Snookums and I watched an awesome movie on telly the other night: Blind Fury starring Rutger Hauer. Here’s the official plot outline from the IMDb: “A blind Vietnam vet, trained as a swordfighter, comes to America and helps to rescue the son of a fellow soldier.” I ask you, what more does a film need? The bad guy is a drug dealer, and the cute little boy is Hobie from “Baywatch.” Awww, yeah, baby. Feel the 80’s love.
 
Quote of the Night:   That’s why Al Pacino gets an award for playing a blind man, and Rutger Hauer doesn’t.
– Snookums expressing his bitterness at the lack of critical respect for this fine piece of cinematic fare.

Last night I went to see “Rent” for the seventh time. Yes, the seventh time. I’m psychotic, I know. But lemme see if I can explain it. When I first got the soundtrack in ’96, it was solely because my roommate Liz and I had seen Adam Pascal performing on Rosie O’Donnell. He was brutally hot. We were smitten. Lizzie would come home from class and put “Glory” on repeat (to the point where she almost killed the song for me). By Spring Break ’97, all of our friends knew it by heart. We saw it that March in Boston from the nosebleed section of the balcony. Eight months later we saw it in Chicago from the front of the balcony. The absolute pinnacle, though, was seeing it in London on the very first day of previews in April ’98. We sat in the very first row and got to see four of the original Broadway performers (including Adam Pascal… *swoon*). It was so fantastic we went back to see it again a few days later. By that point I had seen it four times, and I didn’t think any production could possibly top that first night in London. A few months later, though, I found myself in New York and a friend won front row tickets in the standby drawing. Off I went again to see the show in the original theater. It was good, but by this point my interest was definitely on a decline. I didn’t give it a second thought, in fact, until I arrived back in London in October ’99 and discovered that the production was about to close. I snagged one of the few remaining seats for the last day and watched as the cast laughed and cried and said goodbye. It was amazing. You see, “Rent” isn’t about the production for me anymore. It’s about remembering my best friends and how it became something that we owned. So when I heard that a UK tour was starting up, I couldn’t resist. I dragged along my college friend Kel for an evening of nostalgia. We had the best time, clapping and laughing and mooing and screaming. The production itself was reasonably good, but it was more the invoking of the “Rent” ritual and all our memories that we enjoyed. Oh, and Adam Rickitt was pretty cute too. *grin*

Holy crap! It was Lisa! For those in the U.S., I urge you to get BBC World and start watching EastEnders. It’s seriously the best soap in the world. Last night 20 million viewers tuned in to find out who shot big bad Phil Mitchell. I honestly never thought it would be mousy little Lisa, Phil’s former girlfriend who is secretly carrying his child. I think he’s going to frame it on Steve or Dan, though…

So, yeah, last weekend Snookums and I went on a quick trip to Edinburgh, Scotland. As usual, I took lots of pictures for your perusal. Am I the poor man’s Michael Palin, or what?

Huge apologies for the extended delay, everyone. I think I mentioned that I was having problems with my host, Portland. (Note: If you’re thinking of hosting a site there, don’t.) After numerous outages and problems, I decided to pony up for a real ISP. So I sent off a request to Portland to transfer my domain and then headed off to Scotland for the weekend. When I got back last Monday, I discovered that Portland had cancelled my account, thus rendering me unable to update the site any further. On top of that, they didn’t get to my transfer request for over a week. In summation, Portland sucks ass. Big time. My new host should hopefully be much more stable and there won’t be any bandwidth restrictions or long download times.

Dream Log: I dreamt that it was night and I was down by the floating open-air harbor market in Hammersmith. (Note: in reality Hammersmith contains no such thing). I was pushing a shopping cart that contained a few items and a bunch of bananas when I was stopped by two men who demanded that I hand over my wallet. I opened it to show that it contained only Australian money – which was useless to them – but they wanted it anyway. Suddenly Mike Piazza appeared out of nowhere and whacked them both with a baseball bat, thus rescuing me and my bananas. Seriously.
 
Could this dream have something to do with my anxiety over securing Piazza for my Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball team? Perhaps, perhaps… although Freud would probably have a field day with all the phallic imagery.

Nancy Stouffer, the woman suing J.K. Rowling over alleged “Larry Potter” copyright infringement sounds like a real nutcase. I hope Rowling and Scholastic don’t give her a dime.

Ironminds has a hilarious article about the benefits of becoming Amish. As somebody who also grew up in the “Amish Belt,” I can attest that this writer’s observations are spot on. Well, except I’m pretty sure that the Amish do use buttons on their clothing. Buttons, but no zippers. And as I spent some considerable time in my youth at a beach frequented by the Amish, I definitely agree that more stylish swimming apparel is needed. *shudder* Polyester shorts aren’t even comfortable to look at, much less swim in, I imagine.

What? Puff Daddy now wants to be called P. Diddy?? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I never thought that anything could be a step down from “Puff Daddy,” but he’s proven me wrong. Is this some weird attempt to copy J. Lo?

Quote of the Day:   “Only one minute to caffeinated happiness, baby!”
– Snookums to me this morning, as I sat at the kitchen table in a still-asleep stupor while he gleefully fiddled with his espresso machine