Hurry Up And Wait...

So, since I've last posted: picked a house, signed contract, negotiated with seller, did home inspection, locked in loan...and am now waiting. Closing isn't scheduled until April 25 (4 weeks from next friday), and with the bulk of the pre-closing tasks done it's time to wait.

I ended up picking a 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath, three story townhouse. This means that I'll go from tripping over stuff in my overly crowded room to feeling as if I have absolutely no furniture. I have enough stuff though to make moving it a lot of work though.

Sure looked strange to me!

(Town)house-hunting has begun in earnest. Botched home improvement projects, check. Questionable odors, check. Overpowering paint schemes, check. If only those were the worst problems that some of these houses had.

As a first time home buyer I've read my fair share of advice for what to look for and what to ignore. But as my first trip out into the marketplace revealed, it was hard to ignore how badly some of these houses had been treated.

#1 Sure a house can be repainted, but when every surface on the inside, and some outside, have been painted a dark shade of purple and you've got purple carpeting too, you've got a problem:



#2 Got renters? Then there's a good chance they destroyed your house. Why? Because it's not their house, and they most likely don't care about selling it--it would mean they have to leave. (I was a renter, I know I didn't intentionally destroy anything, then again I didn't make anything nicer either...)

#3 If your house isn't clean, I'm not sure how good your maintenance would have been either--a clean house is worth actual money.


#4 It's true, it's hard to sell an empty house, all the flaws are magnified because there's nothing else to look at.

#5 Hardwood or pergo flooring only improves the value of your house when you install it properly...those finishing details like edging matter.

That sounds harsh, welcome to a buyer's market.

Look a post!

So I realize it's been a little over 5 months since I last posted...

Here's what happened: 1. I went on vacation for two weeks (Hawaii and Oregon) which entailed the blog going on vacation. 2. I came back from vacation. 3. I didn't come back from my blog vacation.

Simple really. Anyhow, here's where things stand: I've reached 308 in the 1001 MYMSBYD count, which feels like alot, and only my ability to do math keeps reminding me that it isn't even a third--still I'm a glass is 30.77% full kinda person. The goal for this year is 400.

Another source of optimism for me is that since the economy in general and the housing market in particular are not doing great I am in a good position to begin the quest for my first house, or rather, townhouse. This will hopefully provide some good blog fodder as process kicks into gear and I'll be motivated to update the blog more frequently hence forth.

Lastly, I did almost manage to finish reading 50 books last year, coming in 75 pages shy of finishing the last one, which I could have totally done if I hadn't watched When Harry Met Sally on New Year's Eve--but that's tradition and you don't mess with tradition. I haven't set any lofting reading goals for this year luckily, because I'd already be way behind.

It's a glow-in-the-dark compass ring. So you don't get lost. -Big (1988)

1. What did Colonel Jack D. Ripper mix with his pure grain alcohol?

2. Who Oscared as Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire?

3. Who won an Oscar nomination for best actress for her role as Margo Channing in All About Eve?

4. What Tracy-Hepburn film was billed as the hilarious answer to "who wears the pants"?

5. What was Woody Allen's reply in Sleeper to the question: "You mean you haven't had sex in 200 years?"?

ETA: Answers in comments.

Everybody's born knowing all the Beatles lyrics instinctively.

They're passed into the fetus subconsciously along with all the amniotic stuff. Fact, they should be called "The Fetals". -Sliding Doors (1998)

Apparently the last great frontier of digital music is The Beatles.

"The Beatles are really the holy grail for digital music, said Aram Sinnreich, a professor at New York University's department of media culture and communications and managing partner of Radar Research LLC, a media consulting firm. "They have not been available legally from any digital music service to date. Once they are, I think it confers the sense that digital music has finally arrived in the mainstream."

Sure, I'll agree with that. This pronouncement, not so much:

"There's no question that there is a massive demand for the Beatles through a digital channel," Sinnreich said, "not only from baby boomers, who would replace the CDs they used to replace their LPs, but also from today's college students, who demonstrate continued interest in the band despite the fact that it's their grandparents' music."

The first thing is how absurd it would be to replace your CDs with digital downloads: 1. It's expensive, 2. CDs are higher quality/bitrate, 3. Apple makes it insanely easy to copy the CDs you have if you only stick them in the CD drive and hit a button.

The second thing, I wonder if they'll restrict certain groupings of songs to album only purchases. Like the first two songs of Sgt. Pepper, or the last half of Abbey Road. Time will tell, but as you might guess, I won't be buying my Beatles digitally.

