Red!

Passion makes the world go round. Love just makes it a safer place.
~ Ice-T

I painted my toenails red last night, and I'm knitting a fuzzy red scarf, because it's February! As much as possible, I'm going to enjoy February as the month of love and hearts and Valentines and red. I bought Little Debbie heart-shaped cakes at the store yesterday, and tonight I'm going to look through my stash of nail transfers and see if I have some hearts to paste on my fingernails. Cheap fun.

I bought a package of Valentines to send to my nieces and nephews, and sometime this week I'd better get out and get some more; February kind of snuck up on me this year.

For the file of Willa weirdness: I like Ice-T. I saw him in Tank Girl a few years ago, where he played one of the mutant kangaroos, and I really liked him. Most of the movies he's been in aren't the kind I'd go see, so I haven't seen him in anything else that I remember until now, on television, in one of the Law and Order spin-offs. I don't make a point to watch it, but if I catch it, I do enjoy his performance.

I don't know much of anything about his background or his other work, and I'm not one of those people who believes that they have to like a person's true character in order to enjoy them as a performer. I believe that, especially in the case of actors, performers are playing a role, and it's completely possible to separate the real person from the role.

I think that's why I have so few "favorite" actors and actresses--what do you like, really? Their appearance, or the way they play a role? Do you like them in every role they play, or just certain ones? If pressed, I do like Nicolas Cage particularly, and in another weirdness, I like Arnold Schwarzenegger a lot. I think he's a terrific comic actor in movies like Kindergarten Cop or Twins. His films remind me of the old-fashioned "screwball" comedies like Bringing up Baby.

I also like Sean Connery, but then, who doesn't?

I just finished John Scalzi's Agent to the Stars, which was excellent. It's a "shareware novel," which means that if you like it, you should send Scalzi some money, but if you don't like it, you don't have to. It's posted on his website and can be read online or downloaded in rich text format.

It's all about what happens when aliens decide to visit Earth. The only problem is, they're really ugly and they smell bad. So they decide they need an agent--as in Hollywood agent--to figure out a way to present them in their best light. It's a wonderful book.

I redesigned author Susan Wiggs' website last month, and it went live last week: