Dappled and Drowsy and Ready for Sleep

Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Robert McNamara, Steve McNair, Karl Malden, Oscar Mayer, and I almost forgot Billy Mays.

I'm sure part of it is a heightened attention to celebrity deaths, but this seems like a lot in a fairly brief period of time. Usta be these sorts of deaths came in threes, but maybe there will be another before the end of the week which makes nine, or three sets of three.

I had Cardamom Rose Pistachio ice cream from Ivanna Cone tonight. If it were only pistachio, it would have been amazing because of the high ratio of whole pistachios, but there were also some bursts of cardamom flavor. I was also pleased that I couldn't detect any rose; I always find rose stuff to taste like a perfume.

Last weekend I watched Away We Go and Public Enemies. I enjoyed each of them. Maya Rudolph, John Krasinski, and the rest of ensemble cast performed wonderfully. It is also well written, my favorite line coming from the child in the resort hotel lobby. The writers take three or four family scenarios as a foil to the central characters of Burt and Verona. The success is that they make the fairly cliche family types interesting while furthering the development of our couple. The music by Alexi Murdoch was also nicely done.

For interesting crossover, Sam Mendes also directed Road to Perdition, another 1930s crime film with Al Capone and Frank Nitti. I love Road to Perdition. Directing, acting, score, cinematography, set design, costumes, writing, I can't think of a thing I don't really appreciate about it. But we're talking about Public Enemies (I prefer both to The Untouchables, which I found to be weak except for Sean Connery's lines.), and it was what I expected from Michael Mann, an incredibly accurate, taut film. Johnny Depp was probably not in the greatest role for his "charisma," but it works. The actor who really struck me was Stephen Lang, in the role of Agent Winstead (a fed from the Southwest requested by Melvin Purvis, who has actually been in gun fights before). There was something about him that I recognized, then I looked him up on IMDb and it came rushing back to me. He played Ike Clanton in Tombstone.

Jules Cazedessus did something for the film too. Another thing I loved was the hood ornaments on the cars. Not necessarily in the film, but appreciated by me are the Packard swan/pelican, the Nash flying man, and the 1931 Buick.

Now for something completely different. You can order a milk shake as a chocolate malted. Can you order a root beer floated? Or is it classier to order a float as root beer ala mode.