Greetings readers. I'm back from my two week plus journey around the American Southwest, and have been sorting through photos to share with you. I had an amazing time. I also had a birthday this week - my 36th.
I love celebrating birthdays, and am grateful for another year granted. I always go back to one of my favorite sentiments on aging in the film P.S. I Love You expressed by Harry Connick Jr.'s character,
"We're so arrogant, aren't we? We're so afraid to age. We do everything we can to prevent it. But we don't realize what a privilege it is to grow old."
I always take the day off from work. I had a great meal with my sweetheart and family at The Kitchen in Englewood, New Jersey. It was almost as exciting as Dorothy's birthday celebration on the Golden Girls at Mr. Ha Ha's Hot Dog Hacienda, which I'd love if they served Tofu Ha Ha Dogs! Now these ladies make aging look fun!
Being the history loving nerd I am (I actually think "nerd" is a compliment!), I looked up the history of the Happy Birthday song. Do you know it's the most recognized song in the English language? Read more about that here.
Posts coming soon on my Southwest journey, including Santa Fe, the Taos Pueblo, the Utah state parks and the Grand Canyon.
Warmly,
Catherine
Showing posts with label The Golden Girls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Golden Girls. Show all posts
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
Thrifty Addiction: Mystery Bags at Cinema Verite Thrift Shop in NYC
It started so innocently. I passed by a new thrift shop, Cinema Verite in New York City's Hell's Kitchen, on a walk to the nearby library. I saw a display by the counter, "Mystery Bags. Hand Picked Curiosities, $2." I couldn't resist buying one to see what was inside, could you?
I wasn't sure what these were! Feng Shui cards, the charming shop owner Peter told me when I went back. I don't know what to do with them, but do like quite a few of the scenes and sayings. Maybe I'll hang some in my cubicle or on the refrigerator.
Well of course I had to "play" again. I love my little decorative egg.
A Radio Shack clock. Practical, now I just have to figure out how to set it! I also got a ceramic candle in the shape of a turtle (you'll have to project it, since I can't find it at the moment) and in a mystery bag for my sister, a bracelet made out of beaded safety pins. Did I mention this shop supports Process Studio Theatre? So you see, I'm supporting the arts!
Who knew my life needed napkin rings in the shape of ducks?!! Now you just can't go into a Pottery Barn and pick these up! I'm sure they'll be quite the conversation piece.
I'll be honest, when I opened the duck napkin rings, they were on a string and I thought for a split second - what a crazy bracelet! Kind of like when Dorothy mistook a maple syrup spigot Rose whittled her for Christmas for a wooden broach in the shape of a turkey's head the year they decided on homemade gifts on the Golden Girls. Love this show.
Mystery bag fun aside, I have been finding some pretty unique things here. I love thrifting because of what it brings in my life: the unexpected. I can't wait to watch Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne in Love Affair, $4; wanted to familiarize myself with the work of Edgar Allan Poe (the book, $3) after reading about the troubled Edgar Allan Poe House in Baltimore and upcoming The Raven film based on the end of Poe's life with John Cusack in The New York Times; and am loving the Henry Mancini Charade soundtrack, $3. New copies on Amazon were selling as of this writing for $30-$80! If you love Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant and Paris - see Charade! It was also here I scored the season one Partridge Family dvd set - for just $4! Did you know Shirley Jones was offered the part of Carol Brady on the Brady Bunch but turned it down? Two Valentine's Days ago, my library had a really cute idea: have a blind date with a book. Books came gift-wrapped, and if you didn't like the book, you could bring it back - no hard feelings.
Disappointingly they didn't do it last Valentine's.
My date, which came with a heart-shaped lollipop, was Jennifer Weiner's Best Friends Forever. I ditched my date without a fair chance, since I was in the middle of John Irving's 500 plus-page A Prayer for Owen Meany, which I'm forever grateful to Cate from Liberal Simplicity for recommending.
I think we all need a little more whimsy and mystery in our lives, don't you?
While I love being thrifty by brown bagging lunch most days, using the library often, getting my clothes at swaps and thrift stores and such, I do allow myself some mad money for thrifting "wants" (not needs). I've passed on too many things I wanted that were a couple of dollars.
Would you be hooked on mystery bags? What do you spend mad money on? Pumpkin lattes? Magazines? Seventies kitsch? More books than you can read? Anything?
Monday, February 28, 2011
Younger – Better? More Valued? Says Who?
Would have made a better Oscar host if you ask me. The legendary Betty White, who played Rose on one of my favorite American sitcoms, The Golden Girls.
The reviews are in for James Franco and Anne Hathaway as Oscar hosts, and they have been less than stellar. While I don't root for anyone's failure, I think a lot of people (myself included) who are tired of our society viewing younger as better, more desirable, more valued, are filled with a bit of "I told you so" today. Youth felt a little vapid, lacking in substance and confidence, which it often is.
Why are we such a youth obsessed culture? I don't envy youth, do you? Yes, there are things I would have done differently (studied for a semester in Paris, been wiser with some spending habits, and such). But to live through my teens and twenties again? No thank you.
When reading this New York Times article about "The Kiddie Couturiers" (child labor it isn't because it's voluntary? I don't understand), I thought how odd that younger people are in such a hurry to grow up, and so many adults waste precious time and money to turn back the clock (mostly on their faces).
