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Why didn't anyone tell me that Pam Anderson and Kid Rock had broken up? I feel so violated! With Pam's massive rack and Kid's stringy hair, they were the perfect trailer-y couple.
Sigh.
And now Pam is planning to remarry Tommy Lee? I'm always the last to know. I'll have to send Pam some pancake makeup to cover up her bruises...you know, as a wedding gift.
Dear Britney,
The time has come to fire your fashion guru. She sucks and you look like ass.
Let's talk about your outfit at the latest MTV party. We'll start from the top -- what's with the hat? Did you not wash your hair? Did your hair stylist not show up or have a bad day? If you were wearing a red and green striped sweater [which, by the way, I'm not recommending], you'd look like Freddy Kruger. Or is that the point? Are you up for a role as the next Freddy Kruger? Because, girl, let me tell you -- you're looking a little old, like someone put you away wet. A few more years of that and you won't even need special effects to give you Freddy face.
The bowtie is not cute. Between the bowtie and your rippy tshirt, it looks like you're trying to bring back Flashdance fashion. While I realize you were just about two years old during the Flashdance craze, let me assure that it's not a good look. It's not retro, it's not kicky -- it's just awful. What's next -- pulling your bra out of your sleeve?
I appreciate the fact that you've got a nice little body, and I admire you for not being completely skeletal. It doesn't mean I want to see the crack of your ass or the cut of your bikini wax. Pull your pants up. And speaking of pants, who told you those capri leggings were cool? And pumps with that outfit? Oh no! It looks like someone got loose in the reprehensible 1982 costume closet.
Put down the crack pipe down and hire someone other than former MTV VJ Jesse to dress you.
Yours truly,
Nicole
So I'm a really big fan of The Amazing Race. One day Amy and I are going to be Team Alternagirl and take the whole thing.
But I have to admit that this season is just fucking boring. It's not the teams themselves are any more or less interesting than years past. It's that they seem to be pretty much staying in the same small area of Europe for the bulk of the trip. The roadblocks aren't very interesting.
Of course, I'm still going to watch it tonight. And then I'll complain again that they're staying in Europe.
During the first Charlie's Angels release and the ensuing media junket that followed, I did a lot of eye rolling. I hadn't seen the movie, but wasn't that interested. The eye rolling was caused by the cheesy girl power, we're all best friends act that Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu put on. If I had to see them fondling each other one more time on a talk show set, I was going to puke.
Eventually Craig rented the movie and I realized how glad I was that I didn't see it in the theatre. What a piece of cinematic garbage. Oy.
Now, with the sequel unleashed upon us, the faux PDA is back in full throttle [har har har].
"We were just talking on the way over here how we are each other's jockstraps," [Cameron Diaz] says, sniggering. "We keep it nice and tight, close to the body."Um, ew.
If anyone ever compared my friendship to a jockstrap I wouldn't be very happy. Sweaty, tainted with smegma, snuggler of hairy testicles -- no thanks. I understand the analogy, but it's a bad one. It makes me imagine Drew, Cameron, and Lucy as pubic hairs in the jockstrap of life. Ugh. Where is my spork?
It's a shame. I sort of like Drew. I think she's gorgeous, but she comes off so awful.
"It would be questionable to go against so much of what the original show represented which was, y'know, women with hair in sexy outfits, y'know, hot girls in sportscars," Barrymore explains. "Y'know, if we went against that and made it some like, y'know, weird feminist statement that we want to look understated it just wouldn't be that warm, sexy funniness that the show had."What? I don't think I followed any of that. I like Cameron a lot less -- she's just a tall twit with a spastic facial twitch. Lucy Liu is the Einstein of the group
So I was sitting around watching Maury just now [because daytime television sucks ass] while I was finishing my knitting project when one of those "Ask your doctor about [drug name]" commercials came on. This one was for DermaBond, which is like stitches made of Crazy Glue.
