don't bust a girl on a bus!

I used to be quite mad about movie awards shows. I was allowed to watch the Oscars all the way through for the first time in 8th grade (I can't remember whether I even cared in previous years). I was totally enraptured, zealously rooting for every 'Silence of the Lambs' nomination not because I'd seen it and loved it, but because my friend Heather had seen it and loved it and said that the girl from 'Freaky Friday' was amazing in it. I was a bit sheltered back then. I taped the Oscars that year and would re-watch them on weekends for fun. I memorized Billy Crystal's sill opening number (still know it, ask me sometime. Or don't. That might be better for our friendship).
All the way through high school and college, I was obsessed with the Oscars to the point where I would see all the nominees, keep tabs during the show and re-see the winners. In college, I was entertainment editor and would get invited to the Oscars every year- as a courtesy. They never accepted my 'application for rsvp,' probably because we were a comparatively small school in LA and they only had so much room for college press. My interest petered out after that- when I moved to New York I watched them on tv with area cousins, even when I hadn't seen the movies.
This year, I am watching the SAG Awards for the first time since 2000, and really, I could give a crap. I haven't seen most of the movies or any of the tv shows. Lucky for TBS, I'm debilitatingly sick* and mildly curious.

Observations from this year's SAG Awards
-While Eva Longoria, who looks 12, sat on the lap of Nicolette Sheridan, who looks man, I'm pretty sure one of them had a knife in her thigh.
-Sean Hayes, who thanked 'Ang Lee, for giving me the chance to play a gay character,' is more adorable that anyone will ever be.
-Old people who started out adorable and stayed adorable, like Shirley Temple Black, on hand to accept a Life Achievement Award, can say ANYTHING and people will laugh. I love her.
-Catherine Keener was wasted when she came out with Phillip Seymour Hoffman to present the clip from 'Capote.' She'd already lost the award by this time and may have just finished drowning her sorrows. Regardless, she wouldn't let go of PSH's arm as she stumbled down the stairs at the back of the stage and was unable to read the copy either in her hand or off the teleprompter. (Talula: I know we love her. Consider this less a criticism and more an intervention)
-Ok, live update: Jamie Foxx can't read the copy either, but is clearly sober. WHAT THE HELL. He just stopped in the middle of it and cued the music to start.
-Apparently there are 18 different ways to pronounce S. Epatha Merkerson, and we heard them all in about 6 minutes.
-Angela Basset read copy like it's Shakespeare. William H. Macy squints and reads it too slowly.
-Jake and Heath both adorably have the giggles and yes, are unable to fluently read the copy.
-Oh Dear God. The copy they wrote for Pierce Brosnan literally starts with 'The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines 'dignity' as...." Seriously? The dictionary ditch? Is this a 7th grade public speaking competition?
-For some reason, Reese's shout-out to Joaquin Phoenix, that 'without your John there is no June,' sounds dirty.

*yes, I'm being dramatic. *cough cough*

call me slappy

I've been watching 'Project Runway,' sort of over Cat's shoulder, for the past three episodes. While I will be very careful not to use words like 'obsessed' or 'amazing,' or 'ointment,' I will say that it is uniquely interesting. I am particularly intrigued by the one they call Santino, with his height and his flippancy and his geeky arrogance and sly hats. I have absolutely no emotional investment in this show (hence the whopping three episodes), yet I think I would like him to win. I can't remember one specific thing he made, and I don't care enough to go look them up on the various websites I'm sure are devoted to this show. Yet I think I might be sad for him in some obtuse way if he loses. I'd have a dream about my fish dying and in some way link it to his loss.
I also like the boss professor doctor father guy. I could very easily ask Cat his name right this second, but I'm not going to. Mostly because it's funnier not to.
I have a very naive and mildly socially retarded way of watching reality television; when I watch with Cat, there's a lot of 'ooh, and now what happens?' after a challenge or '...so why did she say that?' after a round of cutting and '...now what what do you think they had for dinner?" simply because I'm curious. I think I appear to regard reality tv the way aboriginal bushchildren regard white men with cameras.

handsome, clever, and rich

Can one really read the whole of Jane Austen's Emma in 10 days? One can try.
Also, I need suggestions for February! To recap, this month's reads have been:
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
A Room With a View by E.M. Forster
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.
I'm making an exception to the "nothing I've already read" rule, and will be revisiting A Moveable Feast in March when I go to Paris.

