Of Frogs, Friendship, & Flora

What is the part about my membership to the Botanical Garden of Earthly Delights that I'll miss the most when Amber moves on to Mother Goose Incorporated?

Is it the free parking? The opportunity to see my friend for four hour lunches? All the plants?

Heck, no. It's my discount at the Gift Store.

Where else can you find Fine Art like the picture below, or this one from way back when?

How do they come up with this stuff? Seriously?

Good Birthday Come In Threes

Who knew such great Dames of America shared the same birthday?

Three ladies I like heaps are all blowing out candles today.

The eldest on our list is Miss Katharine Ross. I like her mostly because she's so pretty, but I also enjoyed her very much in The Graduate and The Stepford Wives (the original movie, not the one I saw in the theatre simply to enjoy the A/C, later to realize standing outside and melting might have been preferable.

Next up is Miss Bettye LaVette. LaVette is an old school R&B musician who had some minor hits in the early 70s, then languished for far too long. In the mid-aughts she came out with I've Got My Own Hell To Raise, followed quickly by Scene Of The Crime. These two albums blow me away - she's R&B, country, rock, everything. On the albums she covers Aimee Mann, Bruce Springsteen, Dolly Parton, Elton John, Joan Armatrading (woohoo!), Lucinda Williams, Rosanne Cash, Willie Nelson, and more. Her versions are so unique and in cases wrenching, that even if they don't surpass the originals in my mind, they stand firmly on their own. She recently did a kick-bum version of "A Change Is Gonna Come" with Bon Jovi at an inauguration event, available on the YouTube.

Here though we're going to see her do a Fiona Apple song medley'd into Sinead O'Connor. God Bless America.



And finally, cheers to Miss Ann Jillian. We know her from Kevin's third favorite sitcom, It's A Living, and as the star of the made-for-TV Mae West bio. I liked her best in Jennifer Slept Here, a comedy that ran for one season in 1983. She played the ghost of a famous actress who haunted her old house, currently occupied by a family with a teenage son, whom I swore was Jason Bateman but apparently wasn't. Georgette from the Mary Tyler Moore show had a nice part too.

Here's the opening credits to Jennifer Slept Here.



Happy Birthday, Ladies!

Cats Is The Best Medicine

Wintry Mix!

You know those days when nothing makes you cheerful except Kitty Pictures? Well, just in case today is another stinker, this is for me!

I was recently sent a picture entitled "Baby's First Snow." Before Zach met me, he lived in a different city in an apartment with a balcony. Here's photographic evidence of his first encounter with the stuff:

He's older now, yet still full of mystery and wonder, and peas and vinegar sometimes.

For example, can someone please explain to me how this cutie beast


can turn into this beast, within just seconds?


Either way, he's a furr bucket of love.

Anyway, Zach has taken a little sojourn from my place, but I received this picture of him from his travels. His caption was "all tied up!" He's such a funny monkey.


Have fun, little boy!

With this, I'm off to work through the wintry mix.

iToss, iTurn, iTunes

So last night I bailed on my plans and stayed indoors, attempting to beat this stupid cold and to recover from a bit of yelling in the office at the end of my day. I watched the first half of a Doris Day movie that curiously starred Shirley MacLaine and Dean Martin.

It was a very traditional Doris Day mistaken identity sex farce, but as much as I like my personal friend Miss MacLaine, I didn't connect with the movie and turned it off.

And THEN, I tried going to bed but I tossed, I turned, I tossed some more, eventually falling asleep after what seemed like hours.

Before I went to bed I noticed that my alarm clock was missing. I have a feeling a certain pussycat thought it was a toy and hid it on me, I'm sure I'll find it under the stove one day. So I set the alarm on my cell phone for my regular time. My iPod alarm is set for the same time every day, for a random shuffle of music to help me wake up.

Lo! Cell Phone alarms do not have Snooze features!

