everything's better on a big screen

Here are two things that are probably only interesting to me:

1. Last night I had a dream that I was supposed to give a speech and I had lost my notes. I don’t know what I was supposed to talk about. Before I went on, someone told me just to speak from my heart, so I got up to the podium and said, “It is a stain upon our entire society that we haven’t found more uses for Cadbury eggs.” Whatever that means. Then, in the same dream, I found out that my stuffed bear Barnabas could lay Cadbury eggs and I was scared he would get stolen. This dream may or may not have been brought to you by some Cadbury eggs I consumed last night.

2. This morning, I sat down on the toilet (hopefully that is not too graphic an image for you) and at the very same time, there was this clattering in the kitchen. I felt pretty bad about myself. Did I weigh so much that by sitting on a toilet I could cause the kitchen to settle? No, as it turns out. It was just the toaster waffles being released with a giant whoosh from the toaster. There were two upsides to discovering this: 1, I was not in fact heavy enough to cause things to clatter, and 2, I had some toaster waffles waiting for me.

Now, on to more pleasant things. Today I had one of my best cinematic experiences, ever. And it probably won’t be topped, so I should just stop going to the movies. Today I went with my friend Katie to the Fabulous Fox Theatre to see my favorite film of all time, Gone With the Wind, on the big screen.

First off, it’s cool enough to do something at the Fox. It is a very neat place. But to see Gone with the Wind there, in recognition of GWTW’s 70th anniversary? Well, that is something else entirely. It was insane to see the movie that large. I kept seeing things that I don’t notice when the movie is on my television. I also noticed that some things were funnier with an audience than when you watch them by yourself. Never have I really laughed out loud at Gone with the Wind, because, you know, an awful lot of bad things happen. But when people started laughing in certain parts, I was like, hmm, this movie can be pretty funny in places. And that just means that this movie has it all….romance, drama, history and COMEDY.

However, the weird thing about seeing this movie with 4800 people was the compulsion that some people had to clap at certain parts. Like when the movie started, people started clapping when the title went across the screen. Okay, I thought, they’re excited and bursting with pent-up emotion and I can deal with this. But then, they kept clapping through all the introductory credits, to the point that I wanted to turn around and be like, you know these people aren’t here, right? The only person still alive from the movie is Olivia de Havilland, who is in her 90s and lives in Paris. Speaking of which, here is one of the most awesome things of the day---Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies was there to introduce the film, and he said that this morning he called up Olivia in Paris to let her know that there were two sold-out screenings of the film in Atlanta. And she said, “Oh, I know all about that. I have my spies.” And then Robert Osborne said that Olivia de Havilland sent us all her regards.

When I recovered from the fact that Olivia de Havilland had sent me regards, I had two thoughts. 1--How do I get to be one of Olivia de Havilland’s spies? And 2—How can I get a job that just allows me to introduce movies and call up Olivia de Havilland? I need that job.

There’s not much else I can say about the movie that I haven’t said a million times before, except to reiterate how cool it was to see it on a big screen. Even though people kept clapping at random parts all through the movie, even clapping at weird parts that I still haven’t quite made sense of. Maybe these people were Olivia de Havilland’s spies. Hmmm.

Book #7: The Complete Maus

"Maus," by Art Spiegelman, is a book I never would have read if it didn’t keep popping up lists of books that I should know about and consume. Best of the best types of lists, and it makes me uneasy when there are books on best-of lists that I haven’t read. So I sat down with “The Complete Maus,” in which Spiegelman tries to make sense of his father’s life story. He has to make sense of the horrific life his father lived before he was even born, as a Jew forced into concentration camps during the Holocaust. And he has to make sense of the man that his father has become, a cranky, miserly, demanding old man, a man so miserable that his wife, Spiegelman’s mother, committed suicide.

Well, if you’re going to conquer a story like that, you might as well use a graphic novel format and draw your main characters as animals. In this book, Jews are drawn as mice, and the Germans are drawn as cats. There are all sorts of deep things going on with this – the Germans called the Jews “vermin” and using animals shows how dehumanizing the whole period of time was. And the format makes this story on the one hand palatable, since it’s very easy to keep reading a comic book than to consume massive amounts of text when you’re trying to understand the awful things happening…but even in comic book form, the horrible things that happen to a mouse are enough to make you stop, pause and remember this happened to humans. I feel like I’m not being very insightful or original about this because I’m tired, but suffice it to say that you know, I can see how it won the Pulitzer Prize and is considered so influential and whatnot. But then, I haven’t read a ton of graphic novels, so maybe it’s easy for me to buy into the hype.

