My girlfriend drove a 2002 Mercedes SUV for a couple years. In addition to getting abysmal gas mileage, every time she took the thing in to the dealership to be serviced, the cost was never less than $500, whether anything had been malfunctioning or not.

One day she got to the dealership to drop it off late and all the Mercedes loaner cars had been issued, so they handed her the keys to a Toyota.

Big mistake.

She found she was driving a vehicle notorious for its dependability and hassle-free low-maintenance which cost half the price of her Mercedes and wouldn't be so much like a temperamental Teutonic filly. She sold her Mercedes and is now on to driving her second Prius, for which she has nothing but praise.

I was piddling around with my camera on Thursday, taking pictures of flowers, when I saw this pretty little pair of birds. I don't know what type of finch this is, but they were a dandy little pair. I think the female has a bit of fuzz in her beak for nest-building, but I'm guessing. Maybe she felt like wearing a fancy hat that day.

And speaking of personal adornment, can we talk about the grooming of the male of our species?

OK, if men insist on imitating the grooming of women, then at least get it right, ok? I'm talking about the epidemic of young men who are over-plucking or over-waxing the eyebrow area.

Sanjaya on American Idleness is a prime example. Note the bold black furry caterpillars above his eyes. What in those dense forests of manhood could possibly indicate such an abrupt terminus between the brows, leaving a gap so wide one could dry-dock a 747 thereon? I think he's rapidly hurtling toward Xerxes territory, if you know what I mean. Anyway, the growth is so dense that to have such a clean field between the two brows looks utterly unnatural. Then again, if he looked like his natural mono-browed self, the little girls might be crying for another reason.

For all his onanistic prancing onstage, at least Constantine Maroulis didn't over-shoot the brow runway by a mile, and he was a hairy dude. Actually, his brows look nice and may actually be the one aspect of his physiognomy which wasn't over-thunk to a repellent degree.

Quite a few young men I'm seeing about town look like they've been tweezed into oblivion, and frankly, this disturbs me. By all means, mow the thatches of reeds that come bursting forth from ears and nostrils (heads-up, dentists!), and even trim or pluck the two-inchers that rear their heads from the field of the brow and flap boisterously in the wind. But try to look a little less girly. Really. I think I speak for all the gals when I say that you need to be gentlemen and step back and allow us to be the pretty ones.

OK, I posted this image over at Diorama today, but I liked this one enough to post it here, too. This pair of mallards has been hanging around my dirty pool, paddling about and generally keeping my little doglet all lathered up. This is one of the last in a series in which doglet goes all the way around the pool and tries to sneak up on the ducks, who were onto her all along.

I can't believe Chris Sligh fell off his game on American Idol the past couple weeks. He's technically such a good singer. Perhaps it's just too wearing for him to keep up the whole facade-- he's much more clever than the average bear. Wit is a rare commodity on that show. I also thought the guy who did the Cure song was way worse than Chris.

I also read in several places on the net that Gwen Stefani was incensed at the idea of Sanjaya singing a No Doubt song. I don't blame her-- he's the entertainment equivalent of a piece of burned toast sitting on a plate for a day, soggy. Ew. And all the while he looks so pleased with himself, too.

Lakisha and Melinda are great on that show, but they are starting to bore me, a little. Paula on Tuesday night? Yo, dawg-- that wasn't working for me. It was just okay.

Top Design is fairly exciting. I was pleased they sent that whiny boy home last week, but I was very sorry to see Goil go - he was so good-natured, and I liked his red hotel room. Carisa is a pain in the ass, but I think she does a good job and has a great design sensibility. WTF was up with Andrea's room this week? I thought they would send her home for sure. Oh well.

WARNING TO MY DAD: Please don't watch this video - I want you to have a happy life. Having seen it myself, my own life is tainted forever. It's not too late for you. Save yourself.

Some other folks have posted their "worst video ever" entries.

I don't know if I'd call The Stroke by Billy Squier the worst, but I will call it cringe-worthy, which, of course, sends me into transports of delight. Is it the way Billy sports his moose knuckle? Is it the skin-crawling lyrics? Is it the groin-centric photography? Maybe it's both three.

What's funny is that now I'm getting the urge to work up a karaoke version of this little gem. Look out, hapless bar patrons: The Stroke is coming to a venue near you. Run for your lives!

In the early 80s, Mom wouldn't allow me to have MTV. I looked up this video last weekend and I have to say that now, 25 years later, I realize she was protecting me. Thanks Mom.

