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What It Is: 4/20/09

What I’m reading: Finished Antony and Cleopatra, recaptured my comic-geek youth with the Ambush Bug reprint collection, and finished Plutarch’s life of Lycurgus.

What I’m listening to: A mix I made called Dropsical Meatwave. Because I’m like that.

What I’m watching: Chocolate, which needed less buildup and more fight scenes. The mishap outtakes in the closing credits demonstrate that more fight scenes would have led to fatalities, so hey. I also re-watched the first three episodes of the first season of The Wire on my flight out to Vegas. What an amazing show.

What I’m drinking: Not much. I’m getting tired liver after a short spring training.

What Rufus is up to: Enjoying the warm weather, going to a greyhound meet & greet (with pix) on Saturday and taking his weekly hike up in Wawayanda State Park (no pix)!

Where I’m going: Las Vegas, baby.

What I’m happy about: I may get to hit In-N-Out Burger while I’m here! (I’m easy.) Also, I’m still pretty ecstatic that I took this pic. (Again, I’m easy.)

What I’m sad about: I had this terrible foreboding the moment I woke up on Sunday, the day of my flight out here. I haven’t had that sort of vibe in a long time. Of course, the flight turned out fine and I even drove in Vegas for the first time (it’s my 5th trip here, I think). Interestingly, they don’t seem to paint stripes on the highway or the major roads. This made the drive interesting. To my credit, I took my GPS unit along and let it guide me out to the hotel.

What I’m worried about: Mortality, evidently. And driving a low-slung Pontiac around Las Vegas.

What I’m pondering: Whether The Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up” (the song from the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are) is this alt-generation’s “Do You Realize??” or their “November Rain.”

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Save Our Newspapers!

. . . Otherwise, where will we get such awesome journalism as this NYTimes article about how male movie actors are getting fat as they get older?

A scene from the new journalistic thriller “State of Play” says it all.

Jeff Daniels, as the politician George Fergus, squares off with Russell Crowe, as the pen-wielding journalist Cal McAffrey.

Two men. One notebook. Four chins.

Hollywood’s pool of leading men is getting larger — and not necessarily in a good way.

The best part — and there are plenty of good parts, including the bit about how today’s aging male leads might be thinner if they just smoked cigarettes, like Humphrey Bogart (dead at 57 from throat cancer), Clark Gable (dead at 59 from a sudden heart attack), and James Stewart (dead at 264 from being a nice guy) — is that the article ends by treating an utterly implausible quote for a Hollywood PR rep at face value!

[Russell Crowe] might want to get some diet advice from Jason Segel.

Mr. Segel, 29, was fairly hefty in “I Love You, Man,” a comedy released by Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks in March. But his face looked surprisingly thin on billboards advertising the film.

The advertising photos were done some weeks after the film shoot, with a slimmer Mr. Segel, said Katie Martin Kelley, a publicity executive with Paramount. “There was no retouching done,” Ms. Kelley said.

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Sprung

Looks like someone forgot to post today! I’d better rectify that with a photoset (with oddball commentary) of this evening’s walk! Why don’t you click through the picture and go to the set?

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Lost in the Supermarket: Deadliest Catch edition

Lost in the Supermarket is on vacation this week, on account of neurasthenia. But your faithful blogger wouldn’t leave you in the lurch!

Since tonight marks the premier of the new season of The Deadliest Catch, one of the most awesome “reality” TV shows of all time, I offer up a retro Lost in the Supermarket post: The Imitations of Crab!

My wife & I, meanwhile, will go back to our Tuesday night routine of sushi-and-crabtini in honor of the Northwestern, the Cornelia Marie, the Wizard and the Time Bandit (and evidently a couple of new boats, the Lisa Marie and the Trailblazer)!

What’s a crabtini?

Bet you’re sorry you asked.

See the whole Lost in the Supermarket series

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What It Is: 4/13/09

What I’m reading: Antony and Cleopatra.

What I’m listening to: So Still, by Mozez. Because it’s Passover week! And the new Bob Mould record!

What I’m watching: Baby Mama, Bottle Rocket and Funny Face. And the final round of the Masters, which was insanely compelling.

What I’m drinking: Plymouth, Q Tonic and lime. And a whole bunch of kosher wine.

What Rufus is up to: Wagging his tail in his sleep last week, which I take to mean he was having the happiest dream ever. And another Sunday greyhound hike up in Wawayanda State Park! Enjoy the pix!

Where I’m going: Las Vegas next Sunday for a biz trip. None of my usual suspects of biz pals will be there, Tom Jones is out of town, and I refuse to bet on baseball, so this may turn out to be a very boring trip for me.

What I’m happy about: Our seder went off without a hitch and Mom made it safely back to St. Louis this weekend after her 10-day stay. Oh, and we got to see my cousins Lewis & Denise on Saturday (at one of my favorite Thai restaurants, hence the decor in the photo).

What I’m sad about: A friend of mine blindsided me with news that his wife blindsided him with divorce papers.

What I’m worried about: There’s no Q Tonic at the liquor store where I’ve been buying the stuff. Now I’ve gotta start searching some other haunts and begin hoarding it before it goes the way of the New York Sun and every other goddamn thing I really like in this world.

What I’m pondering: What it is about Audrey Hepburn’s in-her-prime beauty that literally makes my eyes well up when I see her in a movie.

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Free Peepsle

For all of you Easter-season Peeps-eaters out there, I give you Peeps Show III, the Washington Post’s annual Peeps diorama contest! Now go microwave one of those marshmallow monsters!