9.11.08

Category: dribblings

Leave a Comment | Permalink

Tags: ,

9.10.08 Tunes for Tots

Category: dribblings

all right, you guys. here’s the internet poster thing for all of your facebook/myspace/shenanigans. use it. USE IT. laura made it, of course, as she is the Maker of Things.

also, you should make yourself available for this because the money goes for a good cause and it’s good music and best of all it’s at a decent hour. plus, you’ll make my mom and dad happy. and you know you owe her for that lasagna that time. heh, that pretty much covers everybody! neener!

4 Comments | Permalink

Tags: , , ,

9.09.08 missle-anius

Category: dribblings

we’re learning a new program at work. it’s going to takle awhile before we really know how to use it, and unfortunately we don’t get any time before we have to use it. i hope the patrons understand. oh, and right as i was leaving yesterday? boss and Training Guy was scrambling around the computer in a near frantic way because we seem to have lost two full days of transactions. **sigh**

two full days of checkins and checkouts.

this will only make us look more inept than we really are. neat.

****

while i was reading the Raymond Burr biography of eternal boredom, the author mentioned something about Dorothy Kilgallen. so i thought i’d read something about her next. i had forgotten that there was a bio of her written by Lee Israel, ( i know! bonus, right? in fact, when i saw it at the “real” library i nearly let out a cheer. which, no one would have noticed because at the “real” library they hide the bios in a cave behind a secret staricase around a magic column-door not unlike Platform 9 3/4. i actually stumbled across the bio section ONLY AFTER i had crawled through the wardrobe to get to the “Narnia” that is the nonfiction section. AM I RIGHT?)  who’s book, Can you Ever Forgive Me? i read last month or in July or whenever, and i had wanted to read something else she had written because she writes well and has clever sentences, like Anne Lamott (say, isn’t she due for a new one?). i think that’s a good comparison. not that they write about the same things, but that they are very good writers and their sentences are often clever.

i’ll admit it, i’m a sucker for clever. every time.

for instance, i’m only about 100 pages in, but this bit here was just a perfect amount of background info with a snark zinger at the end:

“On the lots, Selznick was shooting A Star is Born with Janet Gaynor. Twentieth Century-Fox’s new release list included Love is News, with Tyrone Power, and One in a Million, starring Sonja Henie. Sylvia Sidney and Henry Fonda were doing You Only Live Once at United. And MGM had just begun Captains Courageous, for which Spencer Tracy took a permanent wave, and Maytime, in which Nelson Eddie took Jeanette McDonald.”

hee.

i had no idea that Dorothy Kilgallen was an actual reporter. i thought she was just a Hollywood gossip columnist type person. so see, i’m learning something.

and i think it’s really cool how my reading choices the past couple of months have been sort of circular or whatnot with the whole Hellman to Israel to Hellman again, around Raymond Burr to Kilgallen which brings me back to Israel.

of course, after this one i’m back to the Twilight series of complete shit. but then after that i’ve some true crime (it’s the newest Leopold and Loeb book. it starts out great but the middle is just so blah with the Chicago political history lesson) to get off my queue. blah blah blah. OH! and i’ve got Paul Auster’s new one and i’m looking forward to that one. it will be my prize for finishing Eclipse.

2 Comments | Permalink

Tags: , , , , ,

45. Suddenly, Last Summer by Tennessee Williams

Category: 50 Books

45. Suddenly, Last Summer by Tennessee Williams

Yes, that’s right, I read a play. I can read plays. I don’t just read true crime schlock and hollywood biography trash.
It’s just that I prefer it.

I’ve probably seen this movie about 8 times. There was one summer when AMC showed the damn thing every morning for at least a month. And everytime it was on I just couldn’t seem to look away. I never thought it was a great movie, but there’s just something about it that makes it hard for me to watch something else. I guess it’s just so damn odd, the story I mean. So I thought I’d read the play to see if it would help me understand the movie better, or to see if it was more explicit than the movie.

It was not.

In fact, the movie follows the play pretty close except for the parts where Catharine is at St. Mary’s. The play takes place at the Venerable’s jungle garden. The movie takes place at the hospital and the jungle garden. One of the things that has always bothered me about the movie was Liz Taylor’s speaking parts. Especially when towards the end. when… all her… lines seemed to! be so broken! up! and… and… and stilted! with… the yelling!

