Is it super cheesy that I want to go see this?
It’s exhibiting at the Pacific Science Center Oct 23, 2010 – Jan 30, 2011. I guess I can’t get away with the excuse that my kids really want to see it…!
In this era of the information superweb with its Amazons, its Zappos and its iTunes stores, I’m always a little surprised that those bizarre QVC/Home Shopping Networks still exist. Do people really sit around for a half hour just to see all the different angles of that commemorative eagle plate before they order? Why watch these networks with their ugly sets and bad lighting when you can at least watch some infomercial with some over-the-top guy selling exercise machines? Or there’s always NCIS. Do these channels still make money?
Not that I have any interest in finding out the answer. I judiciously ignore them when flipping through channels. The other night I was scrolling through the program guide and a intriguing listing in the swampland that is the collection of shopping channels caught my eye – “Hello Kitty Diamonique” is what it said.
I know Hello Kitty. I know diamonds (I came up with the word “bling”). But “diamonique” wasn’t a word in any language I know. And I know Hello Kitty is historically and ethnically Japanese and it didn’t sound like a Japanese word at all. So I had to stop and tune in.
Here is what I saw:
I don’t watch the Daily Show very often, not because I don’t like it, but I just don’t really think about putting it in the rotation. It’s damn funny but for some reason I always forget that it’s on. Anyway. I just watched these clips (they take a while) and I have to say the first one especially is pretty darn depressing. I realize the Daily Show is meant to be comedy. But isn’t it sad that there’s so much truth to what Jon Stewart says? Why is a comedian so much more intelligent than like 90% of the news pundits out there?
Before going to PA for Thanksgiving Eve, Sara, Amy (oh and Sara’s friend Karin) went to see “Twilight” the movie. It was what it was – definitely much better than my expectations. I just watched it again this weekend with my mom and I liked it even better the second time around. I think it helped to have moved beyond not accepting that the casting didn’t live up to my mind’s eye of the book characters. I really liked the style of the filming and the color palette. They definitely weren’t going for a Disney-like full color quality. Of course they adjusted the plot points a bit but overall they stayed surprisingly close to the book. Robert Pattinson, as Edward, was in fact pretty yummy but we caught a couple minutes of of him as Cedric in “The Goblet of Fire” on tv last night and he looks much better w/out white face paint and lipstick. Too bad he dies in that one.
The baseball scene turned out really cool and the end credits really rocked. Those were my favorite parts. Sadly none of it was actually filmed in Forks or PA. Which was a bummer. Forks the movie town was a cute little borough, definitely wet, but still cute which isn’t the real Forks, and the high school was this classic multi-story number you’d see, well I don’t know where you’d see it but not in Forks. My mom even started laughing at that first shot of the school (and so did Amy and I the first time around). The brief scene in PA wasn’t at all like PA either.
Our PA (the REAL place) Thanksgiving was great as usual. 17 people counting Mr. Jonah-cakes who enjoyed his cauliflower and cheerios.
Bella Italia: The sign lets you know about Bella & Edward
On Saturday Slanky and I ditched the kid and went out to dinner and a movie. We decided to try Bella Italia because we’ve never been there. You “Twilight” fans will note its reference in the book. We told ourselves we definitely weren’t going there because of the book but I think we were a little curious as to how much they’d play it up. The Peninsula in general has benefited a lot from the Meyer-mania. You can read about that here. My mom told us that there were some block-wide celebrations happening at all the businesses down town next to the theater showing “Twilight” when it first opened and we saw this display at a clothing store a couple storefronts down from Bella Italia.
Vampire-like clothes? Not sure. The apples in the display are a nice touch.