I also just liked the story on a writerly level; Spiegelman inserts himself into the story as a guy trying to drag this story out of his grumpy dad. I know he was doing that so he could write a book that could be published, but I read it more just as a diary, as a way for this guy to write down the story so it could always be there, unlike his mother’s journals, which his father burned. It may not be a perfect record of what happened to his family in the past, but it’s all he has, and at the end of the day, all kids have is what their parents told them, whether it was true or not. Or whether it was as historic as this or not. It was what it was. As Spiegelman the character tells a reporter in the book, “I never thought of reducing it to a message.” So maybe I should stop trying to find one, and go to bed.

i know that i was your favorite

Every year, Oprah Winfrey says a few things are her favorite things, and all those things become enormously popular. But, let's say you can't buy a Kindle or a ton of electronics and you don't like Oprah's taste anyway. Well, maybe this post will appeal to you, because it features some of my current favorite things. I'm not giving any of them away, like Oprah, but I am giving you my knowledge about these tremendous products, and I think that should be enough. However, should any of the makers of these fine products want to contact me, I think that would be good.

First off, do you ever wear slip-on shoes, the kind that don't allow you to wear socks without looking unfashionable? But you don't want your shoes to get all smelly, the way they sometimes do when you go around wearing shoes with no socks? Then you will absolutely love the first product I am about to recommend. These are little shoe liners made by the fine folks at Wal-Mart. Egads! you may be thinking if you are a raging liberal. How tacky to recommend something made by Wal-Mart. And yet, I tell you, these are the best sock liners I have found. They stay in place, and they are not made out of the same material that pantyhose is made out of. I really really hate pantyhose, and I don't want sock liners made out of it. And anyways, this my favorite things list. If you don't want to buy from Wal-Mart, then make your own favorite things list.

Here are my feet. Sorry for the veins. On the left, you can see a sock liner, but on the right, you see how it's completely invisible once I slip my foot into the shoe. MAGIC. Sweet, non-odorous magic.

And here is another view of my sock-lined foot. I find myself doing laundry just to have clean foot liners.

Now, my next thing has to do with my recent adventures in the kitchen. Suddenly, I have a lot more dishes, and I find that my dishwasher can't cut it when there is actually real food on the plates to be scraped off. So now I have to do the dreaded pre-wash of dishes. For this task, I recommend Ultra Palmolive Oxy plus Odor Eliminator, because it really does eliminate odors!

And let's not forget that it's hot pink! Which, I will admit, is the whole reason that I picked this product over all others available to me in the detergent aisle. I mean, look how well it goes with my decor:

I know, it's like that detergent was made for my kitchen! If your kitchen also has lots of bright colors, then I think you should get this product.

Now, a product that you should get, no matter the color of your kitchen, is Delallo Dipping Spices. Here is how this works. It's a cannister filled with four delicious spice combinations. On this side, you are getting a peek of "Rosemary and Garlic" and "Roasted Garlic and Cheese."

And on this side, you see "Sundried Tomato and Basil" and "Garlic and Tomato":

So you select a spice combo that suits your fancy, and you put it in a bowl. Then you put olive oil on top, and get out some bread that you bought at a nearby store. Then you pretend that you are in a nice restaurant where they bring you bread and oil with spices, except you are really in your apartment watching Letterman. That's essentially how this product works, and I have to tell you, I think it's genius. All the flavor combinations are absolutely delicious, though it looks like I've consumed the most of the Sundried Tomato and Basil section, so perhaps that is my favorite. Now, I'm not saying that it's a good thing for my waistline and overall health that I come home in the evenings craving olive oil and bread, but for now, I'm going with it.

And now, in a very un-Oprah like move, I'd like to tell you my three least favorite things right now:

--people who don't use blinkers when they're switching lanes, as well as people who leave their blinkers on despite the fact that they have no plans to change lanes.

--people who spit on sidewalks where people have to walk, leaving giant gobs of spit in their wake

--tornadoes and rain storms that create massive traffic and power problems, in combination with local media that doesn't mention these problems, so that you get horrible surprise detours on your commute home.

I meen bizness

I went back to Candler for Easter, and as usual, the family made their Saturday pilgrimage to the South Asheville Chick-fil-a for Saturday lunch. We were sitting there, finishing up a delightful array of chicken products and waffle fries when my dad said, “I don’t get that advertisement hanging from the wall.” (or something like that; since he is very detail-oriented I don’t want to get sued if he didn’t say those exact words)

What was hanging from the wall was one of the infamous Chick-fil-a cows with a banner that said “Eat Chicken Q1 through Q4,” except with the zany misspelled words that are the unfortunate trademark of the Chick-fil-a cow. We told Dad it had to do with corporate lingo—Q standing for “quarter”, which is a unit of time of three months. Here, I’ll use it in a sentence: “You better do better in Q2 or you won’t be here in Q3, or in other words, if I don’t see improvement between April and June over your performance between January and March then by July you may not be here. But probably more like August because it takes people half of the next quarter to figure out what went on in the previous quarter.” Oops, that was two sentences.

