Instead of delightful breakfast foods, I am now eating a greek candy bar.

I felt just as you did, Kat. although I liked Depp a teensy bit more. A horrible mess of a movie, though.

y'all have convinced me that I need breakfast. but I think a shower before I decide if breakfast is out or in

Timelies all!

Happy Belated Birthday Tommy!

It wasn't that I disliked Depp, more so that I felt like he was phoning it in. He was relying on the fact that everyone knows that Johnny Depp is an impossibly sexy man, thus we'd think this character was as well without establishing it and selling it through, you know, acting, which is what he's getting paid to do. So sad, because it could've been a fabulous movie.

My girlfriend and I also had weird Big Daddy Kane flashes with the whole "How do you like me now?" moment at the end of the movie, which is not where I think the moviemakers were trying to take us. But there you go.

Buh?

The Brooklyn House of Detention, bounded by Atlantic Avenue and the criminal courts building, is apparently headed into a mixed-use future.

Soon, it will house not only inmates and jail cells, but also, in a vision endorsed by the mayor, a 24,000-square-foot strip mall on the street level.

The biggest question may now be which businesses the Department of Correction, the property's landlord, will bring to this increasingly residential section of Boerum Hill.

City and borough officials have publicly suggested a high-end food store, a children's clothing outlet or law offices. But retailing experts, community groups and New York City business owners interviewed Friday had their own ideas.

"There's a tremendous amount of potential to sell what I call the nifty-gifties," said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst for the NPD Group, a market research firm. "You have a captive audience, even with the visitors," he added. Forget boutique stores. "Think of it as more of an upscale airport gift shop."

Because what every jailhouse really needs is an upscale gift shop in the lobby.

Heh. Thanks to Betsy's encouragement I'm making JZ watch Flash Gordon (the Queen one) and she's boggled by the satin, Brian Blessed's Big Blessedness, Sam Jones' maple-hard acting, Timothy Dalton's commanding manliness and speculation about how bored Brian May and Freddy Mercury must have been doing the score. ("We're supposed to build the tension here. How about we just hit the last key on the piano incessantly?" "Right!")

Quote of the morning: "You're flying blind on a rocket cycle?"

"Think of it as more of an upscale airport gift shop."

Egad. Or even better, good grief.

Soon, it will house not only inmates and jail cells, but also, in a vision endorsed by the mayor, a 24,000-square-foot strip mall on the street level.

I'm still boggling over that, too, Jess. The only thing I could come up with was that maybe the property developers noticed that putting up luxury townhouses right next door to a jail might have a negative effect on property values.

a 24,000-square-foot strip mall

It's a typo. The word "search" was omitted from between "strip" and "mall".