Paul McCartney seems resigned to the idea of digital music though. When interviewed on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic:

To me, it doesn't really matter, it's however people want to take the music--to me it's the music that matters. You know, it's probably better if they listen to the vinyl, but how many people are going to do that these days? It's kind of inconvenient. It probably is the best sound, if you're going to be a hi-fi nut. That's actually probably the best way to do it. I don't care though, however people want to do it.

You can listen to the whole live show and interview here, it's well worth it.

There is no spoon. -The Matrix (1999)

1. Who portrayed The Ugly in The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly?

2. What was Gene Kelly's occupation in the 1951 classic An American In Paris?

3. What 1957 film had the line: "Easy enough to talk of soul and spirit and essential worth, but not when you're three feet tall"?

4. What co-star of Shane died at 30 when he slammed his van into the side of a truck in Lakewood, Colorado, in 1972?

5. What was Brian's last name in Monty Python's Life Of Brian?

ETA: answers in the comments.

Don't Panic.

#20: The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.

I've known that 42 is the ultimate answer since I was seven, along with the every line from Monty Python And The Holy Grail, because I lived in the same house with my middle brother. So it was about time I actually got around to reading the book--my middle childhood makes so much more sense now. The 2005 movie was pretty good, but the book is comic genius. What P.G. Wodehouse novels are to the English novel, Douglas Adams is to the science fiction novel. Science fiction is normally not a genre I gravitate to, but I would recommend this, only because if you like sci-fi then this is up your alley and if you don't you can view the whole book as a satire of the classic sci-fi novel, so you can't lose. On that note, so long and thanks for all the fish.

You have another question? Sure, I got one question for you. It's CAN YOU DEAL WITH THAT? -Meet The Parents (2000)

Now that the internet problems at chez 57 have been resolved 1001 Movies trivia can post on schedule:

1. What did the blind flower girl throw in The Little Tramp's face in City Lights?

2. Who played gay desparado Sonny in Dog Day Afternoon?

3. What did Harold Chasen convert his Jaguar into in Harold And Maude?

4. What 1974 Jack Nicholson film was set in 1937?

5. What famed Paris restaurant was Vincente Minnelli's 1958 musical Gigi partly set in?

ETA: Answers in the comments.

Sprechen Sie Daytshish?

When I took German in college, little did I know it would come in handy for reading a murder-mystery set in a fictional Jewish refugee colony in Alaska. That's right, it's book update time once again. I'm pretty far behind on posting about my reading progress, but I'll try to get it under control over the next few weeks.

#19: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon.
This is the first book I've read by Michael Chabon (I know, I'm apparently the only one who hasn't read The Amazing Adventure's of Kavelier And Clay). Coming off a Dashiell Hammett's complete novels this book was a little bit flat for me as a genre book. It came really close to working for me, but was a little bit short in a few areas. I really liked the Yiddish for the first third of the book, after that it started to seem a little gimmicky. I also really liked the plot for the first third and the last third of the book, the middle was slow and not helped by my sudden irritation with the unblent Yiddish. That being said, knowing German added another layer to the characterizations for me. Since a good bit of Yiddish is the phonetic spelling of the German word (how you can be more phonetic than German I don't know), or just the German word, I was amused to find that the main character's ex-wife has the last name Gelbfish, or yellow fish. My favorite Yiddish transformation is familiar to most bagel-eaters of the northeast: lox = lachs = salmon. You can translate from Yiddish to English as much as you want here.

Ray. If someone asks if you are a god, you say, "yes!" -Ghostbusters (1984)

Movie trivia time...

1. What film had Sugar claiming she always got "the fuzzy end of the lollipop"?

2. What was the theme song for The Grapes Of Wrath?

3. What 1936 Charlie Chaplin film ended with the title card: "Buck up. Never say die. WE'LL GET ALONG"?

4. Who played teenage hooker Iris in Taxi Driver?

5. Where did Cary Grant meet Deborah Kerr in An Affair To Remember?

ETA: Answers in the comments.

Baby needs a blog name

I was doing so well with my plan to post on a regular basis, and then life intervened. My excuse for last week: Had to study for a professional test at work (pretty good, huh?). My excuse for every day after last Friday? Life really did intervene, new life that is. My first niece was born on Friday, and well, she's cuter than you are. We can already tell she's gonna be a heart-breaker. She will be affectionately known as niece57 in these parts, and she started owning that name when she was born at 8:57 a.m. I am looking forward to my new role as 'the cool aunt' and the ability/excuse to buy children's toys , clothing, and books. (Look, a whole outfit for just 9.95!) I can now buy this for my own fridge...I'll just tell everyone my niece was over.

