Mumford & Sons.....

Beauty and I are addicted to this song......The Cave.

It's our new driving song, straightening our hair song, doing our blog song, eating dinner song, well you get the idea.

There's just something about this English folk band that keeps us entranced.

Ride em cowboy......

My dad had been going on and on and on......and on.....about the western movies he used to watch when he was a kid and how he would love to watch them again. 

When I was in Target the other day I seen these three vintage westerns from El Paso Films (what a cliche name) on remastered DVDs and I knew that he would just love them.

So dad when I see you tomorrow I'll have a present for you. 

In the meantime..I gotta go see a man about a horse.

 

L.A. NOIRE........

The Knight purchased a new playstation game today titled L.A. NOIRE.

It is a game about detectives in the 1940s era and the clothes, art deco buildings and cars are beautifully detailed.

 

He has been playing for four hours now with slow sultry 1940s "detective" music continually playing in the background. Even with the police sirens, cop shoot outs and The Knight swearing when he gets a clue wrong, it's been very calming sitting here on my computer. Why? Because of the music.

I have never really listened to the smoky, sultry, laid back jazz music from the 1940s but after four hours of it l'm a convert. 

Miles Davis here I come!

Sookie, Sookie, Sookie, where did you go?.........

I read ALOT!

One of my favorite series is the Southern Vampire series by Charlaine Harris or as it has become known the Sookie Stackhouse series. 

Most people who have followed the saga of Sookie, Bill and Eric also watch the TV adaption of the series called TRUE BLOOD which is great.

I like the Sookie character in the books. I love how she adapts and ploughs straight through any and every challenge she faces.

What I hate is what her creator Charlaine Harris has done to her and all the other characters in book 10 and now the latest book 11 called Dead Reckoning.

Book 10 was disappointing. Lazy writing, boring dialog and inconsistent plot. I said that was it, I was done!

It was so borrriiinnngggg. 

But a year later the next book comes out and after all it's a series so you want to know what happens, so I conveniently forgot the yawn session of the last book and purchased book 11.

The holes in the plot were so big I could have driven a semi trailer truck through them. Some of the story line did not even make sense. Charlaine Harris seems to have forgotten her own story time line from books 4,5,6 and 7 because she contradicted herself over and over again.

I must admit when I was finished I closed the book, looked at the front cover, picked up the book and threw it at the wall uttering the words "what a load of shit".

It's a sad day in hell when an author disrespects her readers by churning out two sub standard books for the money it brings her.

Charlaine Harris has said that the next book will be the last Sookie Stackhouse book in the series.

Don't bother writing the next book Mz Harris, you've drained the life out of your characters already.

DVDs-Take them or leave them?......

Today I started taking photos of all my DVDs to sell on ebay.

I was about 30 photos into the big pile when I suddenly thought, "is this the right decision"?

After all I'm moving to a country where English speaking DVDs will not readily be available for purchase.

With a multi region DVD player I could keep them and watch them in Italy.

It would sure save on the expense of having to purchase them all over again.

The problem is that they would fill 3 tea chests and I could use that space to pack something more precious than DVDs.

Then Beauty came up with a brilliant plan. Take them out of the plastic cases!!!!!

All that is left is a flat DVD and a slip of paper (the cover insert)

All I will have to do when I unpack them in Italy is purchase a few bulk packs of DVD covers.

So it looks like all 355 DVDs will be coming to Italy with us.

At least when we are snowed in in winter we will have something to watch!!!

That's Amore.......

I have many great memories of the love songs of Dean Martin.

To this day whenever I hear his Italian accented voice singing to me about love, it makes me sigh and wish for a time long gone.

While I was growing up my mother would always play her record albums and I grew up listening to the songs of true everlasting love and the heartache of lost love by Al Martino, Perry Como, Neil Diamond and many more.

I have a question for you.

What happen to the men that wrote these lyrics?
Where are the men hiding that know how to express their feelings in this soul bearing way?
Why are the men of today so scared?

It's a mystery isn't it?
Until I get an answer......Play it again Dino.

