Author: Jeff Tabaco

The rain is gone. Ah, I feel a lot better than I have these past few days. I’m not sniffly anymore, just a little sleepy. I suppose that leaves happy and dopey among the remaining temperaments.

I forgot to relate yesterday a conversation I overheard on the way to the supermarket. “Well, if he’s Rubenesque,” one guy said to another. I’m like, huh, interesting. So I slow down a bit and eavesdrop further. Well, it wasn’t quite as interesting as I had hoped. They were talking about the recent shake-up at the Treasury Department, and referring to former Secretary Robert Rubin, and not, as I had initially assumed, Flemish baroque painter of voluptuous beauties (among many other things) Peter Paul Rubens. Ha.

Crazy stripes: I love my new Gap scarf. It’s so huge and colorful, though, that I’m just waiting for someone to stop me on the street, and mistakenly tell me my neck is being attacked by a Muppet.

Ugh. I’m still feeling a bit under the weather. On the way home from work, I stopped by Whole Foods to get some soup. As I was walking out of there, this guy ahead of me dropped a glove, so I picked it up and ran to give it to him. “Sir, I think you dropped this.” Just then a cashier came up and put a baguette in his shopping cart. Apparently he left it at the register. The guy thanked both of us, paused for a bit of comic effect, and said, “Okay. I think I can leave now.” I walked out to the newstand and picked up a copy of the Blade. We passed each other again by the elevators, and he called out, “Y’know, that would’ve been the third right glove this week.” Ha.

Okay, must eat my soup and go to sleep.

I baked cookies. No, not from scratch, are you kidding me? I’m not averse to baking from scratch–I recall fondly some labor-intensive pumpkin apple muffins I made a long while ago–but these days I don’t usually have the patience (or counter space, really) to carry out such an operation. Anyway, these are pretty good. Pillsbury chocolate chip. Mmm. Speaking of things domestic, I found a neat little blog all about crafts and assorted things to make, called Not Martha.

Yay, A Charlie Brown Christmas is on tonight!

I came across this interesting website called BookCrossing. It’s basically a tag-and-release program for books, a kind of infinite book exchange. It works like this: when you’re done reading a book, you go to the website, register and label the book with a unique ID number, and then release it “into the wild”–give it away, sell it, leave it somewhere, whatever. (After I finished Harry Potter on an airplane, I considered leaving it in the seat pocket in front of me, but was afraid it would just get thrown away.) Then, as people find or receive these labeled books, they too can go to the website, and using the ID number, add a journal entry with a review or notes, for example, where they found the book, and so on, creating a record of that book’s provenance and its travels around the globe. I’m sure the website explains this more clearly than I can. It’s a pretty neat idea.

Will, on the “gay mafia”: “Or as I like to call it, really organized crime.” Ha, Will & Grace this week was hilarious. Elton John, perfect. In other W&G news, the guest-star parade continues with Dan Futterman (Judging Amy, Urbania, The Birdcage), who joins the series for five episodes beginning Jan. 16, and plays a potential love interest for Will. Finally.

“And pull out the what what?” I slept in late this morning, or afternoon, rather. I’ve been feeling kind of sniffly and sneezy. Ugh. My cell phone is sick, too: it won’t turn on, despite my attempts at CPR. “Live, damn it!” I brought it to the Sprint store today, and long story short, my replacement phone will take a few days to arrive. So I am sans cell phone until then. Grr. (However, I do feel somewhat liberated without it.)

Shopping for le petit prince: I ventured the few blocks to Gap. I must say, the in-store experience is losing a bit of its charm for me: at Gap.com they have many of their men’s clothes in extra-small, but they never seem to carry this size in their actual stores. I asked a saleswoman about it. “Yeah, they’re just not big sellers.” I figured as much, and nodded in agreement. (I’ll just have to get my corduroy jacket online, then.) But I was able to find some boxers on sale, and also got a wool cap and rainbow-striped scarf. I admit it, I’ve turned into a “Love Train”-commercial drop-out. In any case, it turns out there was some additional storewide sale going on, so I got an additional 30% off everything. Rock on.

Speaking of shopping, H&M is coming to D.C. next spring with a new store in Georgetown. Yay! Thanks to Tina for the heads-up.

I had an eggnog latte at Starbucks yesterday. I realized: I don’t really like eggnog. Anyway.

Yesterday was the notification date for semi-finalists in Gap’s model casting call, and I haven’t heard anything. So yeah, c’est la vie. I entered that thing knowing probably nothing would come of it, but the past few days I kept thinking, what if I did make it? Oh well. I won’t quit my day job. For now.

