Fun Weird Shit

• Check this out -- Gandolf officiates at Picard's wedding.
I trust I need say no more.

• And then there's this: In which Cousin Matthew leaves Downton Abbey and heads into apparent penury.
How else to explain the fact that he seems to be starving (he's lost, what, at least 30 pounds since Season 3 ended?) Or the fact that he appears to have raided an Oxfam shop and could only find a suit that is too small for him? Or the fact that he evidently can't afford real hair dye and had to color his hair with shoe polish? (Seriously -- that's one bad dye job.)

I admit that when it comes to fashion, I'm pretty out of touch. I enjoy following the fashion bloggers Tom and Lorenzo (thanks for the tip, onehundredmoons), but I'm often baffled by the things they think are cool and cutting-edge fashionable. A lot of the stuff just looks laughable to me. And the men's suits always seem at least a size too small -- as with Cousin Matthew here. But I do agree with TLo that Dan Stevens is trying a little too hard to go Hollywood-cool.

• The Chicago River on St. Patrick's Day
I love St. P's Day. My mom came from a half-Irish family, and I grew up in a town that had a large St. Patrick's parade every year. Every now and then, my mom would let us stay home from school, and we'd go. It was great. "Leprechauns" zipping around in little cars, throwing green candy; the local (large) Irish-American club doing Irish dances long before it was cool or well-known; the Irish Wolfhound club walking dozens of beautifully-trained and groomed dogs with green ribbons in their fur. We'd wear green clothes and have green ginger ale with dinner (and later in life, there was green beer. If you don't like beer [and I don't], there's always green gin-and-tonic). I know that these sorts of celebrations are more of an American invention than a real Irish tradition, but I don't care. I like them.

Snow in NYC yesterday, with more still on the ground than I'd have expected. It's fun, in a last-gasp-of-winter sense.