I was over my parents’ house yesterday helping my dad with his computer. I opened donnaville in IE and I was really surprised to see how it was riddled with layout errors. The WordPress theme I had been using was pretty old. I looked to see if there was an update to it but no such luck. What to do? What to do? Even though I use FireFox and donnaville looks fine in it, there are people out there using IE and I can’t have my Internet outpost looking shabby! Guess it’s time for a new theme. I whipped this baby up rather quickly using the fSpring widgets theme. What do you think? Is it okay? Is it readable? If you don’t like it, let me know. Maybe I’ll just go back to the old theme and to heck on IE. I dunno.

Looking over this new theme, I am really surprised at the sheer length of my archives column. I’ve been doing this a very long time. I can’t believe I’ve been able to produce so much on so little. I remember awhile ago Charles had an entry in which he gave a template of his typical post. I think if I was to do it, it would like like this:

I [generic content]. I [generic content]. I [generic content]. Stupid remark for conclusion, probably beginning with I.

I watched most of the Oscars last night. That was not my intention. Last year I turned it on, caught Alec Baldwin’s smug face and had to turn it off. Quickly. Very quickly. Yesterday I had dinner at my parents’ and afterward my mom and I were sitting in the living room and it seemed like a good time to put on the Oscars and catch the opening number. I love musicals so I got a kick out of it. And I was able to handle the acceptance speeches better than normal because I kept seeing old actresses from the past that got me excited: “SOFIA LOREN!!! EVA MARIE SAINT!” The one thing that I found extremely silly and I couldn’t help but scoff at were the number of celebrities that kept getting teary-eyed! What is wrong with these people? I will tell you. They are drama queens. And it’s a good thing they are actors because the real world would whip their cry baby asses. My favorite moment was when Japanese filmmaker, Kunio Kato (I looked him up on Google) won for his animated short, La Maison en Petits Cubes and he said, in very halting English, “Thank you very much. Thank you, pencil. Thank you, all my staff. Thank you, academy. . . . Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.” He totally cracked me up!

I missed the very end so I didn’t get to see Mr. Sean Penn calling the crowd a bunch of commie, homo-loving, sons of guns. I do miss the old days when calling someone a commie… was a bad thing. Yes I am a little ashamed I watched the Oscars but I enjoyed Hugh Jackman’s song and dance routines– he kept me entertained.

Isn’t Dave Foley the spitting image of Zooey Deschanel?

Over the weekend I watched the movie Hancock for a second time. It’s not that I loved it so much I had to watch it again but when I saw it the first time I knew pookie would love it so I watched it again with him. And truthfully, I really did enjoy it. I love superheroes! The one thing I really liked is how Charlize looked like a super heroine even without having to don spandex. I kept trying to figure out what it was that made her look so Wonder Woman-ish. Unfortunately I think it has to do with her being breathtakingly gorgeous. I was really hoping the reason was more attainable like wearing clothes that she bought at Ann Taylor Loft— that way I could look like a Super Heroine too!

Yesterday I had my third interview with a company that I quite like– I wore my kickass wrap dress that I bought at Macy’s last year on sale. I also put my hair in hot rollers in the morning so I could achieve that Mary Tyler Moore, Paula Prentiss, Mrs Emma Peel FLIP. The meeting went well. Apparently I said the right things since the owner just called me and said he would be calling me later in the week with an offer. What am I saying? It had nothing to do with what I said and everything to do with my flip, my wrap and how I tried to channel the vibes of a SUPER HEROINE. 🙂 I hope to gosh this is the right move for me. It’s not like there’s a lot of stuff out there right now. But even more so, I am honestly going crazy not working. Truth is, I think this is a good opportunity. So let’s see how it continues to unfold, I don’t have it yet.

This really freaks me out– I found this URL listed in my referrers list. It is a direct copy of Donnaville’s homepage from August 2008. Why is it there? What is this person doing with it? I went to the root of the site but it isn’t a Web page– it’s more like someone’s using it for online storage. I am not finding any email address where I can write and ask him to cease and desist. Should I just ignore it? What should I do?

I have a couple hobbies. I just recently came upon a new one; it’s called geocaching. Here’s a description:

Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment.

Lisa and I spent President’s Day tromping around the local park with our TomTom Ones trying to find hidden tupperware boxes. It was fun. I am sure we will do it again.

My other hobby isn’t as structured as geocaching nor does it have any strong sense of community or environment. Basically I enjoy getting drunk and surfing Youtube. Just the other day I opened a bottle of Three Buck Chuck and poured myself a glass. I clicked on Youtube and started some free association searching. Valentine’s Day was coming up and I wanted to find some goopy, goofy love scenes. I found myself watching Dolly Parton singing I will Always Love you to Burt Reynold’s in The Greatest Little Whorehouse in Texas:

Gosh I love this movie! And I totally love this scene! It’s so romantic! (Too bad the very last bit is cut off the clip above)

I started thinking of other romantic scenes and tried queuing up Hugh Grant in Three Weddings and A Funeral where he tells Andi MacDowell, “…in the immortal words of David Cassidy, I think I love you.” Unfortunately I couldn’t find this scene but I did find David Cassidy in tight silver pants:

I tried to continue on the path of romantic scenes but I veered off and did searches on The Night Porter, Water Drops on Burning Rocks, and Querelle. I don’t know what it is about Fassbinder and me. He’s like a drug to me– a depressant. I drank more wine and tried to think about beauty. Next thing I know I am typing Rudolph Nureyev into the search box and watching him perform on the Muppet Show. Can you believe this clip? It’s Miss Piggy raping Rudolph Nureyev:

Who thought of this? Is it just me or is that really sick?