In closing, I have to say in defense of Billy Squier, I love Everybody Wants You.

I've puzzled over this. My sister and I had lunch at Stoneleigh P's on Maple yesterday, and either we saw former soccer star Clive Owen, or his identical twin is in town. Oh, then my Eureka moment was this morning, when I remembered there's an international film festival happening in Dallas right now. I went to their site, just to take a peek, and no snaps of Mr. Owen were to be seen, but Bill Paxton is in town.

My favorite line from Aliens: "Game over! Game over!"

On contradictions, and other rabbit-chases...

OK. There's been a bee in my bonnet about this for a very long time.

I find it laughable that in (this is my own generous estimation) 4 centuries of fine-instrument-recorded global weather phenomena, people have extrapolated they know so much about our planet's internal thermostat that they can definitively state we are on an out-of-control trajectory toward being burned to a crisp.

My understanding was that the position of a "scientist" is to observe and not to be swayed by emotion, politics, or the hubris that is endemic in human nature. Yet we are told scientists are all agog over the havoc industrialization has wrought on our environment.

Well, I would say to you, if the earth is 5000 years old, as strict adherents to a biblical time-line claim, then yes, 400 years is long enough to detect a trend. However, if the earth is millions or billions of years old, then the millennia of modern bipedal humanoids are but a blip on the map and can't be considered substantial enough to indicate any type of trend. The fact is, before humans crawled from the primordial ooze, there was a cycle in which the whole of the planet was alternately covered in ice and sultry, rotten swampiness. These pre-human aeons of meteorological extremes can't be blamed on the use of fossil fuels or on Al Gore's monthly $30,000 electric bill in his Tennessee mansion. (By all means, stay comfortable, Al!)

I predict that in very short order, if we continue to use electricity the way we do today, all our electric bills will vastly outpace the cost of rents and/or mortgages.

What baffles me is that having been born in the 60s, solar energy collection for domestic use has been available my whole life, yet has not developed into more common usage. Oh, sure, we have light-powered calculators, but ask yourself why solar energy on larger scale has not been developed. I can tell you why, and you only have to look in your pocket or handbag for the answer: the cell phone industry is a great illustrator of a loss-leader. Cell phone companies give away what can be a very expensive little appliance, because the net gain with a one- or two-year contract with the user will reap many more thousands of dollars than the actual expense of the appliance. However, if you buy and maintain your own solar collection system which helps you to be off-the-grid in your home, the sale is a one-shot-deal for the manufacturer, and after that, you'll not be paying anyone for the countless thousands in electrical savings you'll reap by simply converting the brutal sun that will be hammering down on your property anyway. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that electrical companies have bought copyrights to any evolving solar technologies to keep the public dependent on using the energy they provide from lignite-coal-burning facilities. Remember, they want to keep the money rolling in, and we've hastened to accommodate them at every juncture.

I'm not saying everyone needs to rush out and convert their home systems, but I think we have to be smarter in the way we build homes, and in how we use electricity. The fact is we have to find some balance between the manifest-destiny-plunderer mentality and the lesbian-seagull-neo-hippie.

Just don't come between me and my hairdryer and my precious, precious deodorant.

Actually, we'll know it's the end of the world as we know it when we all start to smell like ourselves again. Perish the thought!

Ladybugs' Picnic from early days of Sesame Street, courtesy of master animator Bud Luckey. Bud has worked on lots of brilliant animated projects you've probably seen, but my favorite work of his by far is the delightful Boundin' which was the opening animation for The Incredibles. Good stuff.

Here's another shot of the W Hotel taken the same night as the previous picture I showed a couple days ago. The camera was hand-held in this photo, too, but a bit more steady. The truth is, I like the look of the blue neon when it's blurry - I think it's prettier that way. In fact, I think few things we perceive as "pretty" in life will stand up to the harsh light of close inspection-- sometimes a little fuzzy mystery adds to the appeal. Think of it as facing life with a beer-goggles approach: better the nice idea than the bad reality. Just remember to keep those beer-googles well-primed.

I've been feeling guilty about my blog, lately, as I've not regaled you with some of the madcap stuff to which I am privy. I realize for too long I have deprived you of white trash tales of terror from distant relatives, so here goes with one particularly vivid story. I hope you will appreciate this, as it is absolutely true and not gleaned from a Jerry Springer episode.

