Pants debate 2012 ...

Since the last time I posted a recap of what I've been doing, Chuck and I went on a quick vacation, I saw Steve Martin standing on local soil and my face hurt from dork-grinning my way through a Gin Blossoms concert. We also went to the world's best street dance and I took back-to-back dinners from food carts. I had Taco in a Bag, which is my favorite food, and a new contender for fried finger food of choice: Jalapeno Pretzel Bites.

In a world where it is normal to say things like: "Ugh. Vacation just went so fast," we had the opposite experience. By the time Chuck went back to work it seemed that we had become people of leisure basking in deliciously long, hot, lazy summer days and that was just going to be the way it was forever.

Anyway, here's what I've been eating, watching and reading.

FOOD TAKEN IN PUBLIC
I love to make To-Do lists, except I weigh them down with super fun things. Then I act like it's a total chore to complete my weekend list. Things like: Ugh. I'm going to go to some comic book stores. Or, Aw, nuts. I promised myself I'd go down to Lake Superior to see how warm the water is.

This one has gone incomplete until recently: Try brunch at Zeitgeist Arts Cafe. I had the Croque Monsieur Benedict with this mushy little potato cakes. It was so great. Not too much food, little curls of prosciutto. And the hollandaise is a gruyere hollandaise.

SPIRIT VALLEY STREET DANCE PHOTO DUMP

Me and JCrew hiding out from the Great Hairball Storm of 2012. (What is my nose doing?)

Chuck at the Kom-On-Inn

MOVIES
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter: This movie starring Alan Arkin and Sandra Locke is just as fulfilling as the book by Carson McCullers. Locke is the perfect mix of unknowing loveliness that I'd imagine for the main character Mick Kelly, who is straddling childhood and woman-hood in this slow and lazy stroll through a year in a small town in Georgia and the characters who become enthralled with a deaf-mute man named John Singer.

These little AP English inspired read book-watch movie combos are always even better when both are accomplished through the wonder that is Minnesota's inter-library loan system. I'm really developing a taste for free stuff.

Adventures In Babysitting: Wow. I had no idea that this was a cautionary tale about big cities when I was 12 and madly in crush with Elizabeth Shue as she lip-synched along to "And then He Kissed Me." I think I saw this movie 150 times before I became a teenager and then never saw it again. I do at one point remember being ridiculously sick of it, but I remembered just a few key scenes as we were watching.

The Executioner's Song (Director's Cut): This movie, based on the book by Norman Mailer, is pretty hard to follow. Rosanna Arquette, however, has stunning breasts. It's a nice time capsule to the 1970s. During a lot of scenes, Chuck pointed out a lot of knick knacks that existed in his childhood home. 

Chinatown: It's funny to remember that at one time in the world Jack Nicholson was considered to be an attractive man. In my brain, he has always looked like "The Shining." Anyway, I'd never seen this before and it's good. Private detective, Faye Dunaway, Los Angeles. It's good.

LEFTOVER VACATION PHOTO

Chuck at Birdhouse

RANDOM PAPARAZZI PHOTO

Steve Martin is in there. Not my finest photography

BOOKS
Happy All the Time (Vintage Contemporaries): There are some writers who are good enough to disregard plot in favor of a collection of quirky characters slinging each other with cute conversation. See also: Laurie Colwin, whose 1978 novel is simply the story of third cousins tip-toeing from bachelorhood to couplehood and the difficult targets who change everything they believe to be true about women. What, in theory, could reek of a banter-y rom-com with a “Gilmore Girls” preciousness is smart and lively and potentially something that might have inspired the writer Charles Baxter — the last person I decided could write whatever the hell he wanted.

I really liked this book. Full review here.

The Executioner's Song I thought this book was really, really long. A lot of it was good, but that was drowned out by how really, really long it was.

Gary Gilmore had spent most of his life incarcerated by the mid-1970s when he was released from prison and into the hands of his once adoring cousin Brenda in Utah. She sets him up with a room at his Uncle Vern’s house and he gets a job working in Uncle Vern’s shoe shop. But life on the outside takes some adjustments: Gary needs a car, Gary wants a girl, Gary likes to lift 6-packs from grocery stores. He bumbles along socially stunted and lacking impulse control. When he meets Nicole Baker, a 19-year-old, thrice married, mother of two, Gilmore goes gaga for her. They quickly fall into a passionate and super naked love affair filled with the kind of oozy goozy murmurs about fate and lifetimes and souls that are usually reserved for the bodice rippers that were hidden in clothes hampers 50 years ago.

Full review here. 

The Lola Quartet This story is about a guy who returns to his hometown after committing the cardinal sin of journalism and he gets wrapped up in trying to figure out if a 10 year old girl his sister saw his his daughter and the events that led to him having a daughter he didn't know about. This means revisiting the members of his high school quartet -- who are all hiding something from him.

This book is clunky and the plot is just too, too contrived. Full review will be here.

Dare Me: A Novel: Ah, yes. A psychological thriller involving cruel manipulative cheerleaders and their equally manipulative new coach. This book is totally delicious.

Full review will be here.

PANTS DEBATE
I got these pants on Sunday. When I tried them on at the store, Chuck gave me a solid: "You know what you're doing," instead of responding "THOSE ARE JUST SO CRAZY THEY JUST MIGHT WORK!" which was the response in my head.

I asked a woman working if she liked them. She paused and said ... "Yes."
CHRISSIE said the people at her dinner table did not think they were cute, did not think they were ugly, but did think they were hilarious.
Fannie said she liked them, then asked: "Are you going to wear them in public?"