While I was knitting …

I got to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them! And it was great! One of those movies that I wouldn’t mind seeing again while it’s in theaters. And also one of those movies that I didn’t knit during, mostly because I finished Henry’s hat and didn’t want to work on the Green Wood cardi – laceweight yarn on size 1.5 needles in the dark? No, thank you. So I helped my middle son demolish a large bucket of popcorn and a giant box of Junior Mints.

This week also saw the demise of our premium cable plan; too much of our monthly budget was getting munched up by the cable bill, so I had to say an abrupt good bye to all our movie channels (Showtime, Cinemax, Epix) and some of the more premium but still laden with commercials channels, like Sundance, which means I’ll have to finish watching the final season of Rectify on Netflix or Amazon Streaming.

Luckily I live in an area covered by 3 local PBS stations – Maryland Public Television, WETA (the Greater Washington DC area), WHUT (Howard University) – all with different programming schedules, and some with more than one available channel. If I can’t find something to watch on PBS, I default to Turner Classic Movies (TCM). I can’t tell you what classic movies I’ve been watching because I’ve had the TV on mainly for background noise.

I do know that Auntie Mame will be on Thursday evening; if you haven’t seen it and you can carve out some time on Thanksgiving (see what I did there?) or set your DVR or get ahold of it some other way, you should – it’s funny and heartwarming and absurd and just all-around pretty amazing – it’s possibly my all-time favorite movie. I loved it so much, I bought the book and then the biography of Patrick Dennis, the author, whose life was even more fascinating than Mame’s. However, you have to watch the 1958 version with Rosalind Russel (I tracked down her autobiography, Life is a Banquet, because of Mame too). I tried watching the 1974 musical version with Lucile Ball, Mame, and I couldn’t get through it. I really wanted to like it but Ball isn’t at her best – she was in her 60s when it was made – and Rosalind Russel just really nailed it.

I think I may have just talked myself into popping the DVD in today so I can spare my children from having to watch it again with me. Nah – just kidding: I’m still going to make them watch it with me sometime before Christmas.