Always a mish-mash

Goddamn, I ride the remote like Seabiscuit. That means I see a lot of TV in a short period of time, but where's the virtue in that. Just makes more little bubbles pop to surface:

* I am a big fan of Memorial Day, but GOLLY I get tired of war movies. Couldn't be less interested.

* Prettiest colors in any animated show: Little Bill. Really amazing. All those transluscent blues and greens. Byooful.

* Corgi Obsession growing like overactive yeast right now. Between T. Tudor and a friend of mine egging me on...help. I am completely in love with their adorable sawed-off look. And Corgi puppies--forget it. Can barely handle them they're so beautiful. God, wanna eat them with a spoon! I'd love to get one one day, but they are NOT urban doggies--they need lots of room to run and to herd things other than roaches and pissy apartment cats.

* One of my favorite names/phrases: MUSCLE SHOALS. Obviously, great internal rhyme. But it's more than that. Just love it. Very cool word, and not just by soul music associations. Just sounds great.

* WHy oh WHY are they putting Queen Latifah in a superannuated violet prom dress in the new Cover Girl commercial?? It looks like it started as a skewed attempt at something, but in the end it's just awful and doesn't seem to be put together with any thought about what actually looks good on her. Looks like a kind of unkind old-fashioned attempt at dressing a fat girl. Goddamn.

* Can't watch Laguna Beach. It's so horrid, and the intersection of incredibly high production values--unbelievable editing and film quality--with absolutely nothing of substance of all, just a lot of roots that need to be touched up, hurts my head. Plus, I'm such an old codger that I keep thinking about what Laguna used to mean, as I understand it, and wondering where it went. I guess everything changes, but it does feel odd that MTV should pick for its major California-marketization a town with a very varied, artistic, iconoclastic history...that's nowhere to be found now.

* Yeah, see, I don't know if they're *trying* to make us hate teenage girls, between that show, Daddy's Spoiled Little Girl, My Sweet Sixteen, Tiara Girls, stuff like that--they must be--I'm sure I'm being cooked like a pancake even watching the promos--but that's some horrible shit on the TV these days. Spoiled, insular, horrible shit. Gotta wonder what the point of it all is.

* I'm embarrassed to say I knew almost nothing about Ivor Novello before Gosford Park. Boy, was he neato. And that movie--only gets better the more you see it. I just got the DVD and although I thought I knew every line, the subtitles tweezed even more out. Amazing. This time I was struck by the Kirsten S-D cavalier attitude toward the Croft/Wilson fight, and its juxtaposition next to their anguished pain...it's brilliant, it really is. That movie just gets better.

* Really beautiful: Donna Reed. I don't think people always see this? through the Image, but she was unbelievably gorgeous.

* Also really dreamy: The Sugar Rush guy on Food TV. Oh my, this crush on him only gets bigger. He's dreamy.

* I've still never seen American Idol. Don't really want to--guess the only thing that seems interesting to me about it is the Songs--what is it doing to the American songbook? Is it adding some? Confirming some? On some gigantor level, it seems like we're sort of reaffirming the songs heard round the campfire, and that's kinda interesting. Probably some of it's incredibly excruciating. That is--I don't want to hear anybody but Stevie sing "Ribbon in the Sky." I dunno--will shuddup.

* Totally creepy: those 'cavemen' in the Geiko (?) commercial. They still totally creep me out.

* Oh! BTW. Robert Altman has gorgeous eyes. Never noticed this as such until recently. Check them out sometime. Just beautiful green.

* Sidney Poitier was so amazing. There was NOTHING thin edge of the wedge-y about him -- he just showed the fuck up and demanded to be heard. I mean, there's *still* something groundbreaking about him in these days of all sorts of light-bright color preference.

* Just bawled watching a documentary about the honor guard and funerals at Arlington National Cemetery (that I had seen before!). Totally fascinating. Collision of hardassed-ness, empathy, physical beauty, ritual, pain, military, honor, secrets, washington dc...oh I don't know. It's a place I have now had two major experiences in my life, the latter of which keeps growing in importance and can't ever really be explained in words. I, like many many people, just have really strong feelings about it. Was cool.

* God, Oprah. What to do about Oprah. I was watching that show with her and Elie Wiesel for about 2.3 minutes (the usually O-max) and thinking, why does this seem Wrong? On the surface this might seem just fine, but why...and then for the 10,000th time I realized that part of the problem is that OPRAH IS TALKING. Let Elie talk.

* She and Martha, though. They both have this really annoying, unerring ability to occasionally be dead-on relevant in your life, which is what keeps you peeking around the corners. Like in the new MStew where they write about over-dying and bleaching RIGHT as my William Morris obsession is getting out of hand. Whatever.

* Pile of books by bed are all re-reads right now. Paddling very close to the shore. Hmm. Why? Ah wheel. Even got (finally) a separate edition of Lucia in London so I don't have to carry the WHOLE Lucia & Mapp anthology with me if I want to read that book--for some reason that one always harder to find than the other five. The chapters where Lucia gets her comeuppance as Olga and the Duchess dine with Georgia is some of E.F. Benson's most satisfying prose ever. I tried reading the bits of the first L&M to my cats the other day to show them where they got their names, but--no interest.