Sock Wars III

I signed up for Sock Wars III today. It is a twist on the knitting swap. For the non-stitchers: a knitting swap is a bit like a Secret Santa. A certain item is agreed on (the last swap I participated in was a scarf swap) and an organizer is chosen. Each person who wants to participate sends her name and mailing address to the organizer, who pairs up knitters. I knit a scarf and mail it to my person and my person sends her finished scarf to me. I got two lovely scarves this way, and I still wear them every winter.

Sock Wars is more of an endurance tournament. Everyone receives their patterns and "target" (person to knit for) via email on the same day. You knit furiously so that you can get your finished socks mailed to your target as quickly as possible. As soon as your target gets the socks, she posts on the site and is considered "dead". She then sends her unfinished socks and the name of her target to you. If you finish that second pair of socks and the target receives it before you receive a pair of socks, then you stay in the game. The sock war continues on in this manner until there is one knitter left standing.

We all know that I am not a fast knitter, so I will probably get killed quickly. Still, I want to give it a try. I think this might be a way to jolt me out of my knitting lethargy, which has been going on for quite a while now. The majority of the knitting projects that I have actually finished have been items for someone outside my family. I guess I need the outside pressure every once in a while.

Anyway, one of the first rules of Sock Wars is that you MUST talk about Sock Wars :-). So here I am talking about it. The organizers are trying to get 4,000 participants. If you love to knit socks, why not give it a try?

Tina Fey on SNL Weekend Update

I haven't watched Saturday Night Live regularly since Eddie Murphy was part of the cast. The only thing I know about Tina Fey's work is from watching her on 30 Rock, where her character tends to be a bit of a doormat. This clip from Fey's recent appearance on Saturday Night Live shows a different side of her and I like it. I especially like the idea of a woman taking what others may see as a negative and owning it for her own benefit, even if it is only in jest.

Amy Winehouse has forgotten the lessons from her own song

Check out this video that Amy Winehouse made in 2003:



The very first line of the song is "You should be stronger than me." The rest of the lyrics are about how Amy wishes that she had a man who was going to take care of her instead of the other way around. This idea is punctuated by the scenes of Amy saddled with a boyfriend who is a drunkard.

It seems that Amy needs to take a look at her own videos. It looks like she fell for a guy who wasn't stronger than her, except in his ability to drag her down with him.

I feel like I live in a foreign country

Since Friday, I've been hearing people talk about their plans for the three-day weekend. Huh? I had to grab a calendar to figure out that today was Presidents' Day. See, in this part of the country, we didn't get today off. All of my kids got up and went to school. People went to work. I think that my neighbor across the street may have been off because he works for a bank, but that's it. Today was business as usual here, so stop taunting me with all the fun you had on your long weekend!

How Many of Me?

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 5 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

This site uses census figures to show how many people are walking around with your first and last name. I've gone by three different surnames in my life. Under any name, there aren't that many of me. There are five people with my birth name and my current name, but only one person with my maiden name. I guess it would be pretty hard for me to hide!

Happy Birthday to M!

Today is M's 15th birthday. M is a real trooper, she is. She hasn't complained once about the fact that we can't throw her a party. Over the past several years, M has gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to birthdays. I feel especially bad this year, though. The twins just had a great party at the skating rink and then I got sacked a couple days later. I know that M has the memory of the twins' party fresh in her mind, and I feel even more guilty because she isn't throwing it in my face.

Anyway, I'll do my best to make this day special for her because that's what moms do, right? Next year, though, I plan to make sure she has a great Sweet 16!

The iTunes Meme

Instructions: Open up your iTunes and fill out this survey, no matter how embarrassing the responses might be.

Note: My podcasts are mixed in with my music.

How many songs total: 154
How many hours or days of music: 14 hours

Most recently played: How to Look Good Naked (British TV show)
Most played: "Wake Me Up When September Ends" by Green Day (M plays this a lot on her iPod)
Most recently added: Podculture #92 (podcast)

Sort by song title:
First Song: "Ain't No Other Man" by Christina Aguilera
Last Song: "You and I Both", a cappella version from BOCA 2006

Sort by time:
Shortest Song: "Lake Titticaca" from Animaniacs
Longest Song: PMC Top 10 (music podcast)

Sort by album:
First album: American Idiot by Green Day
Last album: Yakko's World by Animaniacs

First song that comes up on Shuffle: "The Etiquette Song" by Animaniacs

Search the following and state how many songs come up:
Death - 0
Life - 0
Love - 21 (but that's only because one of my albums is The Look of Love by ABC)
Hate – 0
You - 10
Sex – 0

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As you can see, my iTunes library is rather sparse. I have never been one to buy a lot of music, so I don't have a lot of CDs to rip and add to the iPod. That means most of my content comes from podcasts. Without podcasting, I wouldn't have much of a reason to own an mp3 player at all.