The commercial talks about how uncomfortable traditional stitches are, blah blah blah, and then says, "Next time you're in the Emergency Room, ask you doctor about using Dermabond."
If I'm in the Emergency Room, the last thing on my mind is going to be asking the doctor to use Dermabond. I can picture it all now...
I'm bleeding profusely from my eyes and the multiple gunshot wounds peppering my broken body. I'm barely conscious, and can barely make words with my jacked up mouth. In my weakened state I motion to the doctor or nurse that I'd like to write something with my one good hand. I scribble feverishly for a moment and hold up the note. The note says,
Dear doctors and nurses working hard to save my life, Please use Dermabond to sew me back together. I'd like to ensure the company stays in business.Even if it's something not as life threatening, say I walked into a statue on the street [because I've been known to do that] and cracked my head wide open. I'm going to sit there in the ER for four hours and when my time to see the doctor comes I'm going to be preoccupied with making sure the doctor uses Dermabond to fix my head?Love, Nicole
It was the dumbest thing I've seen today, and considering I looked out my front door at some bar patrons about 30 minutes ago, that's saying something.
The Rollins Band destroyed the TLA last night. Just fucking destroyed it. It was the best Rollins Band show I have ever ever seen. Amazing! And I wasn't even in front of the stage. By the time we got there the front spots were taken, so I nabbed a spot on the balcony railing. And I got carded! How old am I when I get excited about being carded?
And Keith fucking Morris. Keith Morris! Watching him sing I Was So Wasted was like being practically preteen. He was, well, Keith Morris [a side note here: Morris is the founding vocalist of Black Flag and Circle Jerks]! Really, I keep using this word, but he was amazing. Amazing!
Keith did about a dozen songs with the band and the Henry came out did the last half of the show, which also rocked. How often do you hear Henry singing fucking TV Party? You couldn't wipe the silly grin off my face.
Every single time I've seen Henry live, his opening band always sucks. I mean, just full on sucks. I'm happy to report that Helen Back and the STR8 Razors were the opening band last night, and it was a riot. They're local and Helen is a tranny. I have got to find out what kind of stockings Helen wears -- he was writhing around on the ground and crawling around on his knees, knees bleeding, and not one run in the stockings! What? And I have to tell you that the man is killer in heels.
It was a weird, weird crowd. Very multi-gen. Aside from the normal pubescent boy crowd, the age group ran from about 8 years old to 60 years old. The balcony and bar areas were strictly aging former punk-land. We saw a lot of father/son combos. Surprisingly it was a very small pit. When Keith opened the place exploded but within five minutes there were only about ten guys in a pit, of course it was populated by idiots intent on killing each other.
There is this weird little skippy punky ska dance, it's sort of pre-pit. A precursor to the actual moshpit action. I swear to you, when done correctly [ie, not trying to kill anyone] it is a joy to behold. There's something about a guy who can pull it off that just gets me. Because I was in the balcony I could see the entire crowd -- there was a single guy doing the little dance. I was totally mesmerized.
And this is just a weird observation -- why do the fat guys insist on crowd surfing? No one really crowd surfs anymore, but three guys just had to try it last night and all three of them were huge guys.
I'm so tired today. Yeah, great, amazing show.
Christy and I were supposed to see Batboy last night, but couldn't get tickets. I should know better than to rely on Christy to purchase anything in advance. I had to tell her to show up at my house an hour early on the day of my wedding just to ensure that she'd be there on time.
Now I have to wait until September and drive to Allentown to see it. Does anyone want to meet up with me to see it? It'll be fun, and then we can all post on the journal of the show's writer and tell him how much we loved it! Woo!
Look ma, I'm a groupie!
Awwwwwwwwwww yeah! It's Henry Rollins day here at go fish! Imagine me now: I'm doing a little dance around my cubicle doing the cabbage patch, singing "I'm seeing Henry Rol--lins! I'm seeing Henry Rol--lins!" at the top of my lungs.
Tonight at 7pm I'll be at the show, firmly laced into my purple Docs. And I'll be way excited. I'm excited now!
