Organist playing at Oakland's Grand Lake Theater before a showing of The Great Gatsby

The summer movie season began officially for me last weekend when we took in The Great Gatsby at The Grand Lake Theater in Oakland.  Built in 1926, just a year after Gatsby was first published, the Grand Lake boasts marvelous Art Deco interiors and some awfully sweet concessionaires.  The story fell flat for me but the costumes and sets were fabulously fizzy. So go. See it for yourself on the big screen. Then find out more about the sets here and here. Other things worth imbibing in, old sport:

1. Educator Madeline Levine on her own struggles with the empty nest.

2. Writer Susan Orlean works and works out at a treadmill desk–could you?

3.  Farewell to “The Office” featuring Creed’s swan song.

4. American Idol winner Candice Glover sings Lovesong and I Who Have Nothing.

5. Just in case you missed this earlier, Angelina Jolie explains why she’s undergone a double mastectomy.

6. The campaign to give Abercrombie & Fitch clothes to the homeless.

Happy Weekend!

"And I like large parties. They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy." F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby