Oh... hello blog.

Today I was shamed into posting by a five-year-old. Well, sort of. It went something like this:

Via Empire: Online. ::swoon:: Magneto

In an effort to be a productive version of a human being, I bought myself a new purse-sized notebook, this one from the clearance section of Borders featuring images from The Simple Art of Sumi-e by Takumasa Ono. Last week I had it out while I was baby-sitting my new charges, Sarah and Rachel, so that I could jot down the topics their Mom had asked me to review with them. Rachel asked if she could look at it and so read the to-do list on the first page, from 25 April 2011, where most things were crossed off except for at the very bottom where it said "BLOG." She asked if I'd done it yet so I could cross it off and I said no. Today she asked me again. I don't want to have to tell her no a third time.

In my defense, I've been busy. Like, legitimately busy and not just putzing on Facebook or playing casual games. So busy that I'm two episodes behind on Doctor Who and have yet to read a single sentence (much less an article) in the new issue of Vanity Fair. There have been birthdays and baby-sitting and gardening and family time and obsessing over Michael Fassbender. But the same notebook also features a list of possible blog topics.

So I'll try to do better. Just don't be surprised if I, you know... don't.

today on zulily

Since a certain friend of mine (i.e. Lily's mom) introduced me to Zulily, it's become the one site from which I receive a daily promotional email that I DON'T delete without opening.  I'm neither a Mom, Baby, or Kid, but either the internet-world-wide-webs doesn't know that or Zulily is spending a stupid amount of money on advertising because I swear, lately, there's been a banner ad on nearly every site I visit.

I've yet to purchase anything; I was deeply chagrined to have missed the boat on the Melissa & Doug alphabet stamp set I wanted and I never worked up the nerve to buy the discounted-but-still-expensive pair of shoes I coveted a few weeks ago. The books/games/toys/etc I peruse in a professional capacity and the Mom stuff in a female capacity and, the baby clothes?

Okay... the perusing of the baby clothes is marginally an exercise in uterus-wrenching sadomasochism. I fully recognize that to maintain a "hope chest" of baby accessories (a la Julia Roberts' BFF in Eat Pray Love*) is not something I can justify either financially or emotionally at this point in my life.  (As the same friend pointed out, if/when I have a child, the world will still be full of adorable baby clothes.)

So instead of buying, blogging; I can blog about all the uber-cute kids' stuff that I'd buy if I could.

This inaugural post, however, will be an exception to the rule.

Note the above ensemble? Due in large part, no doubt, to its presence on the site's front page, the raincoat is all gone. But the umbrella and boots are still available. You'd think I'd love this, right? Fits in perfectly with my favorite color scheme.

No. NO. My first thought when I saw it?

That's right. "Cruella de Vil, Cruella de Vil, if she doesn't scare you, no evil thing will." Or rather, Glenn Close in the guise of Cruella de Vil.

As far as I'm concerned, not a good look, particularly for the preschool set.

 Why? Subject of a later post: Barbies that SHOULD not exist.

 P.S. If you're looking to become addicted to Zulily too, ask yours truly for an invite.

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I chose this picture to be color-coordinated.
Also for the eye candy

* Zzzzzzzzzzz. Way to take an awesome book and turn it into a mediocre, disjointed snoozefest. Dear Javier Bardem, thanks for showing up and making this movie suck slightly less. Dear Hollywood - go ahead, continue to make bestsellers into movies if you must... but please take extra special care with the non-fiction ones.

"Stay" in the '90s, Ethan Hawke.

I left the house and reentered society today, being mostly recovered from my cold, and playing on the car radio was one of my favorite songs from my youth, 1994's "Stay (I Missed You)" by Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories. I still know all of the words.

Of course, my love for this song is directly related to its feature in one of my favorite movies, Reality Bites. And thus began my '90s love affair with Ethan Hawke. I don't so much care for him now and I'm not exactly sure what appealed to me then (certainly not the greasy hair). Maybe I just loved Troy Dyer.

"You can't navigate me. I may do mean things, and I may hurt you, and I may run away without your permission, and you may hate me forever, and I know that scares the living shit outta you 'cause you know I'm the only real thing you got."

Okay, he's also pretty adorable in Before Sunrise.

Team Bates!

I now interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this brief, Boyfriend of the Week-esque fangirl squealfest.

But first... some context. Are you watching Downton Abbey on Masterpiece? Why not? Because I'm here to tell you...

YOU SHOULD BE.

No offense (or as the Brits say... offence?) To the folks at PBS, but the original ITV trailer is vastly more compelling:

 

Kilwillie getting his kilt on!

This isn't your Grandma's Masterpiece Theatre. Written by Julian Fellowes (who wrote the equally awesome Gosford Park and was, once upon a time, Kilwillie on Monarch of the Glen), Downton is an epilogue-of-sorts to another Masterpiece, The Buccaneers.

Based on an unfinished novel by Edith Wharton, the eponymous title characters of that series are "nouveau riche" American girls on a quest to legitimize their money by forging mutually beneficial matches with land rich, cash poor British aristocrats.

In Downton, Elizabeth McGovern plays Cora, Countess of Grantham, who in her youth was just such a "buccaneer" and is now the happily married daughter of three grown daughters. But no son, which, in the primogeniture-happy land of the English aristocracy, is a bit of a problem. It's even more of a problem because the sizable chunk of change she brought to the union has been, unfortunately, entailed to the estate, meaning that it will go, not to her daughters, but to the next Count of Grantham. And after an unfortunate incident involving a White Star ocean liner and an iceberg, the next Count of Grantham is a third cousin who happens to be a staunchly middle class solicitor from Manchester.

In Downton Abbey there is an upstairs and a downstairs, whose intersecting lives form much of the drama.  But despite the obvious correlation to the original Upstairs, Downstairs (which also, as I recall, featured a story line centering on Titanic - upper crust Edwardian society was nothing if not insular), Downton Abbey most reminds me of Manor House; the level of intrigue is on par with the best of reality television.

But to get back to the promised squealing, every Count needs a mysterious valet, right?

Clive Owen in Gosford Park

Brendan Coyle in North and South

Bates (Brendan Higgins) and Anna (Joanne Froggatt) share a moment.

Half an hour later....

Sorry... I'm not sure if that was appropriately squealy; should have used more exclamation points.
I'll try again. Dear Brendan Coyle: You are awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!