Thank You, TCM!

Finally, somebody got it right. I have been screaming and yelling for quite some time about the fact that there used to be an actual schedule for movies. Admittedly, this was before cable, but it was still set in stone. For instance, you watched King Kong and Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young on Thanksgiving while you were cooking the meal. Wizard of Oz was always around Easter, and of course, Christmas movies were at Christmas. These days, you get The Santa Clause 3 in October, and Wizard of Oz, it seems, whenever nobody can think of anything else to put on, and so forth. I think this is annoying because it means you have nothing to look forward to. I mean, you used to wait all year to see the one showing of a movie on TV, and then it was a whole family evening with popcorn, which was great. This is why there are certain movies I have refused to own, because it seems to me like cheating, somehow, if you can watch them any time you like - you lose that whole sense of celebration. (I may have to break down and buy the Alastair Sim Christmas Carol - whose title is actually Scrooge - from 1951 because they haven't shown it in two years and it never seems to be Christmas to me without that and the Grinch.)

Anyway, in the last few years they have put The Quiet Man on at all kinds of strange times...August, May, October...but never at the right time, which is today. And TCM did it tonight and I've just finished watching it and I'm delighted.

There are certain movie scenes which are the absolute best of their kind. The swordfight in Princess Bride is my favorite swordfight ever, for instance - yes, it's inherently unlikely, but so are most swordfights, for heaven's sake. I know - I took stage fencing. The thing is sillier than hell, but just the best fun. And the best screen fistfight ever is the marathon fistfight in The Quiet Man. What a neat movie. I feel so Irish that I may turn vaguely green any old second...wait, maybe that was lunch.

I had a nice busy day today. I was out the door at 7:45 for an audition, at which I think I did pretty well, but who the hell knows what directors want. I even set my hair last night, which I think is not what I should be doing at all, because I don't seem to be able to make it come out right no matter what I do.

If you recall, the last time I set my hair I ended up with the pouf of all poufs. I figured this time, well, if it poufs, I can always do a French twist (which suited the character I was auditioning for anyway) because at least the pouf will give the top some height. Naturally, my hair refused to cooperate. Today it came out quite reasonably well, a nice soft pageboy, which is actually what I was after. However, I think I killed it. It just didn't look shiny, and it was slightly frizzy, so I sprayed it with some stuff Sarah left around which is supposed to tame the frizzies and add shine (I quote from the label). Well, it got shinier, but the stuff took all the curl out. I just can't win here. Next time I'll think I'll just leave it dirty (well, anybody knows that dirtier hair has all the natural oils in it and sits better). I couldn't do that because it was so dirty that it was trying to escape from my head and find the nearest shampoo bottle. Actually I think I used too much of that stuff, whatever it was. I'll have to experiment. And then my hair will fall out and I can just do wigs, which would be immensely easier...

And one of my temp agencies actually called me! I was quite shocked. Naturally, it's one of those damn seminars, but what the hell. It gets me out of the house and adds another day to my unemployment benefits, so why not.

And I did my taxes, which are costing me a bundle this year, damn it. I don't quite understand this, and I think I'll go over my figures again before I send them off...how could I owe nearly 1300 bucks in taxes when I worked so little? This makes no sense.

Tomorrow I shall wrap Joshua's stupid books in between curling up and reading all my nice library books, and I shall do laundry, and probably take a walk because it's going to be in the low 60's. Oh, I do love this semi-retirement stuff.

I just Spellchecked this (I have a tendency to type ahve instead of have), and I had typed "costinbg" instead of "costing" in that paragraph about my taxes. When I clicked on it to correct it, Spellcheck went flying off into the realms of fantasy and suggested I replace "costinbg" with "Steinbeck," "Gutenberg," or "guestbook." Does this make sense to ANYBODY? I mean, Gutenberg contains precisely one letter that is in what I typed. Admittedly there are some terminally vile typists in the world, but I don't think that it's possible to type "costinbg" when you mean "Gutenberg." Anyway, ". . .taxes, which are Gutenberg me a bundle. . ." Eh?

Love, Wendy