Angela Karenina

But Jessica, when IS the time for Russian Angst?

The Breakfast Dub

Recently, Seth emailed me this link. I do not understand, even with the pop ups.

It somehow seems appropriate for a Monday morning though.


If you're feeling adventurous, click here to see Seth sing it in Icelandic. Almost makes more sense this way.

One Twee Over The Line

Everything that rides my tail about those smug, overly-soundtracked indie movies is summed up in one minute and forty-seven seconds.

The Dirty Garage - watch more funny videos

Hee hee. It's funny because it's true.

One For My Baby (& One More For My Monkey)

So, does it make me a bad uncle if I decided to keep the baby outfit I bought today at H&M?

Who knew Shorty wore a 6-18 month?

LOLKATE, or, Suspended in Gif-a

I'm not sure what I could say to add to this awesomeness, which I found through my friend Brian.

This website here is the greatest example of American ingenuity I have seen since the invention of San Loco tacos.


How does one do this? I have no idea, but it involves a .gif file and some Awesomeness.

I mean, who doesn't love Kate Bush videos? But what busy executive has time to watch them all day long?


I haven't been this excited since I found my first Kate Bush fanzine at Tower Records in high school.

This is perhaps more mesmerizing than that sand or those squares.

Ah, moments of pleasure.

Lion's Tale

Phew! I am finally back from my trip to "Florida," which seemed to last years and years.

Zach is away right now on his own trip, but I wonder if he would have embraced me as passionately as this puss-puss hugged his long lost gays.

Amber & CRD's Biznuss

Hello, dear Internals Plural readers. It's me, ALH, sometimes guest blogger for CRD while he is away in Florida. Or is he?

I felt horrible about letting him down yesterday by not getting around to guest blogging, and then I started to ask myself Don't they have Internet in Florida?

I mean, sometimes I blog from Splashing Laundromat, which is, in some ways, way more remote than Florida.

And then I read this article in the Mail Online. And I noticed the "coincidences" just piling up. CRD is "away," "someplace without Internet," and he "doesn't answer his cell phone."

Remind you of anyone? I think by "business trip" CRD means "three day bender with some mountain gorillas." The facts speak for themselves.

South By South East

In just a few hours, I'll be making this trip:

Will I be off on an awesome adventure like this one, written about in the paper a few weeks ago?


Nope. I'll be doing something more like what's depicted below.Sigh. Business. I guess in this new Economy, we can't complain.

Enjoy NYC while I'm gone. Amber has generously offered to keep this place fresh while I'm gone. I can't promise more articles about Minty Mudbaths or Shamrock Shakes, which seems to be what the public wants these days, but she'll do her very best.

One Lazy Shade Of Winter

Seriously? On the First Day Of Spring?


F You, Winter.

You too, Groundhog.

And you too, March. "In Like A Lion, Out Like A Lamb," my fanny.

A Case Of Mitchell

Recently, my friend Brian tumbled about how easy it is to download an artist's entire discography. He was lamenting, as I do, how this changes the music experience for the Kids These Days.

Specifically, he was talking about snagging the entirety of Joni Mitchell's ouevre in one go. I think it's a crying shame, as I learned about Blue and later Court & Spark and later still Hejira, all three of which I enjoyed immensely as full albums, from start to finish. Now, of course these had all been out for years before my music appreciation awakening happened, but you didn't buy more than one album at a time, at least not on a college student's budget.

One good thing I'll say about the internet and music is that you can risk free - if maybe not so legally - sample some of those horrible tribute albums they do. I'm still a purchaser of the ones for causes - and am glad for the tracks off this month's Dark Was The Night and War Child comps that I bought.

Speaking of Mitchell, I swiped an album of covers of hers that wasn't to benefit anything, and judging by the crummy track list I wasn't so excited until I heard this lovely version of "Carey" by Miss Cyndi Lauper. Is it better than JM's? Nope. Is it pretty great in its own right? Yep.


Thanks, Internet. You too, Cyndi.

Last Train To Squaresville

My job involves a lot of conference calls, and often I'm only really needed about half the time. I blogged about a cool sand website a little while ago, which gave me lots of enjoyment, even if my art wasn't as good as everyone else's.

I sure was happy to find this website here.

You might not guess it, but it's very satisfying to start with this:



And end up with something like this:



Mmmm, the hours go by.

Shamrock O'Shake

Woohoo! They're here!

Well, maybe they're here. They're awfully hard to find.

This website serves as a Shamrock Shake Finder - users can send in updates after Shake spottings - as of today, there have been no reported sightings in NYC.

