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.