5

Jan 11

It’s not called Holiweeklies, I know

Neighborhood lights

I’m not sure why I stopped writing here this month. I got tired, I had too many other things to do, all the usual lame-sounding excuses. No motivation. December has been a very up-and-down month for me. Wonderful Christmas Day, sucky New Year’s. Not much movie watching, but my husband has been going through the entire series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the first time on Netflix Watch Instantly, and I’ve increasingly been sucked into watching them with him. (We’re finishing the final season right now. It is somewhat ridiculous.)

The above photo is a house in my neighborhood. I felt inspired to take photos of neighborhood holiday lights this year, perhaps in part because my neighborhood association put together a luminaria walk at the nearby school. I found out that it’s damned difficult to take successful photos of holiday lights, at least with my camera and my limited photography skill set.

But if you like that sort of thing, I have a whole Flickr set of holiday decor from this year: holiday lights, the luminaria walk, and a few photos from the house. Chip made latkes on Christmas Eve and I have a photo of that too. I missed taking a picture of our Christmas morning breakfast: latkes and bacon. Hey, we make our own holiday. And I have to say that I was really happy with the holiday we had around Christmas this year.

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18

Dec 10

Samurai oatmeal

birthday oatmeal

I had been hearing all kinds of magical, mystical stories about what happens when you cook steel-cut oats overnight in a slow cooker (or Crock Pot, if you’re into that whole brand name thing). I heard especially drool-inducing tales about what happens if you throw apples into the mix. Oh, my. I had never tried steel-cut oats before, being happy enough with the normal kind, but I was very tempted.

I didn’t try it, though. My husband loves his morning oatmeal breakfast but seemed supremely disinterested in the whole steel-cut concept, not to mention he gets a bit mock-y about my cooking unusual things in the slow cooker. Also, we have a rather large slow cooker. I felt like if I experimented with a small amount just for me in the huge Crock Pot, I might wake up to find a smoking black hole in my kitchen counter. With a burnt apple smell. (Yes, I know about the trick of putting a smaller bowl in the cooker and filling the cooker with water, but I was wary.)

However, a few weeks ago, my husband asked me to buy some steel-cut oats when I was at one of the fancy grocery stores, and I took that as my cue. He mocked the slow-cooker idea, arguing that it was easier just to use a saucepan on the stove, but I noticed he didn’t have time to do them on the stovetop. So last night, I decided I would just make a big batch of oats in my big red Crock Pot and see what happened. Oats are not exactly pricey — even if I had to throw out a mess, it would not be terribly heartbreaking. Read on »

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15

Dec 10

Christmas movies: ‘Remember the Night’

It’s the time of year where people start to talk about Christmas movies, and I want my turn. Every year we get new crappy Christmas-themed movies in theaters, as inoffensive and family-friendly as possible, and that’s not what I want to talk about. No Polar Express, no ninety-thousandth remix of The Nutcracker or even A Christmas Carol (although there are several versions of the latter that I like).

What is a Christmas movie, anyway? In my book, it’s a movie that you want to watch when it’s Christmas. You don’t really get a hankering for it in July, although I remember one grad-school summer when AMC was showing It’s a Wonderful Life almost daily and I used to like watching the first half if I stumbled upon it. It can be a movie with one good Christmas scene in it — like Little Women, Meet Me in St. Louis or Holiday. Brazil is set at Christmas time, and perhaps that’s your cup of tea. Lots of people enjoy Die Hard.

Or hell, maybe it’s one that has nothing to do with Christmas at all but you’re used to watching it then. A lot of people grew up watching The Wizard of Oz on network TV at Christmas. I have a fondness for Singin’ in the Rain at this time of year, usually if I am actually wrapping presents. My husband and I go to Alamo Drafthouse on Christmas week every year for their annual movie-and-sliders screening of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Okay, I don’t think that actually qualifies, although we can certainly count Bad Santa, which we often watch on or around Christmas.

I bought a movie on DVD yesterday. I don’t buy a lot of DVDs anymore. The household rule of thumb for DVDs is that they should be movies you plan to watch at least once a year. Otherwise, we’d need a bigger bookcase for them. But I also like to buy older movies that I’ve been waiting to be released on DVD for years and years, not just because I love the movies, but because I want to support these types of movies being on DVD, and the best way to do that is buying them. We have a lot of 1930s movies on DVD for just this reason.

I had just read something online about Christmas movies, and thought about one of my favorites, even though I have only seen it once or twice, and on a whim I did a search on Amazon. Lo and behold, TCM has released a DVD of Remember the Night. This is a 1940 movie written by Preston Sturges (The Lady Eve) and directed by Mitchell Leisen (Midnight). It stars Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck and a lot of familiar character actors, several of which show up again together in It’s a Wonderful Life some years later. Naturally I snapped it up immediately, and it should be here soon.

