Where to start… you thought you liked Kick Ass? Ha, child’s play compared to this… You thought you liked Lucy? Bah, faggedaboutit… don’t miss this earlier groundbreaker that deals with death and pain and Gary Oldman and mobsters and their quiet moments and Natalie’s first killer performance and… Matilda’s passion for life, like that of many tweens, is inspiring. I was listening to Bjork’s Debut earlier, another amazing example of unbridled passion and obsession, and when Luc included nearly the entirety of “Venus as a Boy” in the movie, I had a moment. :-)
Author: m
The most amazing thing to come out of a vending machine ever :-)
The Flying Biscuit Cafe has tofu scramble
Dan Rei and I in “The Empire Strikes Back Uncut”!
The team included Wren and Bailey too – nice work everybody, we’re famous!!
Chicago and VU Homecoming
Spent Wednesday through Sunday with Erik Keith Matt Ken Mark Tim Tara Kristen Kari Kristine Kathleen Bob Jon and lots more…
Wednesday
Direct flight on Southwest, oh yeah – brought snacks and “The Good Lord Bird” – smooth sailing. Beautiful and brisk at Midway. Walked around with Revco blasting in headphones. Trying to find the pizza place where Keith was hanging, while simultaneously navigating Erik there. Keith got mad that I didn’t get there sooner. Erik wouldn’t install an app that would have shown him my location, so drove around without finding me for an hour. Finally we all got to the pizza place. They whined, I got mad, slapped Erik and Keith, Keith got pissy. Off to a capital start!! :P
Matt showed up and reminded us how to chill. He’s doing great, teaching art to 35 high school kids at once (wha??) on the south side of Chicago. We went to the art studio where he works on lithographs done on these blocks of limestone that he gets (from Russia I think?). Beautiful stuff! Wish I’d bought one… Well, I misbehaved there and that was the end of my Wednesday night. My Pulp Fiction moment without the adrenaline or fun. Live and learn!
Thursday Keith and I got up to run (I was 100% recovered) and headed out of our swanky Hotel Lincoln digs straight into… camels? Yep we were running through the totally free totally amazing Lincoln Zoo! It was early so we didn’t see the lions, tigers and giraffes until later, but we did catch the seals before we were through the park…
…onto beautiful views of the city from the beautiful wetland preserves around Lakeshore Drive. Absolutely stunning, full of all kinds of native plants fish and birds, with the Chicago skyline as a backdrop…
9.0 Jabberwocky
How can there be a Terry Gilliam-directed movie starring Michael Palin that I have never even heard of??! Good Lord! Stephen tuned me in and we thoroughly enjoyed this massive indulgent romp through a middle age equally beleaguered by a huge monster and the beginnings of a free market economy. Classic!
9.5 The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Imagine some of the most respected, regal and talented British actors of our generation relocating to India to make an epic movie about discovering the beauty of life – you don’t have to, just watch this amazing film.
9.0 A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
The audio book is like listening to Douglas Adams sarcastically spinning yarns that turn out to be true.
“You have been extremely – make that miraculously – fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth’s mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides, has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result, eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly, in you.” Continue reading “9.0 A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson”
9.5 Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy
Those rock solid hugely fun Marvel superhero blockbusters keep coming. I loved that CA had a serious and important motivational element. Guardians of the Galaxy was epic too – huge fan of Chris Pratt – Marvel just keeps delivering! These are just AWESOME fun!
I like that the blockbuster action movies have moved away from the stupid so-fast-you-can’t-tell-what-happened style of action – there are some seriously – SERIOUSLY – beautiful superhuman stunts for which I don’t want to miss a single movement. Strange to work so hard to write properly (no dangling prepositions) about superhero movies with short curt dialog. But even that is being so well done these days. Hollywood is getting their action movies right. :-)
Peasant Meals
I have become addicted to what I am calling peasant meals: fresh local veggies, some savory spices, all sauted and served on a bed of rice or pasta. Today’s menu: local farm fresh okra and onions breaded with herbs and pan fried to perfection, on basmati rice:
Some other recent dishes are on this recipes page…