Odds & ends, because it's all I feel up to:
Could tell that Elizabeth: The Golden Age wasn't exactly to a level with its predecessor, but it was too easy to lose myself in its costuming and set design. Those dresses! (swoon) ... sadly, all Clive Owen's subplots were dead weight, I felt, and I'm pained in saying so as I love Clive Owen dearly.
Alan Moore love fest continues: Top 10 #1 was great, eagerly awaiting book 2; League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #1 a fun read though more of a simple diversion.
<3 Heart Station, as expected.
Officially filled up on $4 gas last week, but too shellshocked to come to terms with it 'til now.
Didn't warm to Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett until her final, heartbreaking duet with Toby. Anthony and Johanna? Ugh. Johnny Depp, unsurprisingly, continues to amaze.
Am not feeling like jumping on GTA IV's bandwagon with the rest of humanity. Truly, when would I play?
These little guys were hanging out with their mother just outside my building's rear entrance (am not sure why, but immediately the cover of Beatles For Sale came to mind). They hadn't been there long, at least not in this state -- you could still see eggshells on the ground. Was immediately flush with newfound sense of renewal, and v. timely so... and oh, but they look cosy, don't they?
Just looking at them made me feel warm, too, and loved.
Thanks for the well-wishes, all. Really, and truly, mean it...
Hit my deadline & have been laying v. low the past few days, a happy feeling indeed! Sweeney Todd is sitting next to the television, waiting to be watched. Finally saw Juno. Persepolis was just so good, must see movie version stat -- if I can find it. Elsewhere on the to-consume list: Top 10 #1, Absolute Sandman #1, Heart Station, Lost Odyssey. Plan to try to fit as much as possible, plus relax, the next five weeks, inasmuch as one can do that whilst preparing to move.
Need to admit, though I feel uncool doing so, that I don't really get Daniel Clowes.
So very, very busy. Apologies. I'm still on the wagon, I swear!
Things should be far sunnier post-Friday.
~ was dismayed* to discover I'd fallen out of the top 100 on the Rock Band vocal career leaderboards. Am resolved to brush up on my Blondie & make myself relevant again. Have just discovered that there's a new Utada Hikaru album out, which must be attended to post-haste. FInally, I'm feeling the itch to host my own blog again, but deflated by the thought of converting all my templates to Wordpress. There must be a better way...
*not really.
Did I mention how much I hate taxes? Finally, thrillingly done, but at a cost -- apparently the window of time spent doing them coincided exactly with a window of unseasonably beautiful weather. This is the usual story of my life.
Had a brief conversation with a lovely barista at Aberdeen Centre's Starbucks, where the following vital information was gleaned:
- Mango tea frappuccino will never arrive because apparently it already did, and due to an abject failure in north American test markets was a no-go. Test markets which went unnamed for their own safety, because they are so finished once I uncover their taste-defective identities.
- Tangerine and pomegranate have been off the menu some time, leaving only the heavy stuff, but you can still get a strawberry-lemon tea frappuccino if you ask nicely. A touch over-sweet, but it'll work in a pinch.
- Iced green tea with a couple squeezes of melon syrup: maybe the best idea of all.
Believe me, as a non-coffee-drinker who spends a lot of time with addicts, this is all going to save my life someday.
I got the table of contents page! (shush, please don't tell me if that's a bad thing!)
Feeling unreasonably giddy at the idea of being published in a real, live, you-pay-for-this magazine*. Even if the other envelope never arrives, I think my euphoria should last for awhile yet. To tell you the truth, I was offered some decent money a couple years back for several shots by the Washington State Tourism Board, but at the time fear of having my real name out there (and, after all, they have to cut a check to somebody) convinced me not to. ~ so glad I got over it, because it's really quite enjoyable!
On the other hand, hate, hate, hate, hate doing taxes. Seething hate. How do I get myself into this situation every year?
*This is the May 2008 issue of Popular Photography & Imaging.
Well, they turned on video support at flickr, which apparently means we've just plunged headlong into the end times; at least, that's the impression you'd get from the mass freakout that's ensued since. People who are afraid that it'll myspace-ize the community are spamming forums with banner gifs and (good grief) lolcats. Seriously? My irony robot just gave up and moved someplace warm, & without internet.
In other news, so very, very busy. Between getting ready for the big move and work and ignoring my taxes (eep), I've barely had time to breathe, much less write... and definitely not enough to watch the new Sense and Sensibility mini, which I've been looking forward to for, well, it seems forever! Been taking Promethea in ten-page increments, just slowly enough for the library to alert me that the next volume's arrived just when I need it, and after that I have Persepolis... Beg apologies for the fragmented update, but I'm awash in every luxury but time.
