the weblog @ interbridge.com
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Sue Trowbridge lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the co-owner of an independent record label, 125 Records, and web diva of interbridge.com.
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more weblog:
January 04
February 04
March 04
April 04

 
 

05.31.04 everybody must get stoned

You know what they say about baby boomers -- navel-gazing, self-indulgent, thinking the world revolves around 'em. I don't necessarily believe that, but if I was looking for Exhibit A, I'd pull out the DVD of "Stone Reader."

At the heart of "Stone Reader" is a quest: a man, filmmaker Mark Moskowitz, searching for the long-lost author of a book (The Stones of Summer) that came out in the early 1970s. Moskowitz, who makes his living creating political campaign commercials, purchased the book in paperback after reading a rave review in the New York Times. However, he couldn't quite get into it, so he put it aside for 25 years. When he picked it up again, he found that not only did he love the book, he thought it was a masterpiece -- perhaps the great lost American novel. Since the author, one Dow Mossman, had never written anything else, Moskowitz decided to track him down and find out why.

So far, so good. As an avid reader, I love the premise of this movie. However, Moskowitz is unbelievably annoying, both as the "star" of the film and as a documentary filmmaker. For instance, when he decides to search for Mossman, he seeks out the guy who wrote the New York Times review, a couple of literary critics, the man who designed the book's dust jacket, and a person who attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the same time Mossman was there. This consumes the first hour of the film. When Moskowitz visits the Times critic at his Maine home, we see Moskowitz get on the plane, get in his rental car, drive along while listening to "Fresh Air," etc. Why? It just makes the 128-minute film seem egregiously padded.

None of those folks know where Mossman is, or what happened to him. The dust jacket designer, whom Moskowitz, who lives near Philadelphia, traveled all the way to Florida to interview, doesn't even remember that particular job. Then, finally, after a couple of years of filming, Moskowitz goes to Iowa to meet the person to whom The Stones of Summer is dedicated -- William Murray, a former professor at the Writers' Workshop Mossman attended. I don't know -- I think I might have started with that guy. He informs Moskowitz that Mossman lives in Cedar Rapids, about 30 miles away. From there, tracking him down is child's play. (I hope I'm not giving too much away here, but since Mossman's book has since been republished and he has appeared with Moskowitz at film festivals, been interviewed on NPR, etc., most people should know by now that he didn't stay lost.)

Along the way, we hear Moskowitz pontificate about books he loves (he seems to travel with big boxes full of weighty tomes, so he can whip them out when he's interviewing literary figures, perhaps in an effort to impress them with his great taste in books); we see him visit his mom's house to find out what he was like in 1972 (eccentric -- he'd go out wearing the linings of coats!); we watch footage of him raking leaves in the backyard of his impressively large home; we see his young son reading a Harry Potter book.

I think a really good movie could have been made out of this material; I just don't particularly care for Moskowitz's approach. The movie seems overlong, and parts of it are obviously staged (such as when Moskowitz mails copies of the book to some of his friends, and we see them receiving and opening the packages).

As for the book itself, it seems like a lot of people who really liked the movie have bought the reprint version, and opinion seems to be, to put it charitably, mixed (look it up at Amazon.com if you're interested). A one-star review quotes a few sentences from the book, including this doozy: "He shifted uncomfortably on his stool looking at the topless blonde bombshell on the bar, but the first thing that struck him was the pulchritude of the exotic dancer's lips, which glowed like maraschino cherries, that is, pitted cherries macerated in an almond-flavored syrup then heated to boiling in an alum-containing brine full of carcinogenic red dyes." Or how about this one: "[He] was attracted to her like a moth to a flame -- not just any moth, but one of the giant silk moths of the genus Hyalophora, perhaps Hyalophora euryalus, whose great red-brown wings with white basal and postmedian lines flap almost languorously until one ignites in the flame, fanning the conflagration to ever greater heights until burning down to the hirsute thorax and abdomen, the fat-laden contents of which provide a satisfying sizzle to end the agony."

The "Stone Reader" DVD is actually two discs long -- Netflix only sent me the first, which contains a commentary by Mossman and Moskowitz (which I skipped). Disc #2 has deleted scenes, featurettes, trailers and more interviews. I'm not sure if there is any more footage of Moskowitz raking his lawn. Perhaps it's only fitting that a 500-plus-page book spawned such an epic-length package.

