Rehab Addict

Rehab Addict is my new favorite tv show.

This woman flips historic homes in Minneapolis, but before she puts them on the market, she renovates them to something resembling their original condition.  That is, she tears out all of the ugly things that bad, bad people have done to the houses through the decades, and replaces it with as many period-correct elements as she can. 

Why do people buy historic buildings and mutilate them into modern looking buildings?  If you want something new, get something new (you fucking son of a bitch moron jagweed asshole)!  Leave the old ones alone.  When I was house shopping, I hated walking into a cute 1930s bungalow only to find that it had been gutted and renovated in approximately 1987.  NOT ACCEPTABLE.  Maybe I'm weird, though.  As I have detailed at some point, I grew up in a 1950 time capsule.

Our house was the Phoenix winter home of a mildly eccentric old man who had kept the house in such pristine condition that my dad didn't see fit to change much but the carpet and the strangely cushioned kitchen tile.  All of the furniture and incidental items of the house conveyed, and my dad kept it all.  I was too young then to realize that this was a little weird.  The prior owner had had a daughter (by then middle aged), and one of the bedrooms of the house was still painted pink, with a little pink velvet vanity chair, a ceramic piggy bank in the shape of a cocker spaniel, and a 1950s jewelry box.  These became my things, and I still have the dog.  I still have their pink Pyrex set, '50s egg cooker, monogrammed glasses and so many other random old things that I've forgotten what was theirs.  So what I'm saying is maybe my perception of this situation is different from that of other people.  I'm somewhere between "normal person" and that couple in NYC who live year-round as though the year is 1940.

Anyway, Rehab Addict is full of awesome tricks and easy ways to rehabilitate sad, abused properties.  What I love the most is that she salvages everything she possibly can and puts it to some use.  She seems to mostly deal in Craftsman style, teens-era bungalows, which she picks up on the crazy cheap at auction.  She's doing the good work.  Perfect job.

VB Chat

To recap a recent phone conversation with my dad:

Guys Who Were Tough
Charles Bronson
John Wayne
Steve McQueen
Charlton Heston
Robert Mitchum (my suggestion, confirmed)

Modern Day Guys Who Are Acceptable
Sam Elliott
Gene Hackman
Ed Harris

Guys Who Are Not Tough
Bruce Willis

Now you know.

artist.

Downton Abbey makes another nod to Gone with the Wind!  This one was too fond, familiar and noticeable to not be the act of shameless fan.  Probably this guy.

In the scene, a girl is weeping and is offered a handkerchief, at which point she thanks the offerer and notes that she never seems to have a handkerchief in times of crisis.

Like when Rhett gives his handkerchief to a tearful Scarlett while noting that he has never known her to have one during any of the many crises of her life.  So mild a moment, yet so obvious.

I finally had to research this on the internet, and found that I'm not the only one identifying these scenes.  See?  I was starting to wonder if I just see GWTW where it isn't, which would of course be strange and unfortunate.

Regarding Downton Abbey, I am particularly enjoying this because of the era, but it is taxing to care about a soap opera.  Something is always HAPPENING. Also, I'm still watching the prior season, and I'm not sure if other people know this, but the internet contains lots of spoilers for television shows.  So that's also a problem.

SJP in America

So, "Who Do You Think You Are?" is a recent program that showcases the ancestry of various celebrities.  Obviously you can't get something like this off the ground unless famous persons are featured.  With the use of historians, librarians and genealogists, the show traces through various family trees until something remarkable turns up.

I like Sarah Jessica Parker.  Contrary to whatever people think of her due to her roles, it's immediately evident upon hearing her speak that she's an intelligent woman with a reader's vocabulary, oh, and a child named after eminent Victorian novelist Wilkie Collins.  She's not what you think. 

Anyway, she knew almost nothing about her pre-20th century ancestors and assumed her family to be fairly recent emigrants from Europe.  Throughout the program, she finds out that half of her family has been in America since the early 17th century.  One of her female ancestors lived in Salem, MA and was actually accused of witchcraft during the final months of the Salem witchcraft craze.  The only reason this woman was not executed was because the witch-finding court had literally just been disbanded.  Unbelievable to have an ancestor who survived this situation, as the court had executed all of the accused up until its end.  Draw your own conclusions about what would have happened with Sex & the City had this happened...I know it's what you're thinking.  Also, this lends extra gravitas to Sarah's role in the excellent movie "Hocus Pocus".

eh, I can't resist.

Wouldn't it be nice if the people who survived ignorance against all odds developed a resistance to it in future generations, the way survivors of the Bubonic Plague passed to their descendants new immunities to use against similar diseases? 

Anyway, I love this show.  It showcases the unique discoveries you begin making the second you start to scratch the surface of history, whether it's about your own family or not.  And it's extra interesting and special to know that one of your ancestors may have witnessed some significant moment in time, such as when my great-grandmother was on the set of Far and Away, eh, I mean when she participated in a land race in South Dakota in 1904 or so.  Tom Cruise wasn't there.