Turns out, that’s the way it was written.

I think I liked the movie better. It made Mrs. Venerable seem even more evil than the play did. Kudos to Kate Hepburn.
She let’s me call her Kate.

1 Comment | Permalink

Tags: , , ,

9.07.08 let’s have a Venture moment.

Category: dribblings

i’m not kidding when i say this is the best cartoon show you’re not watching.

 

well, this and Frisky Dingo.

1 Comment | Permalink

Tags:

44. Hiding in Plain Sight: The Secret Life of Raymond Burr by Michael Seth Starr

Category: 50 Books

44. Hiding in Plain Sight: The Secret Life of Raymond Burr by Michael Seth Starr

So I’m standing at the circ. desk talking to a coworker and as I’m checking in this book I ask aloud, “Raymond Burr had a secret life? Like what, he was a spy?”
My coworker replied with, “No, he was gay.”
“He was not!”
“Well, that’s what that book is about.”
“Perry Mason? gay? No way.”
“Read the jacket cover.”

And sure enough the jacket cover told of Mr. Burr’s lies about his personal life and that he was gay. So I checked the book out in hopes it would be interesting in a trashy way. Lookit, that’s what Hollywood biographies are for, don’t judge me.

In a way, it’s nice that the book wasn’t all trashy and gossipy. However, the book was boring. I could tell the author had great respect for Raymond Burr, and that’s always nice, but it was kind of too nice. And the author didn’t even go into much about the 30 somethingish odd year relationship that Raymond had with his supposed lover. Eh, like I say, boring. I mean, half the book is dedicated to telling about working on Perry Mason, and while I enjoy the reruns, it’s not that keen of a read. I mean, how many times do you have to explain to me that Burr worked a crazy schedule and that it took a toll on him and his health? Once ought to do it. It gets 4 Cansecos for not being dishy enough.

2 Comments | Permalink

Tags: ,

43. An Unfinished Woman: A Memoir by Lillian Hellman

Category: 50 Books

43. An Unfinished Woman: A Memoir by Lillian Hellman

This is one of Lillian Hellman’s autobiographies. She was a writer, a playwright actually, and she lived a hell of a life. She was a bit of a troublemaker, or maybe it was that she happened to be around trouble and had to act accordingly. She seemed to be very brave and ended up in Europe and Russia during WWII as part of the League of American Writers (I think that’s why she was over there. I mean, she wasn’t a war correspondent really, so look, she wasn’t very clear in the book why she was there, okay?) And she was called to testify by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and was then blacklisted as a Communist.

She also talked a little about her life with author Dashiell Hammet. They lived together for about 30 years, but I couldn’t really tell why. I couldn’t tell from her writing if they were just roommates or lovers or if they were each other’s cover for being homosexual or what. On one hand I could tell she had a great affection for him, on the other hand, she wasn’t around a lot of the time. I think I’d like to read a biography on him sometime. How cool was he anyway? A retired Pinkerton detective turned detective story writer. Neat.

One thing I really found interesting is how she thought of herself as being of a different generation than the people who were also big writers at the same time, Dorothy Parker, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway. She had great respect for them, but claimed she wasn’t like them and didn’t understand them sometimes. I thought this was really neat because you hear all the time about Postmodern generation, Generation X, Y, whatever, but I rarely hear anything about whatever generation came just right after the Jazz Age or whathaveyou. It gave me something to think about, and I love that.

Anyway, it was an interesting book, but I got the feeling she was really holding back. Also, I was disappointed that she didn’t talk about her plays. Like I said, it really felt as though she was holding back, editing herself. I’ve her other autobiography, Pentimento, and I’m hoping she writes about her work and is more open about her life in that one.

4 Comments | Permalink

Tags: ,

9.06.08 happy birthday, nerd face!

Category: dribblings

today is my leetle brahther’s birthday. he is, i want to say, 28 years old. oh they grow so fast. it seems like it was only last week that he pulled my hair and hit me and yelled, “it’s MY turn to play Zelda!”
those were the days.

