Because Alan is a Two-Time Knitters' Hunk, and Sam is Our Reigning KH

Sam Neill is crazy, wicked clever and funny.  He is also a winemaker who periodically asks his friends to contribute their Essential Listening music lists.  This is today's:

Alan Rickman

Special Guest  DJ Thespian LEGEND, Alan RICKMAN Star of Bottleshock (Just to show this is in some small way connected to wine.)
Ladies aanndd Gentlemen! Tonight only, direct from Broadway, the utterly unique and completely brilliant Alan Rickman, right here in the Dayglo Disco spinning his discs just for you. And you. And you two in the corner. Yes it's Alan Rickman ... NOW I have your attention. Yes, it's the man who brought you Snape in Harry Potter (if you're under 20), Valmont in the RSC's Dangerous Liaisons (if you are grown up), the bad guy in Die Hard, he IS Colonel Brandon, Truly Madly ... oh alright you’ve got the picture ... and masses of other luminous performances on stage and screen. He is, like his namesake Chicken Rickman, sexy, charismatic and very scary. And here he is ... RESPECT ... sashaying up to the turntables with a stack o’ wax under his immaculately cut  armpit -- give it up, if you please, for one of the greatest actors of his and any other generation -- the simply great, the inimitable the fantastic ...Alan RICKMAN!!

---

These are songs to have grown up with:
I Won’t Dance - Fred Astaire                                        
My hero. Completely disciplined, completely free.
I’m Easy - Keith Carradine                                 
From Robert Altman’s great film, Nashville.  The scene has an acting lesson from Lily Tomlin.
Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts - Bob Dylan                                             
10am. Monday morning. RADA student. Our brilliant teacher, June Kemp, gets us moving.
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face - Roberta Flack                                      
Just listen.
Desperado - Langley Schools Music Project
Recorded in a school gym in 1976. The singer is 9 years old.
Dancing in the Street - Martha and The Vandellas            
Just dance.
Real Good For Free - Joni Mitchell                                        
She says it all, really. No comment required.
Coney Island - Van Morrison                                      
Nostalgia about everything. Everywhere.
You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling - The Righteous Brothers                  
Last dance at the party. A red light bulb. The dregs of cheap wine.
Imagination - Little Jimmy Scott                                         
A great jazz singer rediscovered just in time.

---

Thanks to Alan from taking a few minutes from learning his lines and rehearsing Seminar for Broadway. Fascinating list, and illuminating too. Go see it if you can.
Oh, and when we said inimitable, we were exaggerating. In the Proprietor’s experience, AR has one of those voices that actors all over the world absolutely love to imitate. Like Michael Caine and Sean Connery. And Christopher Walken. It’s a compliment.
Anyway, we always love any Rickman performance.  What’s your favourite?
He is the Bee’s Knees. Practice your Rickman with that phrase ... mutter through your teeth with eyes half closed and a kind of hypnotic drone “...heeez the beeez neeez." Good.

And I Read, Too

Just the other day, I told a friend of mine that Jose Saramago is my favorite author.  This weekend, I finished his Seeing, the sort-of companion to Blindness (one of my favorite books of all.)  It was, as all his work is, remarkable.  And though Saramago is my favorite author, my favorite writer is:

Heck, maybe he's my favorite reader, too!

Once I got finished with Seeing, I sped through two more books.  Both were fairly short, but so compelling it was hard for me not to read them.  One was Thunder Dog, about a blind man and his guide dog surviving the 9/11 attacks.  (ANYthing about service dogs --- I'm there.)  The other book was Scattershot, about a family with bipolar disorder.  And "family" here is literal --- both parents, and two of the three children suffer with it.  After all my mental health issues this year, it was both a comfort and a fright to read their struggle.

Knitting does continue.  I restarted Briton's Christmas sweater with a different color yarn --- just wasn't satisfied with my first choice.  I've got just a couple of facecloths to knit for Hannah, and all my knitting for her (so far as I know) will be done.  I'm doing little things for the etsy shop --- tree ornaments, brooches, that sort of thing.  I hope, I hope, I hope I get some traffic this year, because if I thought last year's Christmas was tough. . .  Twelve more months of unemployment have broken the back of this one.

Just Cool Photos

This is my crazy cute daughter at one of her favorite places, an anime convention:

These two men are Strauss and Brahms:

This is a bit of philosophy I'm finding helpful these days:

This is one of my heroes, and the inspiration for this blog's title:

This is a glorious picture.  Even the bear is in awe:

This is the first model hand eye crafts has ever had:

This has pretty much been my year so far:

How you doin'?

Entitled

“Harpo played the right instrument. He was an angel.There was nobody like him, there never will be anybody like him. He was just simply wonderful. He never had a bad word for anybody… not like me.I at least occasionally say something. But Harpo… they don’t make that kind anymore.”
-Gummo Marx

I'm Just Sayin'

Consider Them Our Rules, Too

Harpo Marx Family Rules
1 Life has been created for you to enjoy, but you won't enjoy it unless you pay for it with some good, hard work. This is one price that will never be marked down.
2 You can work at whatever you want to as long as you do it as well as you can and clean up afterwards and you're at the table at mealtime and in bed at bedtime.
3 Respect what the others do. Respect Dad's harp, Mom's paints, Billy's piano, Alex's set of tools, Jimmy's designs, and Minnie's menagerie.
4 If anything makes you sore, come out with it. Maybe the rest of us are itching for a fight, too.
5 If anything strikes you as funny, out with that, too. Let's all the rest of us have a laugh.
6 If you have an impulse to do something that you're not sure is right, go ahead and do it. Take a chance. Chances are, if you don't you'll regret it - unless you break the rules about mealtime and bedtime, in which case you'll sure as hell regret it.
7 If it's a question of whether to do what's fun or what is supposed to be good for you, and nobody is hurt whichever you do, always do what's fun.
8 If things get too much for you and you feel the whole world's against you, go stand on your head. If you can think of anything crazier to do, do it.
9 Don't worry about what other people think. The only person in the world important enough to conform to is yourself.
10 Anybody who mistreats a pet or breaks a pool cue is docked a months pay.