The Next Dark Age
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Petfinder is Cool
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The Cupcake Craze
I dig a good cupcake as much as the next girl, but I was rather stunned last week in DC when I heard my colleague, Marsha saying that “the cupcake guy promised he’d make us his first stop after the scheduled deliveries”.
“You know the cupcake guy?” I asked.
“No, he posts on Facebook.”
Curbside Cupcakes is the company we are talking about here. They take their pink van around town, park it somewhere, and a line forms until they run out of cupcakes. No kidding, people. I got the word he was there, went downstairs to see what all the fuss was about, and he had already run out. It was not 10 minutes. I am pretty sure I once read there was a “cupcake factor” involved in measuring the progress of the economic recovery. But I don’t remember if it was “more cupcakes = small luxury to make us happy when we have no money” or “more cupcake = we are spending our money on dumb things because we have it again”.
It seems that Cinnabon has also started making cupcakes. I first saw it at the airport on the way home. I think that is a great idea for them – get a bit further outside the breakfast model. So the next time I was in a shopping mall, I grabbed one. Unfortunately, I was not impressed. It might have been that it didn’t taste entirely fresh. Also, I think they might have used the cinnamon roll frosting on the vanilla cupcake. Didn’t taste quite right in its solid (as in non-melty) form.
Now I am all jonesing for a decent cupcake. I should probably just stick with Deerfield’s.
Talking Poetry (sort of)
It seems I like to get my homework done early…
Weekend Assignment #316: National Poetry Month
As April wraps up, let’s not let it get away without celebrating National Poetry Month. For this assignment, please share with us something about poetry. Tell us about your favorite poet, or quote us a few lines of your favorite poem, or if poetry doesn’t happen to be something you enjoy, tell us why!
Extra Credit: Write a Haiku!
I was thinking of writing something about the smart, snarky, tortured lady poets: Dorothy Parker, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton. But the truth is that I don’t much do poetry. I like character development.
I remember studying Beowulf in high school. That was pretty cool, but I imagine if Mr. David Mullaly taught quantum physics I would have thought it cool. Which is kind of how I ended up reading Paradise Lost 
I purchased a copy many years ago, when I went through a phase I call, “I have finished my Bachelor’s Degree and no one is ever going to make me read a book again.” It was really a panic. That if I didn’t make myself read the things one is supposed to read, I will have missed something. And become a Jello-head.
Seriously, people. I went through 13 years of public school and four years of college and didn’t manage to read To Kill a Freakin’ Mockingbird 
I wanted to read Paradise Lost, but every time I picked it up, I would think about how much more fun it would be to read with a real teacher. You know, that knew stuff. Then I discovered Academic Earth. And it had an entire course on John Milton. So I finally read it. And the “sequel”. And some other 17th century English stuff about politics and virtue.
Here is what I wrote about the epic and here is what I wrote about the course. Good times.
Thwarted
I came home from the Rescue tonight, all excited to see how Kiwi and Sigmund did with their new foraging toys. Sigmund hadn’t touched his. Here is what I found in Kiwi’s cage:
Oh. How True.
Robert Bianco, a TV writer at USA Today, does a regular column called Critic’s Corner. It is basically a What to Watch. He made a comment today for the Wednesday post that rather hit home for me:
“David Tennant stars as Hamlet (PBS, 8 ET/PT, times may vary) tonight in this Great Performances filmed-for-TV version of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s modern dress production, with Patrick Stewart as Claudius. There was a time, back when cable was young, we all thought classics like Hamlet would find a regular home on an arts-oriented basic network — like one of the ones that offer Dog the Bounty Hunter, Top Chef Masters or Hoarding: Buried Alive tonight instead. But it has become abundantly clear that if PBS doesn’t do it, no one will.”
Seriously, I can’t remember the last time I watched something on Bravo. Now I am going to go set my DVR. Hang on, though:
Ooh, and check it out: my new Amazon Associates toy called it right up
Rotating Toys
The last time I bought Kiwi a new foraging toy, it took her all of two hours to figure out. We’ll see how this works. And in the meantime, Sigmund can borrow the “easy” one.
Ashlyn
It occurs to me that I haven’t actually told you about my new niece, Ashlyn. She was born Monday the 12th, when I was in Seattle. Last Friday, I headed over to spend a couple of hours, as my brother had been out of town and wasn’t returning until late that night. Becky’s mother had spent the week with her, but was heading home after she picked up Alex from school.
So Alex wasn’t home yet and Ainslie was asleep and Becky gave me the napping baby while she stepped outside to talk with a neighbor. I was reading my book when Ashlyn started to squirm. I knew she wasn’t hungry, so I put her on the floor to do a diaper check and before I could grab the diaper bag she had fallen asleep again. Good timing because that was about when Ainslie, age 18 months, woke up. Oh, but I snapped this pic first:
Yeah. She’s a baby. So Ainslie and I read a magazine and then she got up and started running around and just as I was starting to worry about watching them both…everyone else came home.
Three kids, man. Seriously.
