Orange tree, please don’t die!
Self has been looking out the kitchen window at your bounty of oranges, every year for nearly two decades! Even when the oranges were so (more…)
Tag: Sundays
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OK, so hubby and self get around to seeing one movie every weekend for the entire summer. Because we love watching movies. Even cheesy ones, like “Land of the Lost.” And next weekend, self probably won’t be able to see a movie because we are going down to San Luis Obispo for son’s graduation! And we will be too excited to think! So, it’s just as well that, even though self was really really really tired this morning (after concert last night, she just couldn’t sleep and ended up wide awake until 4:30 a.m. or thereabouts), she and hubby summoned up the energy to go see a movie. And this was one of the ones hubby had really wanted to see.
Will Ferrell has really crooked lower teeth. Self only made this discovery while watching this movie, during a couple of close-ups which come early on, in cinema verité / “Blair Witch Project” style.
Which led self to wonder: why didn’t he ever get them fixed?
Self is pretty sure he could afford to have them straightened, if he’d wanted to.
But he didn’t. Which is why you should go and see “Land of the Lost,” dear blog readers! Because, unlike Seth Rogen, who is going the make-over route (i.e., dieting — and becoming progressively less funny as a result), Will Ferrell is staying true to his art! And his non-glam image!
It was pretty sad to see that self and hubby were only one of about eight people in the audience (Didn’t this movie just open?), but every one of those eight was laughing. Really, what more can one expect from a summer movie?
Self laughed through almost this entire movie! Really! She went in there expecting to fall asleep (which she did last week, during “Up,” — my bad!), but she didn’t! There probably wasn’t a single five-minute stretch when self was not laughing!
Self loved, in particular, the cheesy aliens who looked like they could have walked in straight from “Plan B From Outer Space”!
And, believe it or not, dear blog readers, the Golden Gate is once again a featured landmark! That makes four movies this summer that are set in or near San Francisco! (Or, at least, near/in and/or around the Golden Gate Bridge!)
In closing, self would like to leave dear blog readers with the news that Will Ferrell mentions the Bataan Death March. (Only he pronounces “Bataan” as though it rhymes with “Damn,” as in: “Damn you, Chaka! I feel like I’m on the damn BaTAN Death March!”) Self thinks probably no one else in the audience (aside from hubby and self) knew what he was referring to. For all they cared, probably, Will could have said: “I feel like I’m on the damn Chikaroobah Death March!” But, well, he didn’t. He said “the Bataan Death March.” And she appreciates the gesture. Thank you, Will!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned
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That’s what Filipinos have been calling it, such is their love for the obscure acronym. (A couple of weeks ago, on the Filipino News Channel, there was a reporter talking about how two contestants from American Idol, in the Philippines for a concert, insulted the medical party that was about to examine them at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport by brushing past them and refusing to submit to a medical exam. The reporter kept saying AH1N1, and self wondered what that was until she realized it was the swine flu)
Here’s a headline from the front page of The Philippine Inquirer of Saturday, 30 May (courtesy of Dearest Mum, who frankly thought self was nuts to request that she bring copies of newspapers with her)
2 More Wedding Guests in Zambales Get A(H1N1)
The number of confirmed cases of influenza (A(H1N1) — more commonly known as swine flu — in the country has climbed to 14 as the Department of Health reported four more cases yesterday, eight days after the first case was confirmed.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said two of the new cases in the Philippines — a 42-year-old woman and a 20-year-old man — were at a May 17 wedding in Zambales attended by a Taiwanese mother and her daughter, who were later found carrying the virus upon their return to Taipei.
Self thinks it is pretty brave of the newspaper to put that information on the front page, for she can’t remember anything about the swine flu being on the front pages of her local newspapers, at least not recently.
Meanwhile, it is Sunday morning here in California, and self is watching a blonde woman give a very chirpy account of her cruise on the Carnival Cruise Lines. In one segment, she goes behind the scenes and chats with the kitchen staff, who are unsurprisingly mostly Filipino. And then the head chef tells her he is following a family tradition: his dad, too, had worked as the head chef of a cruise ship. And as he talks to the woman, the chef’s hands remain busily at work on a cantaloupe. When the finished product is displayed, it turns out to be a cantaloupe carved into the shape of a rose, with many petals.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.
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It is still cold.
Self ate too much (last night at Karin’s).
Self and hubby saw “Wolverine.” Theatre was packed, self hasn’t had the pleasure of hearing so many pre-pubescent boys exclaim excitedly over scenes since the days when son was still himself a pre-pubescent. Self was extremely pleased with herself for having gone to the Mountain View Farmers Market earlier this morning, for then she was able to munch on cookies from her favorite cookie lady while watching the movie. Self still sad over the closing of Beard Papa.
