Movies/TV

Highlights of 2010

This highlights list marks my 5th year of attempting to sum up a year’s worth of life, and with that fact you’d think I’d be able to streamline this process, but no. Once again, I’m still thinking about these things even though we’ve already begun the new year. Should I take notes along the way so that I don’t just remember what happened in December? Hmmmm… It’s a thought.

Favorite Restaurant (or where we frequented most): Sadly, we slowed way down on our restaurant going activities this year. After Corbin was born an infant and a toddler really took the fun out of it for a while. Ok, I guess that’s not totally true. We just got lazy and exhausted so take-out seemed to work out much better on a lot of occasions. So, I think I’ll have to put in a subcategory here: Favorite Take-out (I’ll get to that later).
Restaurants, hmm, I guess I’ll venture to say Zayda Buddy’s since they are kid friendly and have interesting comfort food, not to mention a great bloody mary and tater tot Tuesday. What’s not to love? I think we went there a lot in 2010. Hint to thyself, the place that might make our list for 2011 is Zeeks Pizza. Your kids can get LOUD in there and no one notices and it’s a laid back place with serviceable pizza and a few decent beers on tap.
For take-out I’d have to go with the Lunchbox Laboratory, which just closed to move down to South Lake Union. It wasn’t something we could do all the time but it was definitely fun to indulge on their awesome burgers and shakes once in a while. It’s a real bummer that they are moving.

Top Album (not necessarily made in 2010 but what I listened to most frequently): We listened to a lot more music this year, which makes this category a tougher one to narrow down. I’ll go with The XX though. I listened to their first album consistently all year. It was especially good for calming music before bedtime.

Top 3 Books I read in 2010: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins and the Millennium series by Stieg Larsson (sorry, lumping that together).

Best Coffee Shop:
El Diablo on Queen Anne. This place has been my go-to for coffee and morning naps for Corbin since Jonah began preschool. I’m scared that my days of lingering here are numbered because Corbin is on the move now. He doesn’t seem to like letting his mama sit sipping coffee while he hangs out. They have great mochas made with Mexican chocolate, one of the coffee dudes there is hilarious and a true foam artist and the atmosphere is totally comfy and quirky.

Favorite Movie: We still aren’t doing great on seeing movies, something we are going to change this year. That being said, I did get the chance to see the new Harry Potter (Deathly Hallows 1) and I thought it was really well done. I guess with that adaptation they had little opportunity to really Disney-wash it out since the book really contains no happy-go-lucky spirit but I thought the color palette was good and spot on for the mood of the story at this point.

Best thing about 2010: Obviously, the arrival of my baby boy, the baby bear, the boy who doesn’t sleep, the boy who is going to cause me a million little heart attacks in 2011.

Ok, who in Seattle’s with me?

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…!

Yes, QVC still exists. Here is what they sell.

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:

Hello Kitty

hellokitty2

Daily Show Humor

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?

Thanksgiving on the Peninsula oh and some stuff about “Twilight”

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's First Date.

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.

Vampire-like clothes? Not sure. The apples in the display are a nice touch.


Apple in display

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.

sorry, i can’t help myself…

an interview clip with one of the actors in the Twilight movie: The Fun Starts About Three Minutes In…

ha!

Because I’m still not over it

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.

Hillary and Sarah unite to address the nation

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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Something a little lighter

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.”

one thing has nothing to do with the other

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:

http://www.dothetest.co.uk/

try it out!