Little Miss Sunshine

Tree reviewed this movie when it was out in theaters. I just watched it this afternoon, and I loved it. The casting was perfect. I've loved Toni Collete ever since Muriel's Wedding and she's so good in this. Alan Arkin. What can I say about him? He's absolutely fantastic in everything he does. (I loved his rant about having chicken for dinner, and his advice to his grandson "fuck as many women as you can. Not just one woman, but many women. I'm telling you fuck as many women as you can!") I thought Steve Carell would bomb playing this dark, suicidal character. I wondered if he could pull it off . . if I'd see Michael Scott in his performance. But he's a very versatile performer and very good in this. The kids who played Olive and her brother were terrifica as well. Greg Kinnear was right on target too.
I noticed the guy who plays obnoxious Hodges on CSI played a sympathetic part as the pageant musical director. Little Miss Sunshine gets an A.

An Evangelical to watch . . . become the next scandal

This is Stephan (sic) Munsey. I was flipping TV channels and landed on some Christian broadcasting on the Lesea Network. This yahoo is so very strange looking--much different from this photo. He has a dramatic combover, very puffy and blotchy face and eyebrows that looked as if they were lifted by a bad cosmetic surgeon. Anyway, he was preaching on the "Harvest Show." He wants people to call in and pledge 77 dollars a month for ten months. Supposedly great things will happen to you if you do his bidding. He isn't even a captive speaker like some evangelicals. He used poor grammar, with long pauses between words. Every five minutes or so, he'd cock his head and listen. Then he'd say that he was speaking to a specific someone "out there," but he didn't know to who(m). But God was telling him, to tell us, that if we'd call and pledge (even though Satan may want to hold us back) $77 a month for ten months that we would A) be healed, or B) know financial gain, or C) find the mate we longed for. wtf?
I looked him up on Google and his church is in upstate Indiana in a small town called Munster and from this picture he evidentally used to have a fundraiser and requested people pledge FORTY-NINE dollars a month for ten months.
Anyway, he's a scandal waiting to happen. Trust me on this. Why do evangelical Christians (some are probably intelligent functioning adults) fall for people like this yahoo? He was like a train wreck. I wanted to look away, but couldn't.

For Spidey**

Idealistic, Man of Honor Liberal George McGovern

The evil racist George Wallace

Famous mugshots of 2006

Dubya and imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

I love Ed

My new favorite show is on HGTV Sundays at 10pm and is called Living with Ed.
Ed Begley, Jr. has been an environmentalist since 1970 and lives in a small house in Studio City CA--a far cry from the "normal" "successful" Hollywood actor. His house is all-green: He generates his own electricity (he bikes 50 minutes to power the toaster to make his morning toast,) has solar panels atop his house, has a white picket fence made out of recycled milk jugs,catches rainwater in barrels to recycle it, and buys post consumer recycled paper and other goods, and recycles paper and plastic products. He "lives simply so that others may simply live." He's forever on the roof doing something--sweeping and cleaning the solar panels, cleaning gutters, etc. His wife worries that 1. he'll fall off ("I'd never know how to do all this solar stuff if he dies") and 2. wonders if his life insurance policy is paid and up-to-date.

He's a Green Dream. Except, of course to his wife Rachelle, who came to Hollywood to become an actress and live in an Aaron Spelling-type house. She says she can't leave home without returning to something else Ed's cooked up . . he calls her "the Commandant." LOL. He runs the house like a ship "the SS Begley," and she whines "It's not a ship, Ed! It's a house!" A modern day Green Acres.
It's both fun and informative--it's Funormative!!! And I love Ed Begley, Jr!!

Ed's Website

Evy in the trashcan

We were supposed to get an inch of snow overnight. We didn’t. Maybe it will come today.

My M-i-l’s 83rd birthday was this past weekend. She’s doing well.

I have about fifteen half burned candles around this house. I get tired of the scent about half way through, and then they sit around getting dusty. I’ll throw them out soon or later.

I spent Sunday cleaning up our bedroom. It was a mess and now it’s not (for the time being.)

I threw away two big garbage bags full of magazines. I guess I could have taken them to work and distributed them there, but the bags were heavy as hell and I didn’t want to lug that shit around. So I pitched them into the garbage cans (or dustbin as Meme would say?)

I’m taking a few books to work to give to the two other readers I know. I was going to throw them away but couldn’t do it. Don’t tell, but the one book I did throw away was Evy’s bigass Bill Bailey Aint Coming Home book. I’m not even going to apologize for it. What’s done is done. No looking back. C’est la vie.

My computer desk really needs to be straightened up. There are piles here and there.

We have a three day weekend coming up, thanks to MLK, Jr. Thanks Marty! RIP.

Books

I made two good purchases at a half priced bookshop the other day.

1. The Creaky Traveler in Ireland (Clare, Kerry and West Cork) A journey for the mobile but not agile by Warren Rovetch. I love travel books on Ireland, and have been to Clare and West Cork so I’m excited to read his stories and what places there he finds of interest.

2. Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books by Lynne Sharon Schwartz. I’m reading this one now and it’s very interesting. After reading a New York Times piece quoting a Chinese scholar which stated: “belief in Buddhism . . . has curbed his appetite for books,” Mr. Cha says, “To read more is a handicap. It is better to keep your own mind free and not to let the thinking of others interfere with your own free thinking,” Schwartz thought about the whole Zen thing of “empty is full”, and “full is empty”, and writes about all the books that had influenced her life and helped shape her as a person.
You might now thinking reading a book about books is boring. It’s not. I wholeheartedly recommend this book.