More people should care about these things, and not just because they want to locate a famous ancestor, although I'm sure that's the motivation for many.  People don't care about history until it's made interestingly or alarmingly relevant to them.  I am sure the recent encroachments on women's health care, contraception and abortion are causing plenty of previously wide-eyed 19 year old girls to realize that the control they have over their own lives is something women have possessed for approximately one half nanosecond, historically-speaking, which may lead them to give a shit about what's been going down with women activists for the last 100 years.  JUST SAYING.  HISTORY IS SERIOUS BUSINESS, DO NOT FORGET IT.

The Women

The Women is one of my favorite movies.  It's dizzyingly fast and witty and perfectly acted.  It's one of the few movies that I watch over and over, and I love it more each time.

It was written by powerhouses Clare Boothe Luce and Anita Loos, with some uncredited contributions by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  This may explain the particularly exceptional quality of the script.

In addition to being almost perfectly written (when it is sentimental, it rots your teeth and face off, and the man everyone is in an uproar about is an unlikeable fool), it is as I said perfectly acted.  Rosalind Russell is pure gold and the delight of my life.  She's somehow hilarious, elegant, scathing and ridiculous at the same time.  You may also know her as Auntie Mame.

The movie mostly revolves around the drama between Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford, as one is the wife and the other the mistress of the undesirable man, but includes lots of side action on behalf of Norma's shitty friends.  After all relationships collapse, the women travel to a ranch in Reno for their divorces, and hijinks ensue.  Although Norma's character predictably goes fleeing back to the man after a humbling revelation, she does at least take an initial stand, raging that inequity and lack of trust in relationships is unacceptable and that she will not settle...Until she realizes that being a sad divorcee totally blows for a socialite in 1939 Manhattan.  Well, whatever.

Another small player in the movie is Virginia Grey, whose only scene is one of my favorites.  Joan is on the phone with Norma's husband, cooing and baby-talking at him in the most disgusting of ways as she deceives him into thinking she's a sweet and modest girl just trying to make her way, instead of the vampire bat that she actually is.  Virginia Grey's character is her perfume counter co-worker, who makes about 47 wickedly funny little remarks about the conversation in the space of 3 minutes.  She's also adorably beautiful and seems like she should have had a bigger role.

I like this movie, the end.

FYI

Downton Abbey ripped a whole scene from Gone with the Wind.

I noticed.  I'm sure other people did too, but I'm not quite pitiful enough yet to seek out some forum and bitch about it to the rest of my 60 year old soap opera watching Ashley Wilkes loving (they do, I don't) sistren, so I'm going to compromise and bitch here. 

Downton Abbey has been around for a while, but I have just noticed it.  It reminded me of BBC's Manor House at first, but turned out just to be a very well done Edwardian soap opera. 

It was the scene where Matthew or whatever asks Mary to look after his fiancee if he dies in a war.  They are in love with each other ~but won't say so~ and so he asks this stupid thing of her and she accepts with much hesitation and agitation.  "Fine, I'll look after Melanie, er, whatever her fucking name is."

Melanie is, of course, the name of the character in GWTW, whom Ashley (not a female) asks Scarlett (not a stripper) to watch over if he's killed in a war.  Because it's the same scene.

GOD NEVERMIND
















"No, I will not babysit your bitch wife! Ok fine, I will."

The Chickening

More pictures from the Zach family coops.

Backyard farming is the best ever, and chickens have crazy breed names.

Albuquerque Again

This is the third time I have driven to Albuquerque.  Never again!  It's too far and it's only fun (the drive) when it's cold. 

Martanne's is the best place in Flagstaff

Because of this.  Chilaquiles.  They also come in "vegan," but you knew that.

Riblet/Ribble/Sonora, the best dog.

Green chile on everything in Albuquerque. Everything! Pizza, eggs, mac & cheese, hot dogs, in cocktails, on your face.

The insides of washing machines make good fire pits.

Dude. Is that -

Vigo! In stained glass collage! BRILLIANT

Elizabeth Bathory as a vampire? I don't even know, but I love it very much.

Breakfast: potatoes, cheesy grits, eggs, tomato, cupcake, coffee, $7.

Requisite New Mexican road landscape.

BREAKING NEWS: How I feel about some dresses

Doesn't anyone care about anything important?  Like the condition of the dresses that Vivien Leigh wore as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind.  Apparently lots of people do, because $30,000 has been drummed up to preserve five of them. 

The dresses were not made to last, and apparently they have endured some poor treatment since the film wrapped.  The velvet curtains gown and the red sequined gown (and certainly others) have been altered several times over the years, particularly in the waists.  I can just see the rich ultrafans who had that done, parading around their houses rattling off about great balls of fire and having the time of their lives.  Eh, act like you wouldn't.

