It's come to this...

MySpace: The Movie

And, because that site is slow right now, you can also find it here.

Warning: Not necessarily not safe for work - but not necessarily work-friendly either.

homestyle...

We've been having so much thunder and lightening these past few seasons, I'm beginning to think that I'm living in the south again. When the humidity settles in for good - that's when I'm outta here.

goodbye weekend

A little too much work this weekend but I did manage to watch some Olympics and a couple of movies:

Hustle & Flow
I really liked this film despite its occasional tendency towards the clichéd. Terrance Howard is so mesmerizing and Taryn Manning is really effective as the Jodi Foster-ish (Taxi Driver-era, is what I’m saying here) prostitute.

Heart of Gold
Of course we had to go see this because Cory attended one of the tapings in Nashville. It was really nice and felt like a front-row seat at a very intimate show. I kept having to stifle the urge to clap after every song. Also: Emmylou Harris is just so gorgeous.

I also made it over to Deep for the Fashion Flea Market and bought a kick-ass long-sleeved Love, Coco T-shirt.

Other than that I really just indulged my loner tendencies. Cory went out Saturday night and I stayed home and watched the Olympics as I wrote. I also drank hot chocolate spiked with a crème liqueur. And it was divine. The alone time and the hot chocolate.

Sometimes I think I would be very happy on a desert island as long as I had plenty of good books, my Tivo, my cats and visits from Cory. It’s sad but true, sometimes – lots of the times – I just can’t deal with people.

Oh man....Don Knotts has left the building. He'll definitely be missed.

Friday five

Friday Five

1. Finish book
2. write
3. roller skate
4. Deep's Fashion Flea Market
5. ???

Shut up!

One thing that sucks about working in a newsroom? People have access to the Olympics results, via the sports newswires, and they don't really care if you want to go home and watch the drama on the telly...

I keep turning up the music that's feeding into my ears via headphones, but I think 'm gonna have to go take a coffee break just to avoid the chatter that keeps seeping in between songs.

I knew there was a reason why I haven't been to the Monte Carlo in ages.

I mean I like dive bars but the Carlo is more of a skeeve bar....

cold twilight ...

It' s so cold and pretty outside right now. The clouds are very dark and heavy and the air is very crisp. I hope it snows.

cinema, verite

Cinema, verite

We were going to go out last night (to the Alkalai Flats show) but then worked kicked my ass - and over the stupidest things - and I'm also trying to get over this cold that had me laid out flat all of Thursday. So, going out? In the end, it was the last thing I wanted to do and instead Cory picked up a Zelda's pizza and we watched good/bad TV (Gilmore Girls/The OC/Desperate Housewives).

The last few weeks have gone by in a blur - it seems that all I have done is watched movies, written about movies, sneezed, slept and, occasionally, read.

Some of the movies I watched:

Chinatown: A classic that I'd (shamefully) never seen. Jack Nicholson is still bearable, Faye Dunaway is still hot and you probably need to see it more to appreciate all of the nuances. Entertaining and complex.

The Fast & The Furious: Not too entertaining, not too complex. Lots of fast cars and Vin Diesel and Paul Walker trying to see who can emote the least.

Eight Below: Sled dogs abandoned in the Antarctic and even though Paul Walker's facial expressions seemed to be as frozen as his dogs, I still enjoyed this flick in a Disney film kind of way. In other words, I was really rooting for the dogs despite the film's shortcomings.

Ask the Dust: Robert Towne film (written and directed by) featuring Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek. Nude. Isn't that you really need to know?

Running Scared: Paul Walker finally emotes! Actually, he's pretty decent and has a kind of seething intensity that's believable. But he's still out-acted to pieces by the young Cameron Bright who just about breaks my heart with a performance that's far too good for this warmed-over Pulp Fiction wannabe. Also, I could have watched an entire film that was just about the middle sequence in this film - the one with the crazy Hansel & Gretal-styled parents and their lair of evil.

Cache: "Important" French thriller that was slow (And I like slow films) and meandering but still interesting and, in the end, compelling because at the very least it makes one want to watch and re-watch the ending to try and figure out what's going on. Worth checking out.

Transamerica: This film started out a little too jokey (in that made-for-TV sort of way) for my liking, but thankfully it deepened as the story evolved and, really, Felicity Huffman is very, very good. Very un-Lynette. More Bree, really. Which is kind of funny because her character's name is Bree. Very low-budget film but worth seeing and ultimately worth the time.

Junebug: By far the best movie I've seen in ages - this is a slow, deliberate film that's funny and sad and disturbing and Amy Adam fucking rocks and I'm so glad she got the Oscar nomination because it's been a long time since a film made me cry. And this one did.

Match Point: Creepy Woody Allen film about love and betrayal. It wasn't quite what I was expecting and although the first half is sort of tedious and cliched, it eventually turns into sonething very satisfyingly disturbing.

Next on my to-see list:

Capote
Good Night, and Good Luck
Crash
Hustle & Flow
The Constant Gardener
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Criterion DVD edition!)

