Watching Movies with Mom

Mom, at the end of Anne of Green Gables: "Oh thank God, I've had to pee since she was like 16!"

Cooking for Christmas

The best thing about Christmas is eating. My mom and I got started earlier this week.

I put Junior Mints in as a middle layer in brownies to make them mint brownies.

Most importantly, our traditional peanutbutter blossum batch, which is more labor intensive than the brownies-from-the-box, but we needed those brownies to have something to eat while we made the cookies.

Once everything is mixed, you roll the dough into balls and then roll the ball in sugar.

Here, Mom is unwrapping Hershey kisses, which will top the cookies.

One for the cookies, one to eat.

You have to put the kisses on as soon as the cookies come out of the oven so you can press them in and make a little crater for them to sit in.

Documenting a family holiday cooking tradition, courtesy of 52 Projects and others.

Boston Globe's Most-Emailed

Notice a trend?

There must be other things going on in the world besides gays. Let's hear more about that deer.

"Cigarette?" "Yes, I know."

Keeping on my course of watching classics, I Netflixed the short-lived 1982 TV series Police Squad!, starring, of course, Leslie Nielson. Police Squad! was done by the people who made Airplane!, and it was later turned into the Naked Gun movies.

The humor is the same in all these endeavors, and it's probably my favorite kind. It's pun-tastic humor. "Let's go outside and talk in the Japanese garden," one of the characters whispers to Leslie Nielson. Then they step out onto a patio where a group of Asian people are standing in oversize flower-pots.

Genius.

And then there's the scene where the bad guy ties the ransom note to a window and throws the window into a pile of rocks.

Side-splitting.

The show probably has the most jokes-per-minute of anything ever created, even if it's little throwaway gags like the clock in the background having the wrong numbers. Leslie Nielson deadpans his way through all of this, and he somehow makes it seem both high-brow and low-brow. "Oh jeez, I can't believe they went for that joke," you think, but you wouldn't have gotten the joke unless you were really paying attention fifteen seconds earlier.

It's Okay, Mom, At Least You're Not Sixty

When my mom turned 35, she was upset. She no longer felt young. Her children were ten and seven years old; old enough to be independent to a certain extent. Her future felt uncertain.

Meanwhile, my dad was still a teenager at heart. At ten, I was reminding him that a present needed to be purchased for Mom and a cake ordered. I suggested that he find a better present than the one she'd received the year before. He'd brought a big box into the room and she's squealed, "Is it a puppy?" like she was a teenager.

It wasn't a puppy. It was a TV. And it ended up on his side of bed, where he has enjoyed it far more than she ever would.

He picked up the cake for her 35th birthday, but didn't look at it until he took it out of its box later that night, after dinner. We all wore birthday hats and she seemed to be doing okay until the cake was unveiled.

"Happy 60th, Mom!" it read. She began to cry, thinking it was a mean joke my father was pulling on her. Turns out, he'd just picked up the wrong cake. Her tears dried as she imagined some happy 60-year-old lady whose cake wished her a Happy 35th.

The tears threatened to reappear when my father realized he'd forgotten to buy candles. The only candles we had were the big dinner-table kind and the candles we'd saved from PJ's 7th birthday back in June.

Ninja Turtle Candles.

Not only was it addressed to the wrong person and topped with children's candles, but my dad thought it was an ice cream cake, and so he'd put it in the freezer. We had to wait for it to thaw before we could eat it.

It could have gone either way, but we all ended up laughing wildly while Mom blew out the half-melted Ninja Turtle candles on her 60th Birthday cake, and it's become one of those family stories we tell to each other or joke about: "Hey, at least we don't have to use the Ninja Turtle Candles," which, by the way, we still have.

Barack's big announcement

A TV commercial from last night:



I love this man. If I'd seen this live I would've peed my pants. Here's hoping the real thing comes soon.

Back in Business

After some turmoil kindly resolved by the Google people, LCiN has made it onto the new version of Blogger. You'll notice we can now tag our posts with topics, like the rest of the world. And our archives are spiffy.

Unfortunately, the new look we unveiled a couple weeks back didn't jive with the standards of the new system. It was a bit of bad timing, so let's all pretend it never happened. Maybe when new blog templates become available, or when we figure out how to code in XML, we'll give it another shot.

Until then, here's a classic-looking LCiN.

Now we just have to write something.

A token of the past

Let me preface by saying that when it comes to Boston, I love new things. Every new building is a little exciting. I'm all for the new parking meters on Newbury Street that take credit cards, as well as the solar-powered trash-compacting garbage cans. I can't wait till a huge new skyscraper alters the skyline.

But I just can't get behind the new Charlie tickets that have replaced the good old-fashioned T tokens. The last token was sold today, to much hurrah, but it doesn't feel to me like a step forward. The new Charlie cards are confusing to buy and dirty to dispose of (notice all the crumpled cards littering the T-station floors now). I don't like the new turnstyles, either. They're not even turnstyles, they're quick-sliding doors that always seem to snap shut on my leg or the edge of my jacket.

The new Green Line T cars are great, and the new stations (Charles Street, etc.) are beautiful. Both were needed. But I don't see what was wrong with the tokens, and I miss them already.

Live-action Stop-motion

This is the most creative thing I've seen in a while.

Note to holiday shoppers

It wasn't a "deal" or a "bargain" if you had no interest in buying it until you heard it was on sale.

Some Like It Classic

After a string of duds on my Netflix queue, I decided my tendency to rent only new releases needed to be spiced up with something more classic. On went The Godfather and The Grapes of Wrath; I ditched You, Me & Dupree in favor of Some Like It Hot.

That last one was my favorite of my venture into classics thus far, for a few reasons. Let's start with Marilyn. Va-va-va-voom! I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a man she couldn't make fall in love with her, regardless of the dude's tastes or even orientation. Also, something skeletal modern actresses should take note of, was the fact that Marilyn was none too skinny. The body of our most famous sex-symbol is much closer to that of plus-size model Emme than to anyone you'll find in a Calvin Klein ad.

Jack Lemmon was hilarious. Men in drag never gets old. This movie must've been just shy of pornography when it was released in 1959 -- men dressed as women kissing women! Men marrying men for money! Toss in what may be the best closing line ever, and it adds up to a fun movie. Sorry Owen Wilson, but this was time better spent.

The Big 5-0-0-0

Congratulations! You're our 5,000th visitor! Or, if you're not, you're pretty close.

New blogs are like new sitcoms. They premiere with lots of fanfare and hubbub, but unfortunately, most of both get canceled after the first week. Thanks to you, our audience, we've been able to keep LCiN going for almost a year.

Thanks for the support. We hope you continue to enjoy our musings.