Monday, 8 March 2010
Late Friday morning, I headed to the Twin Cities to give Lovely Wife a couple of days with the house to herself. It was pretty low-key trip. Went to see my best friend that evening and had some beers. Although we did not each drink 30 in the course of a single night, as was his dream for us, we had enough that I had to ask, at least three times, whether this movie was old and sincere or new and a parody. It was confusing. Anyway, Minneapolis looked kind of like this when we went to bed:
And then on Saturday, I located my brother and joined him for Z Systems’ first Winter Film Festival. For the most part, the 19 short movies were really impressive, and several were flat-out good. If the festival happens again next year, as it’s supposed to, I think we’re gonna make this an annual tradition. I don’t watch that many movies, in part because they’re long and expensive and often disappointing. The festival’s competition format I can get behind, though: All the shorts were around ten minutes (I think?), they had a couple of intermissions, and it was both easy to see what the directors were aiming for and easy to forgive what they didn’t succeed at.
Then we stayed up too late talking, got up too early in the morning, and I got back on the road. By the time I got home, the Oscars had already started. Kelly and I had frozen pizza that was not as good as her homemade pizza, and I went to bed relieved that Avatar didn’t win for Best Picture but still not that interested in seeing The Hurt Locker. Maybe if they make a shorter version and show it at a festival.
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Thursday, 4 March 2010
…to see that the images from my last post didn’t come through in my RSS reader. Because the mouse-over text is really WHERE IT’S AT.
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Thursday, 4 March 2010
There are fireman romances…
There are policeman romances…
There are even NASCAR romances…
But run a search over at eHarlequin.com for “astronaut” and—nothing. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THIS COUNTRY???
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Wednesday, 3 March 2010
Today marks perhaps the most important day in my personal history, outside of my own birthday and July 12, 2008, a day I hung out with Bob. Yes, on this day in 1981, the world welcomed the kitten who would come to be known far and wide as Stripey Francoise, the Cat With the Most, into its arms—which she promptly squirmed out of, because Stripey Francoise prefers not to be held.
What are the qualities that make Stripey Francoise such an admirable feline? Herewith, I shall enumerate two hands’ worth of them. This list cannot possibly hope to be comprehensive, because her splendor is infinite and diverse; and because, from her current lodgings in Buckingham Palace—where, in a reverse Mr. Belvedere–style maneuver, she relocated after raising our family in Fargo—she continues to delight both the eye and the mind, if not the ear and the nose. But I dawdle. Onward!
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Tuesday, 2 March 2010
…in 1904, Theodor Seuss Geisel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. I think if I had to pick a favorite Dr. Seuss book—like, if I were tied to a chair with electrodes clamped to my nether-parts, and severe-looking men were slapping me repeatedly and with great gusto, snarling, “Tell us what your favorite Dr. Seuss book is!”—I would go with There’s a Wocket in my Pocket.
The brief Wikipedia entry for the book reveals, disturbingly, that: “The 1996 republish has been edited to remove some of the scarier creatures, including the vug under the rug.” Which, the atrocious use of “republish” as a noun notwithstanding, is just saddening and maddening. The vug was scary! It was also my favorite part of the book. I mean, the whole thing falls apart without the vug.
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