Tonight is the Black Flag tribute show to benefit the West Memphis Three defense fund.
While I am uber excited for tonight, nothing makes me feel older than going to a show. Sure, there will be the occasional fan from way back, but mostly it's a bunch of 15 year old boys who don't understand that the concept of a moshpit isn't to maim your fellow concert-goers.
If I see a show at the Trocadero, at least I can escape the hormonal masses by watching the show from the balcony. At the TLA [where the show is this evening] there's no escape. I generally try to avoid the middle of the floor. The best spot is directly in front of the stage. Because I'm so short I can't really see much if I'm any further back. And you know these young whippersnappers: no respect for the elderly.
Yesterday I put about 12 loads of laundry through the wash. So last night I sat on my bed and folded them. There was nothing on television to watch, so I left NBC on. And then Love or Money came on.
Holy shit.
Did the producers search the world over for the biggest asshole they could find? I realize that the chicks are purely in it for the cash, and so they should have to deal with a little bit of hardship, but wow! And that fake, insincere apology for being a fucktard?
I can see now that I should have turned off the television and, I don't know, counted squares in my screens for entertainment.
I got out of bed this morning, discovered it was supposed to be sunny today, and decided to call out of work. I just can't face another sunny day at work after a weekend of pouring rain.
So I'm sitting couchside right now watching Valley Girl. I don't care what anyone says -- Valley Girl is one of the best movies ever.
I lurve me some young Nicolas Cage.
It doesn't matter what Traci Lords does, or how hard she tries to convince us all that she's a serious actress. Whenever I think of Traci Lords, I think of her with a dick in her mouth, and that's the way it will always be.
If, by some strange twist of fate, Traci won an Academy Award or something, she'd go up to collect her statue and thank the masses and the image would just pop into my head.
You know, you'd swear I watch a lot of porn or something.
I've spent the last hour watching The Breakfast Club on TBS. So you can't say "Eat my shorts" on television, but they can show Molly Ringwald's crotch shot?
What's that about?
Perhaps it's a sign of my maturity and my advanced age, but the MTV Movie Awards just could not keep my attention last night. Most of their little skits ran about five minutes too long. I find 50 Cent ridiculous. I was hoping someone would throw quarters at the crack of Pink's ass hanging out of those pants. There's something Stepford creepy about Beyonce Knowles.
It also could have been the trauma of seeing Kirsten Dunst's flaccid bosom, of course.
I watched for about 30 minutes and then flipped to Comedy Central for the new season of Insomniac. And then I was traumatized by the size of the knockers on the porn star at the porn convention Dave Attel attended.
Why can't women in the media ever have normal boobs? You don't need tits the size of beach balls. You just don't. There's no reason. I've seen a pair of gigantic naked boobs in person and they're just scary. You don't know whether to run screaming in the other direction or poke them to see if they explode. It's not like something of that size can be manhandled with any dexterity.
And on the other end of the scale, the Dunst end of the scale, it's OK to have saggy boobs. My own, while not nearly at the level of sag Ms. Dunst has achieved, do sag a little. But I'm not exacerbating the problem by running around to do my errands sans bra. Because if you need support, you wear a bra. It's a simple thing.
Is it too much to ask?
To: Kirsten Dunst
From: Nicole at go fish
Re: Your sagging rack
____________________________________________
I don't know what you have been doing to make your boobs sag so much. You're only, what, 22? But really, it looks like you had all your boob meat surgically removed and left only the skin and nipples. And now your nipples are hovering somewhere right around your belly button.
Here's a tip: you don't look good without a bra. You don't look sexy and you don't look hot. You just look like an old hooker. Your knockers no longer point in the right direction. Your tatas aren't even remotely in their original location. Those girls have gone south for the winter.
Please, be kind -- I don't need to see you flunk the pencil test with your dirty pillows.
Thank you. Congratulations on your award. Now go be a good girl and put on a nice foundation garment.
