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[Matt H.]

Yes, I'm hoping my copy of NEW YORK, NEW YORK arrives today. The script has always been the problem with the film, but DeNiro's selfish, nasty character doesn't bother me at all. I've known lots of unworthy guys who were loved body and soul by women who should have known better, but they usually stay with the men instead of doing what Liza does in the film.

And the score is so wonderful with the new songs and the mix of old big band standards that carping aside, I do like the film a lot.

I am still livid, however, that MGM persists in releasing 1.66:1 films in non-anamorphic transfers.

[Ben]

Donald has a nice show this week, full of old standards and some obscure things like a number from Shogun, all in the name of love, or at least Valentine's Day.

[Matt H.]

When I bought the house where I'm currently living, the entire kitchen had to be gutted. It was a total loss with pine tree wallpaper, appliances sticking out into the floor so far that you could not walk a straight line from the side door entrance to the door to the dining room. The cabinetry was unsufficient, and none of the appliances which came with the sale were worth having.

So, my partner and I found a guy who specialized in kitchen renovations; we sat down with him and planned a kitchen that would have cabinetry built specifically for the space, and I have to say it was the wisest investment I made in this house. The kitchen functions like a dream, and the cabinets were built with wonderful features that are totally unique utilizing every inch of space.

[Rodzinski]

Sounds like it could have been a candidate on the America's Ugliest Kitchen show on TLC a couple weeks back. Although you could not have beaten the winner, which was a kitchen that someone had covered entirely, appliances and all, with a maroon velvet. Truly hideous.

[Rodzinski]

Being a renter my whole adult life, I have not had the opportunity to do too much renovation aside from painting. I did have a victory when I convinced The Gal that this disgusting bookshelf in the trash outside our building could be rehabilitated. Even I had my doubts as it was covered with filth and kids' stickers and had nails sticking out of it, but I disinfected it cleaned it, painted it, and the thing is one of the nicest-looking pieces of furniture we have now.

[Ben]

I, like Rodzinski, have been a renter my whole life so I don't do much but I did decide a few years ago that I needed to refinish the cabinets in the kitchen. They were white and had about a million (almost true) coats of paint on them. The hardware was bad, the doors either stuck closed or wouldn't close at all. I had seen some of those infomercials for paint remover and decided to buy something similar at a local paint store. What I thought would be maybe a week long process at the most ended up taking closer to a month. Some of the paint came off with the remover but there was SO MUCH build up, colors I couldn't believe. There was a layer of black, a layer of red, a layer of yellow and a few other layers. What a mess. I scraped a lot and then I took out the drill and put the sanding attachment on to finish the job. I had to close the doors to the bedroom, living room and bathroom and even then the fine sawdust was everywhere. Oy, what a mess. My original intention was to do the rest of the kitchen area after the cabinet doors but that soon changed. I finished the cabinets and they are now painted a nice flat washable white and that's all I did and that's all I'll do. I'm very glad I did it, but I'll never attempt something like that again, especially because I rent this place. If I owned it, I might (with Anthony's help) try something in the bathroom, but it ain't gonna happen.

[George]

I'm another renter, although now I'm renting a house owned by my sister.  She said that if I want to do anything, I can.  I don't, so I won't. As for actual decorating, to paraphrase Blanche DuBois, I have always depended on the kindness of...family.  My parents gave me the couch and non-matching easy chair, my sister's boyfriend gave me his year-old queen-sized bed when he bought a brand new California king-sized bed, my sister just left a whole bunch of things that she didn't want in her new house.  I have developed a very strong preference for "eclectic" decorating.  In other words, I'm too cheap to go out and buy anything that matches!

[JoseSPiano]

Good Morning!

Yeah!  The morning fog is finally starting to lift here in Fairfax, VA. It's supposed to turn into a very nice day weather-wise. -And supposedly the nicest day of the week.  Which should mean that it will be a nice day for a drive back down 95 to Richmond.

It was quite the struggle to get up today.  But I did get up - eventually - and I made my way - eventually - downstairs to get my workout in this morning.  Whew! That was a struggle too.  Almost so much a struggle to make me consider NOT taking a day off from working out!    But I pushed through it all, and now I'm just taking a break before I start getting things in order here.

I'll need to make some decisions as to what I need and want to take back with Richmond today, but I'm pretty sure I'll come back up this weekend just to spend some time with my family.  However, it was nice looking at the four stacks of CDs that I've brought up over the past few months - and that I've actually listened to too!

[JoseSPiano]

As for Today's Topic...

I'm a renter too...

