Had this weird dream that Dave Barry, (you know, the cartoonist from MAD Magazine), was a spectacularly unfunny standup comic, but for some reason I had promised to watch his act.

Also, he had changed his name to Atticus Dave Barry, which I didn't particularly understand, since Atticus isn't particularly funny. But neither was the rest of his act, so it all fit.

So yesterday was daylight savings time, as they told us about fifty times on the news the night before. This did not, however, make us actually change the clocks before going to bed. Go figure.

My clock is an atomic clock, meaning that it sets itself via the atomic clock in Colorado, the official US time, so I didn't have to touch it, I knew that it would set itself. But I don't set an alarm. So when I woke up at 11.03a, I squinted at the clock, thinking "Hmm, mass is at 11.30a..." and immediately dozed off again.

Mom woke at 11.10a and said, "We're going to miss mass!" and I said, "No, we're not!" and like a whirlwind, we threw on clothes and brushed teeth and leapt into the car.

We were late, of course, and didn't actually realize that it was Palm Sunday before we were trying to find a parking space in the incredibly crowded lot. Who are all these people and why are they in my way? They're the A&P Catholics, showing up only on Ash Wednesday and Palm Sunday. Of course, when I'm not in LA, I'm one of those myself, so I shouldn't sneer.

Anyway, the church was stuffed with these Catholics-come-lately--it wasn't as bad as midnight mass, but still pretty crowded. We got there as the gospel had started, which was the Passion. What? Isn't the Passion supposed to be on Good Friday? You know, when it actually happened? Apparently not.

I've been going to St. Thomas for the past four years on Good Friday, where they have the amazing plainsong version of the Passion, so I think it belongs there, but St. Thomas isn't Catholic, so I have gotten confused. It's an Episcopalian plot!

And let me tell you, the plainsong version is so much more moving than in my church, especially since they had this woman with a voice like Shirley Temple reading Pilate, and this high, squeaky voice with short vowels saying, "Flog him and release him, he has committed no capital crime," and then segueing into "Good Ship Lollipop". Let alone the priest reading Jesus saying "Judas, do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?" as though he were asking a wayward child whether he had snitched a cookie from the cookie jar.

Give me the men and boys choir at St. Thomas any day.

Last night, the movie at the Academy was something called Shade starring Gabriel Byrne. I didn't know a single solitary thing about the plot, but I love Gabriel Byrne, so why not? It's fun to see movies when everything hasn't already been given away.

It was a really good, really fun movie about con men and card sharps, very Stingy with Gabriel Byrne and Thandie Newton and Stuart Townsend as a trio of grifters who end up in a big game with the greatest card player alive, Sylvester Stallone.

It's a lot more twisty than that, of course, lots of perceptions skewed and so on, and I don't think that the ending was quite good enough, but basically I thought that it was great fun and really kept it going. And whosever hands those were in the credits, demonstrating dealing from the bottom of the deck and palming cards and so on, that was amazing.

And I did enjoy the Battle of the Facelifts in the scenes with Stallone and Melanie Griffith. Melanie won hands down, either because she was lit better and shot through a big piece of gauze, or because Stallone had just one procedure too many and now can no longer lower his eyebrows. Melanie had bright red ears, though, for some reason. Must have been all that youthful pink lighting.

And for anyone else who it's driving crazy who that French guy is who played the mobster, it's the guy who played Zack in Choose Me. Somebody in the world will read that, smite their forehead, and say "O, that's who that was!"

O, and am I the only one who noticed the little homage to The Usual Suspects? When they are in the room and there's a flashback to earlier and over a shot of Gabriel Byrne someone says, "The whole thing was a setup"? I'll bet the writer-director did that on purpose.

Anyway, it's a fun, who's conning who kind of story and who's a good guy and who's bad, and I recommend it highly.

I absolutely cannot stand for one more minute the switched baby storyline on All My Children.

Of course, the same storyline is on One Life to Live, but at least on that show I am not forced to sit through the 500th version of the scene with Bianca saying that she can feel that her baby is still alive. Not that the actress playing Bianca isn't great, because she is terrific, the scene is just making me crazy.

It's a very Rocky Horror experience, though, since whenever Bianca says, "I heard Bess cry and thought for a minute it was Miranda!" both Mom and I yell, "It was!" or when Kendall just said, "I'd give anything if that could be Bianca's baby," we chorused, "It is!"

I need to go back to NY so that I no longer have to watch these soaps.

Today's horoscope:
Gather your courage and sit close enough to that lovely authority figure to get a closer peek at them. If you like what you see, take steps to make that point. Subtly, of course ....

One year ago today:
I don't think that means this is "as good as it gets." I think it means there's a bottomless well of hope that this moment and the next and the next can be all we need.

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Last Updated Mon 5 April 13:40:09 2004