Hey, wasn't I just there...?

I saw The Bourne Ultimatum tonight, which was a great, great end(?) to the trilogy. I saw the second installment in the trilogy (The Bourne Supremacy) in the week between my summer living in Germany and returning to graduate school. As you may recall, much of the film took place in Berlin. I had spent several days in Berlin while in Germany and it was pretty awesome to recognize so many of the locations on the big screen. A true 'Hey, wasn't I just there' moment. The same held true for parts of the third film tonight. Without giving away any major plot points, parts of the film take place in Tangier, Morocco and on a ferry going over from Spain. Once again I thought, 'Hey, wasn't I just there'?

This is one of the few action series where I hope they make another one, but only if they can get Matt Damon to play the lead. People probably felt the same way when Bond switched from Connery to Lazenby (I blame the ruffled shirts for the how bad the film is) and then from Connery to Moore, but Bond seems to me to be more about the position than the person (007 number, high-tech gadgets, and hot women). Bourne rarely uses technology outside of what he comes across, gets by on hand to hand contact and evasive speed, and doesn't have a woman in every...location. So I'm not sure that the series can work if the actor is changed. We'll see what I happens I guess.

Your first concert in years and you wear odd shoes. -Shine(1996)

1. Who did a 14-year-old Andy Williams dub [parts of] the singing for in To Have And To Have Not?

2. What 1934 Dashiell Hammett inspired film was shot in 16 days by director W.S. Van Dyke, known as One-Take Woody?

3. Who played Rufus T. Firefly in Duck Soup?

4. What was the baby in Bringing up Baby?

5. What was the last line of Seven Brides For Seven Brothers?

ETA: Answers in the comments.

Turn! Turn! Turn!

Fall has arrived, inside my mailbox at least. Catalogues filled with fall clothing have started to pour in, just in time for August's humid ninety degree days. I understand of course, it's back-to-school shopping season. After 20 years of conditioning, I'm hard-wired to expect summer to end the third week in August, or Labor day at the very latest. Two years off isn't enough time to be reconditioned. I figure I'll be over it by the time my hypothetical future children are ready for school, thus ensuring that I won't fully recover until I'm well into my AARP years. I am ready for fall though- I want to wear sweaters again dammit! Also, I miss college football and scripted prime time television. But that is still weeks away, which means that the 'Fall Story' JCrew catalogue that came last week only made my summer ennui worse last weekend. This of course is a mood that makes me want to watch Pride and Prejudice (the 5 hour BBC miniseries no less!) and knit. Both of which I did; it helped enormously. Topping things off, the JCrew catalogue was insidiously full of sweaters that had been photographed in an historic Boston library. Nothing sells sweaters like books. Seriously. That's just mean. I love sweaters almost as much as I like books and libraries. So, inevitably, I had to order a sweater because by the time it is sweater weather they will be selling swimming suits and shorts again. To everything there is a season.


If you like looking at other people's libraries as much as I do:
The Your Home Library Project
Celebrities' bookshelves
Flickr Bookshelf Pool pictures

I just want to move ahead, I just want to free myself - but it's a struggle

Recently, like others around this part of the internet (Built On A Dare & Mommy Tracks) I started running again on a semi-frequent basis. I was a long-distance runner in highschool and continued to run on and off throughout college. The last two years...nada. This, however, is the first time I've consistently run since I've owned an ipod. I have 3 requirements for a song to make the running playlist:

1: tempo, the most important thing, nothing slow or erratic.
2: no long intros.
3: it's gotta have lyrics.

Here's the playlist I've been using thus far:

Unwritten, Natasha Bedingfield
Tears Of Pearls, Savage Garden
Suzie, Boy Kill Boy
One girl revolution, Superchic[k]
Sunshine Superman, Donovan
Sunshine Lollipops & Rainbows, Lesley Gore
Summer Of '69, Bryan Adams
Struggle, Ringside
Sinner Man, Nina Simone
Seventh Son, Johnny Rivers
Secret Agent Man, Johnny Rivers
Runnin' Down a Dream, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
Red Staggerwing, Mark Knopfler/Emmylou Harris
Rebel Rebel, David Bowie
Out of Control, She Wants Revenge
Need You Tonight, INXS
Naturally, Middle Distance Runner
Mrs. Potter's Lullaby, Counting Crows
Midnight Special, Johnny Rivers
Memphis, Johnny Rivers
Mellow Yellow, Donovan
Le Disko, Shiny Toy Guns
Just Like Heaven, The Cure
Jet Airliner, Steve Miller Band
Jerk It Out, Caesars
I Want You, Savage Garden
I Can't Get Next to You, The Temptations
Holiday, Green Day
Perfect Day, Hoku
Here It Goes Again, OK Go
Happy Jack, The Who
Hammer To Fall, Queen
Go Tell The World, Joy Zipper
Friday I'm in Love, The Cure
Fortunate Son, Creedence Clearwater Revival
Cobrastyle (featuring Mad Cobra), Teddybears
Clocks, Coldplay
Charlotte, Air Traffic
The Boy from New York City, The Ad Libs
Born to Be Wild, Steppenwolf
Blankest Year, Nada Surf
Black Horse and the Cherry Tree, KT Tunstall
Beautiful Life, Ace of Base
Bang a Gong (Get It On), T. Rex
A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You, The Monkees

