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.