Remember the Night is the kind of movie you stumble upon while wrapping presents in the back bedroom on Dec. 24 if you want a distraction and are weary of A Christmas Story. At least, that’s how I ended up watching it the first time. Stanwyck is a shoplifter whom MacMurray’s DA has put in jail awaiting trial over Christmas, but when he finds she can’t make bail, he bails her out himself, and even offers to drive her to her family’s home in Indiana for Christmas. It starts out hard-boiled and snappy, but the second half gets a bit sentimental and hell, even corny at times. However, you get to be a little schmaltzy with a Christmas movie, especially with Stanwyck around. Double Indemnity, this is not, not by a long shot.

I want to see Remember the Night again. I’m hoping I still like it, even though it’s been years. I hope I haven’t hyped it too much in my head because it was unavailable to me (TCM shows it annually but we don’t have cable). And … sometimes you just want to watch a sappy Christmas movie, especially if it is counterbalanced with Sturges’ snappy dialogue. I have seen It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street too many times, and White Christmas gets a little annoying in spots, and Bad Santa doesn’t quite satisfy my need for a little unabashed melodrama. I don’t know if I’ll watch it now or save it another week — I’ll have to see if it’s at all interesting to my husband — but I’m looking forward to revisiting this movie.

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14

Dec 10

When random isn’t random

Testing new camera

So my secret plan for posting here every day during Holidailies was this: I have a Flickr badge in the sidebar that displays three random photos from my Flickr set. I would pull up the website, pick one of the photos and post it with a paragraph or two about it. If I really hated all three photos I could refresh, but I hoped to avoid doing that too often.

Unfortunately, I ran into a snag. Apparently the “random” photo selection isn’t really random. It’s only the most recent 100 or so of my photos. And frankly, the last 100 or so photos are not very exciting from a personal writing standpoint: film-fest pictures, snapshots from my neighborhood’s Independence Day parade and a bunch of photos from a local event honoring Spike Lee. I have already written about most of that stuff elsewhere. I could swear that at first, I truly was getting a random selection, but maybe a photo of something recent reminded me of an earlier one. I don’t know.

I spent a lot of time searching Flickr, Google and WordPress and could find no good answer on how to fix this. I want three photos picked randomly from ALL my photos. Apparently I could get a random selection for photos with a certain tag, but which tag do I pick? I don’t want to pick just photos from Austin, as that would leave out any childhood and vacation snapshots. I don’t want photos from just one year, either. Read on »

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9

Dec 10

Gilded branches

Gilded branches

I picked the photo with the star for my holiday cards, and also ordered cards with the reels-and-candle mantelpiece to send in a quasi-professional way. I liked the photo with the ogling Santa, which I took in Tucson last year, but I didn’t want to get anything too overtly Christmas-y, although my parents may even interpret the star as religious if they choose. I like a holiday card that’s open to multiple interpretations.

I suppose I also could have considered the above photo, which looks holiday-ish in a generic sort of way. There are a few traditional hanging ornaments but they’re subtle. And I have an odd fondness for winter holiday decorations in Texas that don’t have snow, because we never have snow. How do you portray a Texas Christmas? Cowboy boots with holly are too obvious. Dead grass is not decorative.

The photo above was taken at the Four Seasons hotel in downtown Austin last year. I don’t normally hang around at the Four Seasons — it’s lovely but I always feel a little grungy and underdressed in there. Although when I go for press events, often the “celebrity” I am interviewing looks even grungier than I do. Read on »

Posted in movies, photos | 2 Comments

8

Dec 10

Why don’t I ever pick the easy way?

Marfa Film Festival

It is a busy time of the year for me. I have to watch a lot of movies. Oh, pity me, all of you, I have to sit on a comfy futon or in a not-crowded theater and watch movies that haven’t opened in theaters yet. My life is so sad. And because I can’t usually bring my husband as a guest to these screenings, I will probably have to see some of the year’s top movies twice. The agony! The suffering! Can we get Warren Zevon over here please for a rousing chorus of “Poor Pitiful Me”?

Ahem. Anyway. Lots of movies to watch, Holidailies to keep an eye on (today’s tip: check your entry after you post it to make sure you posted a link and not a discussion post that won’t include your link), and the general holiday season to prepare for. We don’t do a lot of holiday prep in the house, but last night I was proud to have decorated our pink and sparkly holiday tree while watching a movie that I suspected (correctly) wouldn’t need my full attention.

While pulling out the ornaments and things from the storage boxes, I also pulled out the Christmas/holiday cards. I was surprised. Usually I have a couple of boxes of cards — some leftover from other years, some bought on sale, and so forth. But last year I must have cleaned them out pretty well and forgotten about it. Oops. Read on »

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7

Dec 10

Oh, for a milkshake

I drink MY milkshake.