My first cousin Jay married a vile creature named Charlene in the 70s. If I remember correctly, Charlene is one of about a dozen children born to a wily, strange pair of hicks who probably never had a full set of teeth between them. Charlene had no more joined our family than she was busy trying to pick fights with my grandmother. Classy.

Charlene is a harsh, strange little creature. Her hair is dark and hangs limp around her pale, pinched face. Her eyes have the pig-like effect of glossy black buttons punched into a potato. In my earliest memories, I recall her in the full bloom of pregancy, resplendent in a raspberry pair of bell-bottomed maternity pants, chain-smoking and berating my poor cousin Jay who seemed helpless to defend himself against her constant harangues. Now that's multi-tasking when you can chainsmoke, be a shrieking harpy and make a baby all at once. From their loins sprang 3 children who had the grave misfortune of taking after their mother.

Throughout the years, it was widely known in their small town that Charlene had affairs with local ne'er-do-wells. Eventually, word of this got around to Jay, who was very beaten-down by this entire situation. I suspect Jay never confronted Charlene.

About 5 years ago and after about 25 years of marriage, one of their children found a video tape in the VCR of Charlene engaging in amorous activities with a man who was not their father. Jay came home and they showed him the video, and he was devastated. Charlene came in later and he confronted her with the evidence. Like the brazen hussy she is, Charlene shrugged the video off by saying that video was very old, having been made a long time earlier(as if that made it ok).

Rather than wait for their father to respond, one of their children jumped into the fray and said "Nuh-unh, mom, you shot that with that tripod you bought last week! We didn't have a tripod before then." He also pointed out that the date was on the video tape.

So. Very. Busted.

Having been so crassly confronted by evidence of her faithlessness, Jay had no choice but to face facts and accept that his marriage was over.

Jay does very hard work in the outdoors, a physically grueling job, and his face is heartbreaking to behold, looking about 25 years older than he is. Lines of worry and care traverse his face like the crevices of a canyon, and he has the look of someone for whom nothing has ever gone quite right-- someone who has never once caught a lucky break. If Jad had a home where he was nurtured and supported instead of treated so badly, I think he wouldn't have been so careworn and beaten down by the world.

I wonder how he came to be susceptible to Charlene's reptilian charms, because his spirit seems one far too fragile to bear up under such abuse? My heart goes out to him, but you really can't fix a life gone wrong for someone else. Kinda funny, but very sad and very bizarre.

W Hotel, Cirque, Victory Station

Well, my girlfriend had to cancel our karaoke date, so she asked me to come over to her house Friday night instead for a big poker game. I've played Texas Hold 'Em quite a bit online, but I've never played poker with live humans. Eek. Either I'll be amazing, or I'll be abysmal. I don't expect a middling performance from myself.

Now I'm reading Streets of Laredo by Larry McMurtry, sequel to Lonesome Dove. McMurtry writes so brilliantly about women that I suspect he's actually listened to a woman once or twice in his life.

I had lunch Thursday with a friend at a restaurant in the Trammell Crow Center downtown. Fancy place, that. Actually, I don't believe I've ever eaten a meal in a skyscraper, before. There's something odd about 40-odd stories of humans stacked on top of the floor you're in. The food was amazing, though, when I could stop thinking of all the humans I was holding up. Herculean burdens, and the women who wield them...

OK. I haven't blurbed on my tv habit in yonks. Lately I've even been missing some favorite shows as my DVR has gone wrong, and I've been too busy to care.

HOWEVER...


ROME?

ROME!

Rome goes to 11 this week. It's got eleven. They changed the knobs out and now they can turn it up to 11. Holy crap!

I don't know why, Mark Antony was a better match for Atia than he is for Cleopatra. M.A. & Atia were equally solipsistic and diabolical, whereas Cleopatra is a drug-addled force of nature making the mere human M.A. seem out of his depth. And wow, what a pervy turkey Octavian has turned out to be. Who knew?

Anyway - love that one.

Top Design, anyone? Carisa annoys me a bit, but I think they manipulate the footage to make her seem like more of an ass than she is. I suspect she's no bitchier than anyone else on the show. Well, except maybe Goil. I love Goil - he's so cute. I think the guy they sent home this week - Michael - was far more annoying than Carisa.


