Happy Springy Weather

Today it was beautiful, beautiful and even now it is 64 degrees out which for the 1st of April is very unusual. It's been wet, wet, wet for the last 2 weeks... so it seems like it might really be Spring, for today and tomorrow, anyway. In NY when I was a kid this was my favorite time of year with daffodils everywhere. Here, in NH I am very happy to settle for the first crocuses. Don't they look nice? Here is another view:
Here is the garden, waiting to be planted. You can see the new raised beds John built. Food Not Lawns is our motto!



And finally a happy Easter Bunny to all, and may your garden be free of blight!

Baby, Let's Play House

I just finished the best Elvis book, ever! Nico gave me "Baby, Let's Play House" by Alanna Nash for my birthday. In it, Ms. Nash interviews or quotes many, many of Elvis's girlfriends from high school to Ginger Alden. With pictures! It is a VERY thick book! There were a lot of girls. And very, verrrry few had anything bad to say about him. He knew how to treat a lady right. He was a Southern gentleman. And, whenever he was dating one woman, and sending her home, another would be coming up the drive, and even when they knew about each other, they accepted that if you were with Elvis, that was the way it was. The kind of thing you'd never stand for from a regular boyfriend, these girls said, well, if this is the only way I can keep on seeing the King, so be it!

He loved his mom, so she was always the # 1 woman in his life. But there were also Dixie, June, Anita and of course Priscilla to name a small fraction.

I have always been an Elvis fan. One of the first movies I ever saw was "Jailhouse Rock" and that had a big impression on me, so I am always interested in everything Elvis! And I also love rock biographies, but I really like to know about the women in rock and behind the scenes, the girlfriends, groupies and wives of rock stars, so you can see why I loved this book! It has everything!

I wanted to add some images but couldn't move them around on the dumb format here, so, maybe later!

pictures courtesy of the Elvis Presley Website

Town Meeting Time

It's Town Meeting season around New Hampshire, and tonight it takes place in our town, good old Farmington. We even get out early at the library so the staff can vote. People gather at the Old Town Hall (as opposed to the New Municipal Building) and prepare to spend many hours griping about budgets, supporting or opposing things like buying a new fire engine and then voting on whether to sell the old one and trying to figure out the vote yes to say no meanings of the text of the town report warrant articles.
If you've ever watched "The Gilmore Girls" and seen the Stars Hollow Town Meeting, that gives you a pretty clear idea of the proceedings if you also add the part where we get to vote by holding up little squares of colored paper and the moderator and assistants doing a count.

John is great to sit with as he has to cover the events for the paper and understands all the lingo, so, after years of asking him..."What does this mean", I have a better knowledge of what the hell's going on. Basically, if the budget committee and the selectmen approve of something it's a safe bet to vote for that particular article. We usually sit on the side, and get a good view of everything. One thing, since Town Meeting has been televised, less people show up in person, so, if you do, you end up with a lot of clout. Also, you get to be on TV, so, there can be grandstanding. Meetings can sometimes go till 1 in the morning or later with a lot of nit-picky squabbling. But this IS democracy in action. You can see why getting anything done in Washington must take forever!

The Kitty Awards

It's that time of year, again, when we stay up late, gawk at dressed up celebrities and gripe about how our movie choices never win. Well, time to change all that. I have created a new award, the Kitty:

It will go to the most deserving. Not the movies that cost the most, or the biggest stars.
Using the Academy Award's nominees, below are the incredibly lucky stars and films
that have won the Kitty!

First, Best supporting actor:
The nominees are:
Matt Damon in “Invictus”
Woody Harrelson in “The Messenger”
Christopher Plummer in “The Last Station”
Stanley Tucci in “The Lovely Bones”
Christoph Waltz in “Inglourious Basterds

And the winner:

Christoph Waltz Isn't this exciting???
He was wonderfully evil.
Yes, Stanley Tucci was pretty creepy in the "Lovely Bones",
but that was such a bad movie.

Next up, Best Supporting Actress:

The Nominees are:

Penélope Cruz in “Nine”
Vera Farmiga in “Up in the Air”
Maggie Gyllenhaal in “Crazy Heart”
Anna Kendrick in “Up in the Air”
Mo’Nique in “Precious"

and the winner:

Anna Kendrick!

No, George, that's not yours. Give that to Anna!

