Call the waaaaahhhhhhmbulance

For a long time, I've had really good luck with the Netflix shipping center in Atlanta. They turn around my movies and TV shows in one day, meaning that even though I have the ultra-cheapie one-at-a-time plan, I can see two per week if I make sure to stick them in the mail the next morning. I've been maintaining a steady Tuesday-and-Friday schedule.

Today my Netflix didn't come. My whole schedule is shot. And there is NO DR. WHO WITH DAVID TENNANT and NOTHING TO DISTRACT ME FROM THE DEBATE TONIGHT.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

A long time coming

The Cleveland Cavaliers have finally won the Eastern Conference--and against the loathsome Detroit Pistons, to boot.

I'm not a sports maniac, but I think it's fair to say that I've waited for this day my whole life. The Cavs were born in northeastern Ohio the same year I was, and this is the first time they've managed to win the East. This victory is all the sweeter for the fact that star LeBron James is a local hero, a high school prodigy from Akron.

Anyone with really good sense would avoid Ohio pro sports altogether, because it's been a story of injury, disappointment, last-minute choking, bad coaching, stupid trades, generally lackluster play, etc., from time immemorial. But I have a soft spot for my hometown basketball team because my ex-stepmother worked in the Cavs' marketing department in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As a result, we had really great seats at the old Richfield Coliseum--right behind the players' wives--during a time when the Cavaliers actually showed promise and might have even won something if it hadn't been for a fellow named Michael Jordan on an opposing team. It's enough to make anyone enjoy sports. To this day, we have a Cavs ornament on our Christmas tree every year.

The Cavaliers are up against the San Antonio Spurs in the finals, a team that the s.o. finds as repellent as I do the Pistons. So you can bet we'll be glued to the TV.

In other sports news, I trust you've all seen this video? I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard. Amazing.

I love melodic, 1970s FM radio-style pop

The song "Sewn" by The Feeling is absolutely slaying me right now. Which is cool, because it's been since sometime in mid-2006 since I last liked a song this much.

And you know what I really like? The damn thing is almost 6 minutes long. Usually I want a songwriter to get in, get the point made, get out. Haiku-like. Three minutes and done. But in special circumstances like these, I want the song to last forever. I wouldn't have blinked at 12 minutes.

*hits repeat*

Rawk

Was it just me, or was the Bon Jovi-mentored episode of American Idol one of the best ever?

*SPOILER ALERT FOR THE S.O., WHO HASN'T WATCHED IT YET*

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I totally expected Lakisha and Blake to crash and burn, but they so didn't. They took risks. They owned those songs. I love surprises.
I'd say something about Melinda's excellent performance too, but it wasn't a surprise to me. She can do pretty much anything she sets her mind to, and she seems especially good at visualizing (auralizing?) which songs are going to work well with her voice.

Mixed media

I have a theory about Netflix: It's very important to organize your queue so that at any given time, you have two very different sorts of movies in hand. The worst thing you can do is end up with, say, two very depressing dramas or two collections of similar TV episodes. If you do that, you'll inevitably find that you are not in the mood to watch what you've got--but of course, you can't get anything new until you return them. It's what I call a Netflix Blockade.

(Yes, I know one could simply return the offending movies without watching them, but I can't make myself do it. It seems wasteful.)

For several weeks I have been locked in a particularly bad Netflix Blockade: Two serious, potentially rage-inducing documentaries. One, The Future of Food, I still haven't forced myself to watch. J recommended it to me, and I know I very much need to see it, but I can't quite commit to it just yet because I have a pretty good idea how it will make me feel.

The other, though, I finally watched this morning: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. It was recommended to me a long, long time ago by someone I interviewed for a business article, and over time it filtered to the top of my queue. It was fantastic and infuriating. I guess before I watched it, I never fully understood the shell game Enron played with the California utilities during the power-grid crunch...or, for that matter, what exactly was wrong with the way the company did its accounting. Now I know, and I'm pissed. Better late than never! Everyone should watch this movie.

And now I can watch The Devil Wears Prada!

Meanwhile, I've been reading. I've just finished Bill Buford's Heat, which I absofreakinglutely loved. For those who haven't heard of it (I hadn't, before I miraculously discovered it on the New Arrivals shelf of our tiny local library), it's a memoir about a writer who apprentices in Mario Batali's restaurant Babbo, then goes on to apprentice with all the people Batali apprenticed with. It reconfirmed for me that I would hate working in a restaurant kitchen (that's not cooking!!!), but it also hit all the right notes about the importance of small, local, artisanal food production.

