List 55

Love: Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen's latest. Its ruminations on nostalgia - the feeling that you should have been born in an earlier era, and that things were better in the past - definitely struck a chord with me. Owen Wilson proved to be a worthy typical Allen character lead. Marion Cotillard was lovely. And Corey Stoll ran away with every scene as the intense, swaggering Ernest Hemingway. (Bonus factoid: Stoll is bald in real life. Nice work, hairpiece people.)

Like: The Jewish Style Artichoke at Locanda, the new Roman-style restaurant in the Mission, opened by Delfina's Craig and Anne Stoll.(Random coincidence - this is not a Stoll-themed post.)

Discovery: Thomas Doyle's intricate small-scale art pieces bring together two things I love (dioramas and terrariums) to create slightly surreal vignettes. http://www.thomasdoyle.net

Obsession: George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, which I started to read right before Game of Thrones began to air on HBO. For the past 6 weeks, and 4000+ pages, the four books have been fairly consuming. The series is filled with dozens of rich characters whose lives and machinations play out in an incredibly detailed fictional world that mixes bits of medieval history with supernatural elements. It might sound super D&D but I have never been into that. I swear. Now that I'm done, I'll miss the story, but I'm glad to have my life back. At least until July 12th when Book 5 is due to come out.

Complaint: That I have yet to make it out to Amoeba to pick up Hot Sauce Committee Part Two on vinyl. I love the album art. Digital just won't do.

List 54

Love: The Lives of Others, one of my favorite movies from the past decade. It's an incredibly well-acted, tense and moving story of life under the 1980s East German police state, and the way surveillance changes the lives of the artists being watched and challenges the humanity of one Stasi officer. (Despite the gravity of the subject, I also couldn't help but oggle the bohemian cool of the Berlin flat where much of the film unfolds.)

Like: Schmidt's, in the Mission. Admittedly, the service can be the worst combination of German + moustached hipster. But I liked the sparse interior design, and it's hard to beat the pea cake and smoked salmon appetizer, the sausage plates, and the spaetzle with cheese and bacon.

Discovery: Just how great The Sound of Music is. I was into it as a kid (Liesl and the song "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" were particularly alluring to a young girl). But that was when it came on TV once every two years and other than that you had no way to watch it. But having seen it over and over on DVD now as an adult, with Stella, I have such a new and deeper appreciation of the movie and the songs. We hope to take Stella to Salzburg one of these years.

Obsession: We finally got the coveted Josef Muller-Brockman Swiss Auto Club safety poster we've been obsessing about for seven years (see List 4) at a vintage poster auction on May 7th. How do you say "happy" in German?

Complaint: Metal. To be fair, the complaint could equally be about the genre itself or about my own failure to appreciate it. My formative music was British New Wave and ska. Erich's, on the other hand, was Metal. So while I was listening to, say, Adam & the Ants, the English Beat and Haircut 100 as a kid in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, thousands of miles away in Milwaukie, Oregon, my future husband was headbanging to Black Sabbath. Our music tastes have largely converged, but often as of late when we are driving in his German car, the German metal band Accept's hit "Fast as a Shark" is blaring. And while I admit his band can beat up my band (do the pictures leave any doubt?), it's just not my thing.

List 53

Love: Jazz on a Summer's Day, the 1960 documentary about the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. Killer performances abound, Anita O'Day could not look any cooler, and there are wonderful atmospheric shots of the crowd.

Like: Skirt steak on the grill, paired with Robert Sinsky's Vin Gris.

Discovery: "Cape Dory" by Tennis. The single came out last year and sounds like summer to me. If you close your eyes and listen, it's easy to imagine you're on the deck of a boat somewhere, watching the sun set. Or rise.

Obsession: Finding the right weather-resistant fabric for our 1960s iron patio dining set. I was very excited to read about Link Design Solution's outdoor fabric collection, which aims to marry modern and vintage and evoke "the golden age of the American pool scene."

Complaint: That it's not really summer yet - nor will it really consistently be summer for us in the Bay Area until August.

List 52

Love: BillyKirk. (Actually, William Kirkland and Chris Bray). Based in Pennsylvania, they work with Amish leathermakers to create what are, in my opinion, the perfect work and weekend bags.

Like: Patricia Wells. Her version of a Cobb salad will be going into heavy rotation in our house. She uses a super simple and healthy dressing, consisting of plain low-fat yogurt, fresh lemon juice, and a homemade lemon salt made from combining lemon zest and sea salt and letting them steep together for a bit.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Patricia-Wellss-Cobb-Salad-Iceberg-Tomato-Avocado-Bacon-and-Blue-Cheese-364872

Discovery: Sean Thackery. He's an off-the-beaten-path winemaker (based in Bolinas) whose Pleiades wines never disappoint. I love Wendy MacNaughton's illustrated profile of Thackery, which was done for Pop Up Magazine as part of SFMOMA's "How Wine Became Modern" exhibit, and published on The Rumpus.

http://therumpus.net/2011/03/meanwhile-the-bolinas-winemaker/

Obsession: Deborah Bowness. She designs and handprints trompe l'oeil wallpaper. We have a strip of her bookcase wallpaper mounted as a piece of art in our bedroom.

Complaint: Peter Dinklage. And not so much a current complaint but rather a complaint that's been taken off the table, at last. Dinklage is a brilliant actor and ever since I saw him in The Station Agent I've wanted to see more of his work. He finally has a big, juicy, ongoing role suitable for his talents: Tyrion Lannister on HBO's Game of Thrones. I'm halfway through the book series the show is based on and know what lies ahead for his character and cannot wait to watch Dinklage do his thing.