Now: Best Animated Feature Film
The Nominees are:
“Coraline”
“Fantastic Mr. Fox”
“The Princess and the Frog”
“The Secret of Kells”
“Up”

The winner: "Coraline"! "Fantastic Mr Fox" and "Up" were both good, too,
but "Coraline" was beautiful, surreal and darkly funny!

Get ready! Here are the BIG awards!
First, the Nominees for Best Actress:

Sandra Bullock in “The Blind Side”
Helen Mirren in “The Last Station”
Carey Mulligan in “An Education”
Gabourey Sidibe in “Precious"
Meryl Streep in “Julie & Julia”

And the winner:

Carey Mulligan!!!

She was like a breath of fresh air and lit up every scene she was in,
which was all of them!

OK, now the nominees for Best Actor:
Jeff Bridges in “Crazy Heart”
George Clooney in “Up in the Air”
Colin Firth in “A Single Man”
Morgan Freeman in “Invictus”
Jeremy Renner in “The Hurt Locker

And the winner, yes, George, it's YOU!

Truthfully, I didn't see the other movies,
but I DID see "Up in The Air" a great adult film.
And George was really good in it!

Finally! The Kitty for Best Movie:
The nominees are:
Avatar”
“The Blind Side”
“District 9”
“An Education”
“The Hurt Locker”
“Inglourious Basterds”
“Precious"
“A Serious Man”
“Up”
“Up in the Air”

Hooray! It's "District 9"One of the best films of this or any year.
Riveting! Surprising! Funny!
"Up in the Air" and "Inglorious Basterds"
were good, too, but "District 9" just blew everything else away!

And, by the way, our choice for the Kitty Awards host would of course
be Neil Patrick Harris. He should obviously be hosting all shows on every channel
including the Tonight Show!

How can the Academy Awards compare?
We shall see!

Something Out There

I'm in the process of creating a new art piece. I'm not really supposed to discuss it yet, as it's going to be unveiled as part of a community art project by an art group I belong to. Let me just say it involves aliens. UFO type space aliens. I always love sneaking the greys into cartoons and onto T-shirts. My particular aliens are telepathic clueless outsiders. Ready to abduct, but often not really sure how to go about it. New Hampshire has a very rich UFO history. Lots of sightings. Some famous. Lots of material to inspire cartoons. I even belonged to MUFON for a while to get ideas. Great conferences with fascinating guest speakers. I'm not sure why but the NH MUFON is now inactive. Here's a link to other chapters: http://www.mufon.com/


And some more alien cartoons:

And, finally, the first alien T-shirt I did. Very popular at the conferences:

By the way, I still have a few of these left in XXL!

A Sunday Kind of Love

Every Sunday I get the NY Times. It's too expensive to get it on a daily basis here in NH so during the week I look at it online. And, the first thing I do is turn to the Styles section (after looking at Bill Cunningham's street photos) I turn to the "Modern Love" column. It's addictive! Who knows what story will be there this week? One of lost love, heartbreak, or heartwarming. Sometimes it's unbearably sad like the one by a mother whose daughter died from an illness. I had to immediately call Nico and boohoo about that one. Then there are funny stories, too. You can see a lot of them online here: http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/features/style/fashionandstyle/columns/modernlove/index.html

Grab a cup of coffee, pull up a comfy chair to the computer and get lost in love.

Alice in Fiction Land

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" have been two of my favorite books since I learned to read, and even before. I've also always been fascinated by the story of Charles Dodgson and Alice Liddell. Recently, John and I were perusing Bald Face Books in Dover, NH, and I found a great biography of Lewis Carroll. And I just finished reading "Alice I Have Been" by Melanie Benjamin, a beautifully written fictionalized story of Alice Liddell and Charles Dodgson. Ms. Benjamin attempts to fill in the gaps of what is known about their relationship which she does quite believably as well as capturing the steamy Victorian atmosphere of secrets and repression making this one of those books you can't put down, and a great companion read with the bio.

Of course, reading these books made me want to immerse myself even more into the story so I found some great sites where you can read even more about the Liddell sisters, plus see the photographs :http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/alice1e.html

This one is a classic:

There was also a dark,dreamy film made in the 80's called "Dreamchild" written by Dennis Potter with Carroll creatures by Jim Henson. Ian Holm plays Dodgson, kind of an unusual choice when you think about it, but he manages to make him a believably haunted character. I'm not so sure about the Tim Burton version which looks pretty creepy...but, then, it IS in 3D, so how can I resist?