A look at how I've been diverting myself lately.
Books
READ: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley [I'm totally on Team Goneril now].
COMING UP: Edward Mendelson, Philip Roth, Michael Chabon.
Movies
SAW: North by Northwest, Young Goethe in Love, The Conquest, The Iron Lady [which is just Meryl Streep, as Margaret Thatcher, putzing around the house].
THIS WEEK'S MOVIE NIGHT PICKS:
MINE: Blackthorn.
KITO'S: What's Your Number?
NEXT WEEK'S THEME: Lesbians.
Television
WATCHING: The Simpsons (Fox), The Good Wife (CBS), Glee (Fox), Top Chef: Texas (Bravo), 30 Rock (NBC), Parks and Recreation (NBC), Project Runway All Stars (Lifetime) [there's no Heidi Klum, Tim Gunn, Nina Garcia, or Michael Kors--which is bullshit].
Food
ATE: a 14-course prix fixe meal @ El Ideas [the meal took forever, but oh my God, y'all, there was this pork and parsnip dish that was the living end]; sausage and mushroom pizza and house salad @ Barbari.
Current Interests
Poetry, diabetes, my adolescence, my appearance, movies, attractive men, lesbians, pop music, US politics, the gays, TV, musicals, TOC, my dog Lucy, children's literature, my family, fashion.
Fool's Four
THE FIRST FULL SENTENCE ON PAGE 69 OF FOUR BOOKS I'M GIVING AWAY:
1. "The British colonial enterprise was the fairyland upon which the sun never sets and its capital the mysterious Asiatic Delhi whence the prince wanted to escape with his princess from foggy prosaic London."--The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
2. "Human beings are not, however, as a rule so made as to understand, without much previous education, what in fact will render them happy; nor, often enough, even when they do know, have they sufficient strength of character to pursue such courses, being prey to many distracting passions."--Political Ideas in the Romantic Age by Isaiah Berlin
3. "'And it bit off your face?'"--Star Island by Carl Hiaasen
4. "Here were the same low houses and palm fronds, the same impression of staged lighting, exclusively frontal, as if the backs of these buildings dissolved into unpainted slats and rotting canvas, into weeds and warm air--that stagnant, balmy, expectant air of Hollywood when the sun goes down."--Bech Is Back by John Updike
Flashbacks
ONE YEAR AGO: "There comes a point in any public Q&A session when some audience member asks a Q whose true A is, 'Jesus Christ, why do I even bother?'"
FOUR YEARS AGO: "With thought of aught he sought though fraught with nought."
FIVE YEARS AGO: "The Four Most Played Songs in My iTunes Library."
SIX YEARS AGO: "I envy the lives of characters in foreign language textbooks: the days are always sunny and everyone's always smiling and asking one another the time."
Glitter
In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which is Monday, here's Billie Holiday performing "Strange Fruit," her haunting song about Southern lynchings.
ELSEWHERE:
My short review of Oracle Productions' Ironmistress is in this week's Chicago Reader.
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