cartoonz

Whatsa matter for you?!

A Marx Brothers movie is just what I needed after this work week.

I'm up to this scene in Animal Crackers, and I love Harpo at this part. I love the faces he makes, like the Suspicious Look when he's dealing the cards.

movie-o

I just caught the tail end of movie reviewers AO Scott and David Denby talking about this year's movies on Charlie Rose. And at the end Rose said it was the best conversation about movies he's ever had on the show! So... you better look it up if you're in for movies. I wrote down one line that Scott said, that I loved: (Talking about The Reader) "Titilation with an overlay of Significance." Ouch.

I don't like a lot of movie reviewers. But David Denby's an interesting guy, and I've come to enjoy AO Scott's mini video reviews. Years ago Denby wrote a book called Great Books. It was a book about his time spent taking two "great books" type courses at University (long before The Year I Spent Doing X became a popular genre). I loved his description of reading Kant--family asleep in bed, late at night, no sounds from the street, NOTHING to interrupt his concentration. And then it was like being in Dante's hell, rolling a boulder slowly up a hill, and just when you think you're starting to get what Kant is saying... a dog barks in the distance, and the boulder rolls back down the hill. Heh heh. Uh ya, that was my experience of A Critique of Pure Reason.

His next book was about his marriage breaking up, partly because his wife came out of the closet (author Cathleen Schine--this is reflected in one of her books too); and about his mid life crisis, where he got all excited about the 90's stock market bubble, and then lost all his money. It's called American Sucker. Apparently he has a new book called Snark.

Daaancing fooool...

Listening to: Michael Jackson's Thriller

We had our staff (post)Christmas party on Sunday. There was a jazz quartet playing most of the evening, but in the last half hour someone in the theater put on the stereo. I don't know if this was meant to usher us out, but instead staff from the various stores poured onto the dance floor and the party took off. (By the way--watching the staff from my store, it was the first time I've seen the guys jump up and try to drag the girls onto the dance floor, instead of vice versa. And just to keep up stereotypes, it was our one staff member from Argentina who was the first on his feet.)

I was standing by the dance floor at the time, and immediately started to dance, even though I was wearing 4 inch heels and for the last hour I'd been thinking (between conversations) "hmm time to sit down."

I forget how much I love to dance until I get the opportunity. The last time was at the Abba cover band concert we went to two years ago.

I mean, I dance in my house all the time, but there's a particular fun that comes from a dark club, a crowd of people, and really loud music. But I am way too lazy to actually go out dancing. Maybe I can set up a disco light in my livingroom, and crowd the floor with stuffed animals. ...And if the guys upstairs are judo-tossing each other around, maybe they won't mind me jumping about.

In other news. I finally finished cleaning up my computer. No more duplicate songs on my iTunes, photos organized by subject and year, school stuff scrapped except articles and papers, all my writing in one place and one computer. Which means it's time to get back to the writing.

Inaugural fashion!

It's hard to do winter fashion. Let's see how they did...

Cute, very cute.

LOVE the hat. Very diva.

Alright, good to see someone bucking the trends...

Look at that scarf!

The best male looks, from Jay Z and Diddy. Note how 60s
they look, just like Michelle Obama. There's a lot of
Mad Men fashion going on these days.

But I cannot WAIT for more pics to come out of Michelle's coat
and dress. Wow. TOtally gorgeous.
Gowgeous, dahling, gowgeous.

Oh what a relief it is.

It's interesting to see the build up to Obama's inauguration. But I think a lot of it is based not just on a looking forward, but on relief that the Bush Era is over. I can't imagine that even Republicans felt this much relief, and weight-lifting-from-shoulders when Bush came into power, and Clinton's time was over; because no matter what changes he brought about that they didn't like, there's no way you could call his presidency a disaster.

The Bush presidency was just soooo paaaaaaiiiiinful.

I feel like we've all been on some terrible vacation where everything went wrong (and by we I mean non-Americans... I can't imagine what it's like for Americans), and you turn the corner onto your street, and finally fiiiiinally you're home home home. You'll sleep in your own bed. And no matter what happens that week, life will still be that much better because you'll be eating Shreddies in your own friggin' kitchen. Or maybe it's like that feeling you get when you've been down with a terrible flu&pneumonia for two weeks, and that blessed day come when you wake up and you realize... you can breathe again... you can swallow without a bomb going off... and you can sip soup without puking it up.

At this point Bush reminds me of a terrible boss I once had. He was eventually given a Talking To by the President of the company, so he started trying to make everyone love him. Of course he didn't know how. So whatever respect we still held for his position, at least, was gone. He became the store clown. Our favourite joke. He was The Office. Bush has become David Brent.

So... Obama is a Human Being and not a god, and there's going to be a letdown or backlash at some point... but I do understand this End of an Era feeling. And here's my sendoff... my favourite Office episode (and the song Gilby sang the whole day we were in Oxford). "She's deeeaaad!"

Malcolm X

I like A. O. Scott's short online video movie reviews on the New York Times. In time for The Inauguration is his review of Malcolm X (apparently Obama cites the book as an influence.) It's one of my favourite movies, and I loved the book it was based on. I highly recommend it for any who haven't seen it. Malcolm went through several transformations in his life, which Spike Lee portrays in part by using different lighting/film techniques. Think I'm due for a re-watch.

Even though Hollywood usually loves to give epic movies the Best Film of the Year award, that year the Oscars by-passed Malcolm X for... Scent of a Woman. Which was cute, at best. Racist much? Blehhhhhh. I've been very Oscar blasé since.