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The Skin I Live In
Whilst Maya was off at her Homecoming dance last Saturday, watching in horror the spectacle that is ‘freak dancing’, Ted and I were at home with a DVD, watching in horror the extreme weirdness that is The Skin I Live In. Which is not to say that we didn’t like it. We both did, quite a bit. But God, it was strange, and sure left a person with some insane images. Picture Boxing Helena, but done well. (Let me stop here to say, if you’ve not seen Boxing Helena, good for you. Keep it that way. Seriously.) In The Skin I Live In, Antonio Banderas plays a brilliant but seriously…
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Wordless Wednesday ~ A Hint of Autumn Edition
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The Netflix Dress
When I was in High School, the Homecoming dance was Friday night, after the game. We were all super casual, (except of course for the Homecoming Royalty), and we danced in the gym and had a great time. Fast forward to the year 2012, and the Homecoming game is still on Friday (LL 24, D 8…Maya goes to LL, so this is a good thing), but the dance is on Saturday, and the kids get MUCH more dressed up. Not prom formal, but certainly the girls wear what I would call a cocktail dress. The boys wear jeans and polo type shirts, mostly. I wonder if the guys ever do…
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Happy Thanksgiving!
Today is Canadian Thanksgiving! Happy Happy Thanksgiving to all of my Canadian friends and family. Ted was born in Canada, and though he renounced his citizenship as a child when he became an American citizen, recent changes to Canadian law say that if he wants to be, he can be Canadian as well. Groovy, huh? We celebrated last night with a typical Thanksgiving feast, including roast turkey and stuffing, candied yams, cranberry sauce, pie, and veggies. Yum. Give thanks, for whatever things you have to be thankful for. For us, right now, it’s family, friends, enough food to eat, a comfortable place to sleep. Interesting work, a good school for…
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Saturday in San Francisco
Here’s Ted, looking handsome and showing off the beauty that is San Francisco in October. Seriously, if you ever decide to come to SF, come in October. It’s the best weather of the year. Yesterday we went in to San Francisco for a few hours. SF was hopping, with people coming in to see the Blue Angels put on their admittedly fun show of money wasting bravado, the Giants were playing the Reds (go Giants! (stupid Reds won, drats!)), and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in Golden Gate Park. Ted has a gig coming up, directing and editing a show for a local TV station, Fresh From the Farmers’ Market, which…
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Braised Chicken Thighs and Legs with Tomato
Yesterday was one of those days when I found myself thinking, “What in the heck are we going to have for dinner? I have no ideas.” So I clicked on over to Yahoo Shine Foods, which has been known in the past to give me an idea or two. They had a recipe for chicken braised in tomato which sounded pretty interesting, but the link didn’t go anywhere. So I did a little google search for chicken braised in tomato, and I found this recipe, from Food Network. I liked the idea of cumin and cinnamon in the sauce, and it looked fairly simple, so I decided we’d try it.…
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Bright’s Passage
The concussive shock of the first shell hitting the church was the only one Bright actually felt. After that came the now-familiar feeling of capsized calm in which the world seemed viewed from beneath a great depth of water. It was as if all sound and feeling were gone suddenly, and, within that watery silence, death was not something hurtled from above but more like a meadow of wildflowers that blossomed from the ground in radii of plaster, mud, and dust, swallowing buildings and bodies, chewing them in the air a while and then spitting them back out upon the trammeled ground like the ends of gnawed bones. When the…
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Priceless
If you are sympathetic with characters like Vivian in Pretty Woman and Holly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, you’ll love Audrey Tautou as Irene in the 2006 French Comedy, Priceless. More like Holly than Vivian, Irene isn’t an obvious prostitute. But she is a loose woman, looking for a sugar daddy to pay her bills, so that she can live the rest of her life in comfort and ease, using her youth, beauty, and sexuality as weapons in the war of the sexes. She’s snagged a wealthy, wealthy man, who is ready to propose and keep her in the manner to which she has become accustomed. Enter Gad Elmaleh as Jean,…
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Breakfast for Dinner
Everyone has their preferences when it comes to meal time. I don’t like bok choy much, Ted does. I don’t like mangoes, Ted and Maya do. I like raisins, Ted doesn’t, Maya’s undecided. That sort of thing. When it comes to meal planning, I try to take everyone’s likes and dislikes into consideration, though sometimes someone has to suck it up and eat the green beans. Often, if either Ted or Maya isn’t home for dinner, I’ll try to make something that the absent family member doesn’t enjoy, but the others do. When Maya was in L.A. a few weeks ago, we had linguine and clams one night, steak and…
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Wordless Wednesday – Sunset Edition
(Photos courtesy of the Contra Costa Times)
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Friday Randomness
Happy Friday, Everyone! A 3-day weekend is upon us, so let’s celebrate Labor, the Labor movement and all that it’s given us, and a bit of rest from our own Labor. I signed up for a free trial of AmazonPrime last month, and one nice thing that you get for your annual fee of $79 is free streaming of a lot of TV and movies. Not the new good stuff, but a lot of other things. I won’t renew past the 1 month free trial, because we already pay for OnDemand and Netflix, and I suspect there’s a lot of crossover. One show that they have on AmazonPrime that they…
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A Recommendation…
(picture found here) Ted’s doing a radio/video show called American Liberal, on TRadioV.com, and at the end of the show, they (he and his co-host) give a recommendation…sometimes it’s a book, sometimes it’s an album, sometimes it’s a life thing. This last episode, Ted recommended an overnight getaway. I agree wholeheartedly. Maya went to Los Angeles (Orange, actually) last week, and Ted and I had 4 days together in between her leaving and coming back. She had fun with her cousin, went to look at some colleges, went to the beach and looked at the Stars on the Hollywood walk of fame. While she was gone, Ted and I did…
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The Right to Choose
(image found here) So there’s all of this fuss right now about Todd Akin’s asinine comment about how if a woman were ‘legitimately raped’ (vs. what, date raped? Raped by her husband? Asshat.), her body would put up its defenses, making pregnancy impossible, and thus, no need to feel badly for the poor woman who might be coming in for an abortion, because, clearly, she is a slut and needs to honor the life of the unborn child before her own. She was not raped. At least, not legitimately. This is a strawman that covers the main issue. The main issue is, can I get an abortion if I want…
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Celeste and Jesse Forever
Celeste and Jesse are best friends, and have been for decades. They adore each other, and want to spend every waking moment in each other’s company. Their time is full of inside jokes and laughter. They took the advice to marry your best friend, which it turns out, isn’t always the best idea. So now, they’re getting a divorce. But they’re clinging mightily to their friendship, unwilling to spend time apart or admit to anyone that they shouldn’t be together every minute of every day. Of course, they need to figure some things out. They need to figure out how to be friends and not be married anymore. Or actually,…
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2 Days in New York
We went to see 2 Days in New York in Berkeley on Saturday, on our way home from Santa Cruz (which was lovely, by the way). If you’re a fan of Julie Delpy, then you should see (first) 2 Days in Paris, and (now) 2 Days in New York. I adore Delpy in the “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset” films, where she talks talks talks and is charming and French and lovely. In “2 Days in Paris” and “2 Days in New York”, she is more wacky and insane…or, more accurately, somewhat, almost sane, in a family of insanity. In “2 Days in Paris”, she is a Parisian (Marion) living…