Weekly highlights

Flawless, yet oh-so-flawed.

When people name favorite style icons the answers are always the same: Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Carrie Bradshaw, Mayim Bialik from Blossom (depending on whether you, too, were a fan of the giant-sunflower-on-hat craze. You weren't? C'mon, it was the early '90s, everybody wa--. No? Oh... *quietly puts sunflower hat in bottom dresser drawer*). Around these parts we love our Audreys and Graces but the real woman after our own fashion-obsessed heart is none other than Anne Bancroft -- specifically Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson. I still (silently) shriek in delight when I spy Mrs. Robinson's fabulous giraffe print slip she cavorts in at the Taft Hotel, or when she glides in and out of scenes swathed in enough leopard to fill a Tiki bar two times over.* And this, after I've seen the movie, oh 3,492,784 times. But I've never seen it on the big screen...until now. Yes, The Graduate will be playing at the AFI Theater here next week. This is the kind of news that gets unicorns pooping rainbows, people.

(*)The wardrobe, though well done, is not the main draw for this film. The story is simply told brilliantly and no other anti-heroine is as tragically flawed as Mrs. Robinson. That alone makes it one of the best.

Now I don't know what to be more excited about:

-That fact that we're moving in less than two weeks back to a land where the general population is healthy and tan and people actually smile because it's sunny and pleasant pretty much year 'round, which makes needing a sporty convertible as necessary as a Real Housewife needing her Xanax (this is oddly starting to sound like Sweet Valley High, hello Bruce Patman!), the beach is never more than a stone's throw away as are the mountains and "The Hills" and zomg LAS VEGAS, and, best of all, one's cup can continually runneth over because this strange and special land accounts for 90% of America's entire wine production. Seriously.

or,

-The fact that The Graduate will be shown on a real movie screen. In a real movie theater. And I will actually be alive this time to experience it (curse you 1967, I wasn't yet a thought in either of my parents' heads but now I can exact my revenge. Kind of.) I'll wear my ostentatious leopard coat to this screening and make loud, spurious claims like I don't know how to drive a European stick shift, that I majored in art in college, and that old Elaine Robinson got started in a Ford. This should embarrass J sufficiently enough while concurrently satisfying my eccentric itch.

The other day I made another run down to Trader Joe's to stock up on my Stilton and Swiss when I passed a California Tortilla proudly proclaiming on a poster in a window that the readers of Washingtonian Magazine had voted California Tortilla -- California flipping Tortilla! -- the "Best Burrito" of 2009. Readers of the Washingtonian: I am disappointed in you. (Herein is where I'm entitled one long, exasperated sigh.) People who live outside of the Southwest/California/Texas, please take note: REAL burritos do not taste like salty footballs wrapped in processed tortillas. Real burritos are so much better. Seeing this "Best Burrito" bit was like voting Panda Express the "Best Chinese Food" in the District. I mean, I love me some Panda, but just...no.

As I mentioned earlier this month, J has been MIA (at least in mind) for the past week or so. Boo. But I can't complain, because this is the Last Semester of Law School Finals EVER!!!!!! (No amount of exclamation points could ever convey how ecstatic I am this month, all I'll say is if you laid all the exclamation points out end to end, they'd wrap around the earth about 67 times.) Of course, after graduation he won't actually be "done" because no lawyer can be a...lawyer... without passing the elusive Bar, so waiting in California when we arrive will be two 25-lb boxes full of workbooks, study materials, and "fear" which J says they actually try to sell (and he's not buying). Once those boxes are opened he'll be studying day and night for the next two months till he takes the Bar (conveniently!) following our three-year anniversary. Which means no sweeping celebration this year, but at this point I could care less. (Refer to borderline obscene elation re: The Graduate above, and subsequent move West.)