Lee Van Cleef is Love. And So Are Lilacs.

I know it's been ages, and I'm horribly behind on birthday wishes as usual, but AMC is playing the opening credits to A Few Dollars More, and Ennio Morricone on a bright Saturday morning can't help but make me smile. Oh, for soundtrack music consisting mostly of whistling and gunshots. Love.

The day in front of me is beautifully unformed; I have scads on the to-do list, of course, but for the moment, I'm enjoying not being at work, not having the migraine that was dogging me most of the week, and just puttering with domestic frippery such as crocheting and baking. Later, there may even be something having to do with potting plants. I read an article recently (probably from one of petzipellepingo's links; I don't comment with my thanks often enough, so thank you, sweetie!) about growing lettuce in window pots, and that sounds marvelous. I don't have a green thumb per se, but some plants seem to fare alright with me, including my mystery tree, some kind of citrus that took root from seeds I apparently planted on a whim to see if could grow them. (They did, and now I can't remember what kind of fruit I might be in for if the thing ever flowers. Lemons? Oranges? Grapefruit? Only the tree itself knows for now.) The attraction of homegrown salad greens is pretty damn tempting, I must say. Only a little strip of actual groundsoil I could fill with climbing vines (cukes! homegrown cukes!) and violets would make me happier.

Okay, and a lilac bush. Or three, so there could be the light and dark purple, and also the white flowers.

Maybe also some Lilies of the Valley. And, y'know, tomatoes. A stand of rhurbarb. I think I really want a garden, eh?

Big ol' Boosterism: the Cartoon Art Museum here in SF is having a show on Nell Brinkely, a WWI-era artist whose work is frankly mind-blowing. Check out this gallery for a sample of her art, in this case illustrations for a serial fiction story.

And finally, sekrit message to danceswithwords: Dante's Cove finally cycled to the top of our Netflix queue and Toys and I loved it. ( Read more... )

More later. I swear, my brain really has been tapioca lately, and I haven't even been watching Hulu. (With what spare time??)

I Saw It!

How's that for a vague catchall title? It really does cover everything in the post. I was a witness to... whatever I'm gonna talk about. Clearly, I haven't forgotten everything I used to know about journalistic fudgery.* : )

I'm probably going to be spammy today; as per the previous post, not-headachy-and-not-at-work seems to translate to more than the usual amount of happy brain energy. Some people write when they're depressed, I write when I'm feeling good, and unfortunately that state's been a little thin on the ground lately (okay, that's enough for moaning about my lack of time/energy). But I'm feeling good now, so I'm going to run with it, because if the day does come when I'll look back on all this and laugh, I'd rather talk about the parts that I'll want to remember. Things like:

• Waiting for the bus at 16th and Mission streets, and seeing a guy ride by on a unicycle, of all things, his eyes wide and expression slack with surprise, as if even he is wondering "how am I doing this?"
• In the same location, staring at an open grill covered with a layer of briskly sizzling bacon-wrapped hotdogs and thick yellow onion chunks, along with a small crowd of other onlookers drawn in by the scent as if hypnotized. "I think it's the onions," one woman murmurs to me.
• Ordering one of the aforementioned bacon-wrapped hotdogs, even though Toys and I have been leaning more and more toward vegetarianism lately (ask me for my broccoli salad recipe - it kicks butt!), because the grill woman looked up at me and said "yes?" Yes. Er, it was the onions.
• Nodding at said grill-lady's question of "everything?", because if I'm gonna get a bacon-wrapped hotdog from an open-air grill, I'm gonna go with what the expert recommends. (For the curious, "everything" is apparently ketchup, mustard, and mayo. And grilled onions.)
• It was damn good.


A late-breaking report: Toys and I watched the Battlestar Galactica finale (in rerun, on tape rather than live - yes, casa Hook and Toys still sports a working VCR), because as early promoters of the show who quit mid-Season 2 in disgust, we still had enough residual curiosity to check and see how the writers resolved the whole they-have-a-plan overarching plot. Our conclusion? Well, if you really want to know... ( Read more... )

Saw Watchmen too. Whole different set of issues there, not so much with the amusing, but at least I have a whole new awareness of scriptwriter David Hayter as an entitled, arrogant crybaby from his open letter to Watchmen fans who haven't been showing the film enough love for his taste. ( Read more... )

I'll save the rest for a later post.

*I also resisted the urge to use "I Watched the Watchmen" because a) I was gonna talk about other things that didn't relate to Watchmen and b) I'm sure it's already been used to death by reviewers. If it hasn't, it should've been. In headlines, obviousness is frequently a friend, as is alliteration.

Aw! And Awwwww!

Argh, I just realized that while frittering about online, I wasn't watching the time and subsequently missed catching Power Rangers RPM. Dammit! I've been really enjoying this one. There's an evil female robot character who's super entertaining, and a whole post-apocalyptic city-under-a-dome sci-fi angle. Ah, well. I think they repeat last week's ep right before the new one, so I'll just have to make sure I catch it next Saturday. Nothing like some morning adrenaline.

And I was just wondering where my Cute Overload feed had gone when my friends page filled up with a backlog of posts - just in time for Easter, a picture of a guinea pig in a bee costume. So much love, altho the pig looks a little unamused. Still: guinea pig!