Winding Down from the Weekend

What is it about a holiday weekend? You have 3 days instead of two and you still do nothing! Well, that's not exactly true. I took in a little culture, sang along to ABBA, and got caught up with Gossip Girl. But tonight is the big night because, nope, not Sarah Palin but Beverly Hills 90210 Version 2.0 is premiering tonight on the CW.

The weekend started off with John McCain picking Sarah Palin to be his running mate which was a shrewd move on the one hand, because you could tell that part of the reason she was picked was because she's a woman, no matter what the McCain camp may say. You just know that McCain was hoping to pick up some disaffected Hillary supporters. The problem is, Palin a conservative Christian woman, which weren't exactly Hillary Clinton's supporters. And just because she's a woman doesn't mean that women will automatically vote for her whether Republican or Democrat. Some of us are actually concerned with the issues.

She's being positioned as a maverick, who won her election as Governor of Alaska promising to clear out all corruption in the government, which apparently she's done a pretty good job of, so good, that she's now the subject of an investigation herself for possibly firing someone without cause. However, she's in favor of drilling in protected forests and anti-abortion, which might make the more liberal wing of the Republican's (if such a thing exists) wince. Plus her 17 year old daughter is 5 months pregnant which must make the Christian Coalition wince. I guess they didn't teach absitinence in the Paulin house. I applaud Obama for taking the media to task for turning it into such a circus.

If I hadn't already been an Obama supporter, this would totally throw me into his camp. The idea of two pro-life candidates possibly getting four more years to influence the Supreme Court frightens me. Also that she is adamantly anti-gay marriage, that she is a lifetime member of the NRA, that she has no foreign policy experience and supports the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in schools. I'm amazed though at how quickly he rushed into his decision. According to the NYTimes, he was really learning towards Lieberman, but Lieberman is pro-choice and the Christian Coalition squawked. Apparently he offered the spot on the ticket after one brief interview after only a week of thinking about it and doing background checks. Meanwhile the other top candidates went through a two month process.

Now off the subject of politics, I indulged in a little culture this weekend by ending over to the Guggenheim museum, which I like to refer to the cupcake museum, to see the Louise Bourgeois exhibit. I've written about Louise before but you can read about her here. It was a really interesting exhibit and I loved two things about it, the fact that I got in for free (thanks to my company) and I had a free audio tour, which was really helpful. I liked some of her work, and some of it confused me, but it was lovely to see an exhibit devoted to a woman artist.

Then on Monday, I went to see Mamma Mia, which I'm not ashamed to admit I adored. I had seen the show in London and loved but I'm a closet ABBA fan (well not anymore). Although most of the critics seemed to think that Meryl Streep was over-acting, but I thought she was just having a good time singing and dancing. She had come so close to playing Eva Peron in Evita, and that role ended up eventually going to Madonna, so this was her chance to do a musical on screen. And the whole movie was adorable. I know what you are thinking, what about Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth, can they sing?

Who cares?

Seriously, if I watch the movie again on DVD, I'll just push the mute button so I don't have to listen to either of them, and I can just watch them be beautiful.

So that was my weekend, no writing, and I still haven't decided on whether to buy a Crackberry or an Apple iPhone.