Well, I took a vacation day yesterday to do some Christmas shopping, but after the ancient car her dad gave us started leaking in the rain and got one of its mirrors knocked off by a passing car, K. decided we should go car shopping instead. It was my first time shopping for cars since I bought my used Ford LTD almost twenty years ago and the first time shopping for a new car for either of us. Since most of our driving is in the city, we decided to get a hybrid.

We test drove three cars. The Ford Fusion hybrid was an amazing car with some really neat gadgets, but at nearly 29k a lot more than we wanted to pay. The Toyota Prius was the car we expected to buy, but frankly it did not impress us. It felt too fragile and toylike, the controls too purely electronic, like playing a video game. The winner, we think, will be the Honda Insight. Not only does it drive exactly like our current car (a 98 Cutlass), it was also the cheapest one we drove. We even managed to unintentionally haggle the price down another two thousand dollars (to 19k) simply by repeating our intention to go home and sleep on it. We're still sleeping on it, and doing some more research, but I think we'll have a new car soon. The only down side is that they only offered us a hundred bucks for our old car, so instead we're going to give it to WXPN, our excellent local public radio music station, for a tax write-off.

Spent the weekend alternating between utter sloth and unexpected sociability. After waiting out the waiting out the rain and snow Saturday afternoon in front of the television, we got invited out to an art auction at a little gallery uptown, followed by drinks and a late dinner at the Continental with some friends. Sunday, I made some pumpkin pancakes and we stumbled upon the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, which we ended up watching for most of the day, barring a quick bike ride to the Acme. Then we got invited to a potluck dinner Amazing Race finale party, which made for a lovely ending to the weekend. There was curried chicken soup and pasta in walnut sauce and some great cocktails with two sorts of brandy in them.

I'm actually sort of looking forward to Thanksgiving tomorrow. My family is scattering, so I won't be seeing any of them, which makes the day far less stressful (I guess that's my thing to be thankful about!), although I'll very much miss seeing my nieces and nephew.

Instead we're going down to spend it with K's dad in Maryland. My only big gripe about T-Day there (other than the drive) is her dad's stuffing, easily my favorite dish of that meal. So we told them that I'd be making the stuffing, my special sausage-and-apple stuffing (recipe after the ass). That actually worked out really well since her cousin is going to be deep frying the turkey and they couldn't have stuffed it in the bird anyway. I can't wait to taste a deep-fried turkey, not to mention witness all the wacky, emergency-room-baiting fun of getting the bird out of the hot oil. And if something goes terribly, terribly wrong with the turkey, I at least know that my savory stuffing eats like a meal all by itself.

Just in case I don't get around to posting tomorrow (which seems more than likely), Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

( Stuffing Recipe )

On Saturday, we met up with friends visiting from Chicago and went to the roller derby championships, which was totally awesome even though none of the teams we rotted for won. The Philly Roller Girls fought back from a big deficit against the Rocky Mountain Roller Girls to tie the score at 111, then lost in over time. It was a great match to watch, so tense! Next up was the Windy City Rollers vs. the Denver Roller Dolls. The Windy City Rollers played with far more skill and heart, but it wasn't enough to beat the rule-breaking Dolls and the exasperating officials who somehow managed to miss all of their elbow-throwing and other dirty moves. Now that I've got a taste for it, I'll definitely be up for seeing some more derby next year.

After the derby, we went to great mustache-themed party, where I washed down many chips worth of my spicy queso dip with tasty margaritas. I considered shaving my beard down to just a mustache for it, but in the end was too lazy.

Sunday, we had a nice hike in the Wissahickon, then heading home to watch AMC's new version of The Prisoner. Given that I was a diehard fan of the original as a teen, I thought they did a pretty good job modernizing it. James Caviezel plays a man who wakes up in a strange place with distorted memories and no real idea of how he got there. He's brought to The Village, a charming town whose residents are seemingly unaware of the outside the world. Some of them seem to have grown up there, others are only pretending, and others are likely victims of induced amnesia. Everyone has a number instead of a name. He's Number Six and the village's leader Number Two (played by the always excellent Ian McKellan) wants more out of Six than just his quiet acceptance of the situation. Rounding out the cast is 313, the village doctor and Six's potential love interest played by Ruth Wilson, whom I quite enjoyed in the recent BBC production of Jane Eyre.

It's definitely less of a surreal mindfuck than the original, but still nicely stylized in it's own way. It's less clever, more earnest. I noticed distinct echoes of Lost and the film Dark City in it, both of which could be seen as descendants of the original series. The show's biggest weakness is probably the star. Caviezel is like Billy Crudup, a brooding, inscrutable pretty boy, but without any of the goofy boyish charm that balances out most of Crudup's performances. Don't get me wrong, Caviezel might be perfect for this role. I'm just not sure how interested I am in watching him.

Great weather this weekend, sunny and warm, especially nice after the recent cold spell. Sunday, after a lovely Mexican brunch with friends at Las Bugambilias, K. and I biked farther uptown for some ice cream at Franklin Fountain and a movie at the Ritz.

The Men Who Stare At Goats is loosely based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Welsh journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker Jon Ronson. It tells the largely true story of a secret unit within the United States Army that was dedicated to the development of psychic powers. Led by a Vietnam vet turned new age guru (played by Jeff Bridges), the unit attempted perform such feats as remote viewing, invisibility, walking through walls, and stopping a goat's heart with just a stare. Through flashbacks, the film chronicles the department's rise--thanks in part to Ronald Reagan's interest in the paranormal--and inevitable fall--due largely, in the film, to a rivalry between their top psychics, played by George Clooney and Kevin Spacey.

This quest to create psychic soldiers is mostly played for laughs in the film, but with enough sincerity to fall short of outright mockery. Our entry into the secret world is via recently divorced journalist Bob Wilton, who basically stumbles into the story while failing in an attempt to cover the war in Iraq. This modern framing device allows the film to link the original unit to the current PSYOPS program, which comes up with increasingly common psychological torture techniques like forcing prisoners to listen to Barney the purple dinosaur's "I Love You, You Love Me" song on a constant loop.

Overall, I thought the movie was pretty good, although short of great. Ewan McGregor whom I usually love was cast as Wilton, perhaps unfortunately since the soldiers in the program make frequent references to the Star Wars films' Jedi Knights, one of whom he famously portrayed. That weirdness just kept hiccuping me out of the movie, but your mileage may vary.