is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Two Good Evenings.
Two Good Evenings.
Tonight I had some people over. I made a yummy black bean soup (secret: add one pod of star anise to an ordinary black bean soup and it becomes FANTASTIC) and quesadillas with jalapenos and mushrooms, and cherry pie and ice cream. Heidi brought a bunch of sushi and some chocolate sorbet. Liz brought beer and limes and wine. Caroleen and Jeff brought chips and salsas. And Evany brought yummy side dishes from the gourmet market in her neighborhood. Leisa, Sunny and Cash brought some wine and fancy cheeses. It was a good spread of food. The variety was perfect, because you could eat one meal, and then have dessert, and then, a few hours later, you could have a whole different meal, and more dessert, and it was all good. We chowed down and sat around and joked and laughed and talked about things, and listened to music, and looked out all the windows. It was fun. Everyone came over around 4 and left some time between 9 and 10.
I made the grandma-recipe cherry pie again, with the secret ingredients that became mine when, after her death, my uncle�s wife scanned all of her recipes and put them on a DVD. Sometimes grandma would give full recipes when asked. Other times she would�whether purposefully or not one could never tell for certain�leave out certain additions that would make her versions always mysteriously better than anyone else�s attempts. So happy am I about this new-old cherry pie that I had to make the pie again (it�s the one I made for Christmas for my mom and sister and sister�s-fiance-lamb) for my friends so they would know I wasn�t exaggerating when I went on and on about how good it is. And now they know. I was not exaggerating.
Last night Caroleen, Jeff and I went to see KING KONG. Man, that is a long movie (just over three hours), but it is not boring. In fact it is TERRIFYING. Sure, some of the scenes are way too long, especially the dinosaur stampede-chase and the utterly disgusting giant insect scene, but the movie really grabs you and doesn�t let you go, in a rather merciless fashion, so that you emerge exhausted in the end, but not in a bad way. Jeff didn�t like it as much as Caroleen and I did, but that is the way of things when it comes to movies in general. I liked the way that this version relied on a narrative wherein the female lead falls in love with Kong instead of screaming terrified constantly like Fay Wray. I don�t remember much about the 70s version with Jessica Lange. But Naomi Watts does an excellent job. So does Kong. Jack Black is OK. It�s hard to forget he�s Jack Black though. Adrien Brody looks good. I�m not sure why, but I just can�t stop looking at him when he�s on screen. And he makes me feel all funny in whatever organ governs the kind of love you feel when you are a teen or a tween and haven�t yet figured out what all the sexual feelings are or what they mean. It�s that kind of crush-feeling he brings out in me. I�m not sure why. So there is lots of good chaste romance action in the film, both girl-ape love and girl-boy love, unconsummated, as it were. And there are heart-stopping crazy-ass chase scenes and gross-out survival scenes. For only ten earth dollars you can be transported into feelings of innocent love so rarely shown in Hollywood movies, and terrified witless by non-existent creatures without any overt blood and gore. Sure, there are plenty of things I could and do find wrong with the movie. But you can read professional film critics yourself for all that. Right now I�m glad we got the romance and the non-gory scary all together at once (though that doesn�t mean I think you should bring young kids to see it. it is probably too scary.). Yay Peter Jackson.
10:33 p.m. - January 07, 2006
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