C Monster

In the last 72 hours, courtesy of the lovely Cat, I've experienced the wonders of two emotionally contrasting (and thus emotionally complementary) icons of the 70s: The Bell Jar*, which I had somehow never read and Free to Be You and Me, which I had somehow never listened to. I finished Bell Jar on the way home from shooting a Vaudeville-themed multi-media project done in chromakey against a green screen at a studio in the middle of an oil refinery, and am currently listening to FTBY&M following a hot-oil treatment shower and in lieu of American Idol while I update my iPod and sip Odwalla. The anachronisms are delightful.

*published stateside in 1971

speaking German like a native

I have a headache and a low-grade fever and a dry, raking cough. I had two shows and a costume fitting today, but none of this, even at 12:13 am on Sunday morning, can stop me from totally loving The Bell Jar.
Or from blogging about it, apparently.
I'm not very far into it, but already it's oddly identifiable. I'm sure it will become less so as we delve on into suicide and electroshock. But at this point, Esther's still a relatively un fucked-up young lass. Who's really tall and skinny and doesn't gain weight. And has brown hair. And works at a magazine. In New York. Superficially, I'm screwed.

i got shoes, they're made of plywood

I’ve had a gross cold for nearly a week, and have been charmingly coughing the days away at work (unskippable, since our magazine has a ship this week). 20 minutes ago, I took a big sip of coffee- and instantly had a lung spasm. I started choking on half the coffee, and ran to the trashcan to gracelessly huck up the other half. This led into a sputtery, gaspy five-minute coughing jag, during which I started sweating and becoming dizzy. As three coworkers called my name from their desks (I’ll be uncynical and assume they were concerned, not annoyed), I staggered to the bathroom to finish coughing and sweating and being dizzy in privacy. I picked the coat hook on the stall door as a focus point and once it stopped looking blurry, composed myself and returned to my office, where I returned to coughing daintily and sporadically. My phlegm tastes like coffee.

How badly do you want to make out with me right now?

he's the sort who are all right

Charlotte's energy! And her unselfishness! She had been thus all her life but really, on this Italian tour, she was surpassing herself.
From E.M. Forster's A Room With a View, book #2 on my Classic Novels of 06 Tour. This dainty, 221-page gem was recommended (and donated) by my agelessly fabulous Aunt Kathy, a globetrotter, literary fashionista and a 6' former model. I imagine she read this on a piazza somewhere in Venice, wrapped in a pashmina and elegantly smoking a cig. "I'd give up smoking before I'd give up reading," she commented in a recent letter.
My queue is long and growing (thanks, most recently, to Cat ransacking our bookshelf and piling her recs). Not sure what's next, but it is certain to be... a book.

don't be nervous

It was either this, or advanced biophysics.

it falls at last into Monterrey Bay

He covered his life with a veil of vagueness, while behind his quiet eyes a rich full life went on.
This is from my first classic novel of 2006, "East of Eden," by John Steinbeck. Recommended by Mom the voracious reader, English major and former teacher, it had all that going for it in terms of a qualified recommendation. It's so far living up to the hype quite impressively. In order to keep up with my likely impossible quota of a book a week, I have assigned myself 100 pages a day for this 600-page whopper of a wonderful novel. It's oddly gripping and I nailed the first 180 pages on my flight back from San Diego last night into this morning. I'll get those last 20 done before I go to sleep.
Between the books I got from supportive immediate family members for Christmas and the veritable crate that my house-selling aunt sent, I am hardly at a loss for my next read; the hard part will be choosing it.