Norma Shearer

I needed a break from blogging. So I took some days off! And yours truly has returned. Did you miss me?
I've been horribly behind on my TCM Summer Under the Stars watching. I did manage to tape 4 Norma Shearer movies and am determined to watch them all! I simply love Norma Shearer, regardless of what her critics say. I think she was wonderfully unapologetic and exquisitely glamorous. She had a will of iron and let no one stand in her way. I am the complete opposite which is why I admire her so greatly.
So I had taped The Divorcee (1930), Her Cardboard Lover (1942), Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) and Romeo & Juliet (1936). Her Cardboard Lover was Shearer's last film. She went on to marry a young ski instructor and continue to live glamorously until her death in 1983. It was quite good. The plot was completely unrealistic but that's the poetic license of film is it not? And then I watched The Divorcee which is supposed to be one of the raciest precode films ever. It deals with divorce (of course), premarital/extramarital relations and gender double standards in a very modern way. Unfortunately, I estimated incorrectly how much recording time I had left on my VHS tape and didn't get to see the ending. Dang it! Now I'm left with unanswered questions until TCM's next rotation, which will probably be in a few months. Anywho, if you haven't seen a Norma Shearer movie, shame on you! Go thee hence and rent The Women (1939), which is her best (and happens to be the theme of my profile).

The Kiss

The Kiss

If you are a fan of The Office, like me you know that this ain't no ordinary kiss. It's hard to explain, unless you've watched the series. Writers Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais put the audience through absolute torture as they watch this lovestruck pair NOT fulfill their romantic destiny until the very bitter end. Almost every episode makes their union seem less and less hopeful. Dawn is engaged to the heartless warehouse worker Lee and is reluctant to leave the security of being in a longterm relationship. And poor officemate Tim, whose simply lovestruck with the lovely Dawn knows his boundaries, and only oversteps them when his feelings get the better of him. And even though I know the ending, I still get the same anxiety from wondering if they are ever going to get together (even more so than Mr. Darcy & Elizabeth Bennett's union in P&P). ::Sigh:: L'amour! C'est magnifique!

Obsessive

I have a tendency to be a tad bit obsessive. It's just in my nature. If I really like something, I really really really like it. I live to eat and breathe it. I inundate myself until I'm swimming in it. And sometimes situations just happen to lend themselves to only let my obsession flourish and grow. For the past couple of months I've been completely and utterly obsessed with a particular band, who shall remain nameless. I don't know why. I am not a fan of their genre of music and the lyrics to their songs are really quite, strange. I'm not sure I understand them much but that doesn't stop me from liking/loving/living for them! This band du jour just happens to be up for two MTV Video Music Awards (aka VMA's) and MTV.com has so graciously provided obsessive fans like moi the opportunity to turbo vote for their favorite nominee. Meaning, you can rack up obscene amounts of votes for your favorite band by simply playing a game. Count me in!

Award: MTV's Viewer's Choice Award
Game: Viewer's Choice Moonman Blast!
How to Play: You shoot Moonmen award trophies through a canon aiming it at your favorite artist or band as they whiz by on speedboats. With each successful hit gets you one vote. Watch out for waterbound and airborne paparazzi and various Floridian wildlife.
Personal Goal: 50,000 votes
Earned to Date: 12,733 votes

Award: MTV2 Award
Game: Moonman Airlift
How to Play: You guide your helicopter past several aerial obstacles such as flying manatees (who knew?), hot air balloons, wayward volleyballs and annoying UFOs until you reach a treasure chest full of Moonmen award trophies. Use your giant magnet to lift as many as possible (watch out for dangerous coconuts!) and bring them back to the starting point to deposit. Each award deposited counts for one vote.
Personal Goal: 2,005 votes
Earned to Date: 1,090 votes

Let's just say I hope I don't get carpal tunnel syndrome from this!

What am I?

Miss Lonely Hearts over at LiveJournal had some interesting classic film quiz links on her blog. I took a couple and here are my results:

Which Silver Screen Siren are you?
Which Silver Screen Actor are you?

brought to you by Quizilla

This is indeed a compliment! I love Katharine Hepburn and always admired her spunk and vivacity, although I don't think I'm quite like her. At least not yet!

Which decade are you?