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05.30.04 mother's day

The Giants are not only on an eight-game winning streak, but have been playing darn good baseball lately. For the benefit of the people who don't follow the game (the majority of my 15 readers, I suspect, so I'll keep this short), the team spent a lot of time in last or next-to-last place for the first month of the season. And now they're winning games again. So, hooray.

Saw Olympia Dukakis in ACT's "A Mother" last week. The thing about being a season-ticket holder is that you never know just what you're going to get -- it's kind of a leap of faith. Since "A Mother" is an adaptation from a 1910 play by Russian writer Maxim Gorky, I figured it was going to be a turgid drama. But it turns out "A Mother" is a marvelous black comedy, featuring magnificent performances by Dukakis as the mom from hell and her husband Louis Zorich as her partner in crime. Thoroughly entertaining from start to finish, and highly recommended.

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05.28.04 bad dogg

For some reason, the idea of Snoop Dogg playing the pilot of a commercial jetliner struck me as an idea with comedic potential. Could it be an "Airplane!" for the '00s? After reading a few reviews of "Soul Plane," though, I think I'll skip it. The Chicago Tribune's Mark Caro writes, "Desperate times call for desperate measures, so until further notice any movie that depicts flatulence, a gastrointestinal mishap or harm to an animal in the first five minutes gets one star. 'Soul Plane' offers all three -- the first two leaving lead actor Kevin Hart stuck to an airplane potty, the third hurling his pet dog into a jet engine."

Bathroom jokes and causing harm to an animal? No, no, a thousand times no.

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05.27.04 low riders

Lately, I've noticed groups of guys who appear to be in their late teens riding around the neighborhood on these tiny little motorcycles. If these boys think they look cool, they are oh so wrong -- put fezzes on 'em, and you might mistake them for a pack of young Shriners. I mean, these bikes are small, maybe one-third the size of a normal hog. But boy, are they ever noisy. When five of them rode by, I had to clasp my hands over my ears.

I wondered what the deal was with these dorky-looking cycles until I read this article. "Pocket bikes" have long been popular in Europe, apparently. Here in California, there's a catch-22: the cops say the bikes require license plates, but the DMV refuses to register them because they lack Vehicle Identification Numbers.

If, for some reason, you want to buy a pocket bike, you'll find that they are cheap -- under $500, in most cases. But notice that the sites that sell them never include photos of people riding the things. That's because you will look really, really silly.

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05.26.04 too precious for words

You know that har-har-funny comedy routine about oxymorons ("military intelligence," "jumbo shrimp," etc.). Well, try this one on for size: Precious Moments Rocks.

Yes, those adowable figuwines featuring big-eyed children are now rockin' out, baby. Click on this link if you dare. And this tour isn't playing any old stadium -- it's coming to a Hallmark card shop near you!

Seriously, maybe I should be happy that Precious Moments is encouraging girls to start rock bands; it's just that PM originated in my hometown of Grand Rapids, Mich., so I've been aware of its treacly designs for a long time and find them sort of nauseating. I do love this item on their FAQ page, though: "USAGE GUIDELINES: Tattoos: Since all of our artwork is copyrighted, a well-respected tattoo parlor knows that they must get permission prior to using any Precious Moments image. Precious Moments will grant permission and issue an agreement with all restrictions explained."

I'd love to see what would happen if someone went into a tattoo parlor and requested that the image of one of PM's cutesy-poo figurines be permanently etched in their flesh. I'm sure it would make an interesting change of pace from the usual barbed-wire-around-the-upper-arm, kanji characters and tribal lower-back designs for the tattoo artist, at least.

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05.25.04 hey now, you're an all-star

Voting has opened for the 2004 All-Star game, to be played in Houston on July 13. You can vote here -- and please do me a favor and write in Yorvit Torrealba's name for NL catcher. If all 15 readers of this blog vote the permitted 25 times each for Yorvit, well... that would be a lot of votes!

It was difficult, but I resisted watching the finale of "The Swan" last night -- a show so awful that even reality-TV slut Heather Havrilesky of Salon.com denounced it as unwatchable. How can that not make you just a tiny bit curious? In case you care, the winner was Rachel Love Fraser, a 27-year-old construction company clerk who had a "nose job, lip enhancement, chin implant, brow lift, breast lift, liposuction in five different places and major dental work" as part of the show.

Next reality-show hurdle: will I watch "For Love or Money 3"? The twist this time is that the bachelor, Denver mortgage broker-slash-model Preston Mercer, will decide how much money each woman will get, from $1 to $1 million. I am particularly vulnerable to watching reality TV in the summer, when more highfalutin' fare is on hiatus. It pains me to admit that I actually watched a few installments of "Married By America" last year. Yes, I know I could be reading Proust in the original French or at the very least renting Criterion Collection DVDs from Netflix. I'm just bad that way.

