The most delicious movie of my life...... so far!

Oh, I don't even know where to start. The Simpsons Movie was incredible. From its first second with Fox's logo, till the very last with the Springfield national anthem (yes, they have an anthem now!). It was as delicious as a scoop of your most favorite icecream, good till the last drop:D

At first it was a bit weird to me to see the characters so BIG in their shinny colors on the screen. Well, you could say from this that i have a crappy small screen tv at home! And... they played "So happy together" which is one of my favorite songs, (and apparently The Simposons' producers' favorites too, as i had heard it in some past episodes before.

Something else: if you went to see the movie, stay for the end titles, you'll thank me later to have saved you Maggi's first word and so much more!

When I stepped out of the theater, i felt like walking on the clouds! Well, seriously, the weather was so foggy i could hardly drive back home!

Red Light Sicko

Yesterday evening I decided to go and watch Michael Moore's Sicko. It would start at 9:45 and by the time I got ready and got into the car, it was 9:40. It's a small town, where I live and you could get to the theater in like 10 minutes. But the problem was the film was on an art theater downtown that doesn't show commercials before the movie. A luxury indeed, but not when you're running late!

In my way i needed to make a left somewhere. When i got to the intersection, the light was already yellow and there was a car waiting at the left lane to turn. Generally, I should have made a stop and waited for the next light, but you would understand that I was in a hurry:-) So, i followed that other car and turned as the light turned red. Ten feet onto the new road and i heard the loud siren. A police car turned right behind me and started to angrily blinking its lights at me. My heartbeat literally stopped for a second and then started beating like crazy. I though oh my goodness, the first time in my years to break the law and getting caught right at the moment. In constant sorrow(!) I pulled over. And guess what? The police car, just passed over me and speeded ahead:D You can't imagine my relief:-)

P.S. Sicko was good. Though this is the biased opinion of someone who likes Michael Moore. But even if you are not a big fan, go and see the movie for its absolutely charming footage of Paris and London.
Here's the NPR program on The Sicko.
P.S.2. Hey, Simposons Movie is coming out tomorrow. Isn't it exciting? :-)
P.S.3. Since yesterday I read the first 14 chapters of Harry Potter. Today I went to wikipedia and read the whole plot summery and put an end to it! Does this mean that the kid inside me has grown old?
Funny thing that i had a dream last night that someone has cut out my ear! Does everybody get these immediate fiction-fueled dreams?

Take a sad song and make it better

...

Aside from its lyrics, I like the melody of this song alot. A couple of months ago i went to a jazz concert and they played a plain jazz version of Hey Jude. I wish I could post that here instead. It was a great performance.

Ohrwurm

I'm not that good with html coding, otherwise i would have put up a section here dedicated to my recent earworms.

Do you think it's wicked to spread around earworms? Well, they're often case-spesific and might not stick into your head:)
So here we go: Whole Wide World

P.S. that link is broken, look here for the song, the clip is alas, gone.

Home is where...

There is a new wave among some Iranian bloggers to post a picture of their childhood in their blogs. I realized that I don't have a single picture of myself as a kid with me here, darn. Days like this, you realize that this place, nomatter how comfy, is not your home.


P.S. It just started out of nowhere. With a bad sore throat. I know when i wake up tomorrow morning it will develop into a complete cold package. I'm childishly fighting the sleep now.

In Memoriam: Beverly Sills

Watch Charlie Rose's program about Beverly Sills. She was a big American opera singer, who passed away last week. Just listen to her sing, the first 12 minutes of the video below. It's so incredibly beautiful. No man-made instrument can ever produce such a magnificant sound.

Crying rain

Water is pouring down the sky. I picture myself standing in the middle of the lawn, opening my arms and letting the raging raindrops wash over me, melting me into the ground. Just that I don't find the strength in me to get out of the balcony.

7-7-7

An all 7 day today. What were you doing at 7 o'clock?

The story of Sisyphus

I often find myself sympathising with Sisyphus. He was condemned by the gods to carry a stone up a mount in the underworld. A few steps to the summit where he could put his load down, the stone would fall down the hill and he would have to go back and carry it up again, and again, and again...

Love is not a victory march

It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

Illusion!

O' my goodness, I watched the entire movie, the illusionist, with the illusion that its main actress was Scarlet Johansen, and kept wondering howcome she looked so different in this movie!!!

From an offline message

Life is short,
Break the rules,
Forgive quickly,
Kiss slowly,
Love truly,
Laugh uncontrollably,
And never regret anything that made you smile.

Music of the rain

Sleeping to the music of the rain,
yet one more of the life's simple pleasures.

Dreaming movies

I watched the two Kill Bills back to back on my laptop in my bed last night, then collapsed to sleep at 5 in the morning. And thus began the special features, the deleted scenes, the alternative endings, the sequal, even new characters in the plot. All in like 15 minute dream installments. I would dream a piece, wake up only to go back to sleep where another part was awaiting me. Not that pleasing, but quite an experience.

"What'll you do when you get lonely ?"

Tonight I'm thinking, why should this particular song, among all the songs in the world, start with this verse?

Cherries

With summer comes cherries, and we like it! Funny thing that anywhere in this country I have to be super careful not to buy anything with cherry flavor, and God knows lots of stuff are cherry flavored here! What's the irony: the cherries i like are Bing Cherries and the ones i hate are the american bright red ones which taste like cough syrup. Well the causality possibly is the other way around, cough syrups are cherry flavored!

You know what, one good thing about visiting California in June is the Bing cherry harvest season. Lots of good cherries for cheap:)
Talking about cherries listen to this song, i liked it. It's called "Black Horse & The Cherry Tree".

Summer Jazz

The magic bus ate my doughnut!
This was the title of a piece in the Jazz concert I went to tonight. I take off my hat not to the composer of the piece but to the person who came up with this name for it ;-)

I left my heart in San Francisco

Alas, only if it wasn't that bitterly cold even in June, San Francisco was my favorite city to live in:-)

P.S. A statue of Tony Bennett's "heart" is in San Francisco's Union Square.

West Express diaries, season finale!

I want to finish these diaries before I go back home. So let's see if we can finish it in this post...
We passed four national parks: Zion, Grand Canyon, Death valley, and Yosemite. Each spectacular in its own way.

Red, red, red, Zion National Park

Zion made a big impression on me, perhaps because it was the first national park we visited, or perhaps because of the color red, I like red :) But seriously it was beautiful. Imagine a road passing along a valley surrounded by red stone mountains with green dots on them, add to the view a beautiful blue sky with some happy white cloads in it. Here are some pictures. The funny thing was that the asphalt on the road was also red!









The grand Grand Canyon
After the Zion park, we drove along the road in the middle of the Indians' land to get to the grand canyon national park. The Grand Canyon truly deserves the word "grand". Standing on the top looking at it, you can't help but wonder how Grand is the nature, and how small the man who claims himself its master.
Picking a photo to post here is a challenging task cause none of my shots could capture the grandness i'm talking about, so I'll pass.

Las Vegas
Well, what do i say about Las Vegas? You know it all! The things I didn't know about before was that you're allowed to drink in public. At nights the whole city sidewalks are like a big pub. People walk freely with bottle of beers in their hands. The other weird thing was the men distributing nude flyers in the street, and so so many of them. the funny thing is that these people also offer the pictures to the men walking hand in hand with their significant others! Would you dare taking one, if you are a man in such situation?;-)

And we drove along the Hoover dam past midnight in our way to Vegas, I regret that I didn't get a chance to go back in daylight to take a better look.

Dipping in Death Valley!
Dip was a new word to me when I first come to US. The first time the word came to my attention was with the expression "double dipping" in a Seinfeld episode. Just recently when I adopted dancing I came across with the other meaning of "dipping": when a couple dance, the dip is when the lady bends backwards, with the gentleman's hand supporting her move. Death valley national park added one more meaning to "dip". Death valley is a dessert surrounded by mountains on the far. the road passes in the middle of the sandy dessert, and so often there are inward bumps in the road. In the places the layers of sand beneath the road has gone down making dips in the road. It's like driving your car along a roller coaster kinda road. It was a fun drive!

The delish Macaroons of the Mammoth lake
I can't go on to Yosemite without mentioning this. On our way to Yosemite we stopped for the night in Mammoth lake. It's a popular sky resort, so in the off season the business was slow and the town looked empty, but no regrets, cause we discovered a very good European style bakery in town with the most decedents pastries and the absolute best macaroons i had ever had. Here's the picture of the place. If you ever got to go there, check that out and bring me some too!





And finally the Yosemite, and me!

West Express diaries, part 2

Colorado, Or how much mountains are enough montains?:)
I liked this state. It kinda looks like Iran. Mountainous with dry weather.The road from Denver towards west very much resembles the Chaloos road in Iran which passes the Alborz mountains in the North. Only the road was cleaner and safer and there were less shaggy venders cabins alongside the road.


Another interesting thing in Colorado: this is the picture I took from the window of the giftshop in the hotel we stayed at in Denver. what do you think about the line on the t-shirt? Who is fighting the terrorism? Indians? Or are they the ones Coloradoans flighted against? ;)


Loveland, Colorado
How many of you would consider changing your trip route across States to pass by a certain icecream shop?:-) I would in general, though I couldn't do it for practical reasons this time we were badly behind our schedule for the day, and we could have missed our hotel reservation for the night. But anyway, there is a small town in Colorado called Loveland. It surprisingly has a branch of my favorite Italian gelato shop, while some big cities like Chicago for instance don't. Btw, isn't Loveland an interesting name for a town? :) So here's some more about it:

It's a town of 50,000 population, about 30 miles east of the Rocky Montains National Park. Each year hundreds of thousands of Valenites from across the world are sent to Loveland to be remailed in Feb, handstamped by volunteers with the town's postmark and a special poem that changes each year. Aren't you tempted to send a letter to Loveland this year?:-) I am. I might as well ask for a special overnight icecream delivery. In February it might get to Champaign unmelted!