I have never understood the draw of Barry Manilow. I like to sing Copacabana at the top of my lungs as much as the next person, but there's no way I could sit through a Barry Manilow concert without creatively trying to kill myself with my stadium seat.
It's bad enough I saw Air Supply in concert and lived to tell the sad tale.
Still, I think it's strangely tragic and hilariously funny that Barry broke his nose and knocked himself unconscious by walking into a wall in the middle of the night.
Do you know how hard you'd have to slam into a wall to break your own nose and pass out for four hours? That just doesn't seem possible.
I have to admit something awful. I watched the season premiere of The Real World last night.
Can you believe that shit has been on for 13 fucking seasons? I remember watching the first season. It was on right around the time My So-Called Life aired. Of course, that was the last time The Real World was interesting...or even remotely real. As I recall there was a nice loft but it wasn't exactly a palatial estate in Paris.
Speaking of which, that was the only reason I wanted to watch it: Paris. Every time they showed a different thing in Paris, all I could think was "Hey, I was just there! Wooo!" and then I got all depressed because I want to be there.
I don't know that I'll be able to stomach watching any more of it, though. What a bunch of fucking wankers. I openly cringed watching them act out the Stereotypical American. The only one who doesn't seem completely wretched is the kid from Ireland. And why are all the girls so enamored of that guy Ace? He's not hot in the slightest -- he's got Bobby Brady hair.
Plus, as noted already, these smacked asses have been able to watch The Real World for 12 years. Haven't they learned anything? Like how not to look stupid on camera? And couldn't they learn to speak even a little bit of French before going to live in Paris? Dumbasses.
So I'm supposed to believe that Eminem is going to save HBO? Apparently he's in talks to star in his very own HBO series. You'll never believe what the premise is.
"According to the Daily Star, he is expected to play a rich rapper from the wrong side of the tracks."
Really? What a stretch! In 8 Mile he played a poor rapper who becomes successful, right? Man, this guy has serious range! Pretty soon some director will tap him to do Shakespeare. It'll probably Shakespeare's long lost play about a rapper who gets rich and has an antagonistic relationship with his mother and wife.
A Hollywood insider is quoted as saying: "Eminem prioved he can act with 8 Mile.Nothing makes sense. Trust me, it's all surreal."It make sense for HBO to want him."
I hate Jewel. I hate everything about her, from her horrendous snaggletooth to her hippy dippy "I grew up poor so you should love me" attitude to her earnest staring. I've been hating her a lot more recently. Why? Because of her new album.
For starters, take a look at the cover. She's transformed herself into Debbie Gibson. Oh, excuse me, Deborah Gibson.
"I'd always thought electronic music was cold and pat and not very creative," [Jewel] says. Yet she decided to try the remix treatment on "Serve the Ego," a single from her previous release "This Way."See where I'm going with this? Jewel is happy to be considered a serious artist until she finds out she can make more money by making cheesy dance music.The end result not only resonated personally but lifted Jewel to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart.
"I found a way to use beats that suits me," she says. "Now, I see that it's like being a painter who says they will never use red or yellow. Why limit yourself that way?"
And Jewel is part of this whole Intuition razor conspiracy. She made a deal with the devil Schick to use her music in the ad campaign. What happened to idealistic Jewel who would never support a product she didn't use? I can guarantee Jewel isn't her bathroom every morning with an Intuition razor and bleeding legs and armpits.
Yeah, I hated Jewel before and now I think she's a full-on, Dionne Warwick sellout.
"It always takes time to know what somebody is capable of; people have watched my learning curve since the beginning," Jewel says. "I've tried as much as I can to be honest, and I've been lucky enough to do this job according to the morals and principles that suit me. Now, I'm ready for this album to be heard."She needs to take her hair extensioned Debbie Gibson-wannabe craptacular self and go back to the van.
Who the hell decided to put Clay and Ruben in all white? They fucking look like ice cream men. Or pharmacists.
Cripes.
