And mom's invited herself to stay overnight with me the night everyone was supposed to have left me to my blissful peace and quiet.

What Are You Reading?

Congratulations to both of y'all!

The Sundays – Can't Be Sure
Gruff Rhys – Now That The Feeling Has Gone
Sleater-Kinney – No Anthems
Ladybug Transistor – For No Other
Johann Sebastian Bach – Goldberg Variation No. 5 (Gould)
New York Dolls – Bad Girl
Lightning Love – Bobby Thompson
Suede – The Drowners
Roxy Music – Grey Lagoons
Traffic – Means To An End
Matt…

I had an awesome conversation with a new friend last night over beers.

Made a North African-inspired lamb tart for a staff recipe contest at work. Ground lamb cooked with spices (inc. turmeric, oregano and cinnamon) and baked in a tart crust on a bed of tomato sauce with a standard tart custard and shreds here and there of mozzarella.

I had a pint of Bell's Two-Hearted and a "short" of Short's Huma Lupa Licious IPA (which is what I meant when I asked for "Short"—i.e. a pint—but it turned out for the best, and it's good to know that I can order in those quantities, as it'd leaven my bar time a little).

Hooray This Shit

One of my best friends is going through a rough medical time right now; a whole host of (largely food-related) allergies, and in what are apparently pretty rare combinations, have descended over the past few months to the point where she's thinking about moving out of the area altogether to a “more rural” location as…

I WANT MY FAIR SHARE I WANT WHAT IS COMING TO ME

Fair enough (though the landscape's still throwing me off; I'm originally from Louisiana but went to college near Roanoke and it was bugging the hell out of me); I guess I wouldn't have minded it so much had Siegel's film not handled it better and if the apparent streamlining had left the movie with anything…

Holy shit, Dariba Diaries sounds awesome.

I get it, but you'll be screwing yourself (not that you wouldn't necessarily have other issues with the show on watch). To each their own, however.

In fairness, there are plenty of art house liberals who'd feel uncomfortable with the idea too; I don't know how conscious it is on the part of filmmakers or audiences, but I'd have figured the AVC brickbats could easily handle such reticence.

Yeah; it's understandable in a way (and I heartily chime in with commenters elsewhere that Coppola trying to "deal with that shit" might have been even more disastrous), but in a movie about the Civil War? Maybe in some Appalachian holler (and even Pharaoh's Army, with Chris Cooper and Patricia Clarkson, addressed the…

"Beautiful — spectacularly so, at times — but dumb.”

The Little Hours is showing up at my arthouse in a week or two. Thinking about checking it out, but the grumpiness I felt over forking ten bucks to see The Beguiled might repeat on paying that much to see Fred Armisen. We'll see.

The Beguiled: Steamy, Spanish moss-laden Virginia swamps (?), the convenient absence of slaves at a well-scrubbed Southern girls' school, a weird lack of affect that comes across as beautiful but empty, much unlike the okay but strangely more vital Don Siegel film original. Everyone's more or less fine in it (Dunst…

This was some nice good news to get on a (personally) thought-provoking day.

So the aliens come to Earth and strangle little kids? Thank you, Japan!!!