More fun IMDB trivia

I found another nugget on IMDB today.

Pamela Adlon, who plays Marcy Runkle on Showtime's Califionication, also provides the voice of Bobby Hill, the teenage son on Fox's King of the Hill.

For reals?!  Maybe these things are common knowledge for some (okay, probably not the Thundercats thing), but it's the little things that make me happy, and this is just one such little thing.  Using the term "cuppy cakes" instead of cupcakes is another.  Hi Curt.

And while I'm at it - Californication is a GREAT show.  I was not an X-Files fan, and therefore not a David Duchovny fan (the two go hand in hand, do they not?) prior to seeing this piece of brilliance.  And to this day, I haven't seen the first season but for a couple of episodes here and there, but I've now watched all of the episodes in season three twice.  So now I guess I like David Duchovny, but I have a TV crush on Hank Moody, his character on the show.  Recurring guest appearances this season by Kathleen Turner and Rick Springfield have been brilliant, and this season as a whole has caused me to adopt the word "church" as a term of agreement.  Adlon's character of Marcy is one of my favorites on the show; she reminds me of Susie Essman's Susie on Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is another great show, by the way.

Random trivia for today

I was just playing around on IMDB and discovered a fabulous piece of trivia!

GUESS WHO composed the original Thundercats theme song.  James Lipton!  He's the dude that does Inside the Actors' Studio.  I get such a kick out of him and his dry sense of humor.

I will not get into how I came to discover this information, i.e. how I came to be on either James Lipton's or the Thundercats' IMDB page (I won't say which I was on), but I'm kind of excited to have learned this new piece of useless knowledge.

Have you learned anything useless today?

In2Books

This school year, I'm participating in a program called In2Books.  It's an online pen-pal reading program for kids in 3rd through 5th grade.  You can sign up on the In2Books website, which involves paying a $5 or $6 fee to cover the expense of a background check.  Once you have been cleared, you are assigned a pen-pal, or e-pal as they call them, who you immediately start corresponding with through the In2Books web interface.  Your responsibilities as an e-pal involve writing an introductory email to your student, and then reading five books, selected by the student, over the course of the school year, and exchanging discussion emails with the student about those books.  The emails are exchanged using the In2Books website, so there's no actual email addresses exchanged, and all emails are screened by the teachers in the classrooms before they are exchanged between the student and the e-pal.

My student is a 3rd grader in Washington state named Glory.  From her letters, she seems like a really sweet girl, and really excited about reading and writing about it.  We have some of the same favorite foods in pizza and broccoli, too.  We just read Granny Torrelli Makes Soup by Sharon Creech, which was Glory's selection for the fiction unit.  I sent my email about it last weekend, and I'm expecting my letter back from her any day now.  It was a cute book about the dynamic nature of friendship, and it even inspired me to make chicken soup the other day.  The In2Books program has five units over the course of the school year.  We just did fiction, next is social studies, then there's biography, traditional tales, and science. 

This is a great program.  I love that it gets kids excited about reading, gets them to read thoughtfully and to write about what they read.  I love that it lets kids have discussions about what they're reading with grown-ups that are really excited to read with them, and who they only know because of their reading with them.  Unlike a parent or teacher or tutor, who read with them because it's their job.  Here, the kids know that their pen pal is really excited about reading with them, and is looking forward to reading the books and hearing what they think of them.  This is my first year participating, but I can foresee myself staying involved with it for years to come.

Red Velvet Cuppy-cakes

Yesterday, I decided that I was going to make cupcakes this weekend.  I was torn between cupcakes baked in ice cream cones, some kind of filled cupcakes, and red velvet.  Had I decided on the cake-in-a-cone or filled cupcakes, I was planning to use a boxed mix, on the grounds that the act of baking them in a cone or filling them was unique and fun enough to justify not making them from scratch.  In the end, though, I decided that I truly wanted to bake something this weekend, and for me, that means from scratch.  So I went with the red velvet.  This is the recipe I used, thank you Cupcake Blogger, whatever your name may be.

 

They came out great!  Jimmy and I each ate one as soon as they were cool enough to put frosting on, and both agreed that they're delicious. He's not usually a fan of cuppy-cakes, either, so for him to say they're delicious is a pretty big deal.  My only criticism would be that they could stand to be a little more chocolatey, so I think next time I make them (and there will be a next time), I will use an extra tablespoon or so of cocoa.  I'm not sure how much this'll change the consistency or anything (I'm totally not a baker), but I'm going to do it anyway.

I also didn't use cream cheese frosting.  Red velvet cupcakes are so rich and heavy as it is, I just didn't see the need to up the decadence level any more by slathering them with cream cheese frosting.  So, while I baked them from scratch, I then used spray Cool-Whip to frost them.  Honestly, they don't even need frosting, they're so moist and delicious as they are, but what's a cuppy-cake without frosting?  Mom says she has a delicious boiled frosting recipe, so I'm going to snag that the next time I visit, and I'll actually make it and properly frost the cupcakes next time I make them.  For now though, spray-and-enjoy works just fine for me.

