I am hitting the road with two other fabulous gals for a week of vegetating in 100+ degree heat. If I don't melt, I may post some pictures during my stay, so check my Flickr page for those.
And my daily posts will be going up on the SFGate Culture Blog per usual, so be sure to check those out.
Oh, and for anyone reading this who thinks this would be a good opportunity to rob my apartment, please know that I have an apartment sitter. He's a bouncer who weighs about 300 pounds and his name is Tiny. Feel free to come by and say hello.
I'm usually under the impression that if something is awesome, everyone knows about it already, and I don't need to bother posting about it here. Sometimes, even in those cases, I'll talk about it here just because it's good to have easy access to, say, my favorite Keyboard Cat moments.
But in the off chance that there's someone reading this who is not yet aware of the complete and utter win that is Sex Pigeon, well, you will soon know. It can be explained easily enough: This guy takes pictures of what he sees every day, and captions them. Simple. In fact, most of the time, the pictures are nothing special. But the captions...oh, the captions. They are magic. Poetry. Dare I say, genius. His--often quite brief--sentences are usually better than anything I read all day.
Movies Seen: Twelve, with three in a theater. One of those three was a Dutch film called "Can Go Through Skin," and you can read my review of it at the SF Appeal."Star Trek" was another, and while I enjoyed it a lot, a lot of it also bugged the hell out of me. The good stuff: Any time the show made overt reference to the original series, especially whenever lead actor Chris Pine channeled William Shatner. The bad stuff: All the unnecessary shaky-cam work, especially when used in combination with extreme close-ups on actors faces. That's just a bad combination. There was also a comedic amount of lens flare in almost every scene.
The third film was "Up," which I mentioned briefly in a previous post. Let me reiterate: it's really, really great. It's definitely one of the best, if not the best movies I've seen this year, so far. It manages to be really, really funny AND really, really touching, AND really, really exciting, AND really, really visually stunning, AND...well, I could go on. All I can say is see it. You will not be disappointed.
As for the DVD movies viewed, my favorite was probably "Wendy and Lucy," (not to be confused with former Prince band members Wendy and Lisa), which is a really small and simple movie that manages to do in 90 minutes what numerous movies fail to do in a bloated two-plus hours, namely, make you care a whole hell of a lot about a character. I loved it for its simplicity. Books Read: None! Actually, that should be "Books Finished: None," because I did spend the entire month of May reading one damn book that I just didn't like very much, but by the time I figured out I didn't like it, I was already half-way through it and figured I had invested this much time, so I might was well finish it, so I kept reading it, flipping it the finger the entire time. Also, the book is kind of a murder mystery, and I wanted to find out who did it. And that's all I'll say about it until next month's Round-Up, except to tell you the title of the book, "The Little Friend" by Donna Tartt.
Fancy Dinners Out: One, at Market Bar, except I totally forgot what I had. I think it was fish. And I think it was good.
Live Shows Seen: One, Ben Folds at the Fox Theater in Oakland. For those who have not been to the newly refurbished Fox Theater, you should. I wish I could see every concert from now on there. It is a mere block from BART, incredibly comfortable, beautiful, and they sell pulled-pork sandwiches. 'Nuff said.
As for the show itself, well, I like Ben Folds a lot. So I liked the show a lot. Kind of a boring review, I know....Oh! He did bring out an acapella group from Sacramento State beforehand. They're a part of the album of acapella Ben Folds tunes he released, and I know acapella groups are supposed to be the pinnacle of dorkitude, but I was so impressed by them that I ended up buying the entire record. Here's the song they did.
Shoes Bought: One pair: These slingback wedges from Target. Perfect for Palm Springs, which is where I will be going in...11 days! Woooo!
I've got a review of the documentary "Little Joe" up on the SF Appeal right now, and I am posting about it here just as an excuse to add this image to my blog, for all posterity.
Hubba hubba.
And while you're at the Appeal, you might as well check out my take on the new reality series "NYC Prep."
It may look like I'm taking a break from blogging or something, but that's just not the case. I just haven't posted stuff here as much. So this is a reminder that you should be reading my "Hey, Watch It!" posts every day on the SFGate Culture Blog, and I also have a bunch of movie and TV reviews over on the San Francisco Appeal. So go over to both those places and catch up. Now. No, now!
Then you can come back here and watch these totally NSFW videos featuring The Muppets.
In my "April Round-Up," I stated I didn't buy any shoes. This is, in actuality, not true. In fact, I bought TWO PAIRS!
They were both bought online from Target, for cheap (I think they were both 50% off at the time), which is probably why I forgot about them. And one of the pairs I doubt I'll ever actually wear, as they are a lot taller and unwieldy that I thought they'd be. They're also pretty freaky looking. To wit.
The other pair I only wore once as the one time I did wear them, I ended up tripping on a sidewalk, which resulted in this lovely bit of black-and-blue toeness. Probably not the shoes' fault, although they weren't as comfortable as one would think looking at them.
