Take me on a trip...

Having travel envy these days.
Dying to go somewhere fun and to take one of these Valhalla Brooklyn beauties with me.

Music Love

A little part of my heart will always belong to New York. This coupled with my love of Bryan Greenberg and so many things HBO has me watching (despite a few reservations) “How To Make it in America”. I might be the only one amongst my fellow HBO devotees, but I’m not fully enamored with it – I find sidekick Cam (Victor Rasuk) incredibly annoying. However, what I will say, is that the music supervisor for this show is absolutely on fire. From the old soul (Otis Redding, Shirley Ellis) and new soul (Aloe Blacc, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, Lee Fields & the Expressions) to the 80s throwbacks (Hall and Oates, Bronski Beat, Missing Persons!) and the new New Wave (Bag Raiders), I can’t get enough. I am in love.

Should I be surprised that it’s Scott Vener (music sup for "Entourage") at the helm once again? No, not at all. But where the standouts on Entourage tend to skew towards a more testosterone-driven rap/hip-hop direction (understandably), I’m feeling a different throw-your-arms-open-there’s-room-for-everyone kind of love with the choices for HTMIIA. And that’s just the kind of music-lover I am.

When someone does this job this well, I just can’t help but go where the story wants to take me, and there have been times, without question, where I actually felt like I’d step out of my door and walk right out into the Lower East Side.

With only two episodes left for the season, just know that if Roxy Music turns up, that somewhere out there, I will be grinning ear to ear and shaking my head, overwhelmed with goodness and approval. It will be just the kind of TV-viewing/music marriage I’ve been waiting for.

Knives Out

I grew up in a household with zero love for knives. My mother did all the cooking and didn’t like sharp knives. If one of my sisters or I even left one of the dull ones in the kitchen sink, she would be compelled to wash it and put it away, fearful we’d lose a finger or someone would break into the house overnight, snatch it and do away with us all.

Despite this, and little instruction otherwise, I somehow managed to become a pretty decent cook. I’ve got several sharp knives at the ready in my tiny kitchen and even though I didn’t know how to use them properly, they’ve helped me crank out some stellar meals.

When cooking with friends though, it should really come as no surprise that I was painfully slow or a bit frightening when wielding a knife and chopping up just about anything. It was not uncommon to hear me groan when assigned the sous chef duty of chopping. “Tonia, can you chop some parsley?” Ugh. Blargh. (Who even likes parsley?)

Well that all changed earlier this week, when my friend Cheryl hooked me up with a knife skills class at the Good Egg. Within 15 minutes of the two-hour class, I was already grinning ear to ear. It opened up a whole new range in my cooking repertoire. Julienned peppers, exquisitely diced garlic and onions, perfect slivers upon slivers of chard and even finely chopped, bruise-free parsley… But as a lover of apples, the thing that made me happiest of all, was the moment I produced beautiful thin little apple slices. I gobbled those suckers up so fast there was very little evidence that I even produced them.

I forgot how amazing it feels to learn a new skill – to work towards mastering something. That sense of achievement seriously can’t be beat. It’s empowering. So much so, I think I’m going to tackle this bit of Smitten Kitchen apple deliciousness next week.

Knives out indeed.

I still hate parsley though.

Radiohead - Knives Out

A Single Man

The Oscar nominations were announced this morning and was I the only one to be surprised to see that A SINGLE MAN didn’t get a nod for Art Direction? What is up with that?

I saw this movie for a second time last week and still can’t get over how gorgeous every single frame of it was. You of course, expect this with Tom Ford at the helm, but he has such an exact eye for detail that he creates this incredibly lush platform for the story that is still simple and minimal at the same time.

Based on the Christopher Isherwood novel of the same name, A SINGLE MAN is the story of an English professor attempting to get through the day despite the recent loss of his partner. Colin Firth (who did get a nomination this morning) plays that English professor and does it so well and acutely that I can’t really imagine anyone else in the role. (Nevermind the fact that it’s very difficult to dislike Colin Firth in anything.).

I keep describing the film to people who haven’t seen it as “quiet” and “beautiful”, but that’s so lame, I should really be able to do better than that. So I’m doing it here. What I should say is that it feels like looking through your friend’s perfectly assembled photo album of beautiful Polaroids while they tell you the story of their broken heart. There, that’s better, isn’t it?

Can't Stop Listening To

I didn’t know about I Listen To Everything when I decided to put the Can’t Stop Listening To column on the site. I should have known, I really really should have. It’s a revelation. But I didn’t know and thanks to Liz, now I do.

I’m sticking to my guns though and leaving the column up because there’s room for lots of good music on all of our iPods. Plus I doubt my picks will be as cool and of the moment and prolific as Diana Miller’s. Compared to Diana’s, mine’s a big ol mess. But I kind of like that. A mix of new stuff and a throw back to old stuff that I forgot about but was once infatuated with. There’s nothing quite like that moment when you first recognize a song being played that you used to love but haven’t heard in forever. I spent a good chunk of my Christmas holiday baking time listening to Wham!'s “Last Christmas” on repeat. That’s right. Wham! And it was every bit as good as the six batches of graham crackers that came out of the oven.

The Slap

A long time ago, I was a fast reader – the days when my undergraduate studies had me double-majoring in Law and English. Back then, reading fast was a matter of academic survival. But those days are long gone and now I am most definitely a SLOW reader. AND, I take big breaks in between books! Nothing like the me of yesteryear.

As it happens, I have no less than six of the fast reader types amongst my close circle of friends. It disappoints me that I’m not one of them. I envy their ability to polish off a book on a holiday or a weekend. But I know myself and unless that book is under 100 pages, that’ll never be me. Still, after a childish fit of frustration at not being able to keep up with the fast readers and a cycle of merely adequate book choices, I just gave up reading for a while. Not good. Not good at all.

Luckily, when life slowed down a bit I decided to stop caring and start enjoying reading again. I dragged one of my poor fast reader friends around a bookstore and demanded she find me a couple of “so good I can’t put it down” / “make me love reading again” books to recharge my reading battery. Had to be contemporary, no war, no tearjerkers, no chicklit. No pressure... Well, success quickly came in the form of “The Slap” by Christos Tsiolkas. Strong, intense, delicious reading. The kind that elicits long audible gasps of disbelief. Exactly what I needed. A big toast to Josey for responding to the high stakes with this pick. Next up a little CanCon with “Barney’s Version”. Wish me luck… and if you have any recommendations of the “so good I can’t put it down” / “make me love reading again” variety, feel free to send them my way.