For about an hour I snoozed while my studio apartment was filled with songs. I had listened to, among other things:

Blondie - "Last Contact in Red Square"

Bette Midler - "Stay With Me Baby"

Dionne Warwick - "Do You Know The Way To San Jose"

R.E.M. - "What's The Frequency Kenneth"

Evita Soundtrack - "Waltz With Eva & Che"

To what song did I eventually fully wake up? I wish I could claim synchronicity and say Miss Day's "Sentimental Journey" or even a MacLaine song from Sweet Charity, but I can't. It was the relatively mundane, yet pretty, "Daniel" by Sir Elton John.

Anyway, here's a great scene from Sweet Charity, with MacLaine, Chita Rivera, and Paula Kelly, which I will take as the theme for my day at work in the Yelling Factory. There's GOT to be something better than this.

Goonies ARE Good Enuf

Wow, thank you, New York Daily News, for this feature here.

I mean, we all know what Sean Astin and Martha Plimpton have been up to lately. Or I think we do - Astin in the Lords Of the Ring, and Plimpton on Broadway, most recently in Pal Joey with Miss Stockard Channing.

But even though I spontaneously saw Milk recently, I didn't connect that Dan White was played by Brand Walsh. Method!


Did YOU know that Chunk is now an entertainment lawyer in LA?

Then:
Now:

Data is now a stunt choreographer, most recently with the X-Men franchise. The man who played his pop, who couldn't get his camera open, is now Lt. Tao on my favorite cop show, The Closer. Oh! And Lupe, the housekeeper? She played Gabby's mom on Desperate Housewives a few years back.

I had no idea that the man who played Sloth was really a footballer, nor that he sadly died a few years ago.


But really, my favorite grown-up from the movie was Mama Frateli, aka Anne Ramsey. She wasn't just my fave because she was in the Shelley Winters role, but that helped. (Can you imagine a Goonies made in the early 70s? With little Jodie Foster in the Andy Carmichael role and Winters as Mama F?).

She also played the titular (hee hee) character in Throw Mama From The Train, and she pops up very regularly in the old programs I frequent - I've seen her on Charlie's Angels, on the TV movie pilot for Murder, She Wrote, Wonder Woman, Laverne, & Shirley, you name it. She went to Heaven back in 1988, but she'll live on forever in our hearts. And our old programs.

Thanks for the memories, Mama Fratelli.

A Great Lie Indeed

Last night I watched The Great Lie, with Miss Bette Davis, Mary Astor, & George Brent.

I thought it was lovely, a great example of Davis' "women's pictures" - all melodrama, all weepie. And Mary Astor was lovely as well.

My favorite part of the preview is how they seem to encourage you to talk during the movie. Times sure were different back then.

If You Seek A... Silly Town Name, Ask A Foreigner

I get the giggles. It's no secret.

If someone says the letter P two times in a row, I giggle. When I worked at a publisher that made A. L. Milne books, and we published Pooh Is Missing, A Hard Day For Pooh, Pooh's First Christmas, I would giggle in meetings. Some ice creams make me giggle. When I had a business meeting with Costco and they discussed "false bottoms" as a marketing tool, I giggled. You know what? That's OK with me.

But this article that Kevin sent last night had me ROARING with my morning coffee today. It combined some of my favorite topics - Giggle-worthy words and Foreigners. I've already blogged about Foreigners and how they don't know what to call movies, but I had no idea they didn't know what to call towns and streets!

I mean, British people are the worst of all. "Fanny" and "bum" mean their opposites there, and 'pinching a baby' means to steal it from a shopping mall. But I had no idea they lived in such silly places!


I mean, what if you lived in Crapstone? Or Penistone (pronounced "PENNIS-tun, yeah right)? Crotch Crescent, Titty Ho, Slutshole Lane, or Thong?

There's even one address that rivals Britney Spears' latest ditty / controversy, "4 Corfe Close." You have to say that real fast and think dirty thoughts.

I dunno, Foreigners. You just keep this up, we like being Amused here.