Cool things:

1. I bought two gorgeous pairs of boots, one brown, one black, both almost knee-high.

2. thedeadparrot's Friday Night Lights vid, which is everything I love about the show.

3. marag's House/X-Men crossover, Death of the Heart, which I'm saving for tonight and can't wait to read and feel fairly confident in pre-reccing.

4. Hugh Laurie and Lisa Edelstein at the picket lines.

5. Quote from this week's Ugly Betty:

Betty White: I did lose a lot of blood, but it was my own fault. I stopped to sign a few autographs and... almost bled out on the sidewalk.
Wilhelmina: Well, that's why you're beloved. You're loyal to your fans.
Betty White: Oh, well, I adore 'em. *pause* Except for the few sickos who write lesbian fanfiction about me and Bea Arthur.

Not the most positive of references, but hey, it's a mention!

6. Apparently, every year on חנוכה Maccabi Tel Aviv (our most popular basketball team) schedule a Euroleague game against Panathinaikos, ie, the Maccabees against the Greeks. Which is just a nice idea in general; I don't actually care much that Maccabi won the game last night.

7. Last night I went to a screening of Raging Bull, followed by a Q&A session with the film's cinematographer Michael Chapman, who also shot Taxi Driver with "Marty and Bobby" and The Godfather with "Francis" and Jaws with "Steven", and many more.

"The difference between pre-production and actual production is that when you're on the set, you're not thinking about 'art'. you're thinking about how in two hours you wrap everything up and go home. You don't think giving a shot 'higher meaning', but about finding solutions the day to day problems, like unpredictable weather or lunch arriving late or hangovers or heartbreak or the grip arriving drunk."

He gave an example: "When we were shooting The Godfather, up in the mountains of Sicily, there was a scene where Al Pachino sees Apollonia for the first time. The actress was a beautiful Italian girl, 16 or 17 years old, and we were supposed to shoot that scene with close ups that would make you see Al Pachino's awe at the sight of her. But on the day of the shoot, the actress got her period, and just bled all over her dress. They didn't have any spare dresses, and we're up in the Sicilian mountains, and no matter how they tried to clean it it wouldn't come off - so in the end, we just changed the shot, showed her from afar, and it worked. Let the academics give it meaning; we just did it to solve a problem."

Why did you go into movies? "Well," he said, "I had a wife. And she was pregnant. And her father didn't like the idea of me being unable to support her, so he ot me a job loading boxes in a studio. It was only years later that I suddenly realized that I wasn't just doing this for money - that maybe it was something I was meant to do. But that's not why I started."

As DOP (Director of Photography), did you actually hold the camera yourself? "Oh, yes, most of the time. We had to hire camera operators, so we used to hire them, have them sit outside with a beer, and shoot the movie ourselves. Operating a camera is a sensual, almost sexual experience; when you're skilled at it, when you get it right, the frame, the timing, the movement, there's nothing else like it."

What was your relationship with the actors? "It depends. Like all crew members, it took me a few years to realize that they weren't just props that could move themselves around. Oh, you want gossip. Harrison Ford: serious guy, knows his stuff. Tommy Lee Jones: son of a bitch."

How closely do you follow storyboards? "Oh, I hate storyboards. I despise them. I think they take all the creativity out of filming on location. When I watch sequences in movies, I can tell if there was a storyboard or not. If you have a good storyboard, release it as a comic book. The directors I worked with... some used storyboards. Some sketched a general one, with, you know, stick figures. In Taxi Driver" -- and here he started cracking up, because he'd just remembered it -- "the studio wanted a storyboard, so we used to draw it every morning following the day of the shooting. We drew it a day later."

In short: he was a very funny, very talented, very practical man, and fun to listen to - if not to learn from, then at least absorb some star dust from afar...

8. bironic made a חנוכה fic rec post (and recced me, yay!), and I added my own in a comment.

9. Two weird phrases uttered by Ziva David on NCIS:

a) "Ooooooly ez etzel." Presumably, she meant oh, la'azazel, ie "oh, hell", but her accent leaves much to be desired.

b) "Esh ketana sorefet arbe tiraz". Again, because of the accent, I had to rewind twice to get that she was saying esh ktana sorefet harbe tiras, which makes no sense in and of itself. So I continued to watch, and the dialogue goes:

Ziva: My father used to say, "Esh ketana sorefet arbe tiraz".
Gibbs: What does that mean?
Jenny: "A small fire burns a lot of corn."
Gibbs: *raises eyebrows*
Ziva: *smirks* It loses something in translation.

Uh, I'm sorry, WHAT? What does it lose? WTF does that mean in the first place? I even googled it, just to make sure it wasn't some obscure Hebrew proverb I wasn't familiar with, but it only got two hits and they both listed it as a Ziva David quote. Honestly, LA is chockful of Israelis, they couldn't have gotten themselves a beta? There are plenty of weird Hebrew or Yiddish - god Yiddish - proverbs, like "a worm in horseradish is certain that it's as sweet as sugar". Why go making one up?

Other than that though, I am still liking this show. And Michael Weatherly. Mmm.