In my research for today's post, I enjoyed this tidbit here from Wikipedia:

Minty Mudbath Shake
In May/June 2007, McDonalds introduced the "Minty Mudbath" shake to go along with the movie Shrek the Third. It takes the original Shamrock Shake formula and mixes it with chocolate. On June 23rd, 2007, the product was discontinued by corporate headquarters after several Internet sites revealed that "Minty Mudbath" was the 'underground' reference for a fetishistic act.

I don't know what a Minty Mudbath is, and I fear it will haunt me if I ever learn. Thank God that's nothing Uncle O'Grimacey (surely related to Cookie O'Puss) would talk about in those ads from our youth.


Mmmmm...shamrock.

Posts-card from the Edge

I feel bad about not blogging on Friday, but I was just too hung over. I know I let the 15-20 of you frequent visitors down, and I apologize. I apologize to you too, person who googles the names of Hortense Calisher short stories and ends up here on accident. I did the best I could to make it up to everyone by live tweetering over the weekend with my activities.

One of the fun things Amber and I did that WASN'T tweeted was watch Postcards From The Edge, starring my pal Shirley MacLaine. I had recently read the novel and really enjoyed it.

Sadly, we weren't so enthralled by the film. Maybe it's because the bar was set so high from our matinee, the weekend's top box office movie? Either way, one thing we did like was ol' Shirl putting her spin on one of our favorite Sondheim songs for Dames.

And so, with apologies to my friend Elaine Stritch, here's a pretty dang good "I'm Still Here."



Thanks, Shirl.

Best Matinee Club EVER

The Race is ON

Oops. Yesterday I was WAY too hanged over to blog.

Today though, nothing could keep me from BRUNCH CLUB followed by WITCH MOUNTAIN CLUB.

Bring it!

Fanny, She Wrote

Today's Murder, She Wrote Moment is brought to us by the word Fanny.

Do you think Terminator and Terminator 2's Linda Hamilton knows that the F word means something different in Angela Lansbury's homeland?

Everything But The Bloodhounds Yapping At Her Rear End

I have to say, dang the cliches, All About Eve is one of my favorite movies. It's a great tale, and fantastically acted, from Little Miss Bette Davis to Anne Baxter to the original Wanda Sykes - Thelma Ritter, to the young Marilyn Monroe. It's a movie I can watch again and again, but never at Chelsea Classics, on account of all the queens that shout out the lines ahead of Margo Channing.

Last year Tyler and I went to see a revival of Applause!, starring Christine Ebersole. I sort of blogged about it at the time, but to recap: in 1970 the creative teams behind Annie, Bye Bye Birdie, & more decided to make a Broadway musical out of All About Eve. It starred Lauren Bacall in the Davis role and television's Bonnie Franklin as the ingenue.

The show itself wasn't so good, and I think it's OK for it to go back in the vault for another 38 years. As Stritchy says, Christine Ebersole is coffee and a wonderful time was had by all (even by Amber, who spent the night on my couch watching the entire series run of Ellen Degeneres' hit sitcom, Ellen, costarring Cloris Leachman).

My favorite number was NOT the Buckle Up Your Seat Belt Dance, but this one here, "But Alive." What I like so much about are the genius rhymes.

Check it out here, from a TV production they did of the original show:

I feel half Tijuana, half Boston!

Partly Jane Fonda and partly Jane Austen!

Doesn't get better than that.

Happy Buff-Day

On This Day In History, Buffy The Vampire Slayer made its debut on the WB network. 1997, if you can imagine that.

I first saw the Buffy movie back in high school when it came out, in 1992. I liked it enough, but didn't have a strong attachment to it. I think my favorite part was the workout montage to the Divinyls' song.

The first time I saw the TV program was in 1999. Andy and I drove from Paris to Bruges in a little Twingo. When we got there we were so pooped we just watched TV, and we landed upon Buffy just as she was sadly killing her boyfriend Angel, end of season 2.

Shortly thereafter, Amber and I created Buffy Club, which meant that every Tuesday we would take her TV out of the closet, attach the Radio Shack Rabbit Ears, and watch Buffy. Later we would watch Smallville afterwards, but often it was on mute just so we could admire Clark.


Throughout time I've had many special Buffy friendship moments: there was the time we played the Buffy Board Game with Kevin and Shane, the time Amber never let me watch the episode with the horses, the time I went to Jeremy's Angel Club and Amber and I never spoke again, the time I saw Fred on the street walking her dog, the time Paul and I drank too much Fish House Punch and then spent the next day watching Buffy on the couch, and I'm sure more.