Anyways, everybody agreed that if the cows are speaking in corporate lingo now, then they really should be spelling correctly. I know that I harp on this and harp on this to the point of obsession, but I just can’t tell you how much it bothers me. These cows have gone out and found business clothes, learned corporate lingo that even my dad doesn’t know, and yet they still can’t use spell check? That’s just not endearing, Chick-fil-a. At this point they stop being darling animals begging us not to eat them in their own befuddled way as much as they become lazy animals that just don’t try hard enough. And do you know what we do with people in this world who don’t try hard enough?? WE EAT THEM.

Here I am with a Chick-fil-a cow. This clearly illustrates how far these cows are taking their campaign…to business offices. I just don’t think anyone would love these advertising darlings any less if some of them were sophisticated beings who spelled correctly and maybe even had fancy handwriting. IF A COW CAN TIE A TIE, IT SHOULD KNOW HOW TO SPELL.
In good news, though, I had no desire to steal this cow the way I want to steal some Chick-fil-a cows I could mention. I think it’s the 2-D vs. 3-D thing. This is just a cardboard cow. I want a cow that takes up some space in a room. Plus, this cow is already dressed, and I would TOTALLY want to make the Chick-fil-a cows cute costumes after I go to the trouble of stealing them.

Book #6: A Thousand Days in Venice

Here’s the thing I feel compelled to tell you: I love Italy, and I love books about people falling in love with Italy, but there is no way that I would ever buy this book in a bookstore for full price. I bought “A Thousand Days in Venice” by Marlene de Blasi at the Seattle Public Library sale a few years ago. It was during one of those shopping trips where you’re drunk with the bargains all around you and don’t feel bad getting a few throwaway books because they’re only 50 cents, after all.

And yet I ended up reading this book before even getting around to some of my more desired purchases. Why? Well, for one, it is very short and I couldn’t make a real commitment to a book at the time that I needed something to read. Also, Italy has been in the news for the past few days, unfortunately, which has me thinking about it a lot. And despite the fact that I wouldn’t want to be spotted reading this book on public transportation, there’s hardly a time when I’m going to turn down a tale of someone falling in love both with a person and with a country, particularly when that country is Italy.

So here’s the deal. Marlene de Blasi hangs out with this dude a few times in Venice, and then he comes to St. Louis for a few days, and based on this she’s ready to uproot her entire life and move to Venice. I don’t find this part implausible, because who wouldn’t move to Venice? She claims she’s in love but the man in question has all the personality of a lazy grasshopper the way de Blasi depicts him. She saves all her adjectives and praise for Venice, which again, is perfectly understandable, but unfortunately, she has far too many words. This book is short, and doesn’t say much, and despite that is still too wordy. Things are described as being fig-like an awful lot, as I recall. And she has a lot of ongoing metaphors to clue us in to the fact that she is going through something magical and life-changing here. Sometimes this can be charming, particularly if you just let yourself get swept away in the Italian-ness of it all, but when you remember that this is purporting to be someone’s memoir of their own true life, well, then it gets to be a bit much. Although I did enjoy learning how difficult it is to have a wedding in Italy. I’m gonna file away that info for later use, since I plant to marry an Italian count.

In conclusion, here are the things I learned from this book:
1. Venice is nice.
2. Marlene de Blasi is a very good cook!
3. Her husband is pretty bland and frankly seems like not that good of a catch.
4. Venetians are nice and giving when you get to know them.
5. We are always changing, even when we are standing still, and to help deal with this fact you should go look at the water in Venice or perhaps cook a gigantic meal, particularly if you are a very good cook like Marlene de Blasi!

Book #5: I Love You, Beth Cooper

I think it’s only natural that when someone ages a year, but doesn’t really want to, as happened to me recently, there’s a tendency to want to regress a little bit. Witness, if you will, the fact that there’s a movie coming out where Matthew Perry wakes up to find himself Zac Efron. But perhaps since regressing to the age of 5 wouldn’t be very interesting to many filmgoers (though it’s an age I would love to regress to, so I could get some coloring done), movies and tv and books only tend to present high school regression back to us. After all, it’s a time of life fraught with drama that’s grown up enough to appeal to our older selves and a time with just enough freedom to have fun without the tangle of responsibility. It’s also an easy stage of life to see the coolness of a person, to know that they will turn out alright if they keep on being themselves, despite the fact that all the high school Neanderthals make their lives miserable.