Gospel choirs

I believe that any artist that can pull off a performance with a gospel choir deserves respect, and has mine.  I hate to beat a dead horse and talk more on here about how much I love Jason Mraz, but his performance on Conan last night inspired this post.  Mr. A-Z performed Live High on Conan last night with a gospel choir, and it was great.  I just tried to find a video to link, but apparently I suck, because I couldn't.  Who else comes to mind when you think of non-gospel performers effectively bringing a gospel choir into their act?  U2, in Ratle and Hum - which was brilliant.  Jay-Z, I think?  Snoop?  It's not just rappers, either, there are plenty of others that I just can't think of because it's Friday night and I've had a few drinks.  Anyway, I love gospel music, but only live.  I mean, by live on TV, I still mean live, but I'm just not into gospel on CD or radio. Anyway, my respect for a musician doubles, if not more, if they're able to perform meaningfully with a gospel choir.  I'm just saying.  If you can find JM's performance on Conan last night, it's worth 5 minutes of your time.

NaNo 2009

My 2009 NaNo Novel has not only a working title, but a .jpg to go with it.  I rule.  This .jpg might give away more than I care to about the plot, though.  I may keep playing with my new free photo editing website and make another one or two before I settle.

It's not YA anymore, by the way.  In case the picture didn't give that away.  I decided in the end that I couldn't handle the idea that I had before; it was just too personal.  There's going to be elements of that idea in this story, but I'm using this as a bit of a stepping stone to get myself ready to write that story next year sometime (maybe NaNo, maybe not).  For now, I just hope that the huge outline that I have thrown together works to help me keep writing, and doesn't hinder me or somehow constrain me.  I'm afraid that I'll feel bound by the outline.  Writing starts tonight at midnight, so we'll see how it goes.  My immediate goal is to get to get as close to 10,000 words as possible by bedtime Sunday night.  Really, if I can get to 5,000 by then, I'll be satisfied, but I'd love to hit 8K or 10K by the close of business on November first.

I made the .jpg smaller, for my message board signatures:

Random thoughts

This post is inspired by Mark Patinkin's articles in the Providence Journal this weekend.  I laughed out loud at both of them.

I hate my lunch today, but we had nothing in the house.  Salad with lettuce and tomatoes only and an english muffin with sugar-free jam, and a few fritos.  Boring.

Untoasted english muffins are just gross, and weren't meant to be eaten that way.  At all.

Does it still count as salad if it's just lettuce and tomatoes in a bowl?

I regret not buying the crumpets I had in my hand at the grocery store last week.

I love Cozy Shack rice pudding, but I very rarely purchase it because then it's more of a treat when I do.

I refuse to buy orange marmalade for my house, because then it takes some of the magic out of going out for diner breakfast.

Is it weird that I made a conscious decision not to bring any Cozy Shack with my paltry lunch today because eating it at work would ruin it?

I've been in a dark, moody and brooding mood for over a week now, and it doesn't appear to be getting much better anytime soon.

My new favorite dark, moody and brooding mood song is Bad Day by Fuel.  Conviently, on the Best of Fuel CD that I own, it's followed immediately by Last Time, which has prooved to be angry enough to help me out of the sad mood inspired by Bad Day.  It works out really well, I think.

I'm beyond excited about the fact that over the weekend, my name was picked in a drawing to win a free copy of this magazine:

I'm bummed that I don't have the equivalent of a "man town" to display it in.  I doubt it would go over well if I displayed it in my bedroom at home.  I guess it's relegated to my office.

I'm thinking of chopping my hair short and coloring it darker than it is.  But I secretly know that I'm too indecisive to do this just yet, and it's going to stay the same color and keep on getting longer for at least a few more months.

On Saturday afternoon, we mowed our lawn.  It took two of us all afternoon to get it all done.  Note to self - do yard work more often than once a month.

Fuel is a great band, by the way.

Sometimes I look back and feel like entire years of my life have disappeared from my memory.  Then I wonder if that's a good thing or a bad thing.  I've never come to any conclusion on that point.

When I go to make my lunch for tomorrow, there's still going to be nothing in my house.  Actually, there will be less nothing than there was today, because we're out of lettuce now, too.

There's also nothing there for dinner tonight without some farily extensive cooking.  Guess who won't be home long enough to cook anything for dinner tonight?

A day without protein is like a day without sunshine

I wish I could quit my job and go back to college forever and just keep earning new degrees, but I don't want to be made to pay for any of this, and I never want to put any of the degrees to any practial, job-related use.  Specifically, I would like to start with an MBA with a focus in advertising and marketing, and a masters in meteorology.

I'd also like to do some more "studying" abroad.

Shutter Island just made the short list of the best books I've ever read.  There will be a separate post (with spoilers) about that in the very near future.

I shouldn't promise future posts like that, because I have a history of not following up.

Does it even matter?  Anything, I mean?