I kept searching around but my memory at this point becomes hazy. I don’t know what other videos I watched. All I can say is Youtubing under the influence is fun and I recommend it to young and old!

Found the movie The Snows of Kilimanjaro in a 75% off sale bin at Walmart. There was a $1 sticker on it. I paid .25 for it. Gave it to pookie for Valentine’s Day (amongst other things). We read the short story when we were on the cruise ship to Bermuda back in July. The movie drastically departed from the original story. It was fleshed out with material from other Hemingway’s novels as well as his own life. The best part, the end, was totally removed. Considering how much I like movies which feature characters with limb infections, I wasn’t terribly fond of this one. I was surprised to see Hildegard Knef in a small role in the film. She was a German actress — rather similar to Marlene Dietrich although Knef came a little bit later. Both recorded songs and both had very deep, smoky voices.

I found this song Knef did on Youtube. It feels light years ahead of 1971.

Maybe it’s just the lyrics:
The dollar is climbing, the dollar is falling
Inflation, stagflation
Yes, yes, I know you know…

On Sunday I noticed that the (blonde) woman on the cover of the Parade magazine looks just like Hildegard Knef. How is it I go years without thinking of her and suddenly she’s everywhere to me?

Well I think she looks like Knef.

Searching around Rhapsody for her recordings, I found a pretty awesome album: The In-Kraut Vol. 3 Hip Shaking Grooves Made In Germany 1967-1974 Don’t get the idea it’s German Schlager music, it’s not– it’s actually really good stuff. Unfortunately Rhapsody doesn’t have vol. 1 or 2.

I WANT YOU TO LISTEN TO ME AND LISTEN TO ME GOOD! I am not going to say this again! I did NOT dream about having sexual relations with that President! These allegations are false!

Andrew Jackson is a different story.

My house is in dire need of some dusting and vacuuming.  I have a hard time motivating myself to clean so what I do is I queue up a bunch of songs on Rhapsody and then I dance around and clean.  It makes it more fun.  I opened up Rhapsody and added a bunch of Tina Turner songs to the mixer.  Private Dancer started to play.  Listening to it, I flashed back to when I was a little girl.  Back then I took the lyrics and video so literally.  “I’m your Private Dancer, a dancer for money, I’ll do what you want me to do.”  I thought this meant she would do the twist or polka or even the hokey pokey, name any dance and TINA COULD DO IT!  And really, thinking about it, why not?  In Pat Benatar’s video, “Love is a Battlefield,” Pat was a teenage runaway who went to the big city and got a job being a private dancer.  She worked at a nightclub where she slow-danced with men for money.  It always seemed strange to me how at the end of the video she and the other private dancers rebelled against their boss.  Even Tina was obviously very sad in her video.  Why were they so upset?  It seemed like such an easy way of making money.  You got to wear crazy clothing with lots of tulle and dance around!  What’s not to like? I figured they were upset because the men they were dancing with were unattractive and had bad breath.  I don’t know when it hit me that dancing wasn’t the only thing on their dance card.   I liken this bolt of clarity to the time I realized Lou Ferigno and Bill Bixby weren’t the same person.

Love is a Battlefield Video:

And here’s the link to Tina’s Private Dancer video.  Embedding was disabled.

I am getting better. I didn’t snort when the Yoga instructor said to relax our butts and crotches.

Here’s a really horrible thing that I hate to admit but I am going to just so maybe I can purge it from my brain: I think my Yoga instructor has fake boobs. Why? They are too big for her frame and too full for her age. It seems so odd to me, being into Yoga and having fake boobs. One would think if a person is into Yoga then they would be into naturalness and not silicone. Or not. Or maybe she just has preternaturally nice boobs. Maybe Yoga helped. All the more reason for me to continue on this path.

Here’s a video of Elvis doing Yoga! (And singing about it too!)

Do you recognize the Yoga instructor? It’s Elsa Lanchester! She is best known as the Bride Of Frankenstein. If you are more of a Beach Party Movie fan like me then you’ll remember her as Aunt Wendy in Pajama Party. She was married to Charles Laughton until he died. I can’t help but wonder about that union. Perhaps it served a purpose to her in some way. Who knows.

Here she is as Aunt Wendy (with Annette Funicello and Tommy Kirk, who shared quite a bit in common with her hubby, Charles) and as Frankenstein’s Bride:

The other day I logged in to Rhapsody’s Online Player and found they had changed the interface. Initially I was excited because the new look was much cleaner but then I found certain functions I used to use were now missing. The Shuffle and Repeat buttons are gone! This means when I queue up a playlist, I have to listen to it from first song to last song. Or if I queue up a couple albums, they have to play in the order I added them. THIS IS RIDICULOUS! I want the songs to play out of order! If I wanted to listen to an entire album song after song, I’d put a vinyl record on my turntable! I contacted Rhapsody support and they have told me with this new version of the Rhapsody Online Player, the Shuffle Repeat buttons have been removed. They may add this functionality back in future releases. I simply cannot fathom how anyone could have okayed the removal of these functions! Perhaps I could see them doing it to cause people to upgrade to a paid subscription account, but I AM A PAYING SUBSCRIBER! Am I wrong to believe that you do not remove functionality from applications? You add to it but you don’t remove core functionality. And if they are going to remove something so integral I think they should refund our money or at least a portion of it. But that ain’t gonna happen. I am really disappointed.