I don't really like these five dresses that much.  I think the curtains gown is a little ugly, and the red gown doesn't look like anything anyone would have worn in that century at all.  It's so slim and really just belongs in a stage show in Vegas.  The one I do like is the wedding dress, pictured below, because I like that creamy satin.  It would not have been fashionable at the time, which was the point.  It was her mother's dress that she had to wear in her rushed wedding to nerd Charles Hamilton, whose offer she accepted just to show up the guy she really loved, who didn't give a shit what she did anyway.  Drama! I particularly like the lines during the wedding scene that basically go: "Uh oh, why is the bride crying?"  "She's probably just so totally happy. Congrats, honey!"

I also really like the dress she wore at Christmas when Ashley left.  I can't find a picture of it because she's only in it in one scene, and it's green, and try finding a picture of a green dress of hers that isn't the curtain gown or the barbecue dress.  I mean reallyyyyyy.

I like the dress in the opening scene, because it is flouncy as all hell and why not?  This one:

Oh! Well...okay.  Apparently there's a "slutty Scarlett" Halloween costume out there.  It's missing the bottom, though?  Confused.  Sidebar, I don't really understand this sort of rubbery looking tanned skin that all the porn girls have.  It kind of reminds me of Barbie heads.  Is that the idea?  Do people actually like that, or do the girls just think they do and copy each other?  Is orange skin just an easy to identify indicator that "porn will happen here soon"?  I just can't figure it out.

I find that other people don't often like the stuff that I really like, and vice versa, so this Gone with the Wind thing is kind of fun, because I'm just one of millions of people who have this entire movie committed to almost perfect memory.  It's an easy way to relate to other women, particularly older ones with whom I would have nothing in common with ever, not that I've really tried playing the GWTW card on any of them.  I recently aced a quiz on it on The Pioneer Woman's blog (yes, I read it, but the wholesomeness really drives a person off after a while) but did not win because, of course, there are a jillion other people out there who are like, "What were the Tareleton boys' first names? Oh shit, I didn't know this test was FOR BABIES."

All of my grandmothers had this complete functioning knowledge of the movie as well.  It was something you knew about and referred to casually at any time, such as to compare the behaviors of your family members to fictional characters as though they were actual people that you knew.  Not weird.

I like the idea of the book and movie as a cultural touchstone, or whatever.  Find a better word for it some other time.  For example, my grandmother's story about seeing the movie soon after it came out.  It was on a date, and they had to drive some distance to a proper town to find a theater showing it.  A year and a half later, the boy was dead overseas in WWII.  60 years after that and she's still naming pets after characters, particularly her box turtle, Aunt Pittypat, who still lives.

Supermoon

I guess one of the more fun things about being an authority on something, or an astrophysicist in general, is wrecking everyone's good time as they get all crazy after reading articles like SUPERMOON CAUSED TSUNAMI.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (NDG) has had it with supermoon bullshit, and suggests that everyone view the moon through a straw tonight if they think it's so huge.  Apparently, after viewing the whole form through the tiny, bendy telescope, the hope is that people will then refrain from posting something tagged #supermoon on Twitter, and further agitating the man.

As evidenced by a number of testy blog posts, astronomers would prefer we used the term "lunar perigee".  Probably, I guess, because it is the actual term for where the moon is at now.  The moon's path around the earth is elliptical, so sometimes it's closer to the earth (perigee), and sometimes it's farther away (apogee).  When the moon is both full and at perigee, it looks larger than usual, and thus it is the SUPERMOON.

As if it weren't enough to debunk the insinuation that lunar perigee makes tides, volcanoes and animals go craxy (the moon was not at lunar perigee during last year's tsunami, and the theory in the Daily Mail article is dismissed as pseudoscience), NDG goes on to confront moon photographers, suggesting that they photograph the moon without a zoom and see how rad it looks then (not very).  He describes full lunar perigee as an 8" pizza as compared to a 7" (full moon at lunar apogee).  He wants to get through to the American people as quickly and easily as possible = pizza analogy.  Why you gotta hate, Neil?  Stupidity at every turn is the price you pay when people become interested in a new thing.  If you want people to care about the moon and stars, you have to hook them with some kind of crazy end of days drama, otherwise they don't give a shit.  Is the moon going to kill Earth?  Does its position in the sky at the time of my birth tell crucial details about my personality?  No?  Then get out of the way of the tv.

I understand the frustration of the astronomers.  It's discomforting to know a lot about something, and then have to watch a bunch of half-informed idiots talking about it.  This was how I felt while watching other students make presentations about Sylvia Plath and James Leo Herlihy in a literature class.  "Um, no?"  I'm not really saying that I am the NDG of subversive 20th century American literature, but I'm working on it, and what I lack in knowledge, I make up for in poor temperament.  And that has to count for something.

I will be photographing the supermoon with my regular zoom tonight to test his theory.  Here is a crazy post on the Maddow blog about how best to calculate when to photograph the moon.  Summary: after the sun has set, but before its light has left the sky, and before the moon has risen too high.  So I'm going to say about 7:30-7:45 for MST.