I don't, apparently, require motivational lyrics as some of these choices make evident.

Well, everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn. What this book presupposes is... maybe he didn't. -The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Trivia questions are back...in case you were waiting.

1. What 1974 film was set in part before the Kefauver Committee in the Senate caucus room?

2. Whose poem inspired production of 1939's Gunga Din?

3. What Walt Disney film was originally titled The Sorceror's Apprentice, then renamed Concert Feature?

4. Who directed Red River?

5. Who played the nasty Noah Cross in Chinatown?

ETA: Answers in the comments.

Oh, simple thing, where have you gone?

To explain my blog silence, I suppose I should tell you what I've been doing. It's summertime and my brain just doesn't seem to want to be serious or focus, a symptom of having spent more years in school than out I suppose. But, I did go on vacation for a week, co-host a baby shower for my brother and his wife, and read the latest and last installment of the Harry Potter series. I finished Sunday evening. I kept meaning to post something, but things kept coming up and the summertime lazies infected me. I'm back though, and better than ever. I'll try to get the movie trivia started again tomorrow, and update my book progress, and format those pesky travel photos...sometime this week*. I promise.

*this week may be interpreted as any time in the next seven days...

Day #185

The year is slightly more than halfway over now, so it seems like a good time to do a progress report. In the 50 books project I am currently reading number 23, Jeeves In The Offing. My 1001 movies number stands at 226, which means I've seen 59 since I started blogging about it back in March. I feel pretty confident that I'll be able to finish my 50 books for the year, and I'm sure I'll pass 250 movies, if not closer to 300. Happy 4th of July!

Once I get inside and hit these air conditioners I get a little dizzy. -Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)

The quote I really wanted to use, but is too long for a blogger title:
-First of all, don't make fun of the weather here, and don't say the weather is the same all the time here. Because it's not. In fact, it's two degrees colder today than yesterday.
-Two degrees colder, me without my muff.


1. What film did Alfred Hitchcock make twice?

2. What actor's arms did Frank Sinatra die in, in From Here To Eternity?

3. What 1970 war epic ended with the line: "All glory is fleeting"?

4. Who sang Put the Blame on Mame in Gilda?

5. What film concerned the first murder in the annals of Sparta, Mississippi?

ETA: Answers, finally, in the comments.

# 18: Out of Africa

Out Of Africa by Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen) is a memoir of a time and a place that don't exist anymore: European colonial Africa. This is one instance though where I was glad that I saw the movie movie before reading the book, in order to have a visual sense of the scenery. The movie is vastly different than the book because it is based on the life of Karen Blixen as opposed to what is in the memoir, which has sketches of life in Africa, no mention of her husband, and stories about her 'friend' Denys Finch-Hatton. What makes this book worth reading is Karen Blixen's ability to describe what it is to be a stranger in a strange land who suddenly feels at home there. When forced to leave Kenya at the end of the book she writes about how it feels to leave a place you have been of, rather than just in:

I was the last person to realize that I was going. When I look back upon my last months in Africa, it seems to me that the lifeless things were aware of my departure a long time before I was so myself. The hills, the forests, plains and rivers, the wind, all knew that we were to part. When I first began to make terms with fate, and the negotiations about the farm were taken up, the attitude of the landscape towards me changed. Till then I had been part of it, and the drought had been to me like a fever, and the flowering of the plain like a new frock. Now the country disengaged itself from me, and stood back a little, in order that I should see clearly and as a whole.

I've experienced a similar feeling when leaving a place that had become home without realizing it, and never would have expressed the feeling this elegantly or perfectly. These places, my college town and the cities of my internships, I don't think I truly saw until I was leaving them.

The other nice thing about seeing the movie first: its nice to have Robert Redford as the idea of what Denys looks like when reading about a character for whom little physical description is given. Substitute a young Meryl Streep for the narrator if that is your persuasion.