margaritas where we could talk freely about the 30 minute conversation we had just overheard and about life in general, all pretense of homework pushed aside.