the Dalaverse

I seem to have roped myself into watching the second half of "Titanic" on TNT. The second half's the good stuff anyhow. Although it's even LONGER with all the commercials, and the tape is sitting right in front of me. Honestly, I'm glad to still be able to appreciate this movie beyond the fact that I was twelve and it took over my life. "I'd rather be his whore than your wife." Love. Kate Winslet is so beautiful. Although I have niggling problems with her line readings in spots, and I wonder if it was simply due to inexperience/poor directing, or if she might have done better with her real accent. I don't remember exactly how long she had been in England, but it wouldn't have been a stretch to make Rose essentially English while keeping her mother Ameican.

Thanksgiving in New Jersey was great as always, both the food and the company. Aunt Nancy and Uncle Howard are my favorie. They sat patiently through my rambling England slideshow, and we had a very good conversation about politics at the dinner table. Yes, it IS possible. OMG I love turkey so much, probably because my dad doesn't like it and so we never have it at home (I don't mean cold-cuts, I mean REAL turkey). Today we continued our tradition with the lunch at Murphys in Red Bank, with an absurdly successful shopping trip.

See, Red Bank has all these trendy shops (Restoration Hardware, a TERRIFIC record store, a funky little shop with gag gifts and vintage t-shirts even more expensive that Hot Topic, a store selling -- I shit you not -- $65 Juicy Coutoure track jackets FOR DOGS [we bought Raplhie a doggie cookie]) and expensive antiques. One place we always pop in is this shoe store specializied in comfortable shoes, which is always full of Uggs and other shoes that are too expensive to even be labeled with a price. But today, they were having a sale on their clearance table: three pairs of shoes for the price of one. Now my current pair of clogs, which I love, came from Rack Room three years ago at a whopping twenty bucks. My boots are from Sears, more because I'm really picky about what goes on my feet more than I meant to look at Sears (I spent an entire DAY at the mall), and they were probably around $30. In other words, I have never owned an expensive pair of shoes. So I am super-excited to now own TWO pairs of shoes that cost more than one hundred bucks apiece (one pair is for Christmas; they're sort of boot/clog hybrids, black felt with a thin band of bright Scandinavian-looking stitching around the soles). The other ones, which I wore all day, are simple gray felt clogs, but they're really well-made and comfortable. I know they're just shoes, but it was really exciting. The three pairs of shoes we got would normally total nearly four hundred dollars, but we got them for $135. Tax free! Thank you, Jersey! Now if you can just do something about those brown leather Ugg boots with the pockets (they were v. hot, I assure you) I covet like burning, we'll be totally square.

Anyway. Happy belated Turkey Day, and I'm going to sit here and watch the Titanic sink while staring lovingly at my new shoes.

ETA: HA! I always did have a problem with how many times Rose says Jack's name, and according to imdb, she says it 80 times (compared to his 50 "Rose"s). That is just TOO MANY TIMES. There's some great trivia for this one. Like Kate Winslet flashing Leo DiCaprio the first time they met, as an icebreaker.

ETA2: OH THE BAND. The "Nearer My God to Thee" montage is brilliant. Not subtle, but beautiful.