2007 Favorites

Inspired by my brohim-in-law, I'm going to do a best of 2007 list, tis the season, I suppose.
Movies:
1.Once
2.The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
3.Darjeeling Limited
4.No Country for Old Men
5.Hot Fuzz
6.Lars and the Real Girl
7.Savages
8.Zodiac
9.Ratatouille
10. like I can just list 10 movies, so the rest are: Juno, The Simpson's Movie, Rescue Dawn, Order of the Phoenix, Michael Clayton, 3:10 to Yuma, Eagle vs Shark
11. All the movies of 2007 I still need to see, which I suspect will be good: There Will Be Blood, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Sweeney Todd, Gone Baby Gone, Kite Runner, Atonement.

TV:
House (although Dr. #13 blows)
Pushing Daisies
Kid Nation
Extras
Flight of the Conchords
30 Rock
Human Giant
Ace of Cakes

Books: (from the ones I actually remember reading in 2007)
Moab is My Washpot - Stephen Fry
Twilight - Stephanie Meyer
The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling
Between the Bridge and the River - Craig Ferguson
I Am America (And So Can You) - Stephen Colbert

A KFC Christmas

Merry Christmas everybody! We'll be heading up to Salt Lake City again for the holidays. Our high has been in the upper 60's here and I have been freezing so the twenty degree highs scare me, but I must admit the cold and snow are still synonymous with Christmas for me, so it will be good. We're going to go to some Jazz games, see some movies, play some games, hang out with fam, and eat lots of Christmas goodies. Whit and I will also be celebrating our 5th Anniversary while up there. We made it. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Are you havin' a laugh?

Last night we watched the Extra's Special and it was amazing. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant have done it again, it was masterfully written, so funny, uncomfortable, sad, sweet. Ashley Jensen is wonderful. Stephen Merchant is crazy funny and Ricky proves, again, that he's got a lot going on underneath that absurd laugh. Another fantastic series and lovely special.

Come on.

Watching this I had more goosebumps than a 12 year old girl with the complete works of R.L. Stine (that's the best I could come up with right now).
Watch

Each Sold Separately

It seems fun to be a child again, playing with Star Wars figures, doing mock British accents. The Chewbacca impersonation, however, leaves something to be desired:
WATCH HERE

Fortune Crookie

Today I received this fortune - so I guess I will be inexplicably compelled to go into my parents basement only to have a huge monster jump on me when I reach the bottom of the stairs. That or I'll have to try to make a bed that is like a hundred feet tall. Sucks.

Takes a licking . . .

Come on, Steve Nash is just so tough.

Lego Les Miserables Trailer

Vader in Love

Amazing. . .

Bali Ha'i

Southern California is on fire as you well know, unless you really have never left your house and you don't own a television. It is much further South than where I am, but the skies over the Burb are pretty gross. I feel like I am in South Pacific, as in the movie, not the place. If you've ever seen that movie, you'll remember that they used many different bold color filters. I think it created interesting moods in the movie, but it does feel odd to be living behind an amber filter. It's like perpetual sunset or maybe perpetual sunset in Vietnam or the old west, take your pick. I don't know why I'm writing this blog, it doesn't have much of a point, I guess it's just a note on how the fire is creating a weird mood here. I feel really awful for the millions of people being truly impacted by the fires, but up here it is just definitely a strange, hazy, apocalyptic sky.

Reunited and it feel so good . . .

We went to the Getty

Eva C Revisited

Oi.

This week I had a pap test, which all the ladies out there will know is not even slightly comfortable, a surprisingly painful tetanus shot from which I am still sore two days later, I was at the dentist's for three hours where it was discovered I had a cavity - my first cavity ever - and I am still completely depressed about this, I try to take such good care of my teeth, and today my car died on me and I had to try to coast out of an intersection, using the emergency brake to stop - a problem which we just had "fixed" for $700 a week and a half ago. So that's a pretty rad week.