You are the 1940s!
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I've always thought of myself as very '40s. In fact most of my current wardrobe is '40s inspired. Though I'm partial to the '20s, '30s and '50s too. Hee hee!

If you take one of these quizzes, let me know your result or post on your blog. Have fun!

It's Friday and there's music in the air...

I'm so happy it's Friday and I'm looking forward to the weekend. I'm hopeful I'll get some chances to get away from my brooding self and go out and do some fun things. I'd love to catch a small concert or something. There's been a lot going on music-wise in the area. The big thing right now in Boston is The - Click - Five which is a quintet of Berklee College of Music grads who have literally exploded onto the scene. They are so big, they transcended the city. Quite a good looking bunch. They seem to be a cross between the Monkees and Take That. And that in fact is a compliment, as I love both groups dearly! And in the punk rock scene, Dropkick - Murphys and the - Dead - '60s are tres happening. Saw the Dropkick guys on Monday, they were very loud. But they used bagpipes which makes them old school and OK in my book. Besides the earsplitting stuff there's lots of jazz and classical concerts and festivals and such throughout the area. Such an array of audible delights to chose from. Or then again, maybe I'll just find myself curled up with a nice quiet book.

Hope Springs Eternal

Lately, I've felt like I am drowning. Like I'm under water and can see the sun reflecting in the water but no matter how far out I stretch my arm I can't reach the water's surface. Every facet of my life right now is overwhelming me and I can't find a way out. I go to work, I have 500+ e-mails waiting for me to respond, act or store, which I can never finish as I have to also deal with the 200 new ones I get during my day. All year I've been doing paperwork for school. Applications, essays, financial aid forms, health forms, waivers, tuition invoices, etc. Only to find myself finished days before classes start when I know more paperwork, in the form of homework, is to come. Since December last year, I've seen my dog battle lymphoma. His bravery and cheerfulness through it all made me ashamed of myself because I simply don't have the capacity to deal with things the way he does. And now I found out that unbeknownst to me, I've been watching my neighbor die of liver disease. Financial problems are plaguing me. Gas is outrageous, car payments dreadful and tuition bills unavoidable. My dream of having my own apartment seems farther away than ever right now. And my two closest friends have found their soulmates and are starting to move on, away from me, the third wheel. It all seems unbearable. I know there are other people in more dire situations. I'm not hungry, homeless, bankrupt or in danger of dying. I've been an optimist all of my life, and I'm scared that the way my life is going that I'll be on the road to living in a state of permanent cynicism. So I try to remain cheerful. I don't like writing negative posts on my blog, but I feel like I should really get this off my chest. Hope springs eternal, and maybe someday soon my life will take a turn for the better.

I've been Tagged!!!

I feel so special being tagged. I was tagged yesterday by the lovely Kelly to list 5 of my idiosyncrasies. Here they are:

1. Although I can be a very shy and reserved person with quiet and understated tastes and styles, I have a very rebellious side of me which loves doing the unpredictable, has a penchant for punk rockers with long tresses and a desire to rebel against society.
2. I'm a devout multi-tasker. I rarely ever concentrate on one thing at a time. It's a blessing and a curse.
3. I cringe at the sight of cooked red onions. Bleh!
4. I love the smell of a good book.
5. My favorite show of all time is "Arthur." I've been watching it faithfully for 9 years and I simply love D.W. and Fern!

I don't know very many bloggers (I'm trying to fix that!) and some of the bloggers I know have already been tagged. So I tag Bev ~ Book Yeti, Caesura ~ Aristotle's Melopoeia and Elena ~ French Toast Girl to list 5 of their idiosyncracies!

Happy Tax-Free Weekend!!!

In Massachusetts, it's tax-free weekend. For two days you can buy anything you want (up to $2,500) without paying 5% sales tax. So you can imagine how crowded stores in the Bay State will get this weekend. And today I really needed to go out and buy some new clothes, which is why I headed out of the state to Providence, Rhode Island to do my shopping. For one thing, clothes in both Massachusetts and Rhode Island are tax-free, because they are considered necessities. And since a lot of Rhode Islanders probably headed north to go buy some stuff tax-free, I thought I'd take advantage of shopping at a Rhode Island mall which would probably have considerably less traffic than a Massachusetts one. I went to the Providence Place mall which was as busy as it would be on a weekday. It was so easy to find a parking spot and getting in and out of stores was a breeze.