Charlaine Harris afternoon reading....

Charlaine Harris- Harper Connelly series

Under The Tuscan Sun

Many of you would be familiar with Frances Mayes books Under the Tuscan Sun & Bella Tuscany.

If you loved them as much as I did then you will be pleased to hear that she has released a third book in the series titled, Every Day in Tuscany.

Frances Mayes offers her readers a deeply personal memoir of her present-day life in Tuscany, encompassing both the changes she has experienced since Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany appeared, and sensuous, evocative reflections on the timeless beauty and vivid pleasures of Italian life. Among the themes Mayes explores are how her experience of Tuscany dramatically expanded when she renovated and became a part-time resident of a thirteenth-century house with a stone roof in the mountains above Cortona, how life in the mountains introduced her to a “wilder” side of Tuscany – and with it a lively engagement with Tuscany’s mountain people. Throughout, she reveals the concrete joys of life in her adopted hill town, with particular attention to life in the piazza, the art of Luca Signorelli (Renaissance painter from Cortona), and the pastoral pleasures of feasting from her garden. Moving always toward a deeper engagement, Mayes writes of Tuscan icons that have become for her storehouses of memory, of crucible moments from which bigger ideas emerged, and of the writing life she has enjoyed in the room where Under the Tuscan Sun began.

With more on the pleasures of life at Bramasole, the delights and challenges of living in Italy day-to-day, and favorite recipes, Every Day in Tuscany is a passionate and inviting account of the richness and complexity of Italian life.

FRANCES MAYES ITALIAN HOME 'BRAMASOLE'

French film Jules et Jim

I love this photo from French film Jules et Jim.

Friends laughing, a sunny day, elegant clothes, a bottle of wine, faded white wrought iron garden furniture and outrageous hats.

Poetica Erotica

I have been sorting through the books in the bookcase trying to decide whether to sell them all or to keep them. Books are expensive to buy, even second hand books. As I will be in Italy I also have think about whats available in English to purchase. Even if I buy of international ebay I still have to pay postage etc. Still haven't decided whether to box them to come with me or sell them and start a new collection when I get there.

What I did find was this book called Poetica Erotica. I remember finding this at a thrift store years ago. I came home and shelved it and forgot about it as I am not a poetry girl. It is such an unassuming looking book for such a eye brow raising title. It has a plain navy hardback cover on a large heavy book with thick cream parchment pages. I wonder what the original dust jacket would have looked like?

It was first published in 1921 with this edition in 1927. As I started to read random pages this morning my first thought was "what the hell" followed by "holy shit" and on and on it goes.
770 pages full of 100's of erotic poems. This is definitely going to Italy with me as something to keep me warm on those snowed in nights. Did I say warm? I mean hot, roasting hot.

Here is a sample of the beginning of one poem. I had trouble finding one that was suitable for display and would not offend anyone! This is the most mild poem I could find. Written in 1680.
(I photographed another one)

TO A YOUNG LADY LEANING OUT OF HER WINDOW
(By Captain John Ayloffe. C. 1680)

When Venus naked from the sea arose,
She did not half so many charms expose,
Nor when for the decisive fruit she strove,
Showed Paris half so rich a view of love:

Nay, when she clasped Adonis in her arms,
The melting Goddess had not half your charms:
Less firm her snowy breasts, her skin less white,
Her lovely limbs less tempting to delight.

How then shall we express those charms below,
Which you and nature both forbear to show?
So fair an hostess, and so fair a sign,
Would force a trade, and recommend bad wine.

Water from such a spring is sweeter far,
Than all the clusters of the vintage are.
Let Bacchanalians and the empty beaux,
Hunt out Champagne, Burgundy, and Bordeaux.

To fetch some drops from that dear shady well,
Would all the nectar of the gods excel,
Your eyes assure us that you can dispense,
Peculiar joys for each peculiar sense:

Then having let us see, pray let us taste
Those dear concealed delights below the waist.
'Twere madness to expect...
*(uuumm you get the idea of what comes next!!!)