Found this via kateorman. The first trailer for the US version of Life on Mars is out. ( Read more... )

I'm in desperate need of a copy of the "Brassed Off" official soundtrack by this Thursday afternoon, as our copy has gone missing and it's needed for commencement. I don't suppose any of you lovely people have a copy you could rip and upload for me? I know ours has got to be here somewhere but at the moment, none of us can locate it and I'm worried we won't find it in time. I'll screen comments just in case.

(I haven't got an Iron Man icon so I'll have to make do with AstroBoy, who shares certain... characteristics.)

Iron Man totally rocks. Also? My longstanding minor crush on Robert Downey, Jr. has been reaffirmed in spades. That man can act. He was the perfect choice for the role, giving it unexpected depth.

There were no really young kids at my showing-- 1:30pm on Sunday. There were a few in the 9-13 range but nothing younger-- unusual for a "comic book movie" but, you know, it really is aimed at grownups, not kids. Definitely at fans, too, though they were careful to make sure the move was 'readable' by both comic geeks who are already familiar with the whole Iron Man ouvre, and the casual fan, like me, who is peripherally aware of the character but knows little detail. Since this is the first film from the new Marvel Studios, it seems clear that they're not weakening the film by pulling it in a dozen different directions to try and please every potential audience. They they know their audience and go for it whole-hog. That showed very strongly in the casting of Robert Downey, Jr., who is far more mature than the usual superhero movie casting choice of a barely-out-of-his-teens boy.

I was really impressed by the casting all around, ( spoilers behind the cut )

My kidunit, Kham's phantastic photographer friend Alain took more amazing photos of him (and a friend) and posted them on his photography LJ idolatrystudios. There's a downsized version of my favorite, below as a preview, but you should go look at the rest and give the photographer the props he deserves!

This morning I *finally* managed to get a shot of the male Flicker-- sort of. He's much shyer than the female and usually flies off the second he sees me, but this morning I managed to catch him just as he poked his head out of the nest. If you look closely you can see the red 'blusher' on his 'cheek.' (I enlarged it a bit so it's kind of pixellated, sorry.)


Also, since I'm picspamming, here's an absolutely gorgeous early morning view in the courtyard between Hellems and Education on the CU Boulder campus, looking north toward the Theatre building. (Please to pretend you don't notice the edge of my finger in the lower right corner of the pic.) There's a the bright pink flowering crabapple tree on the right, an orangey flowering quince beneath it and I'm aiming through the branches of a tree I can't identify but right now it has deep burgundy-red buds about to break into bloom, and it has orange berries in the fall. (It's not a bittersweet, though.) I have a pic of it in the fall showing the berries >here< if anyone wants to try to ID it for me.

I stopped watching Smallville somewhere around the middle of season three, but have recently watched a few of the latest eps, and something is just driving me crazy. Who is that woman playing Lex's minion with the glasses? I've never managed to catch her character's name but I have checked the IMDB for Smallville and couldn't spot anyone who looked like her, and I've looked on the WB site and didn't find her, and she looks SO familiar. (Actually, she looks a lot like Tina Fay but I'm pretty sure it's not.) Someone on my flist must know who she is. Right? :::looks at flist hopefully:::

I've discovered a simple and very yummy new spring vegetable dish. Take six brussels sprouts and six spears of fresh asparagus. Quarter the sprouts and cut the asparagus into 1" pieces (make sure to cut off the woody bottom parts). Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a skillet over medium heat, add the vegetables, sprinkle with a pinch of sea salt, and sautee until the asparagus is bright green and the sprouts have begun to brown in spots. (This serves one person.) I had it with a salmon filet crusted in panko bread crumbs, black sesame seeds and wasabi powder, all the above served over some Japonica rice and it was mmmm-mmmm good!

Monday was kind of chilly and I wanted something warm & hearty, plus Kham had been asking to try lentils after seeing the Alton Brown show featuring them, so I tried a new dish. I sent the leftovers with Kham to a get-together and apparently it went over like gangbusters and I've been asked for the recipe, so I thought it would be easiest to post it here so they can grab it.

Vegetable Lentils with Sausage ( recipe behind the cut )

Finally, a couple of Springy shots from my indefatigable cell-phone camera:


(Yes, this is the same building I posted a picture of last week with snow on the ground. Springtime in the Rockies, take two.)


A male Cassin's Finch at the feeder in the back yard. Photo taken through two layers of very dirty kitchen window, so it's not the best, but I didn't want to scare him off by opening the back door for a better shot.

Just watched the last ep of Murdoch Mysteries for the season, and this one really tickled me with its tale of mysterious Martian murders. There were some great little homages/fanservice bits to UFO lore and science fiction shows. "Concession 51" had me snickering, and that whole final conversation about where they would situate an 'alien base' made me really laugh out loud. ( dialogue quoted behind the cut )

I hope the show gets picked up for another season. I really enjoyed it.

I managed to get a pic of the lady Flicker this afternoon, hard at work on her main bore. :) (sorry about the cheesetastic highlight box but it's hard to tell her from the tree without it!) I can tell it's the female, because she's better camouflaged and lacks the bright red 'blusher' the males sport. She regarded me warily with her beady black eye the whole time I was trying to get a decent shot with my trusty cell-phone camera.

Then this evening I saw a new bird at the feeder, another woodpecker, this one I think was either a Downy Woodpecker with rather more red on his head than the fellow in the exemplar, or a Red-naped Sapsucker, which supposedly prefers higher elevations than Boulder, but the pic looks more like the guy I saw.

This morning I noticed that a couple of our local Red-Shafted Northern Flickers have created matching condominiums in a topped-off cottonwood in front of the house. Look closely and you'll see the beautifully symmetrical entry-holes, one in each trunk:

Now I need to see if I can get a picture that includes a Flicker! I've tried several times to get a snap of one at our feeder but the darned things fly away before I can, every time!