After going to Providence, I headed down south to Newport (again! I just love that town), to go see my mom's friend's sister's new restaurant. It's called La Baranda (which means "The Border") and it serves Latin-American cuisine. It was very small and quaint. Almost everyone spoke Spanish and the food was very authentic. It felt like I had walked through a portal into a restaurant in South America. I completely forgot I was in posh Newport. I had a really good beef stew with rice and sweet plantains. My mother had lightly fried fish with picked onions, kidney beans and rice. And we shared a plate of complimentary of fried plantain chips. Very good! Well worth the trip. It was great to get away from the shopping madness of Massachusetts and relax the day away in Rhode Island.

GRRRR!!

I'm in a GRRRR!! mood right now. Ever since I graduated from college in December '03 (got my diploma in January '04 and had the ceremony in May '04 ~ weird I know), my alma mater has been trying to get me to join their university fund. In other words, they want me to donate my hard earned cash for the beautification of their campus. Now, I'm very proud of the fact that I went to that particular school. I had the most amazing academic experience there. But I feel what I paid in tuition is enough. But on and off for 1 1/2 years my alma mater keeps CALLING ME with more request for $$$. I was starting to get very perturbed.

So today I get a call, from another university asking me for money. One I never attended but had to fork out thousands of dollars to earlier in the year. It's where my dog went for chemotherapy for his lymphoma. I was drained of all my savings paying for expensive operations, drugs, treatments, x-rays, blood tests, etc. to save my dog's life. And not that they were nice to me and my family during the whole process. They tried to make the experience as negative as possible. It was their way of frightening me about my dog's situation enough so I could go back and spend more money on treatment. So now that my dog is in remission and they know that I refuse to bring him back for more treatment, they are trying to find other ways to tap into my wallet. Good grief people! Don't you have souls? I feel so used and so sad.

Random Thoughts (in no particular order)

1. Requiescat in Pace: Peter Jennings (1938-2005). He was truly a legend.
2. Today, I saw two fawns grazing in a field full of wildflowers. It’s times like these that I wish I had a camera handy.
3. Les Triplets de Belleville (2003) ~ so weird.
4. Happy Autumnal thoughts. Pumpkin pie, multi-colored leaves, indie flicks, back to school supplies, crisp blue skies, barrels full of apples… ::sigh::
5. Wouldn’t it be so neat to be a History Detective?
6. Why in the name of all that is good does Ritz decide to put sugar and high fructose corn-syrup in their Sour Cream & Onion Chips? Why?!
7. I’ve got 954 movies rated on Netflix and my friend Amit has 1,555! I swear one day I will beat him.
8. My alma mater keeps calling me asking for donations to their university fund. You mean to say those tuition fees weren’t enough?
9. Whatever happened to Liesel Matthews of A Little Princess (1995) fame? She was so annoyingly cute.
10. School's gonna cost me an arm and a leg, but I can't wait until classes start. Woohoo!

My Semi-Interesting, Non-Constructive Weekend

I have the worst case of lethargy right now. Even as I write this entry I feel myself starting to doze off in front of the computer. I had a very strange weekend in which I did absolutely nothing that was even the least bit constructive. Friday night my area got hit by a torrential thunderstorm. Heavy rains, wind, lightning and thunder the whole shebang! We even lost power. I took a picture of it. Not that you can tell the intensity of the storm from my very poorly taken photo. The storm put a damper on any plans I had of going out that night.
I really wanted to go see this Italian movie at the MFA ( Musuem of Fine Arts- Boston). I had missed their French Film Festival (#$%&*!!!!!!!!!!), which as you can tell I'm very upset about. And I wasn't really looking forward to the remakes and mindless stuff that the local cinema had to offer, so on Saturday I thought I'd try one of their Italian selections, Dopo Mezzanote (2004), English translation "After Midnight." It was surprisingly good. Most foreign films I see at the MFA are usually very serious and surreal with extremely complicated plots that are very hard to follow. Dopo Mezzanote was both melancholic and light-hearted and had a truly delightful story. It was the story of 2 men and one women, whose lives begin after midnight; a film museum custodian, a late-night burger shop waitress and a professional car theif. The two men are in love with the woman who can't decide between the two and choses not to decide, much to their dismay. I truly wish this were on DVD so I could recommend it to people! It was truly a worthwhile flick.
So after Saturday's high note, I spent most of my Sunday in my current somnambulent state. I did manage, I'm not sure how, to make an apple pie sweetened with Splenda. It was quite good! The apples are naturally sweet and I added extra cinammon so it wouldn't lack any flavor. Yummy! Also, earlier in the summer, when the weather was a lot cooler than it was now, I planted a little garden. And now I have some wonderful ripe red tomatoes, long thick green peppers and bushes of sage, parlsey, chives and a lovey stalk of dill. Lovely! Now I'm off for another nap. ::yawn: Good night!