Achy breaky heart

Ah, hell. In previous blogs I wrote about my disdain towards the Disney Channel. Well, here's yet another example of the sad state of tweens today. Apparently the Hannah Montana (fictional character played by Miley Cyrus, aka Billy Ray's daughter) concerts are selling like hot cakes - tickets are in such high demand that they are selling for thousands of dollars. The story on the news said that these tickets are selling for more than The Police or Bruce Springsteen . . . what?!?! The Police reunion tour, the tour that would never happen, one of the greatest bands of all time, is cheaper and easier to see than a fictional 14 year old country/pop star. Wow.
Along with the concerts theme, I am realizing that it's tough to be a fan of, well, of a lot of bands that I am a fan of. My parents are a little older than a lot of my peer's parents (my dad was 50 when I was born), so musical rebellion for me was listening to music of the '60's and '70's. But the members of those bands that haven't died are getting really old. Yesterday I watched a concert on hdtv of the Moody Blues. I love the Moody Blues. I've seen them in concert a few times. I sneaked (sneaked? snuck?) backstage once and got to meet them. But this was probably about eight years ago. They were getting old then, but still had their gusto. This new concert was sad. Justin Hayward actually still looked and sounded pretty good, but that's where the hope stopped. There were two drummers on stage because the original drummer, Graeme Edge seemed like he was pushing it to even keep a simple beat, so the new, young drummer was picking up the slack. Ray Thomas wasn't on stage, so I wikipedia'd him and it said he left the band because of health problems with gout. Gout? Outside of Alzheimer's I don't know of a disease that screams elderly more than gout.
hmmm. To match my musical melancholy, Led Zeppelin's Going to California just came on. I have no right to feel sentimental over music of days past, I'm only 27, but I guess the music a person listens to in their youth always holds a special place in their heart. And that's why parents shouldn't let their kids listen to Hannah Montana, because those kids will grow up and look back on the music of their youth like I am now, and no one should ever be sentimental over Hannah Montana.

Colbert

This just makes me smile every time . . .

Fun

A fun site to peruse if you've got some web time to kill here , the Story of Bread is great.
and another here, which is super rad. It's called Pictures of Walls and it made me feel connected to the other humans in this world and all our goofy, stupid, thoughtful, sad, joyful, mean, funny and vulnerable moments.

Kitchen of Dreams

Okay. I've got to post one more picture from the Swedish site - it's just too weird.

Now you can feed your family and your horse at the same time!

Swedish band pics . . . Wowsers

I love these pictures too much, I want to post all of them, but you'll just have to look for yourself.
To see more Swedish band photos go here, it's pretty amazing:
http://www.omodern.com/

He's back

Season Four has started. Hoorah!

Just Like Jesse James

Oh, who can forget Cher's song Just Like Jesse James? Well, mostly everybody other than my sister and I and possibly a handful of gay men who still love Cher. However, this is not a blog about Cher but rather it's about one of the greatest movies I've seen in a long time, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. It's not released quite yet, I went to a screening last night, and I just want to tell all three of you who may be reading this blog to go see this movie when it opens. I don't want to go into a lengthy review of the film, but I just want to state that it is a beautiful, fascinating film. This is the writer/director's first film which is crazy! The cinematography by one of the greats, Roger Deakins, is amazing. There are wonderful acting performances: Casey Affleck is awesome, who knew? Sam Rockwell, also great. I was about to list the actors but the list would be too long, they are all really top notch in this film. My husband and I walked out of it absolutely inspired, but as we're leaving we heard people in the lobby complaining about how long it was. We live in an increasingly dumbed down society of people with short attention spans. People want watered-down, safe entertainment. I understand sometimes wanting a fun night of being entertained at the movies, but that doesn't mean it needs to be brainless fun. Too many movie companies now feed the masses mindless fluff, we should be thrilled when a film is released that has thought, complexity, sensitivity and passion; people have forgotten that film is an art form.

Emmy's

The greatest moment of the 2007 Emmy's - why are these guys the coolest? Sitting through the seemingly endless tribute to the Sopranos and having to watch James Spader win best actor over Hugh Laurie didn't matter any more as soon as Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell ran into each other's arms.