Tag: entertainment

Light My Fire

I have been waiting since my Button Sunday post on November 5 for this. It has left me shaken and so furious on Uma Thurman’s behalf that I haven’t been able to think of anything else this afternoon. I think of my friends who are huge Tarantino fans, particularly of his work with her. I’ve seen very little of this, because in general I don’t watch violent movies. But at least there’s always the thought, “It’s not real violence. It’s just a movie.” Over the past few months, I’ve had to acknowledge that many of the romantic comedies and favorite movies in which I’ve lost myself had a real-life violence behind them that has stolen the pleasure they once gave me.

This is the NYT feature on Uma Thurman. Try to find the full article, including a piece of film from one of Thurman’s films. I know sometimes NYT articles are blocked if you’ve read too many on the site, because they want subscribers. But I’m sure it’ll be posted elsewhere. I’m never going to be able to unsee that film clip. There are many actors who like to do their own stunts and often have to be discouraged for their own safety. But to force someone to do something after she’s clearly stated her fears and reluctance to do it–it’s easy to believe this was a warning or a punishment to a woman who was not playing by rules devised by a truly despicable group of powerful men.

Write your own storyline?

In the past when I’ve been sick and set up my laptop to work from bed (it’s crazy to realize the first time I did this was in 2007 when my fractured vertebrae hurt so bad I was immobilized, but I digress), not only do I work, but I watch my comfort movies.

But all the DVDs are in storage and my current Netflix attention span is about a twenty-minute episode of something…

If I was sure Jack wouldn’t eat them, I could bring the Funkos from my comfort movies over and write my own storyline. But then again, that’s the slippery slope to bad fan fiction turning into bad movies I never want to see.

They don’t look like they want that, either.

wrapped in plastic

I don’t know if anyone remembers that time I photoshopped myself all up to look like dead Laura Palmer from “Twin Peaks,” but Marika sure did.

Viola! My first little Funko figurine ever which she couldn’t resist sending me because she’s Marika.

I didn’t get to see the recent “Twin Peaks” reboot. But I will. One day. Thank you, Marika! You’re nuts.

free to choose my world

I told Tim I wanted to go into his apartment and photograph something that proved he was back home and he was all suspicious and said like what and I said I don’t know, anything, please, and he said okay. So I photographed these beautiful chests of drawers that replaced the ones that were drowned in the flood and that had once belonged to my parents and I’m sure that makes some people feel sad because after all, it was my late mother’s furniture but I just can’t hang on to all that and anyway, these are beautiful and have metal legs that keep them off the floor which I think you’re going to start seeing as the theme of replacement furniture in all the Houndstooth Hall dwellings.

Then I was going to let Penny help me take a photo of Tim’s groovy new coffee table that also has metal legs but something distracted me and when I later told Jim about the distraction he said Robert Pattinson, is he even a thing anymore, and I said I have the choice of living in a world of mythical vampires or a world of Trump which should I choose and he said point taken.

The End.

Transport Thursday!

There are several of us who at transport will sing to the puppies as they stop at our table to get their photos and transport stickers–always a song inspired by their names, like the time the entire table and the dog’s escort broke into, “My, my, my Sharona!”

Sometimes I feel like my colleagues are hoping to stump my musical memory, so the other day, I knocked out four in a row as the dogs came through before a lull.


For Miracle: I believe in miracles, where you from (you sexy thing) (Hot Chocolate, 1975)


For Joene: Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, woman, please don’t take my man (Dolly Parton, 1974)


For Josie: When Josie comes home, so good, she’s the pride of the neighborhood (Steely Dan, 1977)


For Jeremy: Jeremy spoke in class today (Pearl Jam, 1991)

That is an odd mix of songs, and they have some dark undertones. In the first, Sexy Thing has come along after the narrator has been lonely a long time, and it may sound upbeat, but he’s begging the new love not to leave, clearly already dreading loss and more loneliness. Jolene is heartlessly threatening the narrator’s happiness by stealing her true love, even though Jolene could have anyone she wants. As for Josie, it’s one of the more ambiguous homecomings in musical history. Josie sounds like she was a wild thing. Where has she been? Is this homecoming a celebratory reunion or something graver? Also, if you read the lyrics, they say Josie prays like a Roman with her eyes on fire. I always heard it as Josie “preys like a Roman with her eyes on fire.” Hmmm… And of course Jeremy is about a bullied, unloved child committing suicide in front of his classmates.

Cheery stuff, right? The puppies don’t care. They just know they’re getting some attention and it sounds happy.

The dates on those songs make me realize why none of our younger staffers and volunteers know what the heck we’re singing half the time.

scary lady heeds my fashion sense

I’m reluctant to post the photo below because it shows my fashion queen Anna Wintour with Harvey Weinstein at a Marchesa (fashion line of Weinstein’s estranged wife, Georgina Chapman) runway show. So I’ll say up front that it sounds like Weinstein is a pig who enjoyed a lot of success in the entertainment industry because his company has made some amazing movies with stellar talent. But he apparently used his success and power in a piglike way to sexually harass, belittle, assault, demean, and torment women. This is not new behavior, nor is it confined to the so-called Hollywood “casting couch.” It’s just that his are the accusers who have begun stepping forward–and that takes real courage–and now everyone who was ever in the same city as him feels that they must denounce him even as they say they were unaware of his piglike behavior, because boy, do humans flee the flames when a star begins his fiery descent to the pit of publicity hell to be finished off on a spit.

(Also, I’m sorry to insult pigs, who I happen to admire in a way I could never admire Weinstein, and I don’t like to see them on spits.)

All that being said, observe Miss Wintour, below. Do you like her dress?

Gary Gershoff/WireImage / / Mandy Moore, left, Harvey Weinstein, Anna Wintour attended the Marchesa fall 2017 runway show during New York Fashion Week on Feb. 15, 2017.

Did you like its reverse colors in November 2009 when it was designed by Becks?

Looks like we are both crafty women. But she accessorizes better. My Anna Wintour needed those boots.

Bonus photo:

André Leon Talley, Anna Wintour, and Grace Coddington at Becks’s 2009 final collection.

P.S. If you click on the link to my November 2009 post, you’ll see my soldiers in a nod to today being National Coming Out Day.

it’s an ill wind that blows no good

Saved without flood damage from the carport bins… a tome written AND illustrated by aspiring author Becky Cochrane. Very ambitious. And like so many works to follow, unfinished as those lips drawn by the young writer/illustrator whisper toward the flickering flame of creativity…

Perhaps some young pup will plagiarize an excerpt for a future Pet Prose submission.

I haven’t cracked open this gem yet, but I’m pretty sure nothing in it will measure up to my favorite thing on the cover: “To Edwin Harper–a friend not soon forgotten. Also to my 6th grade friends–who first read this book.”

While I do actually remember some of my sixth grade friends, I have not a single clue as to the identity of one Edwin Harper. Perhaps not soon forgotten, but forgotten all the same. Sorry, Edwin.