Lots of little lists.

* I just took a long nap with the TV on and during it "watched" The Third Man (on in the background). I was hearing tinny accordion music and seeing things on a 33 degree angle in my dreams. And I kept thinking harry lime harry lime...

* Well, the recent paucity of postings (whee!) is the result of a major medical crisis. Suffice it to say, in this conscribed (topically) space that 1) I shan't be anthropomorphizing drugs anymore; their side effects are too lethal 2) sometimes you do things you thought you could never do and 3) call me a naif, but the world of medical alert jewelry is much tackier and more complicated than I expected. And spendy. A lot of it is very...wiseguy. Not to mention that some of it, when too much like regular (ugly) jewelry, defeats the "alert" part of the equation.

* Hermione now appears to think (hilarious) that I bought the big new laundry basket so she has a ginormous, moveable cat throne that can be conveniently padded with dirty clothes for her comfort and where she can recline like a pasha out of the reach of Ursula (too chubby to leap into it without an assist). She's starting to look really annoyed if I need to, you know, use it for any reason. Very funny to watch. I'm expecting her to clap her paws together and ask for more Iams in a moment. She also these days climbs up and sits around my right hand while I'm on the computer so I'm forced to mouse through her legs. Cats, man.

* Let's get some obvious things out of the way. That have to be said. For no real reason except they do. Really obvious. 1) Is not "Claire de Lune" the most beautiful melancholy excruciating piece of music? Where lodged in the universe did that come from to arrive at Debussy's pen? SSoderbergh was kind of genius to use it the way he did because of the strong feel of coda--ending--denouement--finishing, elegiac something or other it has. Golly. It's weird and daring too. I love it. 2) Raoul Bova is so gorgeous. He's certainly pretty to look at in still photography, but he's much gorgeous-er in motion: that's where his real beauty lies, in his moving, expressive self. Good GOLLY. What a smile. 3) I love bagpipe music and, frankly, I never hear enough of it because you rarely hear a whole *song* ever--it's hinted at in movies, marches by you in parades. I adore its directly sad quality. It's this funny powerful thing and some people hate it, which I don't get. Okay, thank you, now I'm done. Love, Mistress of the Obvious.

* Maria Shriver has THE most alarming jawline. Concave in spots and in ways that make her look at first glance cadaverous and sick. Her jawline is especially distressing when it's moving around articulating things like, "I struggle with weight problems like all American women," which makes you realize that you've always wondered how the hell her kids might be surviving with Kennedy woman body issues on one side and Schwarzenegger body-building and childhood-fitness-crusading issues on the other. It feels kind of mean to say this about her--genetics are genetics and her very unfortunate mandibular construction is not her doing--but it's hard not to comment on when she's playing governor's wife about body issues. Her face feels like a very extreme version of the way women's faces are aging these days--ruthless. Hollowed.

* Let's talk about Luther Vandross: 1) I am tired of people singing "A House Is Not a Home" who aren't Luther. More specifically, singing it the *way* he did, rather than going back to the original song. He made that song his own with his particular interpretation, and it's tedious to hear bad versions of his superior version. 2) Having said that, I think it's interesting how good, and how long-lasting the Lalah Hathaway version of "Forever, for Always, for Love" is. It's wonderful. Quiet. Beautifully, almost masterfully sung. And it's in almost constant rotation--still--on V103 here. It came out of the same batch of kinda tedious Luther Tribute stuff in 2004 but just won't go away. Very cool.

* Also: I think I have to get the Anthony Hamilton album. I can never get "Can't Get Let Go" out of my head, and how can you not love a man who pens a song like "Sista Big Bones"? (too fab) And puts Monique in the video? (Note: yuck to see Angie Stone, about whom I think the song was written, on "Celebrity Fit Club" or whatever that show's called. Hate that show.)

* Sabrina is the most *lugubrious* movie, as is Random Hearts. Is there a particular chemical reaction that occurs twixt Harrison Ford & Sydney Pollack that causes this? It just doesn't work! And I like them both.

* Morgan Freeman was on oPraH yesterday and it was really satisfying to hear him answer "Fast Black" (from Street Smart) when Oprah asked him what his favorite role had been. Her face kinda fell and it was clear she wanted to hear him describe something uplifting and O magazine--she said a few seconds later, "but what about Shawshank Redemption?" I love MF in noble amazing roles, although I think he might take too many of them these days if I could ever watch any of those scary movies with Ashley Judd, but he's also fantastic when oozing cool menace, and I think it should be tapped into more. Like Fast Black. Oprah can be so...Obvious.

* It's partly the constant repetition, but the promo for the new Nigella show is starting to make her look like a dope with parodically posh accent. So obnoxious. Coy glances, teasy camera-work. They better get that show on TV soon.

* One gets the faint, but very constant feeling watching Tyler Florence on "Food 911" that he is a kind of Tom Jones, that he is, um, servicing these women in more ways than one. Traveling the country takin' care of the ladies. It's impossible to ignore, despite the boyfriends and husbands often in the background. It's like...they don't understand you, baby, I'm gonna rework your recipe and make you feel like a new woman.

* Okay, now here's what we really need to talk about. Ross Hunter. I'm suddenly obsessed with Ross Hunter. I've known who he is for a long time, of course, as befits a Doris Day fan (who can ever forget his epic line, "Doris, you have the wildest ass in Hollywood"), but I never really *explored* just who this guy was. Now I'm totally fascinated. I can't think of anyone else like him, especially in the time when he was working--he was a gay man, with an intense camp sensibility, who wasn't just an appreciator of things, didn't just worship Lana and Doris, but he MADE MOVIES for them. He created movie thrones for these women to occupy, influenced style and perception. I mean, I think the man was wielding irony--*then*. Not just in retrospect. And not irony *only*, because he's more sincere than that, he'd have to be. But. Who knows how he contributed to the hopelessly gay undertone of things like Pillow Talk? I'm starting to think the really naked (not even)sub-text of that movie might have his pawprint on it, that he might be winking at us. And seeing the potential in Doris' ass takes a certain kind of vision! That sounds incredibly inane, but I don't know how else to explain it except that he seems somewhat ahead of his time, despite the turgid dated qualities of his weepy films. And he had a long Hollywood marriage with an art director. He just seems really fascinating to me all of a sudden--I want to find out more about him. How can you not wonder about the man that remade Madame X? Just insane. That photo is him (on the right) with Doris and her no-goodnik mooching third husband. I wonder how much all this has been explored?? Oh the biographies I want to write!