12/25

This young child received a Cookie Monster that eats plastic cookies and then excretes them into a backpack/colostomy bag so that they can be re-eaten in perpetuity.

This smiley girl asked for a particular Star Wars license plate gewgaw every time she was in Target. Santa put such an item in her stocking. First thing Christmas morning she dumped out her stocking, pulled the wrapper off the gewgaw and saw that she'd been given an image of Darth Maul that said HATRED. A miraculous Christmas moment!

12/24

MELANCHOLIA (2)

I caught MELANCHOLIA for a second time tonight as part of the Three Rivers Film Festival. It was programmed for a single screening at the Harris Theater, our lone downtown theater and the region's smallest art theater, at about 115 seats. It was a curious decision to put the Festival's film with the most stars and crossover buzz in the tiniest venue, but the upside was the unusual sight of a large crowd of people stuffing the sidewalk on Liberty Avenue a half-hour before showtime. I've been to shows at the Harris where it was me and one or two others, but I can think of maybe only one other time (Mike Seate's cafe racer documentary) where it was packed to the gills.

Anyway, ten minutes or so from the end, right after Claire grabs her son and drives down the front nine in the golf cart, the film abruptly cut to the credits, though they were backwards and upside-down. I laughed and figured they'd got the last reel spooled wrong, and waited for them to fix it. But apparently nobody in the projection booth knew right away, because they let the credits wind and the house lights, probably keyed in to the credits, went up. People started looking around with confusion. The credits kept running. Then people started to get up and leave. I guess maybe they thought Lars had let the people of Earth off the hook. Maybe that opening montage-- the Perfume Ads of the Damned-- was just a head-fake, the inchoate cry of Justine's disease. People are filing out. I've got a choice to make: either I can be Claire, and allow them to go into the chilly night with a measure of misplaced comfort, or I can be Justine, and assert that life on Earth is not for long.

"I've seen the film before. That's not how it ends. They've got the reel mixed up."

The young woman next to me is intrigued by this information. Even better, she's far more comfortable with speaking at high volume to large crowds of strangers. "HEY. THIS GUY'S SEEN THE FILM BEFORE. THAT'S NOT HOW IT ENDS. SOMETHING HAPPENED TO THE REEL."

Now the people who had started leaving have stopped in the aisle and are looking back and forth from me to the screen filled with backward letters. Another moment passes. Finally, a guy from the projection booth casually walks into the theater and goes to the microphone to break the news.

Warhol

The Lord is at hand.

ghoti

Ruby caught this big boy at the compound's largest pond around nine this morning.

zzzzzz

sit/spin

Swinging

July, 2011 Film Viewings

7/1 Generation Kill, Part 1
7/2 Generation Kill, Part 2
7/3 Generation Kill, Part 3
7/4 Breaking Bad 3.1
7/5 Breaking Bad 3.2
7/6 Breaking Bad 3.3
7/7 Breaking Bad 3.4
7/8 Breaking Bad 3.5
7/9 True Grit (Coen, 2010)
7/10 True Grit (Coen, 2010)
7/15 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One (Yates, 2010)
7/17 Breaking Bad 4.1
7/24 Breaking Bad 4.2
7/25 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two (Yates, 2011)
7/28 Boarding Gate (Assayas, 2007)
7/31 Breaking Bad 4.3

Spinnnnnning

Deck + Sleeping Bags + Alfred Hitchcock Presents + Cool Summer Night

Kennywood

The Tubes

There's a bear in the woods.

End of Season

James Brown? James Brown!

Qu'est-ce que c'est

May, 2011 Film Viewings

5/1 Treme 1.9, 1.10
5/5 The Kid (Chaplin, 1921)
5/13 Thor (Branagh, 2011)
5/20 The Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)
5/27 Whichever interminable Pirates of the Caribbean movie just came out
5/30 Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Weerasethakul, 2010)

Memorial Day 2011

PPG Fountain

Learning to knit

Swinging and reading Harry Potter

April, 2011 Film Viewings

4/1 Paranormal Activity (Peli, 2007)
4/2 Treme 1.1
4/3 Certified Copy (Kiarostami, 2010)
4/4 Treme 1.2
4/15 Tangled (Greno and Howard, 2010)
4/16 Bluebeard (Breillat, 2009)
4/17 How Do You Know? (Brooks, 2010)
4/21 Certified Copy (Kiarostami, 2011)
4/22 Insidious (Wan, 2011)
4/23 Treme 1.3
4/24 Treme 1.4
4/25 Treme 1.5, 1.6
4/26 Treme 1.7, 1.8

2011 Eastern Conference Quarterfinals, Game Seven: Lightning 1, Penguins 0

And so it ends.

2011 Eastern Conference Quarterfinals, Game Four: Penguins 3, Lightning 2 (2OT)

The trend continued last night, by which I mean that a night meeting kept me from seeing most of the game. When I left Beaver County, the Penguins were up by 2, and about a mile and a half from home, the Lightning scored to send it into overtime. So I saw overtime and double-overtime.
There are a bunch of great storylines with this year's Penguins. For example: (1) Will Sidney Crosby ever be the same. If so, will it be in time for this playoff season? (2) In the balance sheet of leaguewide headshot reduction efforts, are the Penguins victims or victimizers? (3) Is there any gas left in the tank of the Alex Kovalev Retro-reunion Tour? and (4) Did the Penguins get fleeced when they traded for James Neal? Prior to last night, Neal had scored one goal in more than twenty games with the Penguins, a four-goal season pace that's, uh, a little off the twentysomething goals he's been scoring for Dallas each of the past couple of seasons. We'll know in a year whether his double-overtime winner last night got him on the road to recovering his scoring touch.
And now for the videoblog:

This commercial was out today, with aged footage. Instant nostalgia! For last night!

