Some MC Masala columns, on hair (it's okay) and raisins (better). An awesome Robert Haas poem.

My mom was in town. She loves to watch figure skating, so I got figure skating videos off YouTube and Google Video to show her. We also watched a bunch of Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies, e.g., "Follow the Fleet" and "Flying Down to Rio," although for some of them we just fast-forwarded through non-dancing scenes. One fun line in "Broadway Melody of 1940" did reward our attention: "I thought you were a bill collector." "Collector? Well, I used to collect stamps....before people stopped writing to me."

My mom invariably calls Fred Astaire "Fred Stario" or "Fred Rogers".

We did get to hear Irving Berlin's crazy Yam song from "Carefree" and his "Get Thee Behind Me, Satan" tune in "Follow the Fleet." There's some surreal mirror/ghost stuff in "Carefree" and "Flying Down to Rio." Because we fast-forwarded past the entire plot of "Carefree," we missed a hypnosis arc. "Flying Down to Rio" includes a scene where white characters crash-land on what they think is a deserted island, then they see black men and assume they're barbarian natives, then it turns out they're in Haiti near a golf resort and a black guy with a golf club and a British accent directs them to the airport. What I am saying is, just because a film is sixty years old does not mean it is less freaky than "Adaptation."

The last film in the Mother's Day/Weekend Marathon: the surprisingly good "Holiday", starring Hepburn and Grant, made in 1938, yet not horribly sexist. I had hopes for it from the moment I saw George Cukor directed it, though the sight of "based on a play by Philip 'The Philadelphia Story' Barry" lowered them. Wacky supporting characters, a drunk brother acting like King Lear's Fool, and class politics!

Now to stop being boring, finish a press release rewrite, and go home for another hundred pages of Quicksilver.