Night After Night, My Heartbeat Shows The Fear

Name that tune.

I have posted before about my problems with pseudoephedrine. And I may or may not have mentioned that thanks to a few idiots who took diet pills and had strokes, my beloved Triaminic with its sweet, sweet PPA was taken off the market. And put back on containing evil Pseudo.

I have either a cold or allergies and on Tuesday night I took an Allegra-D. Good news: bone dry nose; bad news: obsessive hallucination, racing pulse and consequent sleeplessness.

Last night (and most of yesterday) I took Dayquil. Upside: little to no psychosis; downside: only works for 4-6 hours, so I woke up at 5 a.m. stuffy, runny and sneezy. (Remember the dwarfs Stuffy and Runny?)

I suppose this is TMI even for blog readers.

Speaking of Hipness

For years, my brother and I have riffed on a bit of movie dialogue:

"Is that a pajama top?"
"No!....yes."

Eventually I asked him hey, what is that from, and he said, "I don't know. I saw the preview in high school and it was so funny, but I don't know."

A little investigation uncovered the movie "Kicking and Screaming," (not to be confused with last year's Will Ferrell soccer movie, "Kicking & Screaming.") but it was not available on DVD. Nor, it seemed, would it ever be available, as few people had ever heard of the movie. I would have to wait until we were in an economic position--or feeling whimsical enough--to spend $35 on a used VHS of a movie that might or might not be any good.

But now, perhaps because of the success of "The Squid and The Whale" by director Noah Baumbach, "K&S" has been released on DVD and while your local Blockbuster doesn't have it, it is at Netflix. When they tell you it's a long wait, don't believe them, because I moved it to the top of my queue and got it two days later.

I don't want to overpromise. It's not the funniest movie ever. It's very...young. Imperfect. The premise--aimless bunch of friends after college graduation--is not groundbreaking. But the cast is stellar: Eric Stolz, Chris Eigeman, Olivia D'Abo; and there are some great lines, some great moments.

See it.

Miro With a Touch of Chagall

I finally found the USB cord for my crapola digital camera. I thought I would still be thwarted when the driver refused to open, but then sweet Windows said, "Hey, I can't help noticing there's a camera attached to my butt, want me to take the pictures out of it?"

Family portrait by M. I can't figure out how to rotate it. I am the giant figure, she's next to me, R. floats with red hair, S. is next to him, NSLR. below him.

Boob Tube Musings

It seems that my husband is right, we are too old and decrepit to stay up until 11 o'clock every Monday night watching "Studio 60."

However, the show is soooo good that it may be worth ruining my health.
And I have to stay hip somehow.
And "House" has jumped the shark.
And "Criminal Intent" hasn't exactly jumped but they've just...lost me.
I don't even want to talk about "The OC." Except to say that in a very weak moment I bought myself a Wonder Woman costume at Marshall's.

No, we don't have Tivo. Yes, I know you think we should get it.

We Continue with the Music and Children Theme

M. and I were grocery shopping and she kept making an odd sound. "Are you a cat?" I asked in the inadvertently patronizing tones we mothers sometimes adopt.

"No," she said scornfully. "I'm the Wawa pedal."

Yeah, I mostly post about music, as it turns out

So many little things have happened in the past couple of weeks that I meant to blog, but now they are lost in my subconscious. Here's one from this morning's drive to school:

I'm switching through radio stations and pause briefly on something unidentifiable and grungesque.
MV: I think this is a little too rockin' for this early in the morning.
R,S: Yeah.
I change the channel and stop on The Cars, "Magic."
R: This too.
MV: No, no, no. This is just synthesizery. 80s.
I turn it up and start singing along.
MV: This song had a great video in which the guy seems to be walking on the surface of a swimming pool.
R, ever the affirmer: Cool!
Some discussion ensues about how they achieved the effect
S: So what was it about?
MV: Well, the chorus line is "It's magic when I'm with you."
To my surprise* my voice quavers and my eyes fill up.
S: Okay, but what was it about?
MV: Testily. It's a love song, S.
S: No, the movie.
MV: It wasn't a movie, it was a video.
Uncomprehending silence emanates from the back of the car.
MV: A music video. We watched them all day.

*But not yours, dear readers.

Dude Lit?

I'm reading Glamorous Disasters, and am a bit mystified. Who is the intended audience for this book? It reads exactly as if someone gave The Nanny Diaries to some hack and said "Turn the girl in this story into a guy." Accordingly there's a little more no-strings sex and vigorous exercise but basically the story arc is the same. Are there a lot of young men who want to read books like this? My sense is that the straight young men who are reading, are reading things like Tom Clancy or whoever is the current Tom Clancy, along with manly non-fiction such as "Guns, Germs and Steel."

I realize that this may reflect some deep-seated sexism on my part, just as I know it should not make me uncomfortable to hear Michael Bolton sing "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?"

But there you go.

OTOH, Elliot Shrefer had a hard act to follow, because I just finished reading Alan Bennett's Untold Stories, with an epigrammatic gem on nearly every page. My favorite: "Every family has a secret, and the secret is that it is not like other families."