Don't you dare click on the link below unless you want to be spoiled...
Now that's the way a season should end! Craig thought a bomb would go off at the last second, which I thought was also an interesting option. Excellent, excellent show. Now that Buffy is over and done with, I don't think I'll be watching anything else except for 24 in the Fall television season. Because, really -- every other show on television absolutely sucks ass in comparison.
I would venture to say that the writers are certainly anti-Bush and anti-war. To write a President so obviously the polar opposite of the fucking joke we have in office just screams "wishful thinking." And the fact that the writers wrote Palmer saying celebrating your freedom instead of chipping away at your liberties is the way to go also makes it obvious. Of course, I don't know what it says that they left things with a chemical weapons attack.
I thought for sure Shari Palmer would die.
I have anxiety.
Tonight Buffy will end forever and it's the season finale of 24. I have an event tonight. Who is the dumbass who chose to have these meetings on a Tuesday night? Oh yeah, that was me.
But I have a strategy. I only have to be there until 6:45pm to guage attendance. So at 6:45pm I'm packing it up and getting a cab home. I'll be home in ten minutes and I'll have plenty of time to get the VCR set up for American Idol and make some sushi for dinner.
But until I have to leave for the event, I'm avoiding work spending my time reading Buffy-licious stories from the cast and more E!Online Buffy stuff.
Because I'm 12 years old like that.
I love that commercial for the I-pod where the guy is singing Baby Got Back. It's only one of my favorite songs of all time -- it totally cracks me up. And I love the fact that, no matter what, whenever you sing the song you have to sing it really loud and you have to make some sort of thrusting motion when you say the word "sprung." And you can't sing it and sound or look cool unless you're Sir Mix-a-Lot.
John Corbett is creepy. He always has this smarmy look on his face like he's picturing himself naked and really digging it.
Ew.
Is Clay wearing a Miami Vice jacket?
So it's going to be a Clay vs. Ruben finale, eh? What the hell is this crap about a three night finale? While I realize all the losers up to now will have to come back and be part of the group sing [anyone remember the harem craptacular from last year?], but three fucking nights?
Who wants to see me in a rapturous gossamer cloud of pure delight? Well, look at me right this instant if you can because I'm fucking psyched up! I just found out that Henry Rollins is coming to the TLA on June 16 for a very special show.
I need you to show up at the show. I need you to tell a friend. That's what I need. I need these shows packed out and the house rockin';. From our side of things, I want to make this absolutely clear: We are not going to be casually shuffling through these songs like it's some oldies show and you'll be kind of into it because everyone's hearts were in the right place. We are a trained assault unit. We are going to fuck you up with this music. This is not a Black Flag reunion. Greg Ginn and Chuck Dukowski wrote some of the best songs ever and we are hell bent on rendering them as best we can. If we didn't know for sure that the set was bomb proof, we wouldn't be out all summer wasting everyone's time. This is a one time, one time only tour. We're not looking to cross over to some new audience by playing someone else's music or cash in on some dubious claim to fame. We didn't write any of these songs. On this tour, we are a cover band. I should add that when I say cover, I mean you better take cover when we hit stage because we're not fucking around. I think I have made myself clear on this point.Eeeeeeeeeee! I'm burning up at the mere thought of it!
All Henry has to do is ask and I'm his willing she-bitch.
Woo! It's Buffy night! You know where I'll be from 8-9pm tonight.
I'm a little sad that Buffy is coming to an end, even with the crapfest that the last three or four seasons have been. I will admit that the blow is softened by knowing that I still get to have my Spike jones fulfilled next season on Angel.
So go play some Buffy trivia quizzes, you know, for old times sake.
I admit it -- I watched the crapfest that was the 90210 reunion last night. I didn't regularly watch the show beyond the first season or two, but I was curious.
What a bunch of pompous schmucks. We were the voice of a generation? What? Did I just hear correctly? 90210 was the voice of a generation? I must have missed something vital -- no one on that show ever represented me or my voice. I never wanted to be anyone on that show. My friends and I watched it and just shredded the show, the actors, and the thin plotlines.
