V-Day

Word of the day :  aubade : a morning love song ; a song or poem greeting the dawn : a song or poem of lovers parting at dawn

Happy V-Day, wife!  Love ya!  Remember last year when I posted 100 things I loved about you?

http://wwwconsideringcjf.blogspot.com/2011/04/my-wife.html 

Well, I think they still apply... lol

When you think of February 14, of course you think of love, romance; only freaks or hopelessly ugly people don't.  So why not come up with 25 great things to listen to, watch, and read on this amorous day?  And I'm going for the not-so obvious picks here (ala The Notebook):

1.  The gorgeous 1964 French musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg with all-time hottie Catherine Deneuve
2. Bob Dylan's "I Want You"
3. The combo of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset
4. Harry Nilsson's affecting, timeless, simple "Me and My Arrow" (though I think it's about his dog)
5. Audrey Niffenegger's beguiling The Time Traveler's Wife

6. The Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody"
7. 500 Days of Summer
8. Either Smith's "Baby, It's You" or Adele's cover of it
9. Bobby Bland's sexy "Ain't No Love in the Heart of the City"
10. Willia Cather's My Antonia

11. Graham Greene's The End of the Affair and then Neil Jordan's sumptuous, haunting 1999 adaptation of it (with Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore)
12. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
13. Chet Baker's enduring "My Funny Valentine"
14. Of course, Love Actually
15. U2's "All I Want is You"

 
16. Anne Tyler's Pulitzer Prize-winning Breathing Lessons
17. Bounce, the underrated 2000 movie with Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow
18. Jackie Wilson's "Lonely Teardrops" (..."say you will-lllll...)
19. Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms
20. Dan in Real Life

21. No Strings Attached
22. Patti Smith's "Because the Night"
23. Bill Withers' "Lovely Day"
24. Amelie
25. The Great Gatsby

(I'll try to make this a yearly list)

Quickly:

- A shame about Whitney Houston.  Too bad she threw her career and life away because of drugs and Bobbie Brown.  My favorite songs by her?  I remember having a VHS called NBA Superstars or something which showed highlights from eight to ten stars of the time (Karl Malone, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, etc.) and each superstar had a song that accompanied his highlights.  I don't recall who the player who's footage was accompanied by "The Greatest Love of All" but, hey, I've always remembered the song.  "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" is criminally catchy.   Will she be missed?  I guess, I don't know.  (Maybe if she had released anything like "How Will I Know" in the last sixteen years I would feel more of a sense of loss)

- In the Phillip Kerr book I'm reading now, Kerr briefly brings up the old, much-debated argument about whether or not Lutherans supported Hitler or if they were coerced into siding with him.  This is a morally complex novel that I'm sure I'll write about more soon.   

- I'm also reading David McCullough's The Greater Journey about Americans in Paris.  Starting tomorrow, I'll feature one of the Americans McCullough writes about. 

Kiss kiss!