Wrinkled newspaper.

It's weird, the way the paper arrives.  Rather than just stacking all the sections in the middle and folding once, there are various configurations of sections and often just the front page is wrapped around a stack of sections.  This leaves the front page rather wrinkled and strained. This was something that was never a problem, before the advent of the tabloid format.

That's right, Oregonian. You keep telling yourself you are doing a good thing.

Self-congratulatory pablum like this pisses me off.  I'd love to know where all the grumblers like me hang out so we could gripe together.

Oh wait, it's probably the Internet.  I'm already here.

Three sentence movie reviews: Ruby Sparks

This was recommended by Jeff, who noted my intense adoration of Zoe Kazan in What If, and I'm going to say straight off that I liked it.  I think it's incorrectly categorized as a romantic comedy as the darker premise has it headed straight for drama territory.* By the time it ended, I was angerly shoving it into that genre where men get to write all the movies and then was shocked to discover the author of this very interesting look at relationships was none other than female lead Zoe Kazan, which completely blew my mind and changed what I thought of the movie.**

Cost:  free from library
Where watched: at home.

*Note to people who decide these things:  Just because there is ROMANCE in a movie doesn't automatically make it a romantic comedy.  Even if there are funny and sweet parts to the movie.
**Which made me wonder how I would have responded to this movie had I known from the beginning a woman wrote it.

poster from:  http://www.impawards.com/2012/ruby_sparks.html

I've got too much going on at the end of the year to give awards to posters of movies I've watched, but if I did, this would be a top finisher.  It correctly sums up this movie in an enticing way.

Three sentence movie reviews: Repo Man

Part of the Ruby Oliver Film Festival *

This has to be the most punk-rock movie I've ever seen as it refused to adhere to the conventional movie narrative.  Is it sci-fi, or action/adventure or biting social commentary?  It comes with a great soundtrack and will keep you interested.

Cost: free from library
Where watched:  at home.

*This movie is part of E. Lockheart's list of top 10 movies and I'd be interested to hear why she likes it.

poster from:  http://www.impawards.com/1984/repo_man_xlg.html

The amount of text on this poster is crazy!

City of Roses Motel, six days in.

So far I've not been able to use the sidewalk for six days and all they have managed to do is drop a construction trailer and park this moving van.  I understand the construction trailer.  The moving van I'm less certain of its purpose.  It's an empty lot.

Excellent parsing of words.

Said by a mom at school to her third-grade daughter:

"It's not about him being a man, it's about him having a skill I don't have."

I was so excited by that phraseology I grabbed for a paper and pen to write it down.  In my ideal world, people would have skills and the gender of the person performing a skill wouldn't matter.

Postcards from Minnesota

This is a neighborhood-centric representation of St. Paul.  Alas, the sender lives in Minneapolis, so her neighborhood is not represented.  I'm interested as to why a chunker of land on the other side of the river is still St. Paul.  I would have assumed that the river would be the sensible dividing line.

I adore this postcard, from a bookstore.  It's design makes me look again.  And again and again and again. It's going to look great when it makes it to the wall display.

A very nice arty view of the Stone Arch Bridge, which I can't wait to see for myself.

Sadly, the postcards were labeled 1, 3, & 4 and #2 has gone missing. It's been a week and has not shown up.