While I was watching "Up" this weekend, (which is awesome, and you should see it right away, although don't feel compelled to see it in 3D; it doesn't really add much to the experience, and I think if I do see it again in a theater it will be in regular D), I was vaguely reminded of a Looney Tunes cartoon during all the scenes with Dug the talking dog, and his fellow army of talking dogs. And because I am brilliant, I was able to figure out just what cartoon it was. It's called "Foxy By Proxy" and I bet dollars to donuts the guys at Pixar were at least partially influenced by it. Watch it below.
I've always been a little conflicted about Jay Leno. When he began, he was a really great comedian. When I was a kid, (pre-teen, whatever), he was one of my favorites, and I saw him perform live at least once. (Comedy clubs were one of the few nighttime places a kid could get into--with parents--because they usually served food as well as alcohol, and thus were deemed restaurants, and not just bars.) In fact, Leno actually made fun of my mother during one set. (A good kind of ribbing, because she answered a question of his so softly, he joked she'd be horrible if she noticed the place was going in up in flames, as she'd probably whisper "fire...fire over here...") So when he took over for Carson on "The Tonight Show," I wanted to like him. But it was never to be. He just seemed too watered down and boring that I've probably watched maybe three episodes of his show the entire time he was host.
Which is just a really long way of saying, I'm really glad to see Conan up there at 11:30pm. And I'm really kind of angry that Leno is NOT going away, and will still sullen TV screens five nights a week come the fall...
Here's Conan's cold opening from his premiere ep last night.
Did you know the year is, like, almost half over? Were you aware of this? How is that even possible?
Let's get on with this, before it turns out it's December.
Movies Seen: Thirteen, with two in a theater. One of the theater viewings was a screening of the HBO movie "Grey Gardens," my review of which can be read here. The other was "Ferlinghetti," and you can read my review of that one here.
On the DVD front, I was very pleased by "Doubt." It was a lot funnier than I thought it would be. I was less pleased with "The Spirit," which was a real mess, and even messier was "Seven Pounds." I could tell you what that movie is about, but you probably wouldn't believe me if I did. Just know that it is perhaps the most ridiculous movie to ever feature a poisonous jelly fish in a supporting role.
Books Read: Three. Kind of. Only one, "Dewey: The Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World," was an honest to goodness book. And yeah, go ahead and laugh, I read a book about a cat that lives in a library. And it's about what you'd expect from a book about a cat that lives in a library, but I still liked it a lot.
"Maps and Legends," by Michael Chabon, was actually a collection of essays and speeches, mainly about writing, and books, and genres, but it was a fast and interesting read, and it included the best take on the "His Dark Materials" books that I've read yet.
As some of you know, I went through a trauma with my kitteh, Tori, this week. For those who don't, the story is thus: Tori is an old lady. She's either 18 or 19, the math always screws me up. (I got her in February of 1991, but she was about four months old when I adopted her so....she'll be 19 around November. There. That wasn't so hard!) About three years ago, I was sure she was a goner as she had developed kidney disease, which required a change in diet and injecting her with subcutaneous fluids every other day. Miraculously, all that seemed to help, and she's been going strong ever since.
Around the end of last year, a small lump she's had for many years suddenly started growing. A needle biopsy was done, and the results pretty much proved she has mammary cancer. Because of her age, I decided to just let the lump be, as I didn't want to risk putting her under anesthesia to have it removed, and figured she's only got a few more years left, as long as the tumor wasn't bothering her, just let her be.
Unfortunately, the tumor started to...explode. It just kept growing, and bursting her skin, bleeding, and eventually, despite my cleaning it every day, began to get infected. So the choice then became, letting it grow until it was so big and gross and painful that it became a total bother to her, and putting her down for that, or risking having it removed completely.
So I opted for removal. I didn't really think I had a choice, really. It just wasn't fair to leave something so uncomfortable on her belly like that. Because of her age, anesthesia was a risk, but I thought that losing her on the table trying to make her feel better would be a better thing than having to make the choice to put her down because she was feeling awful. Luckily, the pre-surgery tests--blood work, chest x-ray--showed no issues, and the vet felt she would get through the surgery OK.
And she did!
Of course, she's not totally out of the woods yet. There can still be post-surgery complications, but she seems to be doing well, albeit trying to manage her way around the apartment while wearing a plastic Cone of Tragedy. (What makes it even more tragic is she's losing her sight as well, so there's just no way she can avoid bumping into everything around her.)
For the record, she had her surgery at the Nob Hill Cat Clinic, where I've been taking her for many, many years, and they did a great job. I'd recommend the place highly to anyone with a cat. Especially if you live in the Nob Hill/Polk Street/Tendernob area.
I'm so glad to have my old lady roommate back. I think I'll put on my new, gigantic hat, sit next to my Elizabethan-collared friend, and talk about MUUUUUSIC.
This all began over ten years ago as a weekly email newsletter called "Musty TV" in which I told subscribers about good movies airing that week on cable. Perhaps you were a subscriber. Then I started this blog. Then I started writing about TV for some other Web sites, too. Then my computer broke and I lost all my old "Musty TV" write-ups, and cried and cried--but perhaps I'll be able to recover them some day. And during it all, I watched a hell of a lot of TV. And still do.
I am hitting the road with two other fabulous gals for a week of vegetating in 100+ degree heat. If I don't melt, I may post some pictures during my stay, so check my Flickr page for those.
