What made you smile today?

nimh, this may be out of line, but Anastasia sounds like a keeper--for you.

hey soz! and realjohn, thanks for the comment!

jlb, not out of line, but she's gone i'm afraid.

I had a double take moment! My name is Anastasia and for a minute I was trying to figure out how I knew you out in the real world!

Glad to know the name isn't dying out.

Good evening to yall.
I went to the dentist today for the semi-annual cleaning. As usual, I came out with a head-ache after 50 minutes. I think they have a competition going on to see who can put the most instruments into a patient's mouth at the same time.
Anyway, they have a television mounted near the ceiling. I don't have a tv, so seeing one is quite a novelty for me. Sometimes it is tuned to soap operas; sometimes to CNN. The latter, in the 50 minutes, covers the same "breaking" story relentlessly. If it bleeds, it leads, seems to be the mantra.
The soaps, regardless of what time I am there, have an incredibly similar format with each other. There is the darkly mysterious guy with the eye patch, a missing character with amnesia, a doctor too closely involved with his/her patients, and-the real staple-meaningul glances between female and male characters who are supposed to be romantically involved with some other characters.
I heard today that a soap opera actor, I think he may be of Japanese descent, has been hired to be the Obama administration's liason to the Hollywood and Asian entertainment industry. Why such a position is needed escapes me, but he is not the 1st person to hold the job. Anyway, he played a doctor on a soap until, when they had to get him out of the plot-line abruptly, they had his character commit suicide for no apparent reason.
But I digress. Actually I haven't even gressed, much less digressed.
Today I watched 50 minutes of the Cooking Channel. The last 10 minutes of one, 30 minutes of another, and the first 10 minutes of a third. Maybe that rather than the tools in my mouth caused the headache. Three whirling dervishes talking non-stop and hurling food around feverishly.
They actually weren't talking to me. The sound on the tv was off. I saw closed captioning where, evidentally, "spell-check" has not yet been discovered.
The show I saw in full had a plot, as it were. A woman, who in the title was billed as "Countess..." was preparing a meal to be carried to her young friend in Manhatten for a dinner party. The Countess, it seemed to me, had spent too many years in the kitchen, licking the spoons and eating all the leftovers, of which there must have been a lot.
Periodically, there would be a switch to the young lady living in a Manhatten apartment, alledgedly a grad student. In this economy? Give me a break! She went out and bought $30 in fresh hyacinths and 3 bottles of wine (one for use during the appetiser, one for the main course, and one for the dessert). A bottle of Red Ripple would make most of us here happy.
The food-the beef brisket and the whatever else got prepared- goes into the cooler and heads towards the city.

The gala dinner party scene was an absolute hoot, as we in the mountains of Virginia would say. You would think that the show might go out and find 4 actors who could at least pretend to be having a good time. But, no. They were, of course all pretty, but the 3 guests sat like zombies, or seated corpses, while the food was ladled out.
The final scene was of the hostess holding out her cellphone/camera/whatever thing to take a picture to send to the chef. 4 unsmiling people.

rjb's post made me smile. (It must have been the Barefoot Contessa.)

I know what you mean about the headache - I take Advil before I go for a cleaning so it will kick in before I need it.

Such a good story teller you are, rjb..

My tv experiences are like yours. Entry to a strange world.

I've actually liked some of the Contessa's recipes (in print); think Ina Garten is her name. I could riff on that, of course.

This...

I was playing a game of scrabble and sharing a bottle of wine with my friend and I had this triple word, double letter combo - and I had HOME - but not HOVER - but I did have HOVEN and I was a little tipsy so I put it down and I said - 'That's a word, right - like Hoven Clooves?' and my friend who was also a little tipsy says, 'Yes, that's fine' and then he looks again and says, 'Wait a minute, I think what you mean is CLOVEN HOOVES'.
And then we realized we'd both probably had a little too much wine and we just laughed and laughed.

Bill, Thanks for the clip. Is there anyone who can watch this and not smile? I laughed.

It's great. I love how he literally falls over laughing. And also the part where he hasn't actually torn the paper yet but he's about to and he's thrilled to bits.

I literally fell over laughing when I read this review of Sacha Baron Cohen's newest movie, Bruno.
I guess it's a little irreverent and might be offensive to some, but it struck my funny bone - just because he IS so insanely irreverent.

Bruno is this very effeminate and openly gay fashion journalist charcter of Sacha Baron Cohen (who also does Borat and Ali G). In the new movie, he does the fashionable thing and adopts a little African boy.
This is the funny part (to me). He dresses this little boy in a t-shirt that says GAYBE (get it- gay baby or baby of a gay guy) and decides to name the child OJ.

I'm still laughing everytime I look at the picture. I can't wait to see the movie.

This made me smile.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYOX5eYcViw

I smiled too.

I posted this at Lola's cafe, but Corrie in the Netherlands who used to be on Abuzz and briefly here sent this to me by E mail:



I'll leave it up to y'all's imagination who this was addressing on A2K.

We should prefer wine. It seems to turn men into women of a higher class. And, really, that's all that matters: class.

Oh, no..... I thought it was style that was the only thing that mattered (words of an old boss).

He didn't mean fashion. Well, who knows what he meant.. but I took it as carrying a discernable persona with some clarity and wit. Which he did.

Still laughing. Apparently Willie Nelson fuels his RV with BioWillie, whatever that is.

Wow, that was cute!

No, that's right, Jo. By "class" I meant style. You don't think I meant money, did you?

It was Oscar Wilde, wasn't it, who said something like "In matters of great consequences, it is style that matters."