And my thoughts with you and yours, Romy. Godspeed.
Too many food & comix posts? To tell you honestly, I've been of a similar mind as well, but have been stalling... too scared to jump headfirst back into the ocean, in case I've lost whatever spark it was that had me searching for that thread to lead me back outside. So please bear with me, and think encouraging thoughts.
...meanwhile, for those who don't mind my trivialities, please feel free to beat me up over never having read Watchmen. What with it sitting on my bookshelf for more than ten years...
Our last KitKat report was almost two years ago & the flavors underwhelming, so it's high time for another, and have I got some lovely new boxes to show off. I heart Japanese candy packaging -- not exactly zen, but definitely elegant!*
First off, matcha choco is yet another green tea flavored variety, although in contrast to our previous friends, green tea and green tea with azuki bean, these aren't coated in nummy tea-infused white chocolate. Instead, we get familiar standard milk chocolate coating with green tea filling between wafer & shell. Normally, I adore all matcha-based desserts, but I think chocolate overwhelms here ~ v. sad. Couldn't taste green beyond a vague sense of "creamier-ness" -- much, much prefer its white choco-based cousins.
Ringo choco, clearly from the same "release," comes in an identical form factor: two solo-wrapped, chubby bars inside a tall, thin box. These are wearing the same milk chocolate cocktail dress, but sport apple-flavored intimates this time. The apple? Totally fake & supercharged with sweetness but in a classic, candy way, and as such can't be overpowered by the cocoa, which makes it automatically more successful than the matcha. Was reminded of Miranda's bizarre choco / apple gummy panda cookie, and these are similarly simultaneously appealing & disturbing. My reshuffled pantheon of fruit-flavored KitKats is now ranked thusly: Wine (yes, please!), Strawberry, Ringo choco, Orange, Banana (yuck!).
Finally, chestnut brings us back to lovely white chocolate-based goodness. Again, we're bordering on too sweet, but there's a pleasant nutty, woody, almost smoky flavor present that recalls, if not specifically roast chestnuts, something in their general neighborhood. The flavor's definitely the most complex of the three, and bears further "study." However! Am feeling guilty now after three KitKat bars, so... will have to wait a bit on that.
*it remains impossible to reconcile this elegance with Japanese candy commericals. w. t. f.
**though I do like this one -- I mean, Ayumi Hamasaki!
Here in Vancouver, there's a chain of eateries called New York Fries. "Authentically New York," goes their motto, on a poster featuring yellow cabs emblazoned with the NYF logo navigating the streets of The City, and I believe it, because certainly when I think of New York, I think of ... poutine.
[...apologies for the horrible cameraphone photo.]
While these people have obviously never set foot in the two-one-two, poutine does seem to be ascendant in the States these days. We're not likely to see Carrie Bradshaw handling messy gobs of gooey goodness on the silver screen anytime soon, but there are no less than three hip eateries in Seattle serving it at the moment, a number that will no doubt rise in the coming months. Combining comfort food with upscale dining's a road fraught with peril, but it can be done (cf. the late and lamented Fork's lobster corn dogs) but, still, given a choice between Feenie's or this food court fare, I'd probably choose this. Besides, you're allowed to get your hands messy at the mall!
Preacher was a fun read, but Promethea is, so far, something special: there are trappings of present-disguised-as-dystopian-near-future, reminiscent of The Dark Knight Returns, and done wittily and well, but there's also an achingly deep sadness at its core which pokes its way through "the immateria" -- and each of the lessons which have so far been handed to our heroine by those who have embodied the titular essence before her are heavy with loss -- lost love, lost innocence, lost child, lost life...
There's something here which parallels the other Alan Moore work I've read recently, Lost Girls, which also has much to do with the often tragic collision between reality and imagination. That, albeit in much more -- no other way to put it -- pornographic language* -- I certainly blushed! Hard to believe it was just sitting out in the library stacks.
But! Back to Promethea. I hope the rest of it lives up to the first, because I will be very sad panda if not. I wouldn't mind finding out more about Roger, of the Five Swell Guys, either:
*long story short: Dorothy Gale, Wendy Darling, and Alice (late of Wonderland) meet up at an Austrian hotel on the eve of the Great War. Much Sex -- nearly 300 pages of the hardbound, slipcased variety -- Ensues. If you have any sensitivity to ... well, just about anything, up to and including incest and seeing Peter Pan's little "lost boy" in the flesh, you'll leave it at that.
