I feel the magic ...

Last week we got a fire pit for the backyard. Now we spend our nights staring quietly into flames while the clock spins furiously. Forty-five minutes escaped while I watched a swirly tornado fire. I cruised embers for an hour. This has to be more healthy than watching TV, but it feels eerily similar.

It's getting a little Ingalls-Wilder back there. This is where we also make our dinners now. Wrapped in tinfoil. 

This is all part of a weird fascination with the out-of-doors that I have this summer and have never had other summers. I'm logging like 15 hours of deck time per weekend, a stack of books, perhaps a beer, and a lounger. Sometimes I write out there, get into a nature zone, and crank out 1,200 words about, um, say ... the book "Eclipse."

It's all very, very glamorous. And the only thing standing between me and optimal comfort is that I am pretty sure our 80-year-old next door neighbor would be able to tell if I was outside in just my underwear.

Oh. Also? I re-kindled some romantic feelings toward Belinda Carlisle this past week while reading her new memoir. On Sunday night, I stayed awake until 3 a.m. combing her video archives and imagining what I'll look like in a few weeks when I tell my hair cutter guy "Belinda Carlisle red, please." So after much research, I've decided that these two Belinda Carlisle videos are my favorite Belinda Carlisle Videos:








Anyway: Here is what I read and watched last week.

FOODS
Made foods. Took photos. Received request from food industry to stop posting unflattering photos of their product. Complied.

MOVIES
El Secreto De Sus Ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes): I find myself unable to differentiate between whether I am madly in love with a movie, or whether I am madly in love with seeing movies at the particular theater we go to -- where everything kind of feels like an experience. ... In this case I'll say it is both; But "Human Centipede" might have gotten a little sheen from the venue. But just a little.

Anyway, this one is like CSI: Argentina in all the best ways, and with none of the worst ways.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse: I kept laughing at all the wrong parts: The vamps on the hill like they are Team Hot Topic about to take on Team Abercrombie; Shirtless Jacob; Shirtless Jacob running through the woods, carrying Bella; Edward's emo breakdown when he proposes. ... I wish I'd known it was going to be a comedy. My glitter smeared I was laughing so hard.

BOOKS
Eclipse (The Twilight Saga) by Stephenie Meyer: There are worse books than this one: Twilight and New Moon, for example. In fact, there are even worse books than this one not by Stephenie Meyer. If you can find a way to ignore the sexism, the overwrought puppy journal-style entries, and forget the impact of this series on hundreds of thousands of young girls — and not to mention their mothers — it isn’t bad at all.
 
Full review here. 

Lips Unsealed: A Memoir by Belinda Carlisle: To see her on MTV supported this personae. In her videos, Belinda Carlisle spun and rolled in the sand, dance-flirted on sun porches, made love to a convertible's head rest with her voice -- a voice that sounded equal parts cigarettes and Tab. Her clothes always dangled off bare shoulders, like she had dressed hastily in the morning before sneaking out a bedroom window. Never trashy,though. What people mean when they say: "Why, she's a natural beauty."

In her memoir "Lips Unsealed" the former Go-Go reveals that this was all a front. That beneath the tousled red hair and pearly whites, she was a coke head in an internal state of controlled chaos. She was on and off the wagon so many times that she should have splinter scars on the backs of her thighs. This shouldn't come as a surprise. The Go-Gos reputation for partying hardy was well-documented, and frequently Carlisle's own binges ruined live performances -- both televised and at sold-out concerts -- and pissed off her band mates.

Full review will be on Minnesota Reads.