In other news, after some two seconds of deliberation, I joined Netflix. And so the steady stream of DVDs begins.

My first two movies are Billy Elliot and Cruel Intentions. Oh, shush. Yes, Cruel Intentions is a guilty, glossy, luxurious romp, but I have to say, it carries the dead emotional weight of a bad TV movie. (Ryan Phillippe’s bare ass notwithstanding.) I couldn’t help comparing the movie to one of my favorites based on the same source, Dangerous Liaisons, the 1988 version with Glenn Close and John Malkovich. To its credit Cruel Intentions follows its predecessor plot almost scene by scene; however, it’s less sure in the modern setting. The very subtle situations lose their heft when given to young (talented and pretty, though they may be) actors. In Dangerous Liaisons you get the sense that the middle-aged aristocrats played by Close and Malkovich are truly falling apart–we’re talking Drama with a capital “D”–but here, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe play spoiled brats to whom you just want to say, get over it!

Those two lead roles and this story are simply made for older actors; otherwise the very heightened emotional themes–love, power, revenge, humiliation, desperation–are rendered mere melodrama and lose their ability to move us. Don’t get me wrong: I know Cruel Intentions wasn’t made to win Oscars, but I’m just sayin’.

Billy Elliot is fantastic. I empathize with the story a lot… not that I was ever in such dire socioeconomic circumstances, but I danced a lot in school, and though my parents were supportive throughout that time, any actual future career in the arts was discouraged.

Jamie Bell, what a talented actor and dancer. (He can also be seen as Smike in the upcoming movie adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby.) And I was pleasantly surprised to see that the ballet excerpt at the end is from my favorite production of Swan Lake, directed by Matthew Bourne, who adapted it to a modern setting and cast all males in the swan roles–in fact, the adult Billy is played by Adam Cooper, who was the Swan in the Bourne production.

It’s snowing! (Online and outside.) Yay!

I finished reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Eh, it’s okay. Then again, I read most of the latter half of the book while sitting in airplanes and waiting at airports this past week, so my weary mid-travel state of mind may have tinted the experience. To wit, I watched Serving Sara on the way back from San Francisco, and actually thought it was pretty good. Well, as good as any movie about serving legal papers can be. (And really, with five hours of flight time ahead of you, anything is entertaining.) Matthew Perry, I support your movie career, but honey, this movie was a step backward. Or at least a lazy shuffle to the side. Speaking of movies, I hate to give in to the upcoming Spielberg / DiCaprio / Hanks juggernaut Catch Me If You Can–I’m as averse to Hollywood “blockbusters” as the next guy, if not more–but the preview looks good. True, that’s probably more a compliment to the preview editor than anything else. We’ll see. It opens Christmas Day.

Godzilla retailing. I swear: I hadn’t thought it was this pervasive, but Amazon.com really does swallow up everything in its path. (You might be next!) Earlier today I’m browsing through music on Amazon, and decide to check out CDnow, which I haven’t visited in a while, only to find that it has “teamed up” with the Amazon behemoth. I suppose it’s a good deal for both parties, but gee, anyone remember ye olden days, i.e, the mid-1990s, when Amazon.com consisted of just a few, mostly text pages on a gray background?

Whatever happened to my lunchbox? On to a more benign, but just as pervasive presence: eBay. I recently searched there for a lunchbox like the one I had in elementary school. I didn’t really think I would find one, but ah, how could I have doubted the vast, internet flea-market? It’s a metal lunch box with a thermos, that had Peanuts cartoons all over it. Good times.

The Amazing Race: I love this show. I’ve been watching it all season, and it’s just as riveting as any drama. Okay, maybe not as compelling overall my other favorite, Alias, but just as many twists and turns. I may tout my affinity for foreign languages, facility with maps, almost tragically insatiable wanderlust, and (perhaps most important for a race like this) a go-with-the-flow, roll-with-the-punches attitude, but I acknowledge some reasons I wouldn’t be an ideal contestant on The Amazing Race (at least in this season): I can’t swim, ride a bike (much less build one, as in tonight’s episode), or drive a stick. Details, details. Sure I can rough it, but these days, as Rajani once aptly intimated, I’m not so much National Geographic as Condé Nast. Hah, true. “What, no complimentary espresso?”

“Let it snow, let it snow!” It’s supposed to start snowing around midnight. It better. I want to wake up to a freakin’ Winter Wonderland, dammit!