However, when I was in high school, I decided to paint my bedroom.  Well, I decided to paint the one piece of wall in my room - the rest was paneling.  My uncle had done this graphic design in his basement, and I was inspired by that to do the same thing to mine - sort of a mini-mural.  I found this kit at Montgomery Ward's - it was sort of an oversize compass deal with this little paint pads.  I marked out the design, put up the masking tape, selected my three paint colors, and started painting.  It was a bunch of interlocking lines and curves.  Very cool.  I wish I had taken a picture of it.

Oh, and then about a year later, I wanted a different design, so I painted over the other one and started again.



I'm also one of the few people who actually likes putting furniture together (from IKEA, Doorstore, etc.).  I have so many of those little Allen wrenches in my toolbox!

[JoseSPiano]

OK - The clock is striking 12 Noon here on the East Coast, and I want to be on the road by 2:00...

Laters...

[vixmom]

Today I am as busy as a one handed wallpaper hanger, so this shall be quick  

When we moved into this house we discovered that the previous owners had a peccaidillo for painting over wallpaper, and apparently the owners before them had had a peccidillo for wallpapering over wallpaper

The house was painted white in every room and it had looked great in the daylight (which was the only way we saw it before we moved in)
but at night under artifical light, you could see the pattern of the wallpaper under the paint!!  

So we started stripping (wallpaper, watch y'selves!), and kept at it for months before we got it all off.  Then  DH plastered all the walls and painted over it.. For all the effort we put in we should really have just taken down the sheet rock and started over!

We also discovered that they had walled up a doorway, but the way they did it was just to cut a piece of sheet rock the size of the doorway and spackle it in and paint over it. Again , it was not obvious except under artifical light when suddenly the outline of the doorway would emerge,

We did end up replacing all the sheet rock in that wall...

As far as ugliest kitchen, I win hands down....one of these years we'll get it redone, the floors are dull brown ceramic tile, and the walls are also brown ceramic tile.  The cabinets were  nice and reasonably new, oak when we bought (they're about 15 years old now) but the mustard yellow formica counters look like they are from the year of the flood,  We thought we would redo the kitchen as soon as we finished the livingroom, but then the Vixter came along, and then the car died, and then we needed a second car because DH was commuting to Maryland for work, then DH was in the hospital, etc etc  ... 12 years later and we never did get the kitchen redone!

But hey, I'll just keep my guests in the new gazebo!!!
 

Gee, wasn't this quick ?

TTFN

[Matt H.]

Actually, I'd prefer a brown kitchen floor; doesn't show dirt as often. One mistake me made when picking out the various things for the kitchen was getting a pebbly white non-wax floor covering. It has been a pain from day one. Shows every fleck of dirt ,and the pebbly nature of the surface enables dirt to hide in the under part of the pebbly texture making it necessary to get on hands and knees to keep it sparkling. I did that charwoman stuff for years, but now, it gets mopped once a week, and that's it.

Well, I usually mop on Friday, but I had to mop yesterday after the installer left muddy boot prints and dolley track marks after the dishwasher installation.

[MBarnum]

Ben-
Yes, I've only been there twice and have enjoyed it both times.

MBarnum-
Just watched WILD GUITAR recently, along with another Arch Hall Jr. film called THE NASTY RABBIT, aka SPIES AU GO GO. NASTY RABBIT is painful, but its always fun to see young Arch "rocking out". When will someone release a CD of the best of Arch Hall Jr.'s totally weird movie music?

I saw the DVD of THE NASTY RABBIT at the store, but decided not to torture myself too much. Having seen the trailer to WILD GUITAR it looked like it might be fun.

Have you seen Arch Hall Jr.'s film THE SADIST? Now that is actually a very good, albeit low budget, film. I was quite surprised by it.

I read an interview with Arch Hall Jr. just recently in, I think, FANGORIA or STARLOG.

[MBarnum]

My big renovation is going on currently. My bathroom is very, very, very tiny, and the previous owners had taken out the original sink (which was likely very small) and put in a much larger sink with a cabinet...well, this sink took up so much room that you actually have to walk sideways as squeeze in to get past it to the toilet.

Last weekend my neice Katie and her husband Brian helped me remove the old sink and replace it with a very small wall mounted sink (similar to what was likely there in the first place). There is now much more room in the bathroom. I plan on repairing a few spots in the wall, putting up some vintage 1950s wall paper on one wall and painting the rest of the bathroom...all this weekend!

[Matt H.]

Was reading DVD Savant's review of CHARLEY VARRICK, taking Universal to task for a slate of full screen transfers on its budget line discs.

[sigh] Letterboxing has been with us for awhile now. You can't watch much network television without some shows being shown widescreen, and if you don't have a widescreen and/or HDTV, you're going to see those bars.

