I had a heckuva weekend-- it's a wonder my eyeballs aren't popping out of my sockets, I took in so much marvelous input. I went to a movie, then to a live musical theater performance, and the next day I caught up on 4 or 5 of my tv shows, AND started a new book. I love the life of a slug! :-) Let that laundry do itself, I'm busy. Grocery shopping? Nahh, who needs it, there's a show on!

The movie: "There Will Be Blood," the last of my Oscar-nominated films to check out. Despite having a weird title more suited to a horror movie, it was really good. It's an historical film, takes place mostly in 1911. Daniel Day Lewis discovers oil in his gold mine and soon is making a living leasing other people's wells, or buying up their land to dig his own. He has a son (mother died in childbirth--there are pretty much NO women in this whole film!) and for most of the film the kid is about 9 or 10 and he is showing him the business. It's a really hard life, and DDL's character is a really tough businessman, doesn't like people much, only wants to become a bigger and bigger oil baron. I was really entertained, although there are some wince-inducing moments involving oil derrick accidents. Then you get to the climactic scene and oh my, there WILL be blood. ;-)

The live theater: finally got to see "Wicked"! Yesss! Wow, what a marvelous musical. I loved the songs, and the premise is so clever. The sets and costumes are fantastic, and so colorful. For a touring production I thought it was top-notch, although the orchestra drowned out the lyrics to some of the ensemble numbers, that was unfortunate. But the two leads playing Glinda and Elphaba were wonderful. I could have listened to them sing all day. I hadn't expected the character of Elphaba (the "wicked witch of the west", the green one) to be so  appealing; she's really the heroine, and that was way cool. I have to go read the book now, I've put it off knowing I wanted to see the musical first. And going to Playhouse Square in Cleveland is such a fun experience, it's got such glorious grand old art deco theaters, with beautiful murals in the lobby, and it made me start trying to remember all of the shows I've seen there--and how long it's been since I'd been to one. Sigh. Can't let that much time pass again before I go to a show.

The tv: I never noticed a big difference in my tv habits during the strike, because so many of my shows are summer or winter series on cable, not network tv. So I've had fresh episodes of stuff I like the whole time. So yesterday I watched some Psych (hilarious!), Stargate Atlantis (great ep with three characters trapped in a mine), Wildfire (my silly teen soap but it's got horses in it too), and Boston Legal (Scott Bakula in a guest appearance! Woo-hoo!).  Okay that one's a network show, but anyway....I'm psyched to see that Robin Hood starts its second season (BBC America) in April, yay!, and The Riches will be back on FX in March. Now if only I knew when Hustle was coming back, I would be one very happy viewer.

The book: I started a new YA novel, this year's winner of the Printz Award, The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean. So far it's pretty interesting, and funny. The main character's a 14 yr old girl, modern day, who has a bit of a crush on the Antarctic explorer Titus Oates. He's long dead, of course, but she's so vivid an imaginer that she has entire conversations with him in her head; she's rather shy and lonely and doesn't fit in at school because she wears hearing aids (and is painfully shy), plus she's obsessed with all things Antarctic, so, she talks to Titus. Their conversations are a hoot. Then her "uncle" (father's business partner, but she's grown up with him around) surprises her with an actual trip to Antarctica! She's beside herself with joy. That's as far as I've gotten. We'll see if I think it was worthy to win the Printz.

That's it for now! What are you watching or reading?