The breeze

It's gotten warm lately, but there's a chill in the air today and it's so nice to feel the breeze through my open window, even though I'm still indoors.

Also - I don't know that this is happy, per se - but I was really pleased to see this well-deserved takedown of the company line at The Plain Dealer. The owners are doing some really lousy things right now, and getting away with it. I'm glad it isn't also going on under the radar.

Spellbound

I've been to the Scripps National Spelling Bee eight times, and I somehow had not seen the documentary Spellbound until tonight.

If you, too, haven't seen it, it's available on Tubi for free and documents the path of eight students to the 1999 Bee. It's, uh, more casually racist in the beginning than I would have expected. But then it's a delight. And knowing that I'm not going to the Bee next month (like many other things, it's not happening as originally scheduled, if at all) it was really spectacular to see it in action 21 years ago. The film cameras! The hair! The clothing choices!

There were a few things in particular that delighted me, having been a part of the program for the better part of a decade:

• The calming tones of Mary Brooks, the head judge, and glimpses of other judges.
• Dr. Bailly, then the associate pronouncer and now the head pronouncer, asking "What's a Corolla?" in response to a speller's question. (This is totally in character.)
• The eventual 2000 winner, George Thampy, as an 11-year-old who went by "Georgie." He's also a judge now.
• Seeing the childhood bedroom and rivals of Nupur Lala, the winner, who I became friendly with after meeting her as an adult.
• The amazing, incredible, brilliant kids trying so hard and with such verve.
• The words! Zwieback was in an alphabet book I made in fourth grade; I swear I heard xeropthalmia (which also has a fourth grade reference for me); and of course kookaburra, he of the old gum tree.

(Dr. Bailly more recently, gettin' jiggy with it.)

This was not my favorite day of the quarantine, so those smiles were more appreciated than they would even have been on other days.

I've also been listening to Fountains of Wayne after learning that Adam Schlesinger died today. You probably know Stacy's Mom, but there's so much more that he did -- including writing That Thing You Do! and many of the songs from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. It's a loss and I'm bummed about it, but glad that I'm able to listen to his music and that a little bit of him can live on.

Red handed

I just had to share this story, about how Genius Lyrics coded its apostrophes to track when someone (in this case, Google) copied them elsewhere online. It's just fascinating, and the choice for Morse Code translation made me smile.

It makes me happy

When people who I like like each other. And there's been a good bit of that in recent weeks.

Super awesome dark chocolate also makes me happy. Yum.

A happy 2010 to all y'all!

It's the only reason I watched it

On my flight to Puerto Rico this morning (which, in itself, is another very, very pleasantest thing!), the in-flight movie was called "I Hate Valentine's Day." Although the movie itself was pretty lame, there was one scene where the leading lady -- who was obviously on some combination of lithium and ecstasy throughout first 4/5th of the film -- angrily throws something mushy (I couldn't tell what it was) against a wall, screaming, "Valentine's Day BLOWS!!!!" I almost cheered audibly; the change in attitude was a complete 180 from her previous "Love is wonderful, dating is so much fun, Valentine's Day is the best day EVER!!" mentality.
Isn't bitterness fun??? :-D