If you're going to be snowed in for the weekend (like most of us are in Maryland, DC and Virginia), at least you can be comforted with having great books:

(which I'm reading for the first time)

and great music:

(certainly an appropriate enough title)

And speaking of music I've discovered two goodies...



I've never seen the movie "Bandits," but for some  reason I picked the soundtrack up at the library today and wow...what a pleasant surprise. One of my favorite songs from my childhood is on here, only I didn't know it was until the first notes of "Wildfire" started...

Also terrific is the music from "Babel":


There's a very fun, poppy song called "Oh My Juliet" by Takashi Fujii, which you can watch the video for on You Tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TBp_yyWz6c

 

Some things together just seem wrong...like pickles and ice cream, cigarettes in coffee (don't ask!) and Big Macs in tortilla wraps...

As a former half-way committed vegetarian who has strayed back to meat I've got to say I HATE the new Big Mac Wrap...I shudder, not so much at the taste as at how dirty it feels eating it...like I'm trying to hide a porn magazine behind a copy of the New Yorker.

This is a Big Mac, people, and no amount of hiding it in a sweet little wrap is going to change that fact...I think I'll refrain from checking the calorie content this one time and go back to turkey burgers without the bun...

 

from deviant art

We probably all have a history of crushes/first love/ things gone amuck measured in songs and the memories associated with those times can still come flooding back years later when we hear those songs unexpectedly on the radio...my top three "time travel" moments are brought on by:


"I Can't Fight this Feeling" REO Speedwagon

"Is This Love?" Whitesnake

"Don't Want to Lose You Now" by Gloria Estefan


I think the fact these songs are so old and I have no newer ones of association has a great deal to do with the fact that I handle emotions a lot better than I used to:) That...and the fact that I'm a firm believer our youth and our music are irrevocably tied together forever, no matter how many years go on and no matter how many groups/singers we go on to love...sadly, that era of music for me is the wacky 80s.

 

 I've become convinced that those of us who are sci-fi nuts and fans of complex tv plots actually LIKE the headaches that come with trying to wrap our brains around the difficult...

SPOILERS BELOW!!>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 (if you watch "Lost")

Not sure what to make of the season premiere, but I do have one or two burning questions:

-I was so excited when the white screen slowly disappeared and the clouds appeared and we realized Jack was back on Oceanic Flight 815...I thought "yay; they made it!" But of course we soon realize that is not necessarily the case...not only because of what soon unravels next, but also because something doesn't seem right on the flight...

-isn't the flight attendant the same woman who appears at the temple later with the two children??

-why did Desmond disappear on the flight?

-if the alternative timeline with the plane is what happens because Juliet DID succeed with the bomb, then where are Michael and Sharon?

-when Jack looks out the plane at the beginning and the camera tracks deep under the sea why are so many things from the Island underwater?? (later: okay i realize now that island is under water because in this alternate universe when the bomb went off it sunk the island)

-so far it seems that life is pretty bleak for the people in the LAX timeline, that somehow they were happier on the island (of course they don't know this because in this timeline they never crashed on the island)...maybe the writers are trying to suggest that life on the island was always (and always will be) their destiny?

 -some interesting ideas and thoughts running around on the IMDB message board for "Lost"...just watch out for the meanies and extremely odd birds who post:):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411008/board

And this article, which I just found, definitely answers some burning questions:

http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/02/02/lost-premiere-damon-carlton/

I like Nicole Kidman and most of her movies, but I'm not so sure I get the passion and slightly stalkerish sound to David Thomson's book about her...

At its best it reads like a text you'd read in film class on gender roles ...at its worst, like a man intent on what he thinks is best for Ms. Kidman's career as if he is well-acquainted with her and one of her closest advisors...

Still, it's one of the quirkiest things I've ever read, with some terrific insights on and little known facts on her less mainstream works.