Hubby enjoyed the movie enormously (declared it “3 out of 4 stars”). Self thought Liev made an uncommonly convincing bad guy. Hugh Jackman was very buff. Couldn’t they have picked a better actor to play Stryker — someone, say, like Stellan Skarsgard, or Klaus Maria Brandauer? Suppose they had to pick an American, but still! Ryan Reynolds (showing off very pumped up biceps) was in the movie for something like 10 minutes.
One character who truly interested self was named Gambit. Our intrepid hero encounters him in a New Orleans bar where he does fancy things with a deck of cards. Self wondered who that young actor was. When she got home, she googled and discovered that he is Taylor Kitsch of “Friday Night Lights.” He looks great on the big screen.
Oh, and Wolverine also has a love interest, whose screen name self completely forgot, about two minutes before the end of the movie. She looked vaguely Native American and told Wolverine stories of her Indian forebears.
Now, self is frying bacon that she will use to make spaghetti carbonara for dinner tonight. She has tons of eggs (from recent foray to Costco) and some half-and-half left over from making the clam chowder she brought to last night’s dinner.
Oh happy day! Sun’s finally out!
If only all weekends could be like the one now ending. Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.
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In which Dave Sedaris chronicles his fascination with Costco:
If anything should be bracketed by matching bookends, I suppose it’s an author tour. The ones I’d undertaken in the past began in one independent or chain store, and ended, a month or so later, in another. The landscape, though, has changed since then, and it’s telling that on this latest tour I started and finished at a Costco.
The first one I went to was in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I was spending the weekend with my sister Lisa, gearing up for six weeks of travel, when her husband, Bob, expressed a need for light bulbs. “Anyone game for a quick ride to Costco?” he asked, and before he could even find his keys I was panting, doglike, beside the front door.
Living in cities, it’s easy to avoid the big-box superstores. Their merciless lighting, their stench of rubber and cheap molded plastic — it’s not the way I normally like to shop. At Costco, though, I’d found displays of pain relievers: Anacin, Bayer, Tylenol. Eight major brands were represented. Pills were paired into single-serving envelopes, then stapled in rows to a bright sheet of poster board. It looked like something you’d see behind the counter at a gas station. There the packets might cost two dollars each, but here the entire display — maybe a hundred and fifty doses — went for just twelve bucks.
— from “Author, Author?”, in the 30 March 2009 issue of The New Yorker
Self can’t help wondering if the aforementioned Lisa is the sister with the feet, as described in an essay in Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. Self is sooo glad she is the only writer in the family!
And, apropos of nothing, did dear blog readers know that Benadryl is not sold anywhere in Hong Kong? This self found out the hard way, during one of her extreme bouts of insomnia in that hectic city.
Self, too, has written about shopping in Costco, at Christmastime, no less (in a story, “Door to Door,” in Mayor of the Roses). Alas, she cannot continue posting. She has to make dinner.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.
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It’s the first Sunday in June. God, where did the rest of the year go? Before self knows it, it’ll be Christmas. How time blurs together when one doesn’t have a child/ children in the house. Could this possibly be what it feels like to grow old???
Self saw the funniest quote from Doris Lessing on Poets & Writers this morning. Apparently, Dear Doris is none too enthused about winning the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature, in fact refers to receiving the honor as “a bloody disaster” because, as she told the BBC last month, “it shifted her attention away from writing: All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed.” That’s the spirit, Doris!
But, enough of the digressions. Below, the list of books self is interested in reading after perusing the 25 May 2008 issue of The New York Times Book Review (And self realizes she’s probably skipped an issue or two along the way, but anyhoo — )
(1) After reading Jennifer Balderama’s review of Cuban dancer Carlos Acosta’s memoir, No Way Home: A Dancer’s Journey From the Streets of Havana to the Stages of the World:
Carlos Acosta’s memoir, No Way Home: A Dancer’s Journey From the Streets of Havana to the Stages of the World
(2) After reading Christopher Caldwell’s review of Steve Coll’s The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century:
Steve Coll’s The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century
(3) After reading Peter Robb’s review of Misha Glenny’s “engrossingly dense” McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Crime Underworld:
Misha Glenny’s McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Crime Underworld
(4) After reading Cathleen Schine’s review of MacArthur “genius grant” recipient Aleksander Hemon’s new book, The Lazarus Project:
Hemon’s collection of short stories, The Question of Bruno
a previous novel, Nowhere Man
The Lazarus Project
(5) After reading Kyla Dunn’s review of Sue Halpern’s Can’t Remember What I Forgot: The Good News From the Front Lines of Memory Research:
Sue Halpern’s Can’t Remember What I Forgot: The Good News From the Front Lines of Memory Research
Kanlaon 