This is catnip to me. I love these kinds of away-from-the-microphone interactions. And the squad of cheerleaders is tough to beat. In the suit is the guy with the concussion who's the best hockey player in the world. The guy in the track suit doing all the backslapping was the playoff MVP two short years ago and is in the top five when he's on his game.

2011 Eastern Conference Quarterfinals, Game Three: Penguins 3, Lightning 2

I had a meeting and was able to catch only the last half of the game, so this will be another partial-game reaction. Here are some bizarre numbers: Through three games, the Penguins hold a 2-1 lead and both teams have scored 7 goals. The Penguins have scored 6 at even-strength and 1 into an empty net. The Lightning have scored 2 at even-strength, 4 on the power play and 1 into an empty net. Overall, the Lightning are 4 for 11 on the man-ad, while the Penguins are an unsurprisingly-abysmal 0 for 15. The special teams disparity explains why all but one of the Penguins' skaters are plus or even, while 13 of the 18 Lightning skaters are minus players. Weird.
Tyler Kennedy's goal a few minutes into the third was a backbreaker, as it came less than a minute after the Lightning finally got back to even with the Penguins after trailing since the four-minute mark. The goal marked Kennedy's first playoff goal since the '09 Finals, which seem a lot longer than two years ago.

2011 Eastern Conference Quarterfinals, Game Two: Lightning 5, Penguins 1

Circumstances permitted me to miss every second of this debacle. Ginger's soccer practice ran late, then I had to stop to fill the car with gas, then we had a taco picnic. The girls wanted to play Wii, and I had the DVR running, so I agreed. Daisy fussed and I took her upstairs for the bed and bath rituals. When I had her dressed and began cradling her for a few lullabies, I sat down and checked the score online. A 3-0 deficit halfway through made it an easy choice to watch TANGLED with the girls.

2011 Eastern Conference Quarterfinals, Game One: Penguins 3, Lightning 0

Sports fans are slaves to superstitition. Why is that? I believe it's because the rational mind resists getting wrapped up so thoroughly in something over which one has no control. The repetition of successful actions creates the illusion of control and reassures us that we aren't wasting our zeal on something random and absurd. Anyway, I spent the 2008 and 2009 Stanley Cup Playoff seasons recounting to an audience of one the game-by-game exploits of my favorite bunch of skaters. The first year of my labors the Penguins fell a mere two wins short of the Cup. The second year they pulled off the first game seven road win in a championship round since the '79 Pirates. I took last year off and the team slouched to a second-round exit. So here we are.

Game One was only the second game I've watched end-to-end since the Winter Classic. I've caught periods here and there and highlights, but for reasons that will be later explained, I let the second half of the regular season slide by in my peripheral vision. I might come to regret that; there's so much to like about this team and the way they've responded to adversity. Game One reminded me quickly why playoff hockey does it for me so thoroughly, random or not. Game was scoreless for the first forty-six minutes until a missed slash-trip, a failed breakout, a turnover and a shot-pass led to Alex Kovalev one-timing a shot for the year's first playoff goal, and the first game-winner. I'd love to see Kovalev become this year's Bill Guerin. On the ice, anyway. I don't think he makes much noise in the locker room. He's the link, though, between the Crosby-Malkin-Fleury-Staal Penguins and the Lemieux-Jagr-Straka Penguins, and seeing him get on the board so early in the series, with a fantastic assist by James Neal, bodes well.

March, 2011 Film Viewings

3/3 IRINA PALM (Garbarski, 2007)
3/11 THE SORCEROR'S APPRENTICE (Turteltaub, 2010)
3/18 PSYCHO (Hitchcock, 1960)
3/19 THE PILGRIM (Chaplin, 1923)
3/23 STRANGER THAN PARADISE (Jarmusch, 1984)

1st Birthday Party

Daffodils

The Water Room

Daisy eating Ruby's ice cream

February, 2011 Film Viewings

2.1 The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)
2.3 The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)
2.6 Nights of Cabiria (Fellini, 1957)
2.25 O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Coen, 2000)
Catfish (Joost and Schulman, 2010)

Because you previously bought The Wire, Season Five, we thought you'd be interested in a box of 128 Pop-Tarts

We rely on amazon.com for all of our breakfast pastry needs.

*sad face*

Ali watched our pastor's daughter today. At one point she asked, "Was your dad sad about the Super Bowl?" Michelina replied, "He not crying any more."

Studying

January, 2011 Film Viewings

1-4 Happy-Go-Lucky (Leigh, 2008)
1-13 Tiny Furniture (Dunham, 2010)
1-14 Goldberg (Baumbach, 2010)
1-29 Drag Me to Hell (Raimi, 2009)

Children's Museum

Painting Ruby and Virginia's room

The Skate of the Mascots

The Winter Classic

December, 2010 Film Viewings

12-1 The Walking Dead 1.1
12-2 The Walking Dead 1.2
12-5 The Walking Dead 1.6
12-13 Jellyfish (Keret and Geffen, 2008)
12-14 Secret Window (Koepp, 2004)
12-18 Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Apted, 2010)
12-23 Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Wright, 2010)
12-24 The Social Network (Fincher, 2010)