American Idol, of course, sucked me in from the beginning by having a few genuinely talented people on the show. WTF is up with the soggy-toast under-energized Sanjaya? He gets up and sashays around the stage like he's rolling around a bag with a valium-drip. He's about 17 and seems positively geezer-like. I LOVE curly-top Chris Sligh - you can tell he's got an over-developed sense of irony and that he's not being taken in by it all. One of his friends in the audience held up a sign that read "bringing chubby back" and "fro patrol" which is an obvious dig at last season's winner who kept intoning "Soul Patrol!" in the little wrap-up interview with Ryan Seacrest after he performed each episode.

Anyway, in Tuesday night's episode, a pre-pubescent girl was crying as though she were witnessing the rebirth of the very Beatles or Elvis. She cried and cried and the camera kept showing her-- I predict she is now a social pariah at her middle-school. She's the Star Wars Kid of American Idol. She'll commit suicide. Her family will sue. It could be ugly.

I started watching 24 about 3 episodes into the season, and then my DVR started messing up a few weeks ago, so I'm back off it. Liked it, but don't know if I'll pick it up again. I'm planning to resist the new Bravo series about hairdressers - for some reason, that one is sounding resistible to me. Also, I'm not pleased by House being almost always pre-empted by American Idol shoving its fat ass into his time-slot. *Harumph*

On to movies...

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I loved 300 - fantastic movie. My favorite moment in the film is after the first battle scene, the Spartans are walking among the dying Persians and dispatching them to Valhalla or Big Rock Candy Mountain, or wherever dead Persians go, and Leonidas is standing by, eating an apple and talking to his Captain who is also going about the business of dealing the death blow to the enemy men. Someone runs up to tell that an emissary is approaching- that it is a group too small to be an attack party, and Leonidas keeps eating his apple, his men keep killing the dying Persians, and Leonidas says "there's no reason we shouldn't be civilized." It made me giggle.

A friend has invited me to a karaoke thing Thursday night. Just what I need. So now the dilemma: Do I sing You Ain't Woman Enough or (Hold Me Closer) Tony Danza? Do I channel one of the queens of country or a queen from the rock genre? Actually, my ultimate fantasy karaoke would be a lounge-version of Jethro Tull's Aqualung. My version would be oozing velveeta as I sang "Hey!" *wink* "Aqualuu-ung!"


I know: it'll never happen, but it could have been so nice!

I've always been musically-oriented, and I like feeling like I know what's around the next corner, music-wise. I've never been one to obsess over what's on the radio--too pedestrian-- but being a movie-buff has served my musical tastes well. One of the best ways to discover good music that is a little off the beaten path is the soundtrack compilation, particularly of more art-house cinema.

Here are a few of my favorite soundtracks, and why I like them, in no particular order.

Until the End Of The World - Various artists - from the ubiquitous film by Wim Wenders
This was the sequel to Wings of Desire, but fell a little flat - the plot was convoluted and difficult to digest. Still, any Wim Wenders film is worth seeing once. Honorable mention to the soundtrack from Wings Of Desire, which is full of lovely, yearning cello, and the deliciously ghoulish Nick Cave. Ah, the perennial allure of the doom-crooner, extra-bad-boy of rock'n'roll who ties damsels to the railroad tracks.

Naked Lunch - Soundtrack by Fort Worth genius Ornette Coleman. Coleman's style is astonishing and can be incredibly demanding listening. However, this soundtrack--while noodle-some and all over the map in a good way-- contains some of his tightest and most compelling compositions, in my opinion. Love this one. It's very mood-inspiring in an ultra-hip, beatnik sort of way. Good poker background music, if you're playing with the hep set.

Romeo Is Bleeding - Mark Isham - Generally, I'm into about any soundtrack by Mark Isham - he sets mood brilliantly. This soundtrack also features the sublime "Bird Alone" by Abbey Lincoln, and a fantastic track by A.J. Croce, son of Jim Croce.


Stealing Beauty - Various artists - one of the best soundtracks EVAH, baby. LOVE this. Run out and buy it. NOW. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Grab your bonnet, hop in the chariot and get this soundtrack. Standouts include Portishead, Mazzy Star (favorite!), Cocteau Twins, Bootsy Collins, Nina Simone, John Lee Hooker and lots of other yummy stuff. I was pleased the powers-that-be saw fit to leave the Hole track from the movie out of this compilation. This is my favorite whilst floating in the pool.

Of course, Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs get big points for delectable soundtracks which are a walk through odd pockets of the 50s, 60s and 70s.

