Random Thoughts While Biking Home From Work

• What the fuck is that noise?
• Back tire?
• No, front.
• Almost there. Betty can make it.
• Back. Definitely the back.
• My ass hurts.
• Why You Should get your bike tuned up before riding her after winter...
• I fucking love the word "twat".

RotD: Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

I know; not as sexy as Kate Winslet or as interesting as paint drying. On today's menu the theme is peanut butter and chocolate, and naturally this recipe sprung to mind.

Ingredients:
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

2 sq unsweetened baking chocolate

1/2 vegetable shortening
2 eggs

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. vanilla

1 1/2 cup flour

1/2 tsp. baking soda

3/4 cup peanuts finely chopped

1 cup peanut butter chips

36 miniature peanut butter cups

1. Heat oven to 350F
2. Combine chocolate chips and chocolate squares in microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on medium heat. Stir after 2 min. Repeat until smooth. Cool slightly.
3. Combine sugar and shirtening. Beat at medium speed until blended and crumbly. Beat in eggs one at a time then add salt and vanilla. Reduce speed to low. Add chocolate slowly. Mix until well blended. Stir in flour and baking soda with spoon until well blended. Shape dough into 1 1/4-inch balls. Roll in nuts. Place 2-inches a aprt on ungreased baking sheet.
4. Bake for 8 min or until set. Do not overbake. Press peanut butter cup into center of each cookie immediately. Cool for 2 min on baking sheet then remove to flat surface to cool completely.
5. Place peanut butter chips in a bowl and microwave until smooth. Spoon into a sandwich bag. Seal and cut corner to pipe zigzags over cooled cookies.

Ode to Kate Winslet

Emma might appreciate this.

My room mate and I decided to have an old fashion Tuesday girls night complete with chick flick (backstory to this: Tuesday used to be our pole dancing class night wherein afterwards us girls would go out for dinner and just BS). So on tonight's menu was dinner at Murphy's then pick up a chick flick. Knowing me, of course, I very rarely peruse the chick flick department. In any case, we rented The Holiday. I won't get into a long review on it because quite frankly... it's not very good (shocking, I know) and I don't feel like getting into what would make it better because, more shockingly, it wasn't THAT bad.

On with my initial intent. Something didn't sit right (besides Cameron Diaz's painful acting) and it was Kate Winslet. This actually hit me early in the film and it wasn't so much a "What the hell is she doing in this picture?" it was more like "IS she really in this movie? Has she EVER ever been in a rom/com?"

So, no secret: I have a non-sexual crush on Kate Winslet (she falls in the same category with Salma Hayek and Gillian Anderson) so seeing her in The Holiday was unsettling - not that I love everything's she's been in nor did she suck in this particular film. It was just unsettling. And if I may take a moment to praise my non-sexual crush: Kate Winslet is eloquent, graceful and gorgeous. Yes, even in Titanic.

Perhaps I'm just used to seeing her in films where she recites Shakespeare sonnets or plays an eccentric woman who erases the memory of her boyfriend or a girl who along with her lesbian girlfriend take said lesbian girlfriend's mom into the woods and beat her skull in with a giant rock.

It's all frightfully romantic.

#1: Little Miss Sunshine

Directed Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
Starring Greg Kinear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Abigail Breslin and Alan Arkin
A family determined to get their young daughter into the finals of a beauty pageant take a cross-country trip in their VW bus.

Yes, I intended to post this right after #2. When that didn't happen, yes, I intended to post this right after the Oscars whether it won or not (of course, I knew the underdog wouldn't win but one can hope, right?) In any case, here I am finally posting what I consider my favourite film of 2006. And I told myself, when I do post it, I would dissect it and analyze as to why this film worked for me on so many levels.

Now that I'm here, I'm drawing a blank. Or rather, I just don't feel like it. That isn't to say I feel more indifferent to the film from when I first came up with my list or even from when I first saw it in theatres (and aside from Superman Return, it's the only film I saw more than once.) I just don't feel like stringing together words to articulate how I felt about this film. So instead, I'll let you do it. Here is a series of adjectives I'd use to describe Little Miss Sunshine:

Charming
Delightful
Fun
Quirky
Adorable
Bittersweet
Engaging
Endearing
Heartwarming
Modest

The miVi Top Ten Films of 2006: Redux

So start of this year, I began my Top Ten Films of 2006 but, through no fault of my own, it seems the list stopped at #2 (seemed like a good place as any to stop a Top Ten list).

Anyway, allow me to recap:

#10: An Inconvenient Truth
#9: Brick
#8: Curious George
#7: Children of Men
#6: Pan's Labyrinth
#5: The Queen
#4: Clerks 2
#3: Superman Returns
#2: Stranger Than Fiction

Now, before I reveal #1 (though, if you know me, it's pretty much a given what it is), I did see The Departed recently and thought it was amazing! Should Scorsese have won for this particular piece? Probably not [cough cough Goodfellas]. It also made me consider moving some of the films around but I decided otherwise. Where would it have fallen? No idea; that's why I didn't bother. So here's the Wild Card Honourable Mention:














Directed by Martin Scorsese
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson and Marky Mark Mark Wahlberg.
Two men from opposite sides of the law are undercover within the Massachusetts State Police and the Irish mafia, but violence and bloodshed boil when discoveries are made, and the moles are dispatched to find out their enemy's identities.

Cool film. Great cast.
Spoiler Alert (though vague, the smart reader out there might figure it out):
And just when it's about to hit a cliche ending that I was admittedly rooting for, it doesn't but just made me love it more!
My Not-So-Surprising-and-Rather-Anti-Climatic #1 film of 2006 to come shortly (I promise!)