Sam, you made the pants too long

A little bit. In one spot.

Here are some snaps of the trousers I made for my son Sam. Knit, with Rowan Denim. I don't remember what size needles--they've been in his drawer for a while since he had to grow to fit into them. But he looks pretty cozy.

mea culpa

ah yes, legion, it was paul haggis, not altman. my bad. blame it on my lack of sleep or being up with current events, since i have very little life outside my four walls at the moment.

altman is helming 'prairie home companion' at the moment. i am not a garrison keillor fan (at least on npr. i like his writer's almanac site), but i might have to see this one, just based on lily tomlin and meryl streep's little shtick. since i do like altman....

where have you been?

not on the planet. but here i am.

so i just burned some soup. so i'm wondering, how in the name of all that is holy, is it possible to burn soup. from a can. on the stove. i put it on to heat and turned the temperature up to 7. and now it is stuck to the bottom of the pan. and i am a bit mortified. i should have stuck to the directions and microwaved it. but i didn't want to find a bowl that was big enough, and a pot was handy. so on the stove it went. and now it's stuck forevermore. i was finishing up an assignment and left the kitchen (about five feet to my right) for maybe ten minutes. burned soup. it was lentil, btw, if you're keeping track.

so i was watching the oscars last night--i know, sorry me, but grey's anatomy was pre-empted and i don't know sunday tv other than the housewives and stupid meredith and her stupid 'i'm going to sleep with george and cry about it. so i watched. beautiful nicole kidman and her porcelain skin and no hipped body. vivacious salma hayek. rappers winning an oscar for best song and wearing jeans--now that was cool

and i LOVED jon stewart as the host. i was afraid most of the audience was going to crucify him, especially after the mock smear campaign commercials he ran for best actress and other assorted candidates. reese witherspoon is just such a great american name, and so on. hy-ster-i-cal. it was odd to hear ed helms (i think)'s voice outside of the realm of the ds. and the barbs on cheney and clooney were great. at one point, it looked like clooney was going to run up on stage and get into a 'i'm clooney an actor, director and producer, and i own hollywood so shut the f*ck up' fight, but alas, it didn't happen. i am not a clooney fan, if you hadn't noticed. give me george from 'the facts of life' over any of his more recent shlock any day of the week.

sadly, it would have helped if i had actually seen at least one of the films nominated for any given award, but with two youngins at home and babysitters non-existent, yeah, well, that didn't happen. i have to hope that the films make it to hbo sooner rather than later, as even my video rental budget has been depleted. i was at one point interested in seeing 'capote' but after seeing a clip and hearing philip seymour hoffman lisp and do his thang, i might just need to give it a miss, if he does that for more than an hour and a half without break. and, as we were informed last night, he stayed in character between takes and during breaks, i can only assume the lisp thing was present for the entire film. joy.

i did have a suggestion for the academy that would make viewing the oscars infinitely more compelling: use broken-up couples to present the awards. i felt a little bad for jennifer aniston, up there all by her lonesome, looking so proud and strong and single. and i giggled at the idea of her and ex-golden boy adonis having to be civil enough to present an award to someone. could they get through it without hurtling barbs at each other, fighting over possessions and resorting to sly, off-the-cuff undertoned remarks to cut the other off at the knees? wouldn't that be better than watching presenter after presenter squint at the teleprompter, read some sorry copy that an 11th hour hack sneezed out, and deftly hand over a "surprisingly heavy" golden statuette to the winner? think of the pairings we could watch: tom and nicole, bruce and demi, jennifer and ben, brad and jen... and everyone else who has seen their personal life torn to shreds in the tabloids. recounting the tension on stage would be a hell of a lot more interesting than listening to hours of post-show fashion police oohing and aahing and slagging off every dress that made an appearance on the red carpet. it would give dr. phil something else to do.

and speaking of teleprompters, what the hell was up with lauren bacall? girlfriend needs some bifocals or an ear prompter. i had no idea what we were supposed to be watching with that whole 'film noir' montage anyway....

normally, the 'in memoriam' part is interesting to me because i'm always curious who has died that i didn't know about, or forgot about since the previous oscar ceremony. call me morbid. it's the same reason i read the obits in the paper--and try to glean the ages. who else died young? tragically? so that's what drugs and alcohol will get you... etc. sadly, other than chris penn, richard pryor, anne bancroft, doris day and a couple of others, i didn't recognize many names. am i getting old? out of touch? or were we short on bodies this year?

i fell asleep before best film was announced, but read headlines this morning that 'crash' pulled off the upset. i do like altman films on the whole. i haven't seen crash, but i admire altman's other work. but seeing as possibly every voter in the academy was in 'crash,' is it really that much of a surprise that it won?

next up: the bearcats, huggs' departure and reappearance at senior night, and a rebuttal to the cbssportsline moron who thinks that kennedy's homage to huggs will cost him the head coach position. Go UC!