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05.24.04 big in sweden

One of our 125 artists, Jill Tracy, got some big-time TV exposure last week -- featured in a documentary about absinthe. The program aired on Sweden's TV2 network, so now we've been getting a bunch of orders from Swedes. Being Swedish, I am, of course, pleased about this, even though filling out customs forms is a drag. Oh, and Jill was interviewed for the show a couple of years ago (!), long before she had any association with us, so I can't take any credit for promotional wizardry. Still, we're probably going to recoup the money we spent on the CD (which has an incredibly elaborate, and thus expensive, booklet) sooner than I'd expected, which is a good thing.

Lots of letters about Curves, pro and con, in Salon today. Was I rash in canceling my membership? Maybe, but I am still exercising, and for free, no less (in a facility that wasn't available to me at the time I joined). Instead of being forced to listen to often-horrible music, I ride the exercise bike or work on the cross-trainer in blissful silence while reading. Perhaps 14 months of sweatin' to the oldies was, quite simply, enough.

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05.20.04 readin' on a jet plane

Gather 'round, children, and let me tell you about a time before iPods, Game Boys, laptops, individual seatback TV monitors -- even before big, clunky cassette Walkmen existed. Back then, there were two things you could do on an airplane: sleep or read. I've never been able to do the former, so I always had to make sure I had a good book along. For my childhood trips to Europe, I would usually head to the paperback fiction section of the bookstore and look at the thickness of the spines in order to find the longest possible book. One year, I remember selecting M.M. Kaye's The Far Pavilions, which was almost 1,000 pages long.

Reading is still a popular in-flight activity, but today, there are many more choices available to the traveler. On my recent trip, my seatmates were armed with fancy devices such as Bose noise-canceling headphones and an Apple G4 laptop with DVD player (the guy was watching "The Blue Collar Comedy Tour" and laughing so hard and so long that I wish I could have heard the jokes, even if they were probably all about bass fishing, hunting, or Wal-Mart).

Here is what I read on my week-long vacation -- not all of them in the air, but rated on a scale from one to four wings (one wing: I'd rather be reading the SkyMall catalog; four wings: so absorbing that you won't even notice the turbulence over Wisconsin).

Sophie Kinsella, Can You Keep A Secret?: The author of the British chick-lit Shopaholic series strikes again with this feather-light but charming romance. Emma, a marketing drone at Panther Cola, gets involved with the rich, mysterious founder of the company. Naturally, they both have secrets -- and that leads to wacky misunderstandings. Bonus points for containing a key scene that takes place on an airplane. Rating: Three wings.

Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, The Nanny Diaries: My friend Janet had recommended this to me a few months ago, but the plot sounded too unpleasant -- rich, snooty, self-absorbed society lady mistreats her hard-working nanny and ignores her adorable four-year-old son. Then my mom happened to have it lying around and mentioned how much she'd loved it. I must admit that once I'd started it, I couldn't put it down. Nanny does take a lot of crap from her employer, but the plot has tons of twists and turns, and the glimpse into the lives of New York's elite is fascinating. The Nanny Diaries deserves all of the acclaim it received when it came out two years ago. Rating: Four wings.

Mary Higgins Clark, Nighttime Is My Time: MHC's books are the literary equivalent of county-fair food like cotton candy or fried dough: no nutritional value, and nothing you'd want to eat as a steady diet, but it can be a delicious treat on occasion. Sadly, Nighttime is probably her worst book (and I've read almost all of them). For one thing, it's a total rip-off of one of her previous novels, You Belong To Me. Once again, we have a woman stalked by a serial killer who is one of several suspects; the killer also uses jewelry as his calling card (this time, it's a pewter owl instead of a ring). Unfortunately, the killer's identity is completely arbitrary. We are given reasons why any of the male characters in the book could have been "The Owl," and no reason why this particular one turned out to be a deranged psychopath. Instead of "The Owl," maybe MHC should have named her protagonist "The Red Herring." Rating: One wing.

