Reading: Suburban Nation

Not yet given up on: John Milton, Paradise Lost

In the midst of: A.S. Byatt, Biographer's Tale; Dava Sobel, Galileo's Daughter

On deck: Invisible Man; Don Quijote

Moving:

20 March 2002: Screen blather

I don't know why I did this to myself. Nebra hadn't seen "Moulin Rouge" so I invited her over to see it. Which will make my fifth time. I thought I couldn't stand it the fourth time, with RDC, but I forgot how much watching a movie with someone who hates it affects the experience. I liked it fine this time. This came up because yesterday we went to see "Beautiful Mind."

Which was okay, in the strict sense of "okay," if okay in fact does possess one. Russell Crowe continues to do nothing for me. The first hallucination was as obvious as the second. Jennifer Connelly failed to blow me away. Ron Howard as a director: Willow, which I like a lot; Cocoon, which I didn't hate; Parenthood, which I adore; Apollo 13, which had too much Tom Hanks and Kevin Bacon and that Paxton-Pullman guy. Paxton. I can tell them apart now (I'm very proud). Not Oscar material, Howard I mean.

I have no idea how to program an apostrophe into Tivo. I might regret it, but I want to see "Nobody's Fool"--the one with Paul Newman, based on the book, not the other one. So I entered "Paul Newman" and "Fool." Tivo found "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" for me with neither preposition nor article, but it hasn't yet discovered "The Truth about Cats and Dogs" which lacks the
conjunction also. I have to find out Haitch's opinion of VH-1's Pop-up Videos, because the "Raising Arizona" I just recorded has suffered a similar fate. I suppose it's the last stop before MST3K.

Nisou discovered "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" but knows only the Usan version, so I've been taping it for her, sometimes Usan, sometimes British. Tony Slattery, Stephen Fry, and Josie Lawrence, and Clive Anderson instead of Drew Carey: clearly better.