Watching last night's Grammys: Amy Winehouse

You know I couldn't get through a discussion of the Grammys without mentioning my girl, Amy Winehouse. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but I believe she looked better than she has in her recent press photos. Her performance was difficult to watch, though. Was she always this jittery and out of step? I just pray that she stays in rehab. Maybe she can get cleaned up while her husband is incarcerated.

Watching last night's Grammys: Learning the Blues

I'm not a big fan of this type of gimmicky virtual duet. I am willing to overlook that, however, because I was pleasantly surprised by Alicia Keys. So many times, modern singers sound out of place when singing old standards or Broadway show tunes. However, Alicia Keys sounded as though she grew up on this kind of music. She even dressed the part, which was nice.

Watching last night's Grammys: Proud Mary

Jay-Z needs to have his head examined. Any sane man would have married Beyonce with a quickness just so that he could say, "She's all mine, boys!" How can he watch her on stage and not think he is the luckiest man ever? I'm telling you, somebody is going to snatch her up and then he is going to be sorry.

Watching last night's Grammys: Let It Be

I am not a fan of awards shows, but in the past few years I have missed so many noteworthy performances that I decided to record last night's Grammy Awards show. I haven't finished watching the recording yet, but I had to stop and comment on the Beatles tribute. The "Let It Be" portion was so beautiful it made me cry! The two singers were from the movie Across the Universe. I remember reading about that movie right before it was released but I wasn't particularly interested in seeing it. Now I definitely want to see it. I've already added it to my NetFlix queue.

"G.I. Jane" is my "Rocky"

A local TV station is playing one of my most memorable movies of the 1990s -- G. I. Jane. As I recall, G. I. Jane was not well-received when it was released in 1997. Demi Moore's character was called one-dimensional and much fun was made about her shaving her head and bulking up for this role. However, this is my go-to inspirational movie. Although I've only watched it twice in its entirety, the scenes with Demi Moore gutting it out with the boys are stuck in my head. I call them up whenever I need to push myself in exercise or even in housework.

So many men have visions of Rocky running through their heads to inspire them that it is almost a stereotype as an inspirational movie. I can't think of a movie that most women can agree on as a motivator when faced with a physical challenge. What movie would you call your Rocky?

The Harvey Girls

One of my favorite Judy Garland movies is The Harvey Girls. It also starred other familiar names such as Ray Bolger and Angela Lansbury. I've seen it at least five times and it never gets old for me. It is a perfect example of what I love in movie musicals.

The story is a fictionalized account of the opening of a new Harvey House restaurant in a frontier town, and the lives of the waitresses (Harvey Girls) that worked in it. Harvey Houses really existed; they were the first restaurant chain and in a way, an early version of fast food. The chain was started by Fred Harvey to provide quick and tasty food to railroad travelers during the short water stops that trains would take. Back in those days, the trains didn't have restaurant cars. People had to pack their own food or eat in dirty roadhouses that had rancid meat and stale coffee. Harvey Houses improved tourism in the western US by providing fresh food in a clean atmosphere, all served in time for you to eat before the train left. They employed young single girls and dressed them in black uniforms with starched white aprons to drive home the image of cleanliness and civility.

In the movie, Judy Garland plays a woman who goes west to the frontier town of Sandrock to marry someone she met in a lonely hearts ad. When that doesn't work out, she joins up with the Harvey Girls to earn some money. The Harvey Girls are setting up a brand-new Harvey House in this town, but it doesn't go smoothly. That's because the saloon girls, headed up by Angela Lansbury's character, see the Harvey House as competition. Matters are complicated further when the saloon owner, who seems to be Angela Lansbury's guy, falls for Judy Garland.

This movie combines so many elements that make it re-watchable for me.

--It was filmed in that glorious Technicolor that has fallen out of favor these days. The YouTube clip above doesn't do the cinematography justice.

--Along with the saturated colors, the costumes and hairstyles definitely satisfy me when I am in the mood for eye candy.

--Ray Bolger and Cyd Charisse both have wonderful dance numbers.

--Angela Lansbury is known to most of today's generation as sweet Jessica Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote. It is fun to go back and see her in a not-so-gentle role.

Best of all, the movie is clean and has a happy ending. It is a movie that I can watch with my daughters without cringing. It is also an escape from the all-too-realistic movies of today. That's what makes me go back to The Harvey Girls again and again.

Broadway Melody

It's a new month and Time Warner Cable has added a few new choices to the free On Demand roster. Today I watched a movie called Broadway Melody. It was released in 1929 and was the first movie with sound to win the Oscar for Best Picture. The plot involved a vaudeville sister act who try to make it big on Broadway. A song-and-dance man in their show dates the older sister but falls in love with the younger sister, a fact that the younger sister tries to hide by dating a stage-door Johnny with only sex on the mind.

I haven't watched a 1920s-era movie in ages, and I thoroughly enjoyed this one. The slang ("It's cream in the can, baby!") and the clothes (LOVE those cloche hats)! It is heavy on the melodrama, but I enjoy that after a steady diet of modern movies. I prefer snappy dialogue and pretty clothes over graphic sex and violence any day.