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:

21 March 2002: Movies

In addition to my Julia Roberts guilty pleasure, I confess to "Working Girl." Yes. I hang my head. RDC does not comprehend, but does tolerate without disparaging, my ability serially to watch "Breakfast Club" this many years later, but he hates "Working Girl" and has a good reason: Melanie Griffith's voice. He confuses her with Meg Ryan, whom both of us detest (with one exception on my part, of a "When Harry Met Sally" nature). I can't think of another Melanie Griffith movie, since I myself confuse her with Goldie Hawn and think "Houseguest," but I like Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver and I dislike Alec Baldwin so I'm glad he's a bad guy and it's Woman Bettering Herself and randomly associating disparate things to come up with a new idea, so it works for me.

At work, while in MS Word, I wanted to bring up Windows Explorer and pressed Control-E. Which, according to my heavily personalized Word set-up, does not center a paragraph but offers a footnote or endnote--just as it did several years ago when I first began to use Word. (Change is bad.) Having escaped from that, I correctly typed Windows-E. This is one of the things that makes me crazy about the computer staff here at Dot Org: after one iteration of Windows or another, Windows Explorer left the Start menu or the Start/ Programs menu. I asked one of them where Explorer now was. "I don't know," the person said. "I just right-click on the Start menu." But I, liking as much screen as possible, don't display my taskbar, and for whatever reason the Autohide function doesn't work--the taskbar is either always on top or inaccessible. Not too long after that lack of exchange, a mistype--I'm a hideous typist--brought up Windows Explorer, and I recognized the worth of that keyboard combination. Yea.

So I thought of the end of "Working Girl" when Tess's assistant tells her "Just hit Shift-S for your schedule." I'm pretty sure she specifies the shift, not control or alternate, key. That cracks me up.

And I was comparing my Julia Roberts weakness with someone recently. I made Haitch watch "My Best Friend's Wedding" with me, which she has yet to forgive me for. (I made her watch the fourth "Batman" movie too, which even Ben didn't understand.) We both hated it--except, for me, a big exception, which was Rupert Everett, sublime face that he is, leading the table in song. This person, who otherwise belittled my Julia Roberts-ing, liked "Wedding."

RDC recently asked if "Bridget Jones's Diary" had any redeeming qualities at all or was it just a chickflick. He liked "Nurse Betty" so figured it had a hope. I say, it has Colin Firth in it, even despite the gherkin up his tush, and Hugh Grant, and Jim Broadbent, and Gemma Jones, and is therefore good. But RDC has given up on Hugh Grant. Says all he does are chick flicks, and used as his primary weapon "Notting Hill." Which I adore. Okay, I've got movies on the brain.

Three days to Oscars.

Not that RDC can forgive Julia Roberts for getting the Oscar for "Erin Brockovitch" ahead of Ellen Burstyn for "Requiem for a Dream," either.