Any film by Michael Mann will have superb music, but in my opinion the ultimate soundtrack to his films has got to be Last Of The Mohicans - incredibly compelling and just plain old gorgeousness. His film Manhunter had a fantastic soundtrack that set the mood masterfully, but I don't think that soundtrack is even available any more, and the film was pretty obscure to begin with.

I love the jazz-baby era music which was popular in the 1920s and 1930s. I'm sure that somewhere there's a compilation of great hits of that era, but I haven't really looked. I have found treasures of this era in the soundtracks for Bullets Over Broadway and also for Henry & June.
Tango, anyone?

Anyway - do you have a favorite soundtrack to recommend to me? There's room in my head for more good music.

OH- My sister reminded me - any soundtrack by Lisa Gerrard is worth checking out - we particularly recommend The Insider and Gladiator. Of course, you MUST love the soundtrack from O Brother, Where Art Thou?

OK, I'm just going to tell you right off the bat that this is going to be in poor taste. The place I'm going with this ain't pretty, so no whining - I won't allow it.

A post in which our heroine ponders a prickly etiquette question...

I went to the cinema to see 300 last week. Ticket in hand I walked up to the teenager taking the tickets. I held out the ticket, but I stopped short. He was wearing a polo shirt but from his left sleeve extended no arm. Now, the ticket takers generally tear off the stub, and I was surprised-- didn't mean to be rude. Instead of thrusting the ticket all the way at him, I stalled by asking him where the nearest bathroom was and then which side of the theater housed my movie selection. As I was asking those important questions, I was wondering "do I tear the stub for him? What???"

My uttered questions answered, it was time to see what would happen next. I held the ticket closer to him, and he grasped it (at this point I'm thinking Oh, I'll hold on tightly and let him rip it off) and then he grasped beyond the perforations and took the whole ticket. He deftly stuck the ticket into his armpit, where I suppose a partial arm of some sort was lying in wait. He zipped the ticket in two, handed me my stub back, and then took his end of the paper from his armpit and dropped it in the box.

I wondered if part of his schtick was freaking out ignorant people like myself. It's weird how even a generally unflappable person can be brought up short by something unexpected. Anyway, I wouldn't have offended him for the world, and I hate when I feel like I've acted like an uncool asshole, because it's so common, innit, what with jerks around ever corner? I mean, should it have to be his job to educate every moron he ever comes in contact with? How tiring that must be.

**************
This is not really the same thing, and I know I've mentioned it before, but in Romeo Is Bleeding (a film noir which I loved, and critics soundly panned), Lena Olin is the über-bad-girl and she tangles repeatedly with dirty-dealing cop Gary Oldman. They obviously have some wicked chemistry going on, but she's a lunatic and he could fill a magazine stand with his issues, and it really doesn't seem to work out for them, early on. On, and they are on opposite sides. Then he shoots her in the arm. Next time we see her, she's got a gimboid-looking prosthetic arm.

In one of my hands-down favorite scenes in all of filmdom, Gary awakens on his back, his wrists handcuffed to an old cast-iron bed, and they obviously are about to finally do the deed. She straddles him and says "With the arm, or without?" Gary had already won my heart forever for lots of other roles, but he cemented the deal when he says "Without." The next thing you see is the fake arm flying through the air. Great stuff.

Here's a clip from that film which is of rather poor quality, but still worth a peek. Gary Oldman has just had some toes chopped off by the local big-time crime boss, so he's in a somewhat compromised state. Lena is about to get her shot in the arm, and still she's a force to be reckoned with. I love the way she gets out of the car, and the shoe-toss at the very end is priceless. I told you that bitch crazy!

*warning - not for the fragile. Then again, neither is my blog*

I already posted this image over on the diorama, but I like this building so much I thought I'd post it again.

This is a grand structure, photographed in the dying light of day. In fact, I started wondering if I shot this in B&W setting with a blue filter, but then I noticed the traffic light at the bottom of the shot, and, well, no, it WAS that color.

One marvelous development in recent years is that many downtown buildings like this one were clad in "modern" exterior facades in the 50s, 60s and 70s, but developers are returning these structures to their original glory. I don't understand why there is such an insistence on "updating" architectural works to reflect the passing fancies of another age. These "updates" inevitably look more cloying, dated and poorly planned than the original structure. There's also that brilliant quote from James Lileks: Nothing says yesterday like something that said tomorrow. Damn skippy!

Hankering of the hour: black walnut ice cream. Wish I had some.