Elaine Viets, Murder Between the Covers: This is the second book in Viets' "Dead End Job" series, featuring 40-something heroine Helen, who is on the lam and living in Ft. Lauderdale. I used to spend a couple weeks there every year visiting my grandparents, so the setting is a plus for me. Because Helen needs to live her life "off the books," she can only take crummy jobs from the sort of slightly-shady employers who pay in cash. In this book, Helen is working at Page Turners, a bookstore on fancy Las Olas Blvd. Page Turner is also the name of the store's owner (har har). When Page is murdered, it seems like everyone who knew him wanted him dead, but Helen's pal Peggy is the one charged with committing the crime. Since the police are sure they know who the killer is, Helen needs to investigate in order to free her friend. This series has a wonderful supporting cast and an appealing heroine; I'm glad Helen will be back in a new adventure this fall (working as a telemarketer). Rating: Three wings.

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05.19.04 i am an ogre

As the 15 or so people who visit this page regularly (according to my stats page) probably already know, I have been out of town for the past week. While I was away, I saw "Shrek 2," which currently has a 91% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Every major critic loves it (or, in the case of the New York Times, likes it, with some reservations). "Only an ogre would complain" about this film, opines Lou Lumenick of the New York Post. So, let me play the designated ogre.

"Shrek 2" opens with Princess Fiona and Shrek returning from their honeymoon. As soon as Shrek has carried his bride over the threshold of his cottage, however, the lovable green monsters are abruptly summoned to Far Far Away, the kingdom ruled by Fiona's parents. The Donkey, voiced by Eddie Murphy, tags along. After the long journey, the newlyweds arrive in FFA. But they're not exactly given a royal welcome -- Fiona's folks didn't expect that their new son-in-law would be an ogre, or that their daughter herself would have turned into one permanently. Shrek sets out to try to use magic to make himself more acceptable to his in-laws; meanwhile, FFA's resident fairy godmother, whose son just happens to be the Prince Charming whom Fiona was supposed to marry, enlists the king in a plot to get rid of Shrek so the princess can wed the prince.

I really enjoyed the first "Shrek," which was a fresh and funny parody of sappy Disney fairy tales. But I sat stone-faced through most of "Shrek 2" (I will admit that I loved Antonio Banderas' turn as Puss in Boots, who starts out as an enemy and winds up as a sidekick to the ogre and his donkey pal). Here's why:

  • Nothing is more tedious than Hollywood poking fun at itself. FFA is an elaborate parody of L.A. and Beverly Hills, from the Angelyne billboard to the Oscars (featuring -- gag -- a cameo by Joan Rivers as herself).

  • You might think it would be impossible to shoehorn product placements into a cartoon set in medieval times, but you'd be wrong. The faux-Rodeo Drive is lined with boutiques such as Tower of London Records, Burger Prince and Farbucks Coffee, with logos that look exactly like their modern-day counterparts. "Cute" product placements are still product placements, and it's annoyingly intrusive.

  • Great animated films are timeless; "Shrek 2," which references everything from Justin Timberlake to "Cops," the E! channel, "Titanic," "Spider-Man," and about 50 other recent movies, is going to look mighty dated in a few years.

  • The music is awful. The hideous covers of David Bowie's "Changes" (by Butterfly Boucher) and the Buzzcocks' "Ever Fallen In Love" (by Pete Yorn) made me long for "Be My Guest" or even "Hakuna Matata." And the movie ends with a big production number featuring Banderas and Murphy singing "Livin' La Vida Loca." I'd almost rather hear William Hung massacre "She Bangs" again.

  • Can we declare a moratorium on the jive-talkin' cartoon character voiced by a black actor? Apparently not -- if you go to "Shrek 2," you'll see a preview for Dreamworks' next animated film, "Shark Tale," featuring Will Smith as a sea creature spouting lines like, "Yo, Angie needs to get her freak on!" and "Slap your fin -- slap it! Oh, don't sweat it -- a lot of white fish can't do it."

  • Maybe this is nitpicky, but while it apparently took Shrek and Fiona days and days to cover the distance from the swamp to FFA -- it's far, far away, get it? -- Shrek's fairy-tale friends (Pinocchio, the Gingerbread Man, the Three Blind Mice, etc.) are able to make it in an hour or so. Was it magic? Maybe, but it's never explained.

I'm sure "Shrek 2" will be wildly popular and make zillions of dollars, but at least I've had a chance to offer my grumpy, contrarian POV.

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05.11.04 multiple maniacs

I like movies. I see about 60 per year in movie theaters, which is, I suspect, a lot more than the average person my age (not having to pay a babysitter helps). My tastes are pretty wide-ranging; the 26 films I've seen so far this year include hyper-commercial Hollywood fare ("Starsky & Hutch"), arty foreign films ("Reconstruction," "Smala Sussie"), and revival-house classics like "Sudden Fear."