Anyhoo - if I were going to recommend just one film it'd be Junebug. Go rent this movie. You may be like my co-worker who hated it and shut it off halfway through. Or you may be like me and immediately want to watch it again. Either way, I don't think you'll end up somewhere in the middle.

life, broken down into subsets of four things

Dave tagged me for this Four Things meme, so here we go:

Four Jobs I’ve Had:
1. Newspaper writer/reporter
2. Retail clerk (Target, Old Navy)
3. Security dispatcher
4. Fast-food drone

Four Movies I Can Watch Over and Over:
1. Midnight Cowboy
2. The Graduate
3. The Ice Storm
4. It’s a Wonderful Life

Four Places I’ve Lived:
1. Sacramento, CA
2. Austin, TX
3. Manchester, England
4. Manhattan

Four (or more) TV Shows I Love:
1. Gilmore Girls
2. The Sopranos
3. Survivor
4. Project Runway

Four Places I’ve Vacationed:
1. New York
2. Chicago, IL
3. Nashville, TN
4. South Padre Island, TX

Four of My Favorite Dishes:
1. Almost anything from Herbivore in SF or Real Food Daily in LA
2. The focaccia at Tapas, served with a pitcher of Sangria and maybe a side dish of marinated mushrooms or cheeses
3. Zelda’s pizza – spinach or pesto
4. French fries that are perfectly crispy brown on the outside.

Four Places I’d Rather Be:
1. On the open road with Cory
2. In New York with Cory
3. In London with Cory
4. Asleep on the couch with my cats Sophie & Trixie

Four Books I Could Read Over and Over:
1. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
2. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
3. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
4. Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson

Four Albums I Couldn’t Live Without
1. Mary Margaret O’Hara: Miss America
2. DJ Shadow: Endtroducing …
3. Jawbreaker: Dear You
4. Loretta Lynn: Honkytonk Girl (box set)

Four Bloggers I’m Tagging:
1. Maya
2. Keith
3. Sarah
4. Claire

Four Things I Want to Do Before I Die:
1. Live a long time
2. Finish and publish a novel.
3. Drive through Canada on my way to Alaska
4. Clean out the garage.

in spring a young woman's fancy turns to ....

I’m sorry, but no…I’m just not ready for spring. I know it’s lovely and all, this perfect 70 degree weather – the sun, the flowers, the warm and crisp air. But again, no. I feel very robbed of my beloved winter. We had an Indian summer and now this?

I’m being cheated out of weeks of prime sweater and coat weather – of hot chocolate nights, of roaring fires, of enjoying the last few toasty moments in bed, surrounded by Cory and the cats before everything must turn to ice. I love those last few toasty moments and now they just feel so-so because the rest of the house? Not so icy. I mean, really. It's still early February. This is just wrong. Grrrrr.

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,

,

I was out late last night and when I got home decided to skim through the Grammys…but they were so boring that I only made it just past the Sly all-star jam….which, from what I’ve heard was maybe the most interesting part of the whole show, what with his early exit and all…though I must say Madonna looks absolutely fabulous…carefully preserved perhaps, but ab-fab nonetheless.

And now for a public service announcement:

Friday night at Old Ironsides: The Haints, Baby Grand and Dan Janisch…come see Cory play with all three bands…buy the hard-working fella a drink, why don’t you? I’ll have to leave early cuz I have to be in SF the next day at 10:30-freaking-a.m., so someone needs to watch out for him in my place….

thank you --oh and also, I'm on a major Dressy Bessy tear lately...I blame it on the early spring...

coming up: one-minute movie reviews because that's seriously all I've been doing lately - watching movies. For work. For reals.

it's bound to melt your heart....

Well, it's finally come to this, I guess: A cold. A sneezing, sniffling and headachy cold.

It probably didn't help that we had to stand for an hour in the foggy San Francisco chill last night as we waited to be let in for the Jenny Lewis show.

Seems there was some huge accident on the 5 and in the end the show started nearly 2 hours later than planned. Luckily once we were let into the venue we were able to warm our bellies with booze at the bar.

Oh, but then I lost a contact lens in the bathroom.

So what I'm saying here is that I'm really glad the show was so damn amazing - smallish room (like a high school auditorium, but about half the size) with good sound and an incredibly intimate vibe. Just perfect. I wish I had a better picture to show you but then, I didn't want to be like the girl in front of me who snapped the same picture all night long.

Anyhoo--it was really beautiful, Jenny Lewis has such a pretty voice --when she sang my favorite, "Melt Your Heart" I could have cried - and the Watson Twins added lovely harmonies --they actually started and ended the show the same way: Walking down the aisle between the rows of seats, singing a capella. That sort of thing always gives me goosebumps. It felt like we were in church - in the good sort of way that reminds me of the things that, as a child, I did like about parochial school and Sunday services. Goodness, that was so long ago.

And today I am so very tired and sneezy and sniffly and headachy. There is still much to be done but I don't think anything will happen until I steal a short cat nap. With my cat of course. She's an expert at this napping thing...