Now I am embroiled in Beryl Bainbridge's The Bottle Factory Outing, a novel with (I'm guessing) all the potential for hilarious trainwreckiness.

For me, reading and movie-watching are like all my other leisure pursuits. I'm either full-speed ahead, staying up late and immersing myself in them; or I can't go anywhere near them for weeks at a time. Knitting's that way, too. Right now I can feel a rush of knitting coming on, but I haven't quite gotten there because I'm way too busy.

And, on that note, I'd better go plant some more vegetables, if the rain will hold off. Not that I have anything bad to say about rain--we need it!

Leslie Hunt goes out in style

"WHYYYYY DID I DECIDE TO SCAT?...AMERICA DON'T CARE FOR JAAAZZ..."

Now that is how you sing your way out on American Idol. Bravo, Leslie. Wish you could have been around for a little bit longer.

So what does everyone think? I really like Melinda Doolittle, Lakisha Jones, Blake Lewis, and Phil Stacey...and several others. I think the talent pool is especially rich this year.

I am ready to say goodbye to Antonella Barba and Sanjaya Malakar ASAP.

America has spoken

Last night I had an American Idol anxiety dream.

It seems I had tried out for the show. This in itself is impossible. I would never do such a thing. For one thing, I am extremely self-conscious; for another, I can't sing. Well, I can sort of sing. I can sing well enough to take part in an average church choir--not the really sensational gospel kind, but the reedy white Protestant kind whose performances people sit through with polite tolerance.

So anyway, I had impossibly tried out for American Idol. And then, to make matters worse, I had by some huge clerical error made it to the top 24. Now the first live-in-front-of-millions-of-people performance was looming, and I was in a blind panic. I would be humiliated because my incompetance would be exposed. How would I even make it through one-minute-thirty of my song?

My mother, who is quite a good pianist, had come to the hotel to help me prepare. But we were having a lot of trouble picking a song for me to sing. I figured we should pick a fast, rough-edged indie rock song that would not require me to hold any high notes. Or alternately, we could pick some sort of soft, breathy Norah Jones-type jazz-pop schlock that wouldn't require me to actually project my voice.

We were still brainstorming in the hallways of the hotel when I rounded a corner and slammed face-first into Simon Cowell. Randy Jackson was there and laughed heartily.

I was really glad to wake up from that dream.

Everyday natural wonders

It is 70 degrees and sunny today. Hallelujah!

While filling the turkeys' waterer, I spotted no fewer than 10 happy, fuzzy honeybees in my immediate vicinity. They were sucking nectar from those purple-flowered minty-looking plants that (ahem) dominate poorly maintained lawns. I love our bees' ability to find food all through the winter. Our bee teacher has not been so lucky; some of his bees got overenthusiastic during the warm January weather and laid more eggs than they could keep up with. When it got cold again, they starved to death before he even knew there was a problem and could start feeding them.

And then there was a third turkey egg, just as beautiful as the first two. I thought turkeys were supposed to be poor layers! Maybe this is just their best season.

To top it all off, we are having our friend L2 and her husband over for Indian food and Idol results tonight. I wish more days were like today.

We love Jenny

Jenny has been here this weekend. We've been having a wonderful time, and she was a real trooper about the whole lamb carcass that was delivered on Saturday morning. We roasted a rack of lamb and OMG it was delicious.

I think she has gotten me addicted to birdwatching. I had wrongly assumed that the human race had done so much environmental damage that the only birds left would be starlings, turkey vultures, etc. I can't believe how wrong I was.* Phoebes, warblers, kinglets, thrushes, the list goes on. I watched a chipping sparrow for a while and was incredibly charmed by its cheerful manner. Birdwatching seems like a really cool and meditative activity that appeals to my inner science geek.

We just saw Casino Royale with J and her husband. What a fabulous movie--it far exceeded even my inflated expectations. And Daniel Craig? Rrrrraaaoooww. The theater was awash in Girl Drool.

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* I mean, yes, we have destroyed the planet and caused a lot of extinctions, but nevertheless there are still a lot of really neat birds around here.

NKOTB

They're at the "ugly" stage (three and a half or four weeks, I think), but they're still cute despite their scraggly pinfeathers!

The s.o. is planning to build a new, larger two-part henhouse for our grownup chickens. We will then convert our existing one into a brooder house, where we can raise new generations to adulthood. These gals will go in there when they get too big for the attic. Then they'll move up to the big henhouse to make room for our spring chicks.

Have I mentioned that we love chickens? They are just a joy to have around.

If anyone's looking for the Thanksgiving menu, it's here.