I know we've had this discussion before about letterboxing, but I can't help but notice that with EVERY single new DVD release that offers separate widescreen and fullscreen versions, the widescreen outsells the fullscreen by a great majority.

So why do these studios keep doing this? Savant thinks it's the Wal-Mart syndrome where studios put out budget product that can be dumped into sale bins at Wal-Mart, and that the kind of person who would dive into those bins wouldn't appreciate a quality presentation of the film. But do those people make up a majority of the DVD buyers? Sales charts say no.

[bk]

Good morning!  Last night I dreamed I was at Manderley.  One of the oddest dreams I've ever had - it kept jumping all over the place and characters kept morphing and it was wacky.  In the last part of it, I'd invited a couple of people over.  We were joined by an uncouth interloper, then by about fifty other people.  Finally got rid of the uncouth interloper.  It alternately took place at some kind of house and the Sheraton Hotel.  Instead of a cover on the bed they'd used towels (this upset me), and there were spiders on the towels, which I brushed off hurriedly.  Then, because there were fifty people, we decided to go to a restaurant for breakfast - we walked down to the corner (this appeared to be like Sunset Blvd. near downtown).  We went into a large restaurant where they seemed to put out food on a table and everyone took what they want (not like a buffet, though).  They had bagels, corn pudding, and corn bread.  I kept trying to get some corn pudding but they kept taking it away or moving it on the table.  Then I woke up.

[bk]

Universal's recent batches of catalog titles has been erratic.  In certain cases (Missing, Cloak and Dagger) they do anamorphic correct ratio transfers that look great, while in other cases (The Forbin Project, Varrick) they do full frame or pan-and-scan).  My guess is that they had letterbox transfers of the former but not the latter, and they just used what they had rather than do a new transfer.  That's the only thing that makes sense.

[bk]

A lull.

[bk]

Way too early for a lull.

Oh, and - PECCADILLO!

[S. Woody White]

I did have a victory when I convinced The Gal that this disgusting bookshelf in the trash outside our building could be rehabilitated. Even I had my doubts as it was covered with filth and kids' stickers and had nails sticking out of it, but I disinfected it cleaned it, painted it, and the thing is one of the nicest-looking pieces of furniture we have now.

That doesn't necessarily say good things about the rest of your furniture!  

[S. Woody White]

Dear BK, are you asking about a peck of dancing d....uh, never mind.

[Jennifer]

Hey guys, I tried beating egg whites again, and they turned out much better. Thanks.  

[vixmom]

Just jumped back quickly to see what was happening.. not much I see!

Watch out or bk'll get ya!!  

That was some dream bk!!


DR MBarnum - We also have an extremely tiny upstairs bathroom, that requires that you scuttle sideways between the toilet and the oversized sink to get to the tub, we have been talking about redoing this for several years as well.... and Sunday, in fact, DH promised that THIS was the year of the new upstairs bathroom!!! (And I thought it was the year of the Rooster....)

and back to work go I

[vixmom]

Oh, DR Matt H - re: full screen vs widescreen, whenever we buy DVD's for the parents (his or mine) they request full screen. They say it is easier for them to watch because they find the bars distracting and they think the picture is bigger so they can see the faces better.

A lot of the old movie DVD's  probably are being bought by the 50 + set  (which I will soon be joining!) and they may well agree with the old folk's at home!

And that is my completelyand  totally unprofessional, unscientific, with absolutely  zero data to back me up, thoughts on the matter!!!

 

[vixmom]

Oh and Jennifer, glad to hear the advice of all and sundry worked out!  What did you do differently this time, use sugar instead of liquid sweetner?

And now, REALLY, I am back to work like a productive little bee.........

Hey bk - hows that for a new book title :"The Productive Little Bee" it can be for the younger set!!

OK ok, I'm  going, I'm going......

[vixmom]

Actually, I'd prefer a brown kitchen floor; doesn't show dirt as often. .

You'd think so wouldn't you? But there seem to be constantly little white spots everywhere (probably from Vixter spilling milk)  

[vixmom]

Ok I really, really, really am going back to work now.

[S. Woody White]

VixMom: Before television became popular, most movies were made with that "golden rectangle" proportion.  This was picked up by the television manufacturers, so the older films are, of course, a perfect fit for the standard screen.  

Ironic, then, that it was as a way to compete with television that filmmakers chose to widen the screen ratios!

I've had many conversations with older people (who aren't that much older than I, while at Sam's Club or elsewhere, explaining to them what the difference is between widescreen and full.  They invariably choose the fullscreen presentations.

Der Brucer and I always go for widescreen.

[S. Woody White]

The Randy Vicar and the Productive Little Bee...Yeah, that's the ticket!  

[vixmom]

STILL only on page 2?!

oh,oh,  bk's gonna yell......