We've had many debates over which were the best seasons, by which I mean which was better, Season 3 (Faith) or Season 5 (Glory). I tend towards S5, but I can see the arguments for Faith. Of course I liked Buffy herself, but I was always more enamored of the secondary characters: primarily Cordelia, Faith, and Anya.


Nowadays people can read the Buffy Comics, and they even tried to get a animated program going:

But I prefer to leave the Buffiverse as a fond memory, occasionally revisited on the DVD. Amber and I still have standing Tuesday night plans, but now we call it Awesome Club, and mostly we watch Murder, She Wrote. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Thanks for the memories, Buffy!

King of Crap, er, Pop

I was recently alerted to this auction site, where you can see all the lovely things Michael Jackson is hawking from the Neverland Ranch.

Maybe you would like a life-sized Darth Vader model, made of Legos? Estimated price $8,000.

Or these scary Geppetto and Pinocchio dolls? Not as scary as that new book I'm sure, but still frightening. $1500.
Maybe Amber will shell out the $120 for this collection of Shirley Temple memorabilia.

Who wouldn't want a set of Wizard Of Oz Jacks-in-the-Box for only $200?


I'm kinda creeped out by this $600 life size rubber policeman.

I am more creeped out by this life-sized girl doll. $400.

This $1200 replica of boys on a bicycle is a little more freaky.

And yet? This $300 life-size bronze of a young boy in a thong? I have no words.

Thanks Michael, for all the, um, interestingness.

A Cookie Of A Puss

Imagine my surprise yesterday when talking to a Canadian colleague to discover she had never heard of Cookie Puss.

Cookie Puss is a creation of Carvel, the ice cream chain that may or may not still exist, I'm too lazy to google. The name may make me giggle now, but back in the early 1980s when Cookie Puss first came to earth from space (why, WHY was he a space creature?) the name just made me hungry.

Some rather earnest Wikipedia writer (Nicholson Baker?) has this to say about the Puss:

According to Carvel lore, Cookie Puss is a space alien (his original name was "Celestial Person" and his initials, "C.P.", later came to stand for "Cookie Puss") who was born on planet Birthday. In his television commercials, Cookie Puss has the ability to fly, though he requires a saucer-shaped spacecraft for interplanetary travel.

Although the exact design and composition of Cookie Puss has varied over the years and even from store to store, his basic attributes have remained consistent. He is roughly pear-shaped and flat, with an ice cream cone nose and two round, bulging brown eyes made from Carvel Flying Saucers. He sometimes has arms and legs, but these are just icing decorations, not additional parts.

I love any sentence that starts out with "According to Carvel lore...," and especially anything that reminds me of Fudgie The Whale, another lost classic of childhood. The accidentally pervy name, and the phallic nature of his "ice cream cone nose" and "two round bulging brown eyes" are not discussed.

Here's a nice commercial that also advertises Cookie Puss Dolls, surely a collector's item by now:



And best of all? I was reminded of his foreign cousin (even though the Puss came from space, he had an Irish cousin, just like Kirsty MacColl), who would come once a year on St. Patrick's Day - Cookie O'Puss.



God Bless, Ice Cream Puns. Oh, and this is especially for all those internet pervs who land here accidentally after googling the P word.

Chicken, Egg / Egg, Chicken

What's funny? CHICKENS.

Exhibit A, from one of my favorite programs:


Exhibit B, from one of my favorite movies:


Exhibit C, from one of my favorite websites:


I would definitely cross the road for one of these funnies.

Wee Webfighter

Whew! I just got back from a 24 hour trip to Massachusetts. The trip itself wasn't so much fun, but I did get to poke around my parents' house for a few more snaps from the past.

In this one here I seem to be wearing some cat-eye frames of my Nana's, which I apparently incorporated into my Spider-Man costume.

I wish things were as much fun now as they were then. And I kinda wish I still had those pants.

What A Bunch Of Flakes

Seriously? After all that hullabaloo, this is all the snow we get?



Last night I was on the video chat with Amber while she was on hold with Delta on her iPhone and had Kevin on speaker on her BlackBerry as they tried to sort out their flight to San Francisco today (8am canceled, rescheduled for 5pm).

And this AM my boss, who lives in the Westchester, emails to say he's working from home due to the blizzard. And the Post has the not so witty pun headline, "Not Snow Fast."

All this for four inches? (almost sounds like a Mae West quote).

I'm just saying, for this much weather angst, I should be able to go outside and make a little snowman.



On the plus side, I'm going to wear dungarees and go in late to work due to "inclement weather."