It’s a two-fer, kind of, in this Intermittent Transmission.

We start with the week in celebrity sightings.  Yes, as I’ve written about before, living in Los Angeles means that every now and again, you’re going to run in to someone who is “celebrated” for some reason or another.  And in the course of my general walking around this week, I hit a sort of celebrity hat trick.  Herewith, a chart:
 

Celeb	Location	"Canoodling" Factor	Misc. Comments.
Jeff Goldblum	Closing Night of Cinerama Dome	High	Mr. Goldblum arrived plenty early, which was good, because tickets sold out about an hour and fifteen minutes before showtime.  “Is that his daughter?” a friend wondered, when we saw the young woman accompanying Goldblum.  Well, if she is his daughter, then Mr. Goldblum spent a good part of the rest of the evening breaking state and federal law.  (We assume it was a girlfriend of some sort.  Lots of tongue action.  Gross!)  Did not return to seat after intermission of “Lawrence of Arabia.”
Cameron Diaz	Closing Night of Cinerama Dome	Low	Ms. Diaz and boyfriend Jared Leto were discreet.  She seemed very nice and cool.  Also did not return to seat after intermission.  Do you think she and Jeff just didn’t realize there was a whole second half?
“Melissa” from MTV’s Real World New Orleans	Outside Dalt’s, a popular eatery/bar adjacent to the Warner Bros. Lot	No Data Collected	“Melissa” was sitting outside with a boy, but what kind of boy, we couldn’t tell.  It was tough to get a good look without appearing obvious.  She seemed to be having a nice, “Friday evening after work” kind of time.

And such is life in Southern California.

By the way, you all know what "canoodling" is, right?  It's one of those dumb "phrases of the moment" that came from nowhere, and is used a lot in gossip columns and the trade papers to denote the most obvious kind of public making out.

Now, about the aforementioned “Lawrence of Arabia.”
 

 1)  “Boy, a lot of it takes place in the desert.  I feel like we’ve seen these scenes before, like, in “Star Wars.”
 2)  “Isn’t there any way for Lawrence to have some sort of love interest?  I mean, why can’t Sherif Ali have a cute sister?  Better, a cute sister who’s killed by the Turks, and Lawrence must avenge her ... “
 3)  “Man, it’s a bit long, don’t you think?  And where are the “action beats” every ten pages?”
 4)  “The title isn’t testing well, but audiences really responded to “Larry of Arabia.”
 5)  “Peter O’Toole?  He’s not really ... um ... Arab, is he?”
 

Links:

http://www.mtv.com/mtv/tubescan/rw9/

http://www.goldblum.com/

http://www.cameron-diaz.com/

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~tem/law/