RandomCha

Lately I’ve been mentally absent from LJ for the most part. I think I’m in one of those phases where it feels like I just have too much rattling around in my brain. The dayjob has been demanding, my writing for Chicagoist has been demanding, I’m still obsessively checking and rechecking airfare to London waiting for it to go down, there was the Oscar party (very fun), and a million other things that I can’t even think of right now. But I do miss blogging … 

Did my taxes this weekend. Owed $37 to the feds, got a $3 refund from Illinois (which I waived by donating it to various causes instead). Not bad really. I’m still shopping for plane tickets. My gut is telling me that prices will drop this week.

All set for the Oscar party.

Last night we watched SNL (which was so-so) and I made some cocoa. Simple pleasures are the best.

Doing laundry, and can’t decide whether or not I’d rather have tea or a cocktail. There’s going to be a lot of people for the Oscar party. I think it’ll hafta spill into a second room, which means yours truly probably WON’T be watching it on the new 32″ HDTV. Grr. The things I do for my guests; I’ll tell ya! I wish we could just knock out a wall or two temporarily.

TV vs. Movies: You Decide

Last night we watched Robert Altman’s Quintet … against all rationality there’s something about the movie that haunts me. It’s a definite failure. And yet a failure from Robert Altman is usually more interesting than many other filmmakers’ successes.

Joey is coming over tomorrow night. In anticipation of the DVD release of Season 2, we’re going to start watching all of “Twin Peaks.” Every Monday night. Tomorrow we’ll start with the pilot (of course). Makes me tingly all over just thinking about it.

I suppose my head is rather blank. Just downloaded the self-titled  debut album of The Bird And The Bee. Love it!

All the snow everywhere has been pretty cool. See, I don’t mind nesting for awhile. It’s okay to be lazy. I love the snow but hate the salty slush which is its inevitable metamorphosis.

We watched Orson Welles‘ The Trial last night and I liked it even more than the last time I saw it. I think it’s right up there with Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil. It seems like his usual budgetary restrictions caused him to focus his creativity into discipline instead of sloppiness for once. Perfect cast too. All the post-production looping is a bit awkward, but maybe because the film is so dreamlike it doesn’t matter much.

We decided to just stay in tonight instead of go to Pars Cove, our original plan. Pasta. Finally get to open that bottle of Coppola Claret perhaps.

Politics? Shrug. I dunno if I can remember a time, recently, when so many people were “debating” so many irrelevancies with so many truly important crises towering over everything like so many elephants in the room. So, so, so.

Back to listening to Thelonious Monk.

“A good reason to be famous, though, is so you can read all the big magazines and know everybody in all the stories. Page after page it’s just all people you’ve met. I love that kind of reading experience and that’s the best reason to be famous.”

—ANDY WARHOL

Yesterday I watched Obama’s campaign launch speech. Awesome stuff. Andy is deeply dubious (cynical?) about how a presidential campaign is going to affect Obama, essentially declaring that “it will ruin him.” As for me, well, you can call me naive but I’m hopeful; I believe that Obama is made of very stern stuff indeed. In his years as a community organizer I’m sure he was up against forces every bit as daunting as those to come. And you can believe he’s going to have an army of volunteers right behind him. I know that things are bound to get nasty within the the next year, but I think this will have the tendency to drag down Obama’s opponents rather than bolster them. There were 17,000 people there yesterday, standing around in the bitter cold. That’s just the beginning.

Of course I was very hopeful about Howard Dean and he did not end up winning the primary. However he did go on to chair the DNC and has done some fairly amazing things there. So, yeah, que sera sera.

I really haven’t been able to find any Chicago/London tickets for under $600. It’s maddening! Maybe it’s just too early. Maybe I need to wait awhile. Maybe the early bird doesn’t get the worm any longer.

This damn cold won’t let up. My sinuses are stuffed with concrete and everything sounds underwater. Work is driving me up the wall. 

The actual frigid temps outside … well, I don’t mind them so much. I handle extreme cold much better than I handle extreme heat. The apartment is perfectly warm. The new flannel sheets that Andy put on the bed yesterday were so warm, I was almost too hot. Plenty of coffee to drink. What’s the big deal? We haven’t had any broken pipes, thankfully. What I like about the extreme cold is the (momentary) disappearance of the slow-walking pedestrian from the streets and sidewalks of Chicago. Heck, it almost seems like there have been times in the last few days when I’ve had the sidewalk all to myself. 

I’ve found a punch recipe in theback of the original Trader Vic’s cookbook that I think will work nicely for the Oscar party. It’s a champage tiki punch (!) Sounds deceptively strong. Excellent. If there’s one thing our parties are known for, it’s the suckerpunch punches.

Politics? Hmm. Am I the only one who feels a certain detachment from it all at the moment? The state of our planet could be amazingly different within my own lifetime. It’s a little disorienting.