04 February 2011

Snowy Mashed Potatoes

-I feel obligated to say it snowed the other day.  A lot.  The only time I left my place from Monday night to Thursday morning was to run up to the QuikTrip (6 blocks away) in the middle of the blizzard, as I was dying for something other than turkey sandwiches and cereal.  I was walking faster than the cars were driving, the roads were so bad.  Then again, I only saw one car before I got to Main Street.


-Since I know this blog readership extends to many television executives, I would like to give them a tip: Never allow your show to cast Will Forte in a guest role.  He is a vortex of anti-funny.  He guest starred tonight on Parks & Recreation, which went from crappy in season one to one of the funniest shows on TV in season two.  Season three has been fantastic so far, but tonight's Forte scenes slowed the show to a crawl.  He's not my least favorite SNL cast member of all-time (Armisen, then Sanz), but he's up near the top of the list.  Fortunately, Parks & Rec was still a very funny episode.  Anything Rob Lowe says cracks me up, but Andy is my favorite character.  
-If you've never seen The Thin Man, please go to your Netflix queue and move it up to the top.  It was on during one of the blizzard days, ensuring I would have a good day.  William Powell's half-drunk former detective Nick Charles is pitch perfect, especially alongside Myrna Loy as the also tipsy Nora Charles.  The shit-eating grin on their faces as they deliver their bitter sarcasm gives me the giggles every time I watch, which is fairly often.  I think it was the third time I watched it in six months.  One of my favorites.


-Two other movies I watched while stuck at home didn't work for me at all.  Army of Darkness, the third movie in the Evil Dead series, had always been the movie in that series I heard I would like the most.  I understand what they're doing with the over-the-top action and campy humor, but it's not my thing.  I can't believe the guy who directed it also did the Spider-Man movies.  And Darkman, which is awesome.


On a completely different level, I watched 3 Women, the 1977 Robert Altman film with Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek.  Having seen nothing but great reviews for it (95% at Rotten Tomatoes), I recorded it on my DVR.  Kinda wish I hadn't done that.  After reading some of the reviews, I'm convinced everyone who liked the movie was on some major hallucinogens.  All the symbolism they saw in it was just a bunch of uninteresting, delusional people being annoying for a little more than two hours.  I love most Altman movies, but this one was pretentious crap.


-In my downtime, I was also able to finish The Girl Who Played with Fire, which didn't live up to the first book in the series but stayed suspenseful.  The plot was not nearly as tight as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  The characters kept it moving, however, especially when Lisbeth Salander is involved.  The Salander-less sections were a bit too many in this installment, so I'm hoping she's in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest from start to finish.


-TGWPWF was the third book in a row that I read with the word Girl in it, in addition to The Pint Man before it.  As a result, I decided to keep with the trend and only read books with the word Girl, Woman, Man, Boy, Guy, or Gal in the title.  Quite nerdy, I know, but it gives me an excuse to read some books I've been meaning to read for years, and I think I have 6 or 7 already lined up to read.  Should be fun.  


-That picture at the top is Parker Posey in Waiting for Guffman, one of my 5 favorite comedies.  She works at Dairy Queen.  DQ makes Blizzards.  We had a blizzard the other night.  Which is really just a means for me to tell you to watch Waiting for Guffman again.  It gets funnier every time.  That could be because when my parents took my grandma, Pope, to see it in the theater, she laughed so hard we missed half the movie.  It was a lot funnier the second time I saw it, and every time since.  Christopher Guest's line at about the 40 second mark here may be the movie quote I've used more than any other:


-If you hadn't figured it out, I'm going to call the hodgepodge posts Mashed Potatoes if I don't have a real theme for them.

1 comment:

  1. OMG, I had forgotten this movie and how much mom loved it!!!!

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