Happy St. Patty’s day!
Watched American Splendor tonight, what an enjoyable film. I had heard about in the New York Times Magazine, back in December when I had a trial subscription. I bought the movie Sunday, sight-unseen. The tagline for the movie is “Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.” And so is this movie — so instead of butchering a synopsis, I’ll quote from the back of the box:

AMERICAN SPLENDOR is the story of a little-known working-class everyman, and first-class curmudgeon, Harvey Pekar. Harvey Pekar finds love, family and a creative voice through the underground comic books he creates, but still can’t manage to find the quicker supermarket checkout line.
Pekar, played by Paul Giamatti, is a frustrated file clerk at a V.A. Hospital, but also a comic book fan who befriends the young illustrator Robert Crumb and is soon inspired to create comic books based on his own life, entitled AMERICAN SPLENDOR. Along the bumpy journey, he meets, marries and falls for Joyce, and admiring comic book seller, played by Hope Davis.
Also appearing in the movie are the real Harvey and Joyce, comic book renderings of the couple, and cameos by some of Harvey’s closest friends. In this truly original, ultimately heartwarming film, you will find yourself deeping immersed in a world of AMERICAN SPLENDOR.

And indeed it was heartwarming. Quite an amazing film, really — very original and engaging; the description really doesn’t do it justice. The film has a few surreal scenes with both video and cartoon in the same frame — think Aha’s “Take Me On” (listen to a retro midi), but cooler. “But Krishen,” you ask, “how is that possible?”
You’re just gonna have to trust me on this one. Or don’t. Check it out next time you’re at the video store; I think you’ll enjoy it.
In other news, I’m totally procrastinating packing! A company car picks me, Jeff, my boss, and three or four folks from hardware up tomorrow at noon, then it’s an hour north drive to Tampa and a 2-hour flight to San Antonio. San Antonio, as you may know, is home to the historic Battle of the Alamo. Was talking to Dad tonight over iChat about the trip, and he mentioned I should learn the words to the Marty Robbins‘ song, Ballad of the Alamo. So, I bought it. Ah, the joys of free music.
What have you thought of the plant shots, by the way? Today’s pic is a “Wandering Jew” (what a funny-strange name), and is the last in the series I took from the garden in Amy’s lanai Sunday. Unfortunately I haven’t been out with the camera as much as I would have liked, but hopefully that will change soon. 😀
This is likely my last entry before I hop on the plane; if anyone would like a postcard, just email me your address, I’ll do my best to get online during the trip. Otherwise, if I don’t hear from you, hope the next eight days treats you wonderfully, and see you on the 27th!

So for dinner tonight, I ended up using Tigereyess’ suggestion from the last entry and cooked the squash by itself in the oven, scooped out the “spaghetti strands” with a fork, added a little butter and salt and pepper and mmmm, lovely! Random factoid: yellow squashes smell a lot like corn. Weird. I think next time, though, I’ll use bigger squashes; these ones were mostly seed! Still tasted great though.
Oh, and Hilary was kind enough to write up an original squash soup recipe for me in a text file and IM’ed it to me, so I thought I’d take the liberty to repost it here for all 🙂
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Hilary’s Squash Soup
i recommend using butternut squash – easy to peel and has good flavour. acorn squash is good too, but hard to peel with all the ridges. i haven’t tried spaghetti squash, but i know of other good recipes for it… just not off the top of my head
recipe
1 butternut squash – pic a pot then make sure the squash will fit.
peel squash and chop up, put in pot with oil (tbsp or 2) and begin frying. you can add onions and garlic if you like at this point. go easy on the garlic -very powerful.
add enough water (and white wine is good too!) to cover the squash
boil until squash is soft.
if you have a hand mixer use it to puree. if you don’t ummm be creative -use a potato masher or put in blender/food processor?? i have a hand mixer -they’re great.
add some herbs and a bit of butter. turn off heat and let the soup cool. once cool add some cream or milk.
add any other flavors you’d like. butternut squash is pretty creamy so you shouldn’t need to add any more dairy/soy products.
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Anyhow, it sounds excellent, I shall definitely have to obtain a blender/mixer and try it out.
Guess what? On Thursday, for work, I’m going to San Antonio for 8 days! We’re doing a big customer installation out there and I’ve been asked to come along for support. That should be fun! Needless to say I probably won’t be updating much during that time, but I shall be taking lots of pictures, so I hope to see you all back here March 28th 🙂
Any of you ever been to San Antonio before?
Update, 12:48am: Killing the Music: Don Henley lays out the scape of the music industry in Tuesday’s Washington Post (via voxpopgirl). I can’t help but be reminded of Courtney Love’s excellent article in Salon on the topic — nearly four years ago. Wow. I’d love to see this get more attention.

So I’ve definitely had less busy weekends; worked five hours extra Friday, 10 Saturday. Slept in Sunday until about noon; skipped Ultimate and went to Bradenton beach with Amy, where we threw the disc around for a bit. That was fun, definitely the downtime I needed.
So I need your guys’ help; last night I made this with one of these, but I’ve still got those three left, and even though I only paid $1.94 for the four of them, I’d really hate for them to go to waste — can anyone recommend a good (preferably edible) way to use ’em?