****

there have been several things that keep popping up in my entertainment lately. recurring things. one of these things is Brazil. first, it was West, and now my conversation partner is from Brazil.

the second is Chicago. specifically the history of Chicago. first there was the book The Devil in the White City, then there was the history of the Gatling gun and that took me into Chicago, and now i’m reading a book on Leopold and Loeb and that of course, took place in Chicago. so now i feel like i’ve been schooled in the history of Chicago 1890 – 1930.

and the third thing seems to be the strangest of all. it’s Lillian Hellman. she keeps popping up. first, one of my co-workers had mentioned she had read a book about her. i didn’t think anything of it really. but then i happened across one of the strangest movies i’ve ever seen, The Children’s Hour. and when i looked up information about it i found that, you guessed it, Lillian Hellman had written the original play. weeks later i read Lee Israel’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? in which she forges letters of… Lillian Hellman.

so finally i went to the library (the “real” library, according to my darling husband.) and picked up an autobiography of Hellman’s. i figure maybe if i read about her she’ll quit following me.

8 Comments | Permalink

Tags: ,

9.04.08

Category: dribblings

at lunch today:

me: i think after lunch i’m going to run to the library downtown.

jimmy: you mean the real one?

me: i hate you.

2 Comments | Permalink

Tags: ,

9.03.08 WTF Wednesday

Category: dribblings

today i got to meet my new conversation partner. i know i explain this every semester, but let me do it again for those of you just tuning in. every semester (except summers) i volunteer in the conversation partner program at the local jr. college. this is one of Stormy Wunderblatt’s projects. and she’s the one who talked me into volunteering. and now? i’m kinda hooked. this will be my third or fourth year. i can’t remember.

basically you go to the college once a week and talk to an international student for an hour. it’s the same student every time. so after a while you’ve made a new friend. it’s awesome. i figure i’ll never get to visit all those awesome places but this way i can talk to awesome people from awesome places. last time my partner was from russia and she was so cool. but i was spoiled because she spoke english really well.

this time my parnter is from brazil. she, too, is sweet. however, she doesn’t speak a lot of english… and i don’t know any portuguese, so basically we’re screwed. even so, we managed to talk for an hour as best we could, which included lots of, “i don’t understand,” and “sorry. no. what?” and then lots of laughing because what else can you do?

her name is pronounced ah-LEE-nee. and like i say, she’s from brazil. but you know what is bad ass? she’s a firefighter! i know! how cool is that? she’s the only female firefighter in her department. she says it’s her and 85 guys. can you even imagine?
me neither.

anyway, i felt like a loser telling her i worked in a library. i mean, “oh, what do you do all day? rescue people and put out fires and see really sad things happen all the time? that’s so great and noble. hm? me? i… shelve books. yeah. it’s pretty… gratifying.”

so anyway she’s a firefighter and a vegetarian. i feel terrible about the vegetarian thing because she can’t drive here and only has the school cafeteria for her meals. she says she eats a biscuit for breakfast and a salad for lunch and dinner. i said, “what about fruit?”

“only apples! apples, apples, apples!”

“what? no bananas?”

“ayiee! if ONLY banana! but no! only apples! don’t show me an apple anymore! i can’t!”

“heh, so you’re tired of apples?”

“always apples. i eat all day apples.”

so i think next time i’ll bring her some bananas. poor thing. she eats cheese but not eggs and she says that the milk here is very different. we couldn’t communicate exactly what was different about the milk but i think what she was getting at was that it’s too watery.

once she learns some more english i think it’s gonna be a lot easier to communicate. i have to remember to slow down though. i talk too fast. and it’s also hard to remember that we talk different than other cultures. here’s an example of that very thing:

“how long have you been a firefighter?”

“i don’t understand?”

“how long…erm. your job. okay wait.”

“job?”

“okay you-” pointing at her “have been a firefighter-”

“yes.”

“how long?”

“long?”

“oh okay here. how much time… have you had… as a firefighter?”

“ah, i see. for the first day in a week there are 24 hours. then sleep with 8 hours. then it is 24 hours. like that for week.”

“no, i mean, nevermind.”

so that’s how it goes most of the time. isn’t it awesome? luckily she has a portuguese/english dictionary and that was a great help.

anyway, my conversation partner rocks, thanks Stormy!

2 Comments | Permalink

Tags: ,

← Previous Page — Next Page →