Eavesdropping pays off

This is a conversation that I overheard on the Metro (on my way to visit Abby and Deirdre on Saturday):

Son: Mom, guess something that I need everyday at school. It's not a backpack, it's something inside me.
Mom: Your brain?
Son: Yes! What else?
Mom: Your heart?
Son: Yes! It's like you're reading my mind!

Modern Mamas and Papas

Awesome art meet Law and Order

I love these works of art based on one sentence description of episodes of Law and Order! There is this one:
It's Needlepoint!

And this one is pretty good: (with the title of Sugar Daddy Suspected of Murder)

You can check out the rest of them here.

Reflections on Musicals

It is very obvious that I love NPR and I learn a lot from the podcasts that I listen to (just ask me about the tricks/car information I learned from Click and Clack) but one of my favorite things is being introduced to new (to me anyway) music and as I've been listening to a backlog of NPR podcasts, I've been introduced (and then obsessively humming) a few songs. The first one is music from the Broadway show "Promises, Promises". Terry Gross (of Fresh Air) interviewed Sean Hayes about his role in the revival of Promises, Promises and then she interviewed Burt Bacharach and Hal David (who wrote the music and lyrics) and played clips from the original recording. And the songs are really great, there are catchy and very obviously written by Burt Bacharach. But what made me fall in love with the songs is that there were sung by Lenny Briscoe in his previous life as Broadway regular, Jerry Orbach. So I invested about $4 in a CD of the original Broadway recording and besides containing a picture of a very young Jerry Orbach, just listening to him sing (as well as the rest of the cast) is making me very happy. The other musical discovery I have made in the past week (another one from Fresh Air) from a movie called Evening Primrose that was aired once (once!) on ABC Stage 67 in November 1966 with the music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. It starred Anthony Perkins and the plot is that a poet named Charles (Perkins) decides to live in a department store after hours and discovers other people living in the store as well including a woman named Ella who has lived in the store since she was six. There is a beautiful duet called "Take me to the world" in which Ella tries to convince Charles to take her out of the store and live in the real world together. The song is so beautiful and memorable; Anthony Perkins had a really nice singing voice and the harmony in excellent. The movie has just been released on DVD (after a black a white 16mm was discovered) and the movie is at the top of my Netflix queue thanks to an introduction from Fresh Air (and I purchased a version of the song on iTunes).

Look for the Liono cameo

His name is Alan

I can't decide

which one of these NPR Valentine's I like more. This one:



Or this one:



But one thing is clear, I love NPR.

The Superbowl brought to you by the letters N, P, and R

If only Law and Order: LA was like this

I bemoaned the death of my beloved Law and Order and hoped that Law and Order: Los Angelos would be just as good as the original. It is not. But Law and Order:UK is pretty damn good.

He's too strong for my tiny magic

Most people who read this blog know that I love Netflix. I am one of those people who watches the movie the same day I receive it and mail it back immediately (although while I was at Casa Schek, I was a bit more relaxed about it). And this is especially true while I'm in Maryland since my entertainment choices are more limited (but I do have access to the internet now so my choices have increased). Of all the movies that I have seen in the past 5 years, about 98% of them have been through Netflix. Netflix is great for seeing smaller films with limited releases and foreign films that were not released in America. But the greatest thing for Netflix is watching TV shows on DVD. Netflix is the perfect system for watching TV shows on DVD. You get 1 to 2 discs at a time, and you can burn through a disc in a night (or over a weekend) and then you have a day or two so you have a little bit of time away from the show. So basically you have the best timing for watching a TV show. You can watch all the episodes in a short enough time to remember the story lines (especially important for a show like Lost and those of its ilk) but there is a enough time so you don't get sick of the show (you can have an overload). And Netflix is pretty much the only way (except for BBCAmerica or possibly a good PBS show) to watch shows from the BBC or CBC.

I'll be back tomorrow-week

Hello Internet, I'm back. That's right, now I have 24 hour access to the internet.