Anyways, I’ve noticed this theme of high school a lot because I guess I’m subconsciously embracing it – just a few days ago my Netflix brought me the high school flick “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” and now it’s bringing me the discs of “Freaks and Geeks” one by one. And perhaps that’s why I stopped at the library one recent afternoon with a single thought: I must read the book “I Love You, Beth Cooper” by Larry Doyle right this minute or I will explode.

Now, I probably did want to read this book in part because my Entertainment Weekly alerted me to the fact that it’s being made into a movie, and you know how I am about books being turned into movies: I must consume them. But perhaps I also just longed for a good ol’ high school romp of a book that featured back-of-the-jacket blurbs by Tom Perrotta and Dave Barry.

It makes sense that this book is being made into a movie, because it reads like a movie or tv show at times, and according to some quick internet research, the author did put in some writing time at “The Simpsons.” Here’s the general plot: A geek announces his love for the super-cool Beth Cooper during his graduation speech, and then deals with the fall-out from that announcement over the next 12 hours or so. It all takes place on that one fateful graduation night, and it might be giving too much away to detail all the things that happen to our hero, but suffice it to say that at one point he gets beaten up by a skeleton and covered in blue and orange hummus. There were a few genuine laugh-out-loud moments, though, like most teen movies, it was also a touch overlong.

So, if you’re depressed at how old you are, or just looking for a quick mindless read, then you might enjoy “I Love You, Beth Cooper.” Like all good high school films, shows and books, it makes you grateful that at least you’re not still in high school.

mooooooooving on up

Alright, so I had another blog lapse. I trace this recent lapse to 4 distinct causes.

Cause #1: I turned one year older, which was fairly traumatic for me, as many people who were around me at the time can attest. I mean, I don’t want to get too specific about it, but I went from MID-twenties to LATE-twenties and I was none-too-happy about it. Luckily, with the help of some beer and some Funfetti cupcakes made by my kind friend and editor Katie, I am much more at peace with my new age.

Cause #2: I was pretty busy. First up there was my birthday party. Then I went to see Neko Case in concert (it was incredibly awesome). Then I threw a party for my coworkers, which involved making both dip and punch. I was pretty busy all last week, and then came the weekend and cause #3.

Cause #3: I got pretty sick. Well, not sick, because it wasn’t a virus or a bug that felled me but instead my sinuses. It has felt like an elephant was sitting on my head, which made it to even get out of bed, let alone blog. Maybe I am getting weak and infirm and frail in my old age.

But the real reason for the gap in blogging is Cause #4.

Cause #4: The Chick-fil-a cows have spoken again.

Now, you know all about me and the Chick-fil-a cows. How I love them. How I want to steal them. Better yet, how I want to just open my door one day and see them there. I would sit them down with a dictionary and I would teach them how to spell, letter by letter, with the patience that Annie Sullivan showed to young Helen Keller.

Now, in all the time that I have known them, the Chick-fil-a cows have been guarding a sign that says “After Counting Sheep, Count Some Chicken,” except, you know, horribly misspelled. Then on Tuesday, without warning, there was a whole new message! Take a look at this:
I am of two minds on this billboard. On the one hand, I am kind of thrilled that these cows are going to give me different messages each week or so. It makes them more mythical and magical, and that’s why blogging last week was delayed….I have just been sitting under the billboard, hoping to catch those cows in the act of painting something new much the way that children try to glimpse Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.

But I also have some consternation about this billboard. As you know, it drives me up the wall that these cows can’t spell. But now I am supposed to believe that these cows know so much of the world that they know what text messages look like? And they know about emoticons and text message abbreviations they can do? And they know how to modify their sloppy painting style so that it looks like electronic print? They know all this and they still don’t know how to spell? I can’t reconcile these facts, and that’s also why blogging has been delayed over the past week. I have just been thinking and thinking about the situation.

Though I’m confused, I’m more intrigued than ever about these cows. I think I am officially reviving my plan to steal the cows, so I can study them further. However, I would be willing to suspend these plans if someone from Chick-fil-a headquarters were to offer me 3 value meals a week for the rest of my natural-born life. I’m just throwing that out there as a starting point. Let’s talk, Chick-fil-a. You can communicate with me via the comments on this blog, or have the cows paint a message to me on my billboard. You know the one.