And what was with Shannon Dougherty getting those weird little cameo vignettes? No one else did. I never want to look at her again. Her teeth draw my focus like a laser beam. She just creeps me out.
Self-important fucks like Eminem should just hang it up and return to their sad little lives. I'm not an Al Yankovic groupie, although Fat is one of my favorite videos ever. If I was a recording artist and Al wanted to parody one of my songs, I'd say "have at it. do your thing." Because Al's a funny guy, yo. Poor, beleaguered Eminem won't let Al shoot the video for his 8 Mile parody. You just know he's sitting up in his lucite and black laquer decorated home lamenting, "Yo man, I can't have that hack making fun of my art. I'm a serious artist, yo! He's going to step back and show some respect."
Lighten up, I say. There's nothing about Eminem that comes off as thuggish or street smart or ghetto-y -- with his stupid Moby war, and almost throwing down with the dog puppet [or, should I say, directing his posse to throw down with a dog puppet], and now his whining over this whole Al Yankovic thing, he just comes off as an over-sensitive, self-absorbed hack.
I can't say I'll be sorry when his 15 minutes are up.
So I managed to figure out how to burn my very own CD. I feel sort of let down -- it was a little too easy. I figured there would be hours of reading the manual and hair pulling and teeth gnashing. It didn't strike me as something that would be intuitive.
At any rate, it's my junior high CD. You know, a lot of REM, Depeche Mode, Smiths, Elvis Costello, Replacements, and Pet Shop Boys. Oh, and one Marvin Gaye tune thrown in for kicks. I'm listening to it now. It's hilarious -- all that's running through my head is me laying on my bed at home in my mom's house, tears streaming down my face, getting all verklempt over whatever loser I was dating that week.
I laugh like hell everytime I hear someone say that more teenagers today are battling depression. Depressing a teenager is like shooting fish in a barrel. Every single one of them is depressed -- whether they're football players, chess geeks, or goths. I certainly spent many a night in tears listening to Morrissey, planning my suicide.
I'm not a huge fan of musical theatre. Most of them just take stories way too seriously, and how serious can it be when you're singing and dancing whilst saying your lines? I've seen Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, and a host of other musicals and, yeah, they're big spectacles and impressive productions but breaking out into a jazzy dance number while you're starving or in the middle of Saigon is just kind of silly. I do, however, have a severe jones to see Hairspray, because the production is a comedy and musical=comedy should always be true.
And now Elton John is making The Vampire Lestat into a musical. This just strikes me as a bad idea. I'm an Anne Rice fan, but even the movies made from her books are horrifyingly bad. Now you're going to convert them to a musical? No thanks. I can see it all now -- Lestat kills someone and then will perform this stunning tap number about how much he likes blood.
Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
So is the pronunciation of the word "cement" a regional thing? Is it "SEA-ment" or "se-MENT"?
I've always pronounced it "se-MENT" and Merriam-Webster's agrees with me. There's this nifty little feature where you can hear a word pronounced on the M-W site. Ah, the wonder of having a sound card again!
Anyway, I'm sitting here listening to the local news and I keep hearing this woman say "SEA-ment" over and over again. It sounds ridiculous.
Amy and I pledged a while ago that next time The Amazing Race was accepting applications, we would make ourselves a team and throw our hat into the ring. We missed it the last time, but we should start getting our shit together because the next season is starting at the end of the month.
I hate to admit this, but this news has caused my department to descend on the CBS website to read the bios. All of us love The Amazing Race. No, we really love it. There is no work the morning after a new episode because we're all clustered together talking about it.
So here's the question -- where are they going to go this year? Everyone in the entire world hates America right now. One of my co-workers suggested that maybe they'll just run around Iowa for a month.
[Link found via Held in Contempt.]
Can you hear that? Harps...violins...angels singing...and, I think I can hear the strains of Cool Rider.