And here are a couple more spring snow images. First, the courtyard between the building where I work and the next one this morning:



And then some daffodils in the snow:


The second one reminds me of a poem I read once...

Spring Snow
by Arthur Sze

A spring snow coincides with plum blossoms.
In a month, you will forget, then remember
when nine ravens perched in the elm sway in wind. ( continued behind the cut )

Ah, springtime in the Rockies. Yesterday it was in the 80's. Today I just took this photo out the window in my office. :)



I can haz rain now plz? No moar sno til next wintr?

From the IMDB Studio Briefing today:

Jericho, the CBS television series that was canceled because of low ratings, then revived following protests from fans, then canceled again because of low ratings, may be revived a second time, the New York Times reported today (Monday). The newspaper said that CBS may follow NBC's recent example with Friday Night Lights in which it sold the DirecTV satellite service the right to air the series before it goes on network TV. The Times said that CBS is considering a similar option in negotiations with cable provider Comcast. Meanwhile, although DirecTV executives have expressed confidence that the Friday Night Lights deal could drive new subscribers to their service, some analysts are expressing skepticism about its ability to do so and forecasting that the DirecTV episodes will wind up being pirated on the Internet.

Hmm.... I'll believe it when I see it.

The weekend was gorgeous-- in the fifties both day, clear and sunny. And today we've got snow! Again. Good thing I decided not to put the hummingbird feeder out yet. Ah, Colorado, one never gets bored with the weather here. (Well, that's not true actually, but most people don't find sunshine boring...).

I had a really nice weekend. It actually started on Thursday night when the kidunit did some foils for me (he's in cosmetology school) and then Friday I got to go in and be the guinea pig for his hair-cutting test. So I got color and a cut for basically the cost of supplies. Not bad! Also, the cut came out fantastic so we're both really happy about that. His teacher said that if he can cut my hair (which is ultra-fine, curly, and has at least 3 cowlicks) well he can probably cut anyone's hair well. :) Friday night we tried a new place for dinner-- Pasta Bozza. They are primarily a fresh pasta vendor but they also do a variety of home-made Italian dishes. Their 4-cheese ravioli in pink sauce daily special was very good, as was the fettuccine with chicken, sausage, artichokes and grape tomatoes. Their mascarpone berry tart was absolutely fantastic. I'd like to try some of their other dishes. They could use some real china rather than paper plates to serve on though-- that's just a tad too casual for me. At least they had real flatware, not plastic.

Saturday, ardent_muses came over, and much fun was had! She brought me a present of the 1968 Zeffirelli Romeo & Juliet which we'd been talking about in email recently. It was the R&J of our youth and we both had the original cast recording (yes an actual vinyl LP!) of it which we played it over and over again, and memorized the entire thing. It's really neat to have my own copy of the actual movie now! I can still quote most of it word for word. I had a present for her, too-- I'd found some NASCAR Harlequins at the grocery store and so I picked one up for her (I blame her new NASCAR fixation squarely on celli and her SGA/NASCAR AU, Fireball!). I can't wait to hear how it is!

We watched most of (everything but the first 3 which we already watched a few weeks ago) Band of Brothers which is a favorite of hers. It's really an amazing piece of work-- the cast is absolutely terrific. Why is it that so many British actors can be so convincingly American, but the opposite is not usually true? Odd, that. I kept trying to place the guy playing Sgt. Muck (Richard Speight Jr.), and failing, but I looked him up on the IMDB just now and had to headdesk. He's Deputy Bill in Jericho, and The Trickster in Supernatural. No wonder he looked so familiar!

About 6pm we called a time-out from the TV and went out to a local favorite restaurant, Turley's, for dinner (they had some great Mexican specials: she had the sopes and I had the rellenos). Ardent hates to shop, but has been saying for two years now that she needs new clothes so after dinner I dragged her over to the local Coldwater Creek store to check out their 70% off sale. Fortunately, we both found several great deals. Ardent even got something 'artsy' instead of preppy. The folks at her office are going to faint. :) Finally we took our booty and returned to my house and watched the rest of BoB, staying up until an unprecendented-in-recent-history 2am to do so.

Sunday was my productive day-- did laundry, ran errands, etc. Bought a new double-ended shepherd's crook for the yard to hang a hummingbird feeder and a suet-block feeder from to supplement the standard seed-mix feeder I already have. Also I saw two new birds this weekend! Saturday I saw either a Western Kingbird (though he seemed a lot yellower than that picture) or a Yellow-Headed Blackbird. I didn't get a great look at him, so I'll need another sighting to make sure. Then on Sunday I saw a gorgeous male Red-naped Sapsucker. Both are new to my backyard birdwatching experience. Also, the grackles appear to be back for the season, which does not thrill me because they are pigs and keep the smaller birds away from the feeder. Grr.

I was fairly well spoiled for this ep, but I have to say, they made it work. ( spoilers behind the cut. )

Survey: Fla. Teens Believe Drinking Bleach Will Prevent HIV, Some Teens Also Believe Mountain Dew Will Stop Pregnancy

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A recent survey that found some Florida teens believe drinking a cap of bleach will prevent HIV and a shot of Mountain Dew will stop pregnancy has prompted lawmakers to push for an overhaul of sex education in the state. The survey showed that Florida teens also believe that smoking marijuana will prevent a person from getting pregnant. State lawmakers said the myths are spreading because of Florida's abstinence-only sex education. They are proposing a bill that would require a more comprehensive approach, the report said. It would still require teaching abstinence but students would also learn about condoms and other methods of birth control and disease prevention. The bill just passed its first vote in a committee.

I just... have no words. None.