Thursday, June 26, 2008

Today's lesson: Take care of your teeth, people. Yes, it is a boring lesson, I know, death and taxes, but hella true. Take care of your teeth. This message brought to you by the ADA, my achin teef, and a few paranoid viewings of Cast Away.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

1. Noosflash: Wallace's new love interest (I think it's going to be called "A Matter of Loaf and Death") is a cute fattie; she is ""local beauty and bread enthusiast, Piella Bakewell." Is she an improvement on Lady Tottington or Wendolene? Only time will tell.

2. George Takei's BF is cute! Golly.

3. The Chicago premiere of Kit KxitterXidge (whatever), the latest bit of comforting revisionism from the American Girl franchise, was across the street last night. I saw a lot of...pink bunting. I rather wanted to set up shop on my balcony with a crack pipe and my opera glasses and hoot at the goings-on.

4. RIP Cyd C. Nobody...nobody had greater pins than you.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Thoughts on 1) Fat Arms and 2) Seeing The Women for the 900th Time

It's odd, but fat, jiggly upper arms with that Sway underneath--about which women are often self-conscious--have great names. Did you ever notice? I just heard that in Australia they call them bingo wings. Heh. Also too fabulous: hi-Helen!s (Hanne told me that one) and my friend Fred calls them nervous puddin's, which I think is hilarious. Ladies...love yer puddins.

Re: The Women

1. Everything hostile and defensive that can be said about even the idea of the new version still holds. Hollywood is on probation.

2. I feel very protective of the hokey bits of this film that make people bark with oh-the-olden-days! laughter. Such as the last shot. Or when Peggy tells Mary she's pregnant*. These moments of sincerity haven't aged nearly as well as the snarkiness, so they need extra care.

3. There are a lot of people to love in this film, to idolize, to dress up as for Hallowe'en, but it's really still always about the Comtesse De Lave for me (by just a bit, but it's hers). She's farther out, less fleshed out, more tangential, but--maybe it's getting older--I love her valiant persistence and style. That would not have been true earlier in my life.

4. It would be hilarious to do a remake where you kept just the two lines that age really badly (the one about Joan Crawford's maid, and the one Mary's mother says about spreading out in bed). Heh. Or maybe some of the stuff little Mary says.

5. I don't like the hats. I appreciate them...love them...but don't like them. Don't think they're flattering.

6. High, high, high on my list of things I'd buy if I could are an original Hurrell portrait of Norma Shearer. Would love it...I adore them.

* I am writing a song based on this bit. Kind of a girl group/Waitresses/Kay Starr thing.

Monday, June 09, 2008

lostage (n.) - When you have lost your remote & therefore are held hostage to whatever's on the TV that you're too lazy to get up and change.
Wacky...confluence of iSight & digi flash.

Sunday, June 08, 2008

grab bag

* Nobody is prouder of his dying taste buds than Bobby Flay. Everything needs more heat more spice more flavor. At some point you wanna say...does anything need less anything? [This topic is a tiny off-shoot of my upcoming dissertation about food media rhetoric, once I can get the funding from the American Dairy Council and Pepsico.]

* I am very immature, for the phrase "Have you received your stimulus check?" makes me giggle. Yes, Mr. Bush, yes!

* Great documentary on Asians in Hollywood cinema this week on TCM, only...am I missing something or were there NO Asian women interviewed in it? I missed the first bit, so I could be way off, but by the end I was a lil confused. Also: took them a very long time to get to indie cinema, to the point where I was wondering what the subtext there was between that (only Hollywood films, with all their mythology) and all the maleness.

* Finishing (finally) book analyzing career of Doris Day by T. Santopietro. I don't envy him the musical analysis...the woman made bizillions of recordings. Anyhow, for a fairly cautiously constructed book--quite linear--it is nonetheless helping me figure out some of this DD obsession on my part. Which for such a big obsession is remarkably not understood by the obsessor (although the bits of understanding are becoming fun). It's like I picked up Appreciating Doris Day With the Right Side of the Brain at a young age and still haven't caught up. Next...THE BIOGRAPHY! It is a huge Doris year. Awards, etc.

* If you're looking for good old-school straight-up Borgia Martha Stewart, I recommend reading her blog. Most of the time it's pretty sane, but sometimes it has photos of things like her assistant Sharpie-ing out the red on the bottom of her Louboutins.

