The Notorious Betty Page

bpaa007.jpgA Review

Slim pickin’s on the movie scene. We walked to the Lumiere last night to see The Notorious Betty Page. Coming out of the theater, Carol said, “That was fun.”

“I was just going to say that myself,” I said.

It’s the story of a naive and open young girl from Nashville, abused by her father, growing into a naive and open woman in New York and taken advantage of by certain sleezeballs, befriended and sheltered by a nice husband and wife team who happen to do bondage photography.

What I knew: Betty Page is a pin-up queen; a wholesome, girl-next-door type who was totally built, but wasn”t terribly sexy. As noted in the movie, “She can be nude, without being naked.”
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What Took You/Us So Long?

Please!Okay. Friedman writes a fine piece:

How could there still be 29 percent of the people who approve of this presidency?…I think a lot of Americans in recent months have simply lost confidence in this administration’s competence and honesty…Is there no job in this administration that is too important to be handed over to a political hack? No…And that is the core of the matter: the Bush team believes in loyalty over expertise. When ideology always trumps reality, loyalty always trumps expertise.

Nice hook, heart in the right place, good examples, etc. But what gets me about these kinds of pieces is that it’s been obvious since Day 1 what DB’s m.o. has been and the American press gave him such a long honeymoon that you have respected columnists writing pieces like this NOW, almost 6 yrs into this dark age and two years into his second sham term!
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KABOOM 2006

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This year we knew where to where to park and how to deal with the whole enchalada, so we took a picnic of sorts, pumped up the car radio, relaxed and let the show come to us.

The accolades I heaped on KABOOM last year still apply, so in case you missed it, here’s last year’s journal.

KABOOM 2005
KFOGs 12th Annual Music & Fireworks Show
And a beautiful day it was. One of those perfect San Francisco days when the sky is blue and clear, the sun is soft and warm on your skin and there is just that hint of cooling breeze that makes a loose overshirt feel just right. (Of course, if one has the right body, a tight tee shirt works too. We saw a few of those.)
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Big Food Wins?

Two For The RoadIf there’s one thing I remember fondly about Tifton, it was the gut-busting preponderance of good BBQ. Like to about killed me (as they say down south).

One can certainly eat well here in France but it’s a different kind of eating down there. I guess here they emphasize really fresh, simply prepared vegetables and then do really creative things with meat. There they give you a pure, simple, huge piece of meat and cook the vegetables to death. Either way, there are some places that make you glad that you have to eat three times a day (or 12 like the subjects of this NYTimes article…).

What a Festival It Was

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Ready For Work

Imagine going to 13 movies in 21 days and not seeing a single car chase, or building explode, or a guy jump from the top of a building onto a moving bus. When the lights dimmed and the projector whirred into action, we saw a rolling list of sponsor logos with new age background music, and then the Chinese characters for Perpetual Motion appeared on the screen. No commercials, no Previews of Coming Attractions accompanied by ear splitting sound, no “visit our snack bar in the lobby” please.
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SFiFF xiv: A Prairie Home Companion

A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION (2006)
USA 103 minutes
Directed by Robert Altman, Written by Garrison Keillor

Cast:
Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Virginia Madsen, Tommy Lee Jones, John C. Reilly, Lindsay Lohan, Lily Tomlin, Woody Harrelson, Garrison Keillor

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Closing Night. Lily Tomlin and Virginia Madsen were present for a Q&A after.

The movie was just plain fun, unencumbered by much of a story, and the blazing stars that Robert Altman brought along were sufficient to overshadow the sappy, stage hogging Garrison Keillor.
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mrating * * * * *
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Spring Chores

hand shears
(click for larger version)

Spring on our Maine farm also means ‘shearing the sheep,” job I truly dread since it requires hours of my time hunched over a squirming fragrant animal when both of us would rather be elsewhere doing other things. (We used to hire someone to do this for us using the more efficient electric shears, except there are very few professional sheep shearers available these days, and those that do are reluctant to travel and set-up for two or three sheep…) As a result I often put off the job until the black flies begin to appear, which turns an unpleasant job unbearable (these flies, which I promise to describe in detail soon for those unfamiliar, fly in clouds and naturally gravitate to your head and face to land and begin biting… if you don’t inhale them first…). This is one of the biggest reasons we now use cows to mow our fields instead of more sheep.
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Joie de Julep

pre-muddleThe Kentucky Derby is a great excuse to enjoy a Mint Julep once a year, especially when I’ve been able to coax a clump of our mint in our hoophouse to grow early enough to include it. It was a beautiful sunny early spring day, and we enjoyed our frosty juleps with our neighbors Liz and James alongside crackers and yogurt cheese mixed with the other herbs from our hoophouse (chives, tarragon, and chive blossoms) watching Barbaro rocket round the final turn for a true stretch run and win.
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SFiFF xiii: Domestic Dramas

DOMESTIC DRAMAS (2005)
Total running time 114 minutes

These narrative shorts convey the humor and tragedy that make up the most common spheres of our existence and the upheaval that results when the things we most desire refuse to come to fruition or are achieved in unexpected ways. [SFiFF Program Guide]
Seven are on the program; I saw five, as I had to leave for work.

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Jardin Potagier

Jardin Plan

(click diagram for larger version)

Above you will find a diagram of the schematic for our garden. (I made it in AppleWorks and the original file has grid lines that make it easy to pinpoint exactly where each plant should be placed.) The plot is 4m x 9m. The sizes of the circles are based on the (within row) spacing suggested for each plant on its seed packet. Thus, this approximates the amount of space needed for each plant. (The zucchini and Brandywine circles are 90 cm, or about 3′.)
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