It's here!

Behold! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AF-S!


Or, as it is known in my family, "the chubby little baby lens." This nickname can refer to the fact that the lens itself is small and chubby, or that it is an excellent tool for photographing chubby little babies. Check out that f/stop! After reading many, many articles about f/stops, I still cannot explain to you what they mean, and I'm not convinced anyone actually can. But James assures me that the 1.4 f/stop is absolutely fabulous, and I choose to believe him.

I spent months coveting James' lens, while lamenting the fact that it didn't jive with my D40. Now, Nikon has finally released a compatible version and I jumped on that thing like a hyena on a wildebeest carcass. Isn't it adorable?


Even more adorable? All the fabulous photos I'll be taking of little Julesy with this. I cannot wait!

Dallas ruins everything!

This week was not so stellar for me in Fantasy Football and, as is usually the case, most of the blame rests with the Dallas Cowboys. They screw up everything!

But first, just when I thought my Ronnie Brown's 41-point performance last week might be the season's best, Brett Farve had to go and totally go off his meds this week, racking up an insane 45 points. Congrats to Jamie who was the happy recipient there. What a performance!

In other aforementioned news, I loathe the Dallas Cowboys. Like the fool that I am, I picked them in both my work survivor league and the cousin suicide league. I should have known they'd go out of their way to lose, and at home no less, just to stick it to a Steelers fan. They are so spitefully selfish. Mark and I are now out of the suicide poll and the prize will go to either Mr. or Mrs. Livermore.

And now all my hopes for the week rest in the capable hands of Mr. Hines Ward. If he can just rack up ten fantasy points for me tonight, I will beat Brian and clinch the division lead. Hines, I believe in you! You can do it!

The music ignites the night with passionate fire.

This past weekend, I took a second trip to Pittsburgh, this time with Jen and our parents to see Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova in concert. If you've seen the film Once, you know what amazing musicians they are. And if you haven't seen Once, you are a fool who needs a Netflix subscription.

To start the evening, Mom and Dad treated us to dinner at their favorite place in the theater district: Tambellini's, a charming little Italian place that is a Pittsburgh classic. Tambellini's is the place where they invented fried zucchini. Oh, so delicious! They do it in a tempura batter with a wonderful horseradish sauce on the side. I am spoiled for fried zucchini anywhere else.



Then it was on to the Byham. After a not-so-enjoyable opening act, Glen and Marketa emerged and started the evening with their wonderful cover of Van Morrison's "Into the Mystic." Then they played their Oscar winning song "Falling Slowly." Oh, they sounded so terrific, just as brilliant in person as they do on their CDs. We had great seats in the first row of the balcony, and the Byham is such a nice, small theater; it was perfect for this type of concert. In fact, at one point Glen walked to the edge of the stage and performed "Say It To Me Now" without a microphone or anything, just him and his guitar, and his voice echoing off the theater walls sounded so amazing. Here's one of the clandestine pics I took. It didn't turn out so well in the low light. If only I'd had my D40, they'd have been awesome.



Glen is so charming and funny. He was telling little stories and jokes all evening, and he and Marketa were telling the stories behind the songs and what the songs were about. And they kept asking us to sing along, and the crowd was just wild for them. It was so much fun. Julia was not pleased that we took her mother away for the evening, but I know she will forgive me. She is such a generous little pumpkin.

The narration crackles and pops with incendiary wit.

This past weekend, I went to see Anthony Rapp’s one man show Without You, which is based on his memoir of the same name. I went with Melis and her former students Taylor, Lauren, and Sandy. Afterward, we sprinted 14 blocks (14!!!) to the Cheesecake Factory (portobello burger – yum!) for dinner with Eric, who is prone to hyperbole, and Andy, who can run like a gazelle.

Before the show, when we were standing outside the theater waiting for Lauren, Anthony came walking up the street to the stage door. Sandy looked up and said, "Is that him? I think that’s him!" We all turned and Melis said, "Yeah, that’s him." It was one of those moments where you could be really cool and say "hi" or "break a leg" or something, but instead I just looked away and squealed like the dork I am. Well played, Stombaugh.

The show was all about the making of Rent, meeting Jonathan Larson, hearing those songs for the first time, creating a cultural phenomenon, losing Jonathan Larson, and about Anthony’s relationship with his mother, by all accounts a sweet little firecracker of a lady. The show was great. We had fabulous seats (I could have reached out and touched the stage) and he sang lots of Rent songs as well as some new ones he wrote for the show. It was cool to hear him sing "Without You" and "One Song Glory" because his character doesn’t sing those songs in the show. He also sang an early draft of the lyrics for "Rent" and that was cool to hear how the song evolved.