Hidden Enemies and Parapluies

Sugar is truly evil. At work, I innocently bought a package of Planter's peanut butter crackers at my work's vending machine. I bit into the 1st of 6 crackers and thought to myself, wow this is unusually sweet. I eat two more and then I decide to look at the ingredients. These evil little snacks contained sugar, dextrose, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup and a few other sugar-like ingredients. Grrr! I ate the whole thing (I was hungry!!!) and afterwards swore never to purchase these little devils again. Even though it was only 4 grams of sugar, I felt woozy afterwards.
Speaking of let downs!, I recently watched a French film called Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (aka The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) on DVD. What a disappointment. All the dialogue was sung. All of it!!! Usually musicals give you a break, but this was non-stop singing all the way through. It's gets on your nerves after a while. It also slows the story down. I could only take 30 minutes at a time, as I was getting a headache from just watching it. Visually it was very stunning. The film was restored for DVD release and it showcases the uninhibited use of color that the '60s was well known for. One interesting thing is that the film stars a young Catherine Deneuve who looks strikingly similar to Gwyneth Paltrow. Don't cha think? (Catherine is on the left, Gwynnie on the right).

TCM Summer Under the Stars

If you appreciate graphic design, please go visit Turner Classic Movie's website. Their Summer Under the Stars month montage is amazing! Each featured actor or actress is set against a summer-themed background. It's a feast for the eyes. Kudos to who took the time to create that! I envy that kind of talent.
TCM's Summer Under the Stars has a lot of great actors/actresses featured this year. I wasn't too happy with this series last August, but then again I wasn't as big a classic film fanatic as I am now. I really want to take the opportunity to watch at least one movie by all of the featured artists. Unfortunately, I don't think that's very realistic. I simply don't have the time to watch 7 films a week. So I pared down the list and am really going to try to watch only my absolute favorites. I feel like I'm being elitist, but if there were more hours in my day, I'd watch them all.

August 1st Lauren Bacall (taped "Young Man With a Horn" last night)
August 3rd Joel Mcrea
August 5th Katharine Hepburn
August 8th Shelley Winters
August 10th Lena Horne
August 11th Kirk Douglas (hubba hubba)
August 13th Cary Grant
August 15th Fred Astaire
August 20th James Stewart
August 21st Maureen O'Hara
August 25th Norma Shearer
August 27th Spencer Tracy
August 31st Humphrey Bogart

Daytrip to Concord

I've had no internet for the past few days. My cable modem went kaput. It was given a formal burial and replaced by a newer model (hey that's life!). Anywho, Saturday was a lovely summer day, so I said to myself "Self, you must get outdoors and bask in this glorious weather! It won't be around for long." What better way to enjoy the outdoors and still get some cultural enlightenment than a day trip to Concord. For those of you not in the know, Concord is a little New England jewel. It was once the home of many great thinkers and writers such as Ralph Waldo E m erson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott and her father Amos Bronson Alcott and Henry David Thoreau. It was also a hotbed of military activity, especially during the Revolutionary War. It's chockfull of literay and military history. And as a town it's very quaint. A bit on the rich side, you have to have a full wallet to own a home there, but it's very tourist-friendly. There are lots of places to stay, tons of free parking, lots of museums and historical sites to visit and for the outdoorsy type there is a lot of biking, hiking and canoing going on in Concord.
I went on Saturday and had a blast. I took a lot of photos and created a fun album of them on Yahoo!. Here is the link: Raquelle's Concord Day Trip. I added some fun captions so it wouldn't be boring. Make sure you scroll down the page a bit so you can read them. Enjoy!