However, I would never dare call myself a film buff. Not after viewing "Cinemania," a 2002 documentary about five people who really, really, really love movies. Some of them attend as many as five screenings a day, often viewing 1,000 movies a year. Naturally, they live in New York, which is probably the only place in the U.S. where such an obsession could flourish. They all have the N.Y. subway system down cold, so they know exactly how much time they have to make it to their next screening across town.

In case you're wondering how anyone can afford to spend their life doing nothing but seeing movies, well, three of them are on disability (though they are spry enough to trot from theater to theater), Jack is living on an inheritance, and Bill collects unemployment. (His benefits are about to run out, which might force him to get a job, although the timing -- right before the New York Film Festival -- may keep him from rejoining the workforce for a little bit longer.) Except for the one who lives with his mom, their apartments all look like hovels, crammed full of film books, memorabilia, and plain ol' trash.

Clearly, these people are a bit nutty. The irascible Roberta was banned for life from one theater for brawling with a ticket taker who dared to tear her stub (Roberta collects them). Jack will go to any lengths to make sure no one disrupts his viewing experience, something that once caused him to get arrested. Nebbishy Bill's dream is to marry a French woman so he can move to Paris and be closer to the French films he so loves. Harvey has the savant-like talent of knowing the exact running time for every film ever made.

Even though they all have their individual favorite film genres, I got the sense that their extreme fascination with the movies is almost a manifestation of some kind of mental illness rather than a true love of cinema -- if they weren't running around seeing movies all day, they could just as easily be obsessed with, say, ham radio or collecting string. That kind of obsession with anything just doesn't seem normal.

I watched "Cinemania" at home on DVD, a pastime shunned by all but one of the buffs (a couple of them even grouse about the fact that the filmmakers are shooting on digital video instead of real film). It never got a theatrical release in San Francisco, perhaps because it's so New York-centric. The DVD contains about an hour of deleted scenes. Being something of a completist, I watched them all. By the end, I felt slightly woozy, the way I do at the end of a film festival when I've gorged on too much cinema in a short period of time. Movies, I feel, are best in moderation -- a statement these cinemaniacs would never agree with.

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05.10.04 chicken soup for the giants fan's soul

Following last week's Sonic Youth sighting in Sally Forth, it's time for another installment of "I Can't Believe I Saw It In A Comic!" Today, it's Farley (exclusive to the San Francisco Chronicle), which is drawn by fellow West Michigan native Phil Frank. Alphonse the bear is writing a cheer about "hot Giants player" Yorvit Torrealba (the team's back-up catcher and my favorite Giant). Yorvit is a very good player -- he hit a game-winning double on May 2 -- but in terms of public profile, he's no Barry Bonds. So seeing him celebrated in a comic was pretty darn cool.

One caveat: the punch line of the strip is, "What rhymes with Dominican Republic?" As all Yorvit fans know, he is a native of Venezuela, not the DR. Which leads to a lot of potential verse, such as:

Yorvit Torrealba hails from Venezuela
When you need a catcher, he will never fail ya'

Also, I know it's not my place to judge, but... even though the Giants did not exactly have a great first month out (they're currently third in the NL West, having moved up from dead last), and they are relying more than ever on Barry Bonds, can't they give the poor guy a few more days off? He's been suffering from a sinus infection. He shouldn't be on the East Coast playing baseball (which presumably involved flying on a plane, about the worst thing you can do when you have a sinus infection). He should be home eating chicken soup. Yes, he's a kazillionaire and I feel sorry for him.

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05.09.04 some girls have all the luck

Once again, a young hot chick wins "Survivor." As I predicted, Rahb and Stuff magazine cover girl Ambuh were the last two standing. And since they just got engaged on live TV, the mil will wind up as community property. Awww, isn't that sweet. Ugh.

The big twist they've been advertising? We, the viewing audience, get to award an additional $1M to the "all-star" of our choice. I think CBS can hire a calligrapher right now to start writing the name "Rupert Boneham" in fancy letters on a giant prop check.

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05.08.04 the tribe has spoken

Slate has an article about why "Survivor: All-Stars" has been such a letdown. I still have Thursday night's ep on the TiVo (the show is so under the radar now that I don't know who got kicked off, whereas I do know that someone named George was voted off "American Idol," which I don't even watch). Sunday's show is the three hour long finale, which might be worth watching for the tribal council vitriol aimed at Boston Rob, in the likely event that he makes it to the final two (along with his gal pal "Ambuh"). Still, I'll be glad when it's over and I can move onto other, better reality shows, like "The Amazing Race." July 6, people!!

