Yes, it does look like I'm wearing a fabulous metallic hat, thanks to the sculpture behind me—I chose the location for the photo—and yes, my eyes are closed.
A couple of weekends ago I saw All the Little Animals, featuring a toothsome young Christian Bale as a young man whose mother has just died and whose truly evil stepfather wants him to sign over his late mother’s flourishing London department store. He runs away to Cornwall and joins forces with John Hurt, who has assigned himself the task of burying animals killed by cars.
I also saw Murder by Numbers, featuring Sandra Bullock as a hard-boiled homicide detective and Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt as high school students who commit a murder just to prove they can pull it off.
Friday night a week ago, Tom and I saw all of Metallica’s music videos from 1989 to 2004. I really liked all of them, particularly the ones for “The Memory Remains,” with an aging Marianne Faithfull looking just splendid, and “King Nothing.” This is not Tom’s musical genre at all, but he said he quite enjoyed the videos, and that if Metallica play around here, we should go see them.
The next evening, we went to see The Bank Job, about a bank robbery that happened in real life in London in 1971, the objective of which, unbeknownst to most of the robbers themselves, was to recover incriminating photos of one of the royal family.
I was swooning from the first moment Jason Statham, the lead actor, appeared onscreen and now have added nearly all of his movies to my Netflix queue.
Fortunately, this week’s “getting to know you” question at our team meeting at work was what film set we would like to have been on and why, so I said I would like to have worked on The Bank Job as Jason Statham’s wardrobe assistant.
Last Sunday Ann and Mac treated Tom and me to a lovely brunch at Bistro Liaison in Berkeley. I decided on both a salmon appetizer and a salmon entrée, and told the server that I was going to have the “Salmon Extravaganza.” When she brought my appetizer, she remembered my joke and said, “Here’s the beginning of your Salmon Extravaganza.”
Ann and Mac were in Berkeley for Carrie Fisher’s one-woman show, Wishful Drinking. After brunch, we accompanied them to the theater and decided to see if there were any tickets left. There were just two places left where two people could sit together. The price was higher than I would have spent of my own accord, but Tom was in the mood for a splurge, and so we ended up in the very front row, soon covered with confetti tossed by the star.
Tom was given a small recurring role, which he handled with aplomb, and later was given a medal, as well as a hug and kiss. I also got to stand up and have a bib affixed around my neck—I forget how this pertained to the story—and say my name and get a kiss on the cheek from Carrie Fisher, best known to many as Princess Leia in Star Wars.
At the same team meeting at work this week, a couple of people said they would like to have been on the set of Star Wars, giving me a perfect opening for my Carrie Fisher anecdote.
When we got home after Carrie Fisher’s show, we watched our favorite Metallica videos again, and then saw Eddie Murphy: Delirious, from when he was 23, I think. I think my favorite thing was the person of Eddie Murphy himself, jaunty in shiny red pants, because his humor tended to the homophobic. It really wasn’t funny at all, though I admired that he was already such a commanding stage presence at that young age.
The funniest thing I ever heard Eddie Murphy say was on Saturday Night Live many years ago, playing a person whose neighbors have telephoned to complain about his noise. “Loud? That’s not loud! THIS IS LOUD!!!” (And I loved him in Dreamgirls.)
This past Thursday, my new book club met for the first time. Via Craigslist, I drummed up five people who said they would like to read The Omnivore’s Dilemma (a crafty choice of mine, since I was almost done with it at the time) and meet to discuss it.
In the event, wildly exceeding my expectations, two actual people, both perfectly delightful, turned up at a quiet café near where I live and we had quite a congenial discussion which did in fact touch several times on The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I’d brought another book with me in case no one came at all.
I have recently finished The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood, which I thought was extremely well written.
Somewhere along in here, Lisa M. and I had dinner at Osha on Second St. and then saw Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, with Frances McDormand and Amy Adams.
I found a wonderful recipe online for lentil soup with tarragon and thyme. I had never used tarragon before and had to buy some for this recipe, which says it’s the last lentil soup recipe you’ll ever need, and I think that might be true.
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