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=leartojugg-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00005JPI6&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifrWhen The West Wing 
I cannot express the love I had for The West Wing in its heyday. I am, however, a sucker for the majesty that can occasionally be found in Washington. Studio 60 was to be my test for whether Sorkin could keep my attention with something else. Here is my verdict:
Sorkin at his best can, I swear to Yoda, make you cry.
This series only lasted one season. It just couldn’t pick up an audience, and it seems the networks don’t give scripted shows much of a chance these days. I was grateful that NBC let them finish the story arc. I picked up the DVDs for some road entertainment, which was silly with my overflowing DVR. But one season isn’t much of a commitment.
Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford played the lead roles. Best buds who returned to run the show that started their careers. Whitford, of course, came straight from The West Wing and Perry did a few episodes there after Friends ended. Timothy Busfield, who rocked my world in his recurring role as a reporter, came with them.
The pilot does not disappoint. The hook, provided by Judd Hirsch (and ohhh, was I hoping he would come back for another guest shot), was great and the pace was…so Sorkin. I swear that DVR was invented by someone that wanted to hear a piece of his dialogue one more time, every single week. The guy is all about the dialogue. The criticism is it is so sharp that you don’t believe real people are that sharp all the time. I don’t care. It is sharp.
For those looking for something juicy, it might please you to know that the relationship between Perry’s character and Sarah Paulson’s is based on Sorkin’s relationship with Kristin Chenowith.
Not every episode is great. The sending a coyote after a something that went after a ferret that went after the snake underneath the stage…even Busfield couldn’t save that thread. But you put up with that stuff in order to be there for the Christmas episode. It took me a week longer than necessary to finish these DVDs because I had to watch it three times. And I am pretty sure I watched it three times when it was on the air.
(sigh) I hear Sorkin is working on a new series, and he wrote the screenplay for the Facebook movie that is coming out this fall. Thought I was going to skip that one. But for now, I’m going to think about Sports Night.
Fostering Parrots: Sigmund Revisited
I brought Sigmund the African Grey back to the rescue for the duration of my road trip. I may have mentioned that we have done a lot of talking over there about how long a time is appropriate for a foster and the reasons that a bird is being fostered in the first place. We do not have hard and fast rules, but I make it a habit of taking a bird back to the rescue when I am on the road. A few reasons:
- When I am out of town, my mother is caring for the dog, the cat, and Kiwi the Grey. Asking her to care for my foster parrot is a lot.
- The rescue needs to keep track of the progress of each bird, and my regular travel schedule is a good opportunity to evaluate.
- I don’t want the bird to get too attached to my house, or for my house to get too attached to a bird.
- When a foster family starts dodging requests to bring the bird back, it makes everyone jumpy. I want to set an example for how it should work.
In my two longer-term foster assignments, there were good reasons. With Manu, the Amazon, the rescue facility was under construction for a really long time. The more birds in foster care, the fewer cages we were tripping on at the facility. I fostered him to adoption and it was fabulous.
My second long term foster was Eloise, an African Grey. She had been ill, was on long term meds and did much better in a home environment than at the rescue facility. I sent her to another volunteer’s home when I learned there was mold in my house last summer. (She was already on anti-fungal meds, so thankfully she was protected.)
I brought Sigmund home this weekend when I returned from DC. He had done fine most of the time I was gone, but started picking his feathers again a couple of days before. He seems happy enough and comfortable at my house and we want to see if we can get him to leave the feathers alone. He is a great bird – incredibly adoptable – he just looks funny.
Ophelia, by Lisa Klein
Ophelia, by Lisa Klein, is another alternate point of view of Hamlet.
The book opens with a letter from Horatio to Ophelia with news of the deaths of Hamlet, Laertes, Gertrude and Claudius. Oooooh, a suggestion of an alternate history from the onset. But will we buy it?
The story begins with the lady’s early life, without a mother, and how she landed in the Queen’s service at a young age. By the end of Act One, she and Hamlet have secretly fallen into their forbidden love (inasmuch as her “lowly birth” makes her unfit to marry) and suddenly, the King is dead.
Act Two is Shakespeare’s play, as told by Ophelia. There is no good way to summarize and I would prefer not to spoil some things. And Shakespeare gets complex enough without adding the differences here. I will say two things: first, Klein is careful with the original. She makes sure that when she spins a different story that it does not directly contradict anything from the actual text. Ophelia is alive because she faked her death. Using that potion that makes everyone think you are dead. Hey..Juliet had it! Oh, and she made sure that Horatio dug her right back up after they buried her. And Horatio is so honorable that he doesn’t tell his best bud, the prince, that his one true love is alive because she asked him not to. Second, and this makes all the difference in my opinion of the characters, Klein asserts in her version that Hamlet was pretending to be insane with the endgoal of Vengeance. And he went mad. Ophelia pretended to be insane to manage her escape. She escaped.
Act Three is Ophelia leaving Denmark and hanging out at the nunnery. There is a point to Act Three, but it dragged on a bit too far for my taste.
Overall, it was well done. Convoluted in the Shakespearean spirit without sacrificing everything that makes the heroine likeable.
The Next Dark Age 