Today’s prompt over at Holidailies is “guilty pleasures,” and while I normally use my own Sekrit Method of prompting myself, a guilty pleasure immediately leapt to mind as I was posting a thread about the prompt to the website. See that photo above? One of my biggest guilty pleasures are the chocolate milkshakes at Alamo Drafthouse theaters.

I have rules about the milkshakes. I am only allowed to consume them during film festivals (or really long movie marathons). I try to limit myself to one shake per festival, too. This means we’re talking about perhaps four milkshakes in a year, tops. People tell me the vanilla milkshakes are divine but you know me, I can’t resist chocolate. The espresso milkshakes sound wonderful but I did promise my husband I would stay away from milkshakes with the word “espresso” in them after I had one at The Hideout and practically suffered a personality change, and not for the better.

I visited a dietician today, recommended by my doctor. My cholesterol level is a little higher than we would like. My weight is rather higher than anyone would like. I was worried I was going to be subjected to a Shame Session but the dietician turned out to be helpful and friendly, and gave me a lot of good advice that didn’t hinge upon me changing my diet too radically. Or so I hope. Read on »

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6

Dec 10

Flashback: The Birth of Holidailies

My archives from previous incarnations of my blog/online journal/whatever are all hidden and password-protected. It’s like re-reading a high-school diary: really embarrassing, especially the unrequited crushes, and even the writing itself to a certain extent. But there’s still some good stuff in there.

And because it is the first day of Holidailies 2010, it seems like a great time to share a couple of entries from 2000, back when my website went under the name Anhedonia (yeah, that’s embarrassing too), and 2001, when it was Celluloid Eyes. These are just excerpts, although I’m tempted to include things like the paragraph where I said Rick Perry couldn’t do too much damage to Texas in what I was sure would be his brief stint as governor. Don’t ever ask me to predict politics.

I’ve made a few notes, which are in square brackets and italics.

December 5, 2000: days of treats and rants

I was rummaging around on the ThreeWay Action board [now The Simplest] yesterday and found a topic about “treats” that many people who keep journals give to their readers or notify list members for holidays or special occasions. My response was that, er, I thought that sharing my witty and wonderful prose with the world was treat enough. I couldn’t imagine making cards or sending little candy boxes or whatever else it is that these people do, even though many of them probably have more readers than I. I was admittedly being a smartass when I posted but honestly, I barely have time to write the entries, much less shower everyone with homemade gifts. Does this look like the Martha Stewart site to you? Read on »

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1

Dec 10

The White House

My dollhouse, renovated

My dad and his dad built the above dollhouse for me and my sister, somewhere around 1977 or 1978, I believe. I wish I had photos of the dollhouse as I grew up with it. The exterior part of the house had been painted a rather unappealing blue and yellow, perhaps because those were the colors my grandfather had in his workshed, perhaps because they were both color-blind. The interior was unpainted and unfurnished.

We weren’t allowed to mess around with paint, but over the years I did quite a bit of interior decorating on the house. Carpet samples furnished rugs in several of the rooms. A silvery “blanket” given to marathon finishers was cut up to make mirrored walls and ceilings in one room. (It was the 1970s.) Another room had wallpaper inexpertly glued to it. Furniture was made from all sorts of containers.

The dollhouse wasn’t a standard size — my dad made it big enough for Barbie dolls to use, at least on the first two floors. The attic was too small for Barbies, but the perfect size for Dawn dolls. We had a lot of hand-me-down Dawn and Rockflower dolls from my older cousin, and they had a really groovy time in the attic. The occasional GI Joe doll, or Daddy Warbucks, or some other action figure often showed up, but for the most part the dollhouse was a female enclave. Read on »

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30

Nov 10

Where are the Books?

Stained-glass divider

I filled out a survey for the local public library system today. I may have gotten a little worked up. I am trying to calm down again now.

About 18 months ago, a new branch library opened in my neighborhood. I had been waiting for that library for something like 10 years, from the days when I lived in the raccoon-infested apartment not far from my current home. There was this sign on an empty lot that promised a new library, year after year, to replace the one in the strip mall. I went to a planning session and I saw a beautiful new facility and I was so excited. I went to the groundbreaking. I went to the grand opening. Look at all the photos I took of the new building.

The grand opening was crowded. Everyone wanted to see the gorgeous glass art and the cozy area for children and the nice meeting room and the impressive collection of DVDs. But something was missing: books. I told myself that the crowds had probably checked out many of the books — the kids stacks looked practically empty — and that in a few weeks or a month, I could visit the branch and browse happily. Read on »

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