Random post of Randomness-TV, Movies, Restaurants etc.
I'm on vacation. This is the first week (switched out) of the two week vacation I would have been taking if hubby hadn't broken his leg and we were going to the UK.
In lieu of that we did something we usually only do on vacation, which is going to a very fancy restaurant.
Another Monkey.
Thai Food. Very ritzy. Candles. Some extremely intense dishes. The coconut chicken mushroom soup had an absolutely perfect coconut broth and excellent mushrooms. The chicken was a little so-so but with that broth it almost didn't matter.
Then we did veggies with a Grilled Green Chili Dip which was a little too much for me, but hubby gulped down massive amounts. I had satay. The beef was good, the chicken again so-so. Hubby had an egg-plant, prawn and scallop entree, which was also very good.
I'm not quite sure this is a perfect match for that section of Valencia St or how often I'd go back, but it was fun for a "vacation-style" dinner.
*****
Hello Sendhil Ramamurthy. It's going to take awhile to get used to the lack of accent and Mohinder hair. The character isn't much to hang on to yet, so I really have nothing to say about that.
Once again, Anne Dudek pretty much acts Piper Perabo off the screen and makes me think that she would have been much more compelling in the lead, because she almost had me caring about her character, which I don't particularly want to.
Peter Gallagher and Kari Matchett's love/hate thing is growing onm me marginally.
Still not impressed with Blind Guy.
Plot-wise? Dreck. Garbage. Crapola.
I'm really hoping this thing gets canceled so I don't have to watch it anymore. I'm pretty much stuck right now because of hubby. I wonder if USA has any idea how lame this show is, especially compared to the witty/shiny of White Collar coming right before it.
*****
New issue of Torchwood Magazine has arrived.
Nice to have a cover I can look at without retching. It's been awhile.
*****
OMG-I can't believe that was Wil Wheaton behind the beard! Didn't recognize him at all, but I haven't seen him in anything lately.
I almost don't care what happens to anyone else, but I really hope we get to keep Trevor Grant. Even if he keeps calling Jack "Sport." I'm totally shipping Henry and Trevor. Grace can join in cause she's awesome.
I liked seeing Jack not being the good guy and having to acknowledge that he wasn't, although I wish it didn't feel so soapy. Obviously the show has always had some of that, but after such a goofy main plot, it felt especially incongruous. Especially because I didn't believe that Tess ever cared about Jack, so her being all weepy now is not very believable.
Hubby had MRI of DOOOOOOOOM this morning. I went to the gym.
Hung out a bit-watched Tour De France. I wanted Andy Schleck to make up the 8 seconds on Contador in the Time Trial, but it was still an amazing stage. Kudos to Contador, Schleck and Cancellara. Bordeaux has never looked better.
And then to the movies:
I haven't read any reviews or seen any metas or critiques claiming gender!fail or anything, but I assume they're out there. I can see why a lot of people might really hate this movie and feel it plays into a lot of Unfortunate Implications and other negative tropes, but I'll let others make those statements.
I really enjoyed it. I felt the script actually make the characters sound like real people rather than characters who had a Hollywood professional writing for them. (A good contrast would be It's Complicated. I liked It's Complicated, but never once felt the characters sounded like anything but characters.) This script was willing to let people be awkward and ridiculous and not always wonderfully witty.
I also thought the relationship between Nic and Jules was one of the most realistic depictions of what it's like to be a long-term couple of any gender that I've ever seen in a movie.
This might be the first time I've ever seen Mark Rufalo in anything and not immediately recoiled. The boy does like doing movies where he gets to do sex, doesn't he.
The girl who played the daughter was the spitting image of a young Gwynneth Paltrow.
Wow! Julianne Moore has a lot of damn freckles. For all you freckle fans out there, this should be quite a treat.
This is probably the first film I've seen that comes very close to dealing with the lesbian love of gay porn, which I take as sort of analogous to the number of lesbians who read and write and adore slash. Yes, I realize that slash =/= cheesey gay porn, but it's not completely unrelated either.
So---the big thing----married, committed lesbian, has passionate affair with man. It worked for me in terms of where the relationship was in the film, but I don't generally go all judgemental about fictional affairs period and I'm radically bi-fictional about shipping characters regardless of their orientation. And I realize this opens me up to the "But it's different because we get to see so few lesbian relationships, how dare they have her sleep with a man etc etc."
So be it.
It can hardly be said that the movie condones the affair and it's clear how much pain everybody goes through. Also, the sperm-donor guy is basically shut out of the family unit at the end.
The script manages to avoid all the bad-fic cliches that I was going through in my head that could have been used to manufacture a "happy" ending and make it "the feel-good movie of the year."
Great movie, but definitely worthy of discussion.
Dinner at Mel's Diner.