* Must know: PETICURE! Do you think this works?? Can it possibly? Seems to good to be true.

* I really like the new B52s song ("Funplex") - I wish E! hadn't appropriated it for their ill-gotten gottens.

* Pageant hair: the real thing. While I was sick recently I went you-don't-wanna-know amounts of time without washing hair, yet sitting in bathrooms full of steam so I could breathe. Those two things together resulted in the biggest head of hair I've had in years. Was almost a shame to puncture it...like risen dough.

OH YEAH...I was sick. Sigh. Still am, I mean, just finally now in the up-alator--I think--after just Deciding I was getting better when in fact for days everything got worse. However...the good news is I think I now have another key to NOT getting sick, i.e., why the office cold always goes so heinous and uncontrolled on me. So I've joined the inhaler generation, although thankfully not in any full-time way. If it can obviate these endless hacking descents into bronchial hell, heck yeah, I'll take steroids a lil each year, at least for now.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

about the famous panda preserve destroyed in the recent Chinese quakes

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

All of a sudden the enormity of what the Obama nomination means was born in upon me, looking at the beautiful, carefully-chosen photo attached to the nomination story.

["Obama called Clinton to congratulate her on the South Dakota win and got her voicemail, according to aides. He asked Clinton to call him back." - Oh my god, it's like they're dating!]

I hadn't once really....really thought about it or let myself. Not that I think I should have--these were just candidates in the end. But oh my sweet Jesus. I want to sob and sob and sob....

Monday, June 02, 2008









I will be the 900,000,000th person to blog this I'm sure. But still. Once you pop...
The gaps in my cinematic education are alarming and unpredictable, but I am noticing that I have a hard time playing it at all cool when someone hasn't seen Spinal Tap. How can anybody ever have not seen it? Esp. music people? (The question is really I suppose: Am I that old? Shouldn't this cult. ref be timeless?)

The scene at the Chinese restaurant in Waiting for Guffman should have gotten C. O'Hara an Oscar. I was watching it this time with the director's commentary and he called it the greatest scene of drunkenness on film. Something to that.

I am not feelin the panda morphology in this new Kung Fu Panda movie. The creatures--that I've seen--miss the Essence of Panda, in silhouette/movement/scale/coloration. Everything that makes them cute or just fascinating to look at. I just don't think they got it. Part of the problem is that pandas, more than some animals, are very...mute. You know? I don't mean they don't have vocalizations, but they're just not big...talkers. My cat looks like with a few more evolutionary steps she'd be speaking English; pandas seem like they don't care. Quiet dudes.

Something personal to note about myself that I had somehow forgotten: I have two-tone eyelashes. Does anybody else have this? They are dark brown/black at the root, and half-way up become blond and hard to see. My sister used to call them zebra lashes.

I caught a tiny bit of some MStew show today. I continue to basically avoid TV Martha since Gaol, but I've been indulging in a little more MStew recently in general. Two things 1) Shouldn't Lidia Bastianich be taller than MStew? 2) Ever since the Poncho Martha's biz ventures have gotten so *big*. She used to tell you how to collect a hobnail glass lamp; then she started selling them; now she's going into huge partnerships with the glass co itself. IYKWIW.

So, my aunt wrote back to me about going to HS with Sydney Pollack. I haven't asked her permission, but I don't think she'd mind me quotin what she said about him (with proper citation, of course; aunt in question is a historian, archivist and author--this is fun! props/log-rolling my aunt!). "I did work with Sid on writing our senior class review, but there were several of us that did so. In other words, it wasn't just the two of us. He was a gentle guy and a fine actor even then--but I don't believe any of us saw in him the later greatness that was in store for him."

It has been a rough week (SP, YSL, Bo Didd). I was so...entranced in my Book of Rock Lists adolescence with the fact that BD had women in his band. He still seems sort of avante garde, now, even.

Official (i.e., Spanish) Ferran Adria blowback. Innnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnteresting.

Best hour of my congested, cold-wrangling day yesterday: takeout from Kamehachi! Cucumbers in various forms (maki, salad), miso, gyoza, some great sticky teriyaki and rice...Japanese fud is the stuff when one's sick. Then I coughed for two hours. TIRED OF COUGHING. I can't tell you.