Apple in display
Dinner at Bella Italia far exceeded our expectations (Is this starting to sound familiar? I think at this point I should just stop having expectations because I’ve been wrong so many times lately!). We started with a calamari appi (sautéed with olives, artichokes, tomatoes & roasted garlic on polenta) and it was perfect. The sauce was good, calamari was fresh and cooked well, the artichokes worked surprisingly well and the olives and garlic didn’t overpower anything. We wiped down the plate with our leftover bread. It was that good. We also shared a small Caesar salad and the croutons were house-made – crunchy on the outside with a little bit of buttery chewiness on the inside, totally good. Slanky had a mushroom ravioli (which I pointed out to him, was what “Bella” had, he didn’t remember) and I had a smoked salmon fettuccini. I think Slanky enjoyed his and mine was great too. I’ve had better versions of this dish in the past (my personal preference is with no tomatoes but this version had them) but this was nothing to complain about. The salmon was locally smoked and delicious and they did not skimp on it. The dish was so big that I took half of it home. We had a good white wine but I can’t remember what that was. Later we headed to the movie. We saw “Quantum of Solace” which sucked. I could say more about that but I won’t. In hindsight I should have forced Slanky to see “Twilight” instead.
an interview clip with one of the actors in the Twilight movie: The Fun Starts About Three Minutes In…
ha!
Allow me to climb back on my hobby horse. Remember back when we were in college and I would never shut up about how great “My So-Called Life” was? Over the summer I got addicted to “Lost” b/c my dad loaned me the first three seasons. I had to watch the fourth right away so Jeremy figured out how to do it online. While we were at the ABC web site I discovered the full episode player which has three great episodes of MSCL available to view. People, its just as good as I remember. I promise. Anyway, treat yourself to an episode or just humor me and tell me you did. It really makes you wonder why there is so much crap.
I know, I know, there isn’t much sport involved in poking fun at Sarah Palin. After all, she supplies a ridiculous amount of ammunition. However, this video is really quite funny. It’s just too bad the amount of people that won’t see how much of this video is based in truth. Unfortunately, you have to sit through a commercial before watching the video, but it is worth the wait.
Palin and Hillary speak against sexism in politics
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So we’ve been watching a little more TV since we have get to hang out with the little J man. We have Comcast cable, which I love to hate. Or just hate. But anyway, something I’ve been getting a kick out of lately — the switched their online menus last year. Used to have a system created by Microsoft. The new system is annoying, but I get a kick out of the descriptions you get when browsing through the programs.All the movies have a 1 -4 star rating. And there doesn’t seem to be much grade inflation — there’s pretty few 4 star movies and 1 stars pop up pretty often. But there’s a serious disconnect between the star rating and the description. While the ratings seem to be critical, negative words are few and far between. In fact, 1 star movies quite often have glowing reviews.Witness this review of Haven, a 1 star movie starring Orlando Bloom (emphasis mine):”Interlocking and cleverly involving tales of love, greed, drugs, racism and double-crosses in the Cayman Islands mark this pulse-pounding crime drama. Orlando Bloom plays a fisherman who falls for a black islander and runs afoul of her brother.”
so is anyone keeping up on project runway? the finale just happened and now that i’m caught up i have to say i’ve enjoyed this season the best so far mostly because there wasn’t as much cattiness as previous seasons and because i totally agreed with the end result. and some of the challenges were pretty damned fun!
on a completely unrelated note, amy forwarded this to me:
try it out!
Here are a few highlights from our time in Bend so far:
- Rowan gets up at 1AM and won’t go back to sleep.
- Niamh is terrified of Una, Skipper, and Elwood. Yesterday Niamh and the dogs took turns being locked up in a bedroom. We found one of our baby gates and will block the dogs in the kitchen today
- Rowan and I watched/enjoyed Ice Age
- Niamh ate cat litter (and not the clean variety)
- I may have broken part of the hot tub. I hope it is still under warranty
- Elwood (cat) urinated in the back bedroom some time ago and it smells horrible. The Winchells put all sorts of chemicals on it, but it doesn’t seem to have helped.
- The Daigles have threatened not to come since they don’t want to stay in a smelly room.
- Part of the carpet in the back bedroom has now been removed
- Multiple people were in tears yesterday
Stay tuned….I’m sure things will really get exciting on Thursday when the Kershners arrive and Friday when the Daigles arrive.