It seems that it was only a year ago that I wrote a congratulations out to Rod and Ness, because it has been a year since their wedding. Guess what one year later brings. No. Not paper, but the birth of their first child, Isabela. Came in at 6lbs 9oz. No word on her height. Mom and baby are doing fine. Father is overwhelmed. Welcome to life, Isabela. Congrats to the lucky, happy parents.
Today is Friday, the 13th. It comes but maybe once a year. Head on over to the home of the movies. It’ll scare you, or at least make you laugh out loud. And I agree with Pete at APCB, Friday 13th VI was great fun.
My predictions for the Amazing Race 7 didn’t turn out the way I thought. I had the Will Farrells winning it all, but they got philiminated a month or so ago. While I originally liked Rob and Amber, by the end, I wanted them gone. They have the luck of the Irish on them as it seemed they completed tasks quick or got on transportation faster. Ron and Kelly that has got to be painful. To have on national TV, a relationship completely disintegrating. Ouch. Uchenna and Joyce the eventual winners pulled one out their ass. Getting on the flight at the last moment made the last leg nerve racking but enjoyable. Congrats to them.
I won a Shag print on ebay. Did I really mean to do it? I just showed up at the last minute and sniped it not thinking that I would actually be the highest bidder. Lucky me, I won. I was expecting to be outbidded or sniped before the end. I like the print, but it wasn’t the top one on my list. Now I’ve got to pay for it and get it nicely framed. Where should I hang it?
As I had mentioned the other day, I had a good start for this month in reading 3 books. Getting ahead by reading a lot of The Shadow of the Wind. Well, I went ahead and finished it off that night (or morning considering I finished at 2 in the morning.)
What a read. The blurbs on the cover liken the author (Zafon) to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I see were they’re similar. Some of the book was magical realistic, but it was more. I liked it a lot. Like the characters in the book I couldn’t put it down until I finished it. A
Even taking two classes and my continuing work schedule, I was able to get a few books in. Of course they were both written by my favorite, Sarah Vowell. I also had gotten further in the Best Travel Writing of 2004 book — almost to the end (although the last few have been real downers being about traveling in war torn foreign lands). I will one day finish this book.
Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell. I thought this was seriously funny. I never imagined that killing presidents would be so. While the story of Lincoln’s assassination is fascinating, Garfield and McKinley’s are equally interesting as well. Vowell is a very entertaining writer. She wears her GenX id front and center. You could feel the sarcasm in words, yet she gets across how much history fascinates and motivates her. I love that. She is a great voice of our geneartion. A++
(I also bought the book on CD. While I can take her for 15 minutes at a time 4 hours of Sarah Vowell gets on you at times. If not for Jon Stewart. I would’ve hated her. Stewart’s turn as President Garfield was hilarious. It has given me a different view of the guy. Jon Stewart as well)
Take the Cannolis by Sara Vowell. While this is a collection of essays that were written somewhere else, they are still fresh and funny. I liked her take on Tom Cruise. The fact that Ms. Vowell is deeply immensed in pop culture as am I has me attracted to her writings. This book lacked the hilarity of the previous only because each topic/essay had to be treated as one. B
May has started on a bang as I am reading Shadow of the Wind and would have finished today if not for writing my final report for school.
Posterwire, a blog about movie posters. Neat. I have several in my collection, if you want to call it that. I like to collect them but don’t have space for them so I don’t. Anyway, my favorites so far are Joe V. The Volcano and Swingers.
It’s just about summer movie season. And to get a start, I caught the latest remake of The Amityville Horror. Not the movie I wanted to watch (The Upside of Anger), but was coaxed into it. In fact I was called out when I complained that it would scare me. It did, but I think it was more because of knowing that something sudden was going to happen. Anyway the movie was standard haunted house. Creepy ghost children. Bleeding walls. Voices telling the occupants to get out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What sucked about this version, they had to explain why it was haunted. You will not believe it, or you would’ve guessed it. Indian graveyard! Plus scary missionary! What?! Dumb. Don’t watch this until it is the only thing on TV.
1 of 5 stars.
Hmm. It’s starting to become an obsession, but here’s a link to the archive of articles she did for Salon. That is all.
For those in the area, Sarah Vowell will be appearing at Politics and Prose bookstore April 18, 2005. (I am looking at you, Walt) If I didn’t have class Monday night, I would be so there.