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05.07.04 kool thing

The most disturbing thing on the comics pages this week: Ted Forth, in the "flashback to 1987" plot in Sally Forth, wearing a Sonic Youth T-shirt. In all my years of reading the comic, I have never gotten the impression that Ted Forth was that cool. I mean, Daydream Nation, many hipsters' first exposure to SY, hadn't even been released yet in 1987. And remember, Ted was a business major! My guess: he might have been listening to R.E.M. or maybe the Replacements or Hüsker Dü, but more realistically, he'd have been into U2, Springsteen or, dare I say it, Bon Jovi. I just don't believe he was rockin' out to Bad Moon Rising.

As for Sally's Bangles T-shirt, that is a bit more plausible.

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05.06.04 burnin' for you

Yesterday, I attended a friend's PartyLite show. At first, I worried that she had fallen on hard times and was getting into the candle-selling biz to earn some extra cash. However, it turns out that she was just hosting the show, which simply enables you to buy candles at half-price. We would be purchasing the candles from our official PartyLite Consultant, Heidi.

I felt a bit left out because I hadn't brought the must-have accessory that most of the other women were toting (i.e., a baby). Luckily, the many burning candles were placed safely on a tabletop, far away from the infants' reach. Heidi showed us all of the fashionable new PartyLite candles and accessories for spring & summer, like the rustic garden candle stand and the teapot-shaped Aroma Melter. She passed around a plastic case containing tiny candles so we could smell the fragrances, which ranged from Strawberry Rhubarb to Belgian Waffle to less self-explanatory odors such as C'est Moi and Joyous Escape.

In the end, I wound up buying some candles -- I mean, we're always told we should have lots of candles in our emergency kits, in case the Big One hits and the power goes out, right? Sure, you can buy packs of utility candles at the drugstore for a couple bucks, but if disaster strikes, it will surely be more pleasant to sit back, relax and enjoy the scent of Almond Biscotti or Raspberry & Thyme instead of plain old wax.

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05.05.04 achoo

I was sitting in a movie theater the other day and a person a couple rows ahead of me sneezed. "Bless you," the woman sitting next to me said, almost in a whisper -- quiet enough, in any case, so that the sneezer would never have been able to hear her. Another "bless you" followed a second sneeze.

As a PWA (Person With Allergies), I have noticed that whenever a sneeze escapes me in a public place (naturally, I am always careful to sneeze into a tissue), one or two people are guaranteed to say, "Bless you." Then I feel I have to say "Excuse me." Can't people just pretend they don't notice? I've got news for you, folks: a sneeze does not mean your soul has been temporarily thrust from your body and your blessing may be the only thing keeping the devil at bay. It means, in my case, that there is dust or pollen or a cat around. Friends blessing me is fine; total strangers blessing me is creepy.

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05.04.04 the endless enigma

Joe & I attended a wedding yesterday -- it was lovely, and the bride looked like a princess. The reception was held at an Irish pub; how cool is that? I notice on the pub's web site that the building is a national landmark, which is pretty funny, since it was built in 1925. In Europe (where the happy couple is currently honeymooning), that would practically count as a new building!

For some reason, I've never really gotten into listening to Internet radio. I haven't even checked out Air America yet -- I'm waiting for it to finally hit the airwaves in San Francisco, although considering the station's difficulties getting off the ground, who knows when that will happen. I do take endless advantage of the bountiful archives on NPR, where I can listen to favorite features that don't air in my hometown, or catch up on a show that I missed.

My friend James has satellite radio in his car -- now that is cool. There are stations that play nothing but, say, 1980s-era alternative rock, or British dance hits, or swing music. They even broadcast Air America!

Of course, listening to satellite radio requires a special receiver, which I don't have. I should go back to listening to 3wk.com -- I bought Snow Patrol's 1999 CD Songs for Polarbears after hearing a track there, and now it turns out that band is, like, the next big thing.

I can't quite get into progressive rock -- what can I say, despite an early flirtation with Emerson Lake & Palmer, I was weaned on the 3-minute pop song -- but if you like it, you should check out Delicious Agony, especially "Shadow & Light," Sundays from 4-6 PM EST (repeated Tuesdays from 3-5 PM EST), because the DJ is really good.

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All content © 2004 by Sue Trowbridge