In the latest Sex and the City film (I with a sinking head in shame admit to watching a library copy) Kim Catrall's Samantha focused most of the film on her neurotic obsession with anti-aging remedies (mostly surrounding maintaining her libido). I found it not only un-funny, but pathetic and offensive since she is a breast cancer survivor on the show (yes, I realize it is "entertainment" but we are a celebrity-obsessed, impressionable culture). Maybe I've known too many people who struggle with cancer, but their biggest concern at the end of it isn't remaining wrinkle-free or jumping from one fling to the next. As a friend who is a scientist said to me, she associates anti-aging with cancer cells and such. When you stop aging, you die.
Reflect on these words in "P.S. I Love You" expressed by Harry Connick Jr.'s character, "We're so arrogant, aren't we? We're so afraid to age. We do everything we can to prevent it. But we don't realize what a privilege it is to grow old."
Isn't that right. What a privilege it is every year we blow out our candles, each
to me symbolizing more light that has been brought into our world.
As for me, I'd rather spend an evening with Rose, Blanche, Dorothy, and Sophia eating cheesecake around the kitchen table any day over Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha shopping for Manolo Blaniks (product placement, ladies!) Rose can tell me a story of her tightly-knit farming community (which sounds almost mythical in our factory farming, immigrant labor word). Blanche could talk of her beauty, but they'd let her have it (like when Rose asked quizzically, "What were you doing shopping in ladies petites?). History-loving Dorothy (my favorite) could give some witty comebacks, such as when she told overly competitive Rose drawing a defense plan for her junior football league that Eisenhower used less chalk planning D-Day! I wonder how many youth even know of D-Day? Sophia could tell a story of the old country, "Picture it, Sicily, 1945..." or of old New York, which I would have loved to have known before gadgets made us numb to our daily surroundings.
Carrie would be as self-obsessed about her relationship as ever, Miranda and Charlotte would be be grumbling as they did in the movie about how they cannot comprehend how people raise children without help, meaning nannies. I recall the commentary in the Nanny Diaries how immigrants come here for the American dream and their own children grow up without mothers while they raise the children of the wealthiest New Yorkers. Picture this, New York City, 2011: Nannies, it is said, are being sent to do the volunteer work at a Brooklyn food co-op, The New York Times reported. And Samantha, she'll be off soon to the dermatologist's office, even though she should be grateful not to visit her oncologist's office.
Age versus youth, was the competition ever really that serious? The older, and wiser, know the answer.
The reviews are in for James Franco and Anne Hathaway as Oscar hosts, and they have been less than stellar. While I don't root for anyone's failure, I think a lot of people (myself included) who are tired of our society viewing younger as better, more desirable, more valued, are filled with a bit of "I told you so" today. Youth felt a little vapid, lacking in substance and confidence, which it often is.
Why are we such a youth obsessed culture? I don't envy youth, do you? Yes, there are things I would have done differently (studied for a semester in Paris, been wiser with some spending habits, and such). But to live through my teens and twenties again? No thank you.
When reading this New York Times article about "The Kiddie Couturiers" (child labor it isn't because it's voluntary? I don't understand), I thought how odd that younger people are in such a hurry to grow up, and so many adults waste precious time and money to turn back the clock (mostly on their faces).
In the latest Sex and the City film (I with a sinking head in shame admit to watching a library copy) Kim Catrall's Samantha focused most of the film on her neurotic obsession with anti-aging remedies (mostly surrounding maintaining her libido). I found it not only un-funny, but pathetic and offensive since she is a breast cancer survivor on the show (yes, I realize it is "entertainment" but we are a celebrity-obsessed, impressionable culture). Maybe I've known too many people who struggle with cancer, but their biggest concern at the end of it isn't remaining wrinkle-free or jumping from one fling to the next. As a friend who is a scientist said to me, she associates anti-aging with cancer cells and such. When you stop aging, you die.
Reflect on these words in "P.S. I Love You" expressed by Harry Connick Jr.'s character, "We're so arrogant, aren't we? We're so afraid to age. We do everything we can to prevent it. But we don't realize what a privilege it is to grow old."
Isn't that right. What a privilege it is every year we blow out our candles, each
to me symbolizing more light that has been brought into our world.
As for me, I'd rather spend an evening with Rose, Blanche, Dorothy, and Sophia eating cheesecake around the kitchen table any day over Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha shopping for Manolo Blaniks (product placement, ladies!) Rose can tell me a story of her tightly-knit farming community (which sounds almost mythical in our factory farming, immigrant labor word). Blanche could talk of her beauty, but they'd let her have it (like when Rose asked quizzically, "What were you doing shopping in ladies petites?). History-loving Dorothy (my favorite) could give some witty comebacks, such as when she told overly competitive Rose drawing a defense plan for her junior football league that Eisenhower used less chalk planning D-Day! I wonder how many youth even know of D-Day? Sophia could tell a story of the old country, "Picture it, Sicily, 1945..." or of old New York, which I would have loved to have known before gadgets made us numb to our daily surroundings.
Carrie would be as self-obsessed about her relationship as ever, Miranda and Charlotte would be be grumbling as they did in the movie about how they cannot comprehend how people raise children without help, meaning nannies. I recall the commentary in the Nanny Diaries how immigrants come here for the American dream and their own children grow up without mothers while they raise the children of the wealthiest New Yorkers. Picture this, New York City, 2011: Nannies, it is said, are being sent to do the volunteer work at a Brooklyn food co-op, The New York Times reported. And Samantha, she'll be off soon to the dermatologist's office, even though she should be grateful not to visit her oncologist's office.
Age versus youth, was the competition ever really that serious? The older, and wiser, know the answer.
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