Afterward we met Anthony and got him to sign our tickets and Melis’ book. Just like when I met him in New York, I told him that I love Adventures in Babysitting, once again hoping he’d respond with "Ya think?" and once again being disappointed. (Well, we can’t have it all. However, this will, in no way, deter me from dropping to one knee and intoning, "Oh Thor, mighty god of thunder," should I ever meet Vincent D’Onofrio.) Anthony was very kind and gracious. We told him about our cousin Kristen and my friend Chris who are big fans of his, and he was very sweet listening to me prattle on.

The show’s run is finished now, but Anthony hopes to tour with it in the future and do a run in NYC. If you love Rent, definitely see it if you get the chance. If you don’t love Rent… well, what’s wrong with you?

Marry me, Ronnie Brown!

This week was a fabulous one for my fantasy football team! My much derided draft pick, Ronnie Brown, vindicated me big time. He kicked 41 types of butt, and racked me up a point for each of them. The dude is a running back, and he threw a touchdown pass yesterday. Genius! The Giants, in a highly stressful situation (for me), managed to pull out a win by the hairs of their chinny chin chins, allowing me to stay in the Suicide League. And depending on how Philip Rivers performs for Mark tonight (hopefully well, but not too well), I may clinch this week's immunity prize. An excellent week, overall.

However, in wide receiver news, Randy Moss continues to prove his utter uselessness. Does anybody want him? Because right now I am ready to trade him for, like, a glazed donut and two Sharpie markers.

I am excessively diverted!

"Dearest, lovliest Elizabeth, what the heck is going on here?"

I am re-reading the magnificent Pride and Prejudice for the who-even-knows-how-many-th time, so I’m also watching the film adaptations. (BBC version: pure bliss. Knightley/MacFadyen version: did they even read the book?) But I had never seen the film made in 1940. I knew a bit about it and was certain I’d hate it.

First off, the costumes were a mess. The clothes were 30 years off, and in some cases 130 years off. In one scene, Miss Bingley was actually draped in sequins! Another found her dripping in diamonds at an afternoon garden party. I settled into my sofa, fully prepared to gleefully roast this total disaster. But then something happened. Early in the film, there is one hilarious scene which finds Mrs. Bennett and Lady Lucas (each desperate to exhort her husband to visit Mr. Bingley immediately in order to better claim him as a future son-in-law) engaged in a frantic carriage race, shrieking at their respective coachmen:

“Pass them, Higgins! Pass them!”
“Overtake them, Jennings! Overtake them!”

And with that, they had me.

I am mortified to report that this movie utterly charmed me, which is most inconvenient as I was quite prepared to despise it. I was so eager to be spiteful and malicious about its lack of parity with the novel, but the complete lack of parity is what saved it. This film throws off the novel text with reckless abandon, which allowed me to enjoy it as an old movie that just happens to share a title with one of my favorite books.

Indeed, there is almost no resemblance to Austen’s masterpiece. There is a character named Lizzy and one named Darcy, but they bear no likeness to Austen’s creations. I found Darcy to be kind, polite, and charming throughout (quite a feat considering he’s portrayed by Laurence Olivier, an actor whom I loathe) and Lizzy was rather rude and not at all witty, which could have been accomplished so easily by simply having her speak Jane Austen's dialogue. She’s also played by Greer Garson, looking every bit of her 36 years. Ludicrous. Jane is a bit of a manhunting schemer, Mary is quite hilarious, and Wickham has a facial hair situation going on that makes it impossible to take him seriously. And horror of horrors, Lady Catherine turns out to be quite awesome and a bit of a Cupid for our “young” lovers. Yeah, I… have no idea.

And oh, the American accents! The opening titles make it clear the story takes place in “old England” yet none of the principles speaks with a British accent, despite the fact that the two lead actors are actually British. Olivier sounds more like a Czech immigrant. Perhaps Darcy came to Pemberley by way of Prague.

But! There is so much hilarity to be enjoyed. In addition to the carriage race, we get to see Kitty and Lydia doing shots (shots!) with the officers, leading to Kitty being drunk as a freshman at a frat party; Colonel Fitzwilliam in a kilt, sporting a moustache that rivals Wickham's in terms of sheer hilarity; and one truly horrifying scene in which Mr. Collins (here, the librarian at Rosings) stands before the Bennett family, declares his intentions of taking one of the Bennett girls as his bride, and proceeds to look them over like cattle at a county fair.

As a connoisseur of human folly herself, I think Elizabeth Bennett would be excessively diverted by this spectacle. I know I was.

Oh, and by the way...

...I still hate Air France.

Just in case you thought my feelings had changed on the subject, I wanted to disabuse you of that notion.