Here comes the prequel you didn't even know you wanted.

"That's right. I'm fabulous."

So, here's the deal and the deal is this: Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh! There may be a Downton Abbey spinoff headed our way. It will be a prequel and tell the story of Lord Grantham shamelessly pursuing his future wife like something out of my favorite Edith Wharton novel.

My mind is wild with delightful possibilities. Who will play the young Dowager Countess? Woe unto that actress if she does not adequately shoulder the crushing expectations we all have for our favorite character. In fact, can't they just use some sort of CGI to age-regress Maggie Smith, for surely nothing else will do.

What other familiar faces will we see? Young Carson? Young Mrs. Hughes? Young Mrs. Patmore? As a kitchen maid herself! Aaaahhhh! I'm betting a young Mr. Bates will show up as well, having fought with Lord Grantham in the Boer Wars. Perhaps even Baby Thomas will appear, having materialized out of a cloud of sulfur.

"Evil. And born this way."

One thing I can guarantee: the clothes will be fabulous. Nothing in the history of fashion can match the Gilded Age in my opinion.

I really shouldn't get too excited just yet since they still have to write the thing, cast it, film it, show it in Britain, wait a punishingly long amount of time, and then finally show it in the US, but I cannot help myself. Something has to pass the time whilst I wait for three Hobbit movies.

Saturday Improvements...

Today I decided to make some improvements to my apartment...

Sauce Day! Improves both the smell of my apartment
and the contents of my fridge.

I decided to take this blank wall in my closet and put it to better use.
(I also feel the need to tell you that the feather boa
is part of a Halloween costume.)

One inexpensive Grundtal rack from Ikea...

...and it's Scarf City and I'm the mayor.
Better storage and the wall looks prettier.

So I applied that formula to my kitchen
and threw a pot rack up on the wall.

Now I'm off to the AFI theater to see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, because once was not enough.

Wanderlust

Exactly one year ago today I was packing for Germany. What a shame I'm not doing something similar tonight.

Documentaries

There's a lot to put up with in this city (traffic, hot weather, traffic...) so I'm concentrating on the good things like cool restaurants, good theater, and an abundance of independent movie houses. Recently I saw a couple of documentaries that had everything a good doc should: fascinating story, good film making, and people who are totally crazeballs.

First up: The Queen of Versailles

This was originally going to be the story of billionaire real estate mogul David Siegel and his trophy wife Jackie as they attempted to build the largest single-family home in America. Part way through construction, the housing bubble popped and the Siegels' had to, as Jane Austen put it in her magnificent novel Persuasion, "retrench."

Watch as they try to scale back their ostentatious lifestyle with their dream home sitting unfinished, languishing on the over-glutted housing market. The filmmaker was with the family for three years, so they became comfortable with her and they really let their guard down. It's a fascinating look inside their world.

And now, check this out: The Imposter

If someone pitched this story to you, you'd be like, "Oh please, even the Brothers Grimm would find that unrealistic," but it's actually completely, totally true. In the early 90s, 13-year-old Nicholas Barclay went missing in Texas. Three years later his family got a call from Interpol telling them Nicholas had been found in Spain. The family welcomed him back with open arms. The problem is, the man they welcomed back was not 16-year-old Nicholas. He was a 23-year-old Frenchman named Frederic Bourdin, who had different colored hair and eyes than Nicholas and spoke with a French accent.

Why did the family unquestioningly welcome Bourdin into their lives? Were they so grief stricken they wanted to believe? Or did they have their own sinister reasons for not exposing the lie?

This documentary is so amazing. I watched with my mouth hanging open, going "No way!" the whole time. The best part is that Bourdin participated in the doc, detailing exactly how he got into the situation and how he deceived everyone from the Spanish police to Nicholas' own mother.

Definitely put this on your Films to Watch list. I would not steer you wrong.

The Americans are coming! And so are the Irish!

New Downton Abbey trailers! Feast your eyes!






So, what have we learned? I cannot wait to see The Dowager Countess square off with her son's no-nonsense American mother-in-law. Also, the Bransons are visiting from Ireland, and how will the former chauffeur handle being in the house as a guest? How will the servants handle it? Oh, things are going to be awkward for my dear Carson. And might we see some happiness for poor Edith?

Apparently the Crawleys have begun hiring footmen from the NBA draft list, and things have gotten chilly between Thomas and O'Brien. Ooh, there's no enemy like a former friend. And why is everyone crying? I'm half afraid that if Thomas cries I might start to feel sympathy for him and I just don't think I could bear that. I much prefer to loathe him.

And for the hardest part: "January 2013." January. The vicious cruelty. You know, the Brits are getting to see it this month. How's that for fair? I think it's payback for the Revolution or something. I shall just have to make do by concentrating on the premiere date for The Hobbit.

Eyes peeled, ladies!

So, after the Strayers’ Labor Day picnic, five of us headed out for a round of The Wal-Mart Game. If you forgot, the rules are simple. Each team chooses ten objects, we switch carts, teams must return the objects to their rightful places, and then return to the finish line, in this case the display of corn on the cob near the produce section.

Team Zack/Kris upon our arrival. Note the time on
the screen behind them. Yeah, we're hardcore.

Team Liz/Lex/Ali, ready to go.

Things started out rough for Liz, Lex, and me. We found one item fairly quickly and then settled in for a long drought. We had seven or eight items left when we saw Kris and Zack and, to our horror, noticed they were down to one. They had even ditched their cart! Oh, the hubris! It looked as though a humiliating defeat, the likes of Napoleon in Russia, was in store for us. At that point our goal was just to get down to two or three items before Kris and Zack declared victory, so that we could at least hold our heads up on the ride home.

Some of the items that drove us mad: Cupcake jewelry (Yes, you read that correctly. As in jewelry to adorn cupcakes, not people jewelry that happened to be shaped like cupcakes.), a hose coupler that was NOT labeled as a hose coupler (or as anything else for that matter), and a bottle of mineral oil meant for the care of bamboo objects.

We were all over that store, to no avail. Once we found the pencil case in the cereal aisle (nice logic, Wal-Mart), we returned once again to the clearance aisles with their messy shelves and acrylic bins. Alexa growled, “Eyes peeled, ladies!” like a drill sergeant. It was past 2:00 AM and I was so over this game at that point that I began to tear the aisle apart like Marilyn Monroe looking for a Valium. I was certain Kristen had chosen something from one of the bins and then buried its twin, so I began to shake them like a British nanny. It must've been impressive because for a moment Liz and Lex just stood and stared at me and then Alexa took out her phone and began to film me. It was fate, for when Alexa turned off her camera, she looked up and saw the cupcake jewelry hanging right behind her.

And then we were on a roll. The hose coupler! The flag pole bracket! The Cinderella Lipsmacker duo with bonus keychain holder! When we finally found our final item, the bamboo oil, Alexa dropped to her knees on the floor of Wal-Mart and threw her arms in the air in victory. 

Then we hightailed it to the corn.

Victory!

Team Winner!

In the end Kris and Zack were undone by that one final item, a Batman keychain/pencil sharpener. Bruce Wayne can always be relied upon. It was the first item we picked up. Liz grabbed it off the shelf and said, “How about this? You probably wouldn’t look for a keychain in the jewelry section.”

Well played, Mrs. B. Well played.

Felled by the Dark Knight. Or at least his keychain.