Sometimes you want to titillate your tastebuds with froofy Thai food and sometimes you want to shove comfort food into your face. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, apple pie.
In lieu of that we did something we usually only do on vacation, which is going to a very fancy restaurant.
Another Monkey.
Thai Food. Very ritzy. Candles. Some extremely intense dishes. The coconut chicken mushroom soup had an absolutely perfect coconut broth and excellent mushrooms. The chicken was a little so-so but with that broth it almost didn't matter.
Then we did veggies with a Grilled Green Chili Dip which was a little too much for me, but hubby gulped down massive amounts. I had satay. The beef was good, the chicken again so-so. Hubby had an egg-plant, prawn and scallop entree, which was also very good.
I'm not quite sure this is a perfect match for that section of Valencia St or how often I'd go back, but it was fun for a "vacation-style" dinner.
*****
Hello Sendhil Ramamurthy. It's going to take awhile to get used to the lack of accent and Mohinder hair. The character isn't much to hang on to yet, so I really have nothing to say about that.
Once again, Anne Dudek pretty much acts Piper Perabo off the screen and makes me think that she would have been much more compelling in the lead, because she almost had me caring about her character, which I don't particularly want to.
Peter Gallagher and Kari Matchett's love/hate thing is growing onm me marginally.
Still not impressed with Blind Guy.
Plot-wise? Dreck. Garbage. Crapola.
I'm really hoping this thing gets canceled so I don't have to watch it anymore. I'm pretty much stuck right now because of hubby. I wonder if USA has any idea how lame this show is, especially compared to the witty/shiny of White Collar coming right before it.
*****
New issue of Torchwood Magazine has arrived.
Nice to have a cover I can look at without retching. It's been awhile.
*****
OMG-I can't believe that was Wil Wheaton behind the beard! Didn't recognize him at all, but I haven't seen him in anything lately.
I almost don't care what happens to anyone else, but I really hope we get to keep Trevor Grant. Even if he keeps calling Jack "Sport." I'm totally shipping Henry and Trevor. Grace can join in cause she's awesome.
I liked seeing Jack not being the good guy and having to acknowledge that he wasn't, although I wish it didn't feel so soapy. Obviously the show has always had some of that, but after such a goofy main plot, it felt especially incongruous. Especially because I didn't believe that Tess ever cared about Jack, so her being all weepy now is not very believable.
Hubby had MRI of DOOOOOOOOM this morning. I went to the gym.
Hung out a bit-watched Tour De France. I wanted Andy Schleck to make up the 8 seconds on Contador in the Time Trial, but it was still an amazing stage. Kudos to Contador, Schleck and Cancellara. Bordeaux has never looked better.
And then to the movies:
I haven't read any reviews or seen any metas or critiques claiming gender!fail or anything, but I assume they're out there. I can see why a lot of people might really hate this movie and feel it plays into a lot of Unfortunate Implications and other negative tropes, but I'll let others make those statements.
I really enjoyed it. I felt the script actually make the characters sound like real people rather than characters who had a Hollywood professional writing for them. (A good contrast would be It's Complicated. I liked It's Complicated, but never once felt the characters sounded like anything but characters.) This script was willing to let people be awkward and ridiculous and not always wonderfully witty.
I also thought the relationship between Nic and Jules was one of the most realistic depictions of what it's like to be a long-term couple of any gender that I've ever seen in a movie.
This might be the first time I've ever seen Mark Rufalo in anything and not immediately recoiled. The boy does like doing movies where he gets to do sex, doesn't he.
The girl who played the daughter was the spitting image of a young Gwynneth Paltrow.
Wow! Julianne Moore has a lot of damn freckles. For all you freckle fans out there, this should be quite a treat.
This is probably the first film I've seen that comes very close to dealing with the lesbian love of gay porn, which I take as sort of analogous to the number of lesbians who read and write and adore slash. Yes, I realize that slash =/= cheesey gay porn, but it's not completely unrelated either.
So---the big thing----married, committed lesbian, has passionate affair with man. It worked for me in terms of where the relationship was in the film, but I don't generally go all judgemental about fictional affairs period and I'm radically bi-fictional about shipping characters regardless of their orientation. And I realize this opens me up to the "But it's different because we get to see so few lesbian relationships, how dare they have her sleep with a man etc etc."
So be it.
It can hardly be said that the movie condones the affair and it's clear how much pain everybody goes through. Also, the sperm-donor guy is basically shut out of the family unit at the end.
The script manages to avoid all the bad-fic cliches that I was going through in my head that could have been used to manufacture a "happy" ending and make it "the feel-good movie of the year."
Great movie, but definitely worthy of discussion.
Dinner at Mel's Diner.
Sometimes you want to titillate your tastebuds with froofy Thai food and sometimes you want to shove comfort food into your face. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, apple pie.