Grease 3 is in the pipeline, yo! Woohoo! All I want is a small bit part. I'll play a waitress at the local diner, or a teacher, or, hell, even a parent or bowling alley hanger outer. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
[Link found via Ain't Too Proud to Blog, home of Robyn -- another Grease 2 aficionado]
Be sure to put your two cents worth of input into this post-war poll by MSNBC. Take note of the poll numbers now.
Something tells me those numbers will be magically transformed to somehow suggest George is doing a bang up job by the time they get reported.
[link found via Gamer's Nook]
Look, I know Allen Iverson is a good player and he brings talent to the Sixers. But can't some other team adopt him? No, really. I'm sick to death of waking up every morning and hearing about some other dumbass thing he's done, or something one of his relatives that are on his bankroll have done.
In the past month alone, some guy tried to take him out and his stupid uncle rear-ended a car in a vehicle owned by Iverson and then fled the scene. Not that expect all sports figures to put out a good image of themselves, but I would appreciate it if he'd quit acting like a moron and lay down the law to the various relatives who are hangers-on and ask them to quit being assholes.
It doesn't make him look like he's "keeping it real" or anything like that. It just makes him look like a fool. And then I get annoyed because I keep hearing his name in connection to crimes and then he complains because the cops treat him like a criminal. And then I get more annoyed because he's complaining.
I'll just shut up now.
So I'm sitting couchside this afternoon feeling pitiful over my knee, and I'm taking in all that lousy Sunday television programming has to offer. And then a Time-Life commercial comes on. Time-Life has purchased the rights to the Fat Albert cartoon from the '70s and is now offering the episodes on DVD or video. Here's the catch: each episode is $25 $20 $10.
I can buy an entire season of Buffy for $40, and these boneheads think I'm going to shell out $160 for ten episodes of Fat Albert? I like Mushmouth as much as the next child of the 1970's, but there's no way.
So then I started thinking back over the hundreds of Time-Life commercials I've seen over the last few years, and it's obvious to me that they have hired someone my age as their video and music collection requisitions guy. Why? Because my childhood has pilfered and is being sold off at ridiculously high prices.Let's just start with The Muppet Show: $100 for 10 episodes. Someone is drinking too much crack-laced Hawaiin Punch. And then there are the myriad of '70s and '80s compilation albums. And it's not just my childhood -- they're peddling stuff from the '40s and '50s and '60s, too.
I feel dirty.
You know, I get a lot of shit from the uber-patriot, Christian right crowd for saying that Bill O'Reilly is a hate-filled piece of shit, and that the only reason people tune into his show is to see what kind of bullshit he's going to say next. It's the train wreck syndrome -- you just can't look away.
Poor Bill isn't doing so well on radio, it would appear. He's losing to Rush Limbaugh. Not that I think Rush fucking Limbaugh is so much more sane than Bill or anything. Both of them have their heads stuck way up their asses. One can only hope that one day there won't be an audience for their vitriolic spewing.
Let me get this straight -- I'm expected to believe that Josh received more votes than Ruben? Josh, who can't carry a tune in a bucket and looks like Jack Nicholson doing the Joker when he sings...Josh, who makes derogatory cracks about drag queens and has hideous teeth....got more votes than Ruben? I don't think so.
Speaking of drag queens, I'm glad Trenyce got voted off. Things would have gotten real ugly if Ruben had been the one to go.
Looks like next week I'm going to have to start voting. Josh must go.
Say what you want about Janeane Garofalo, but the woman knows how to make a point:
...I can't stand watching history roll right over us. It's like they're asking you to bend over, put your head in the sand, and put a flag in your ass...And here's another great quote: "That brings us to some of the rightwing pundits who dominate the radio, like Mike Savage, or some of the commentators at Fox – the Ann Coulters, what have you. I think what they do is they turn their own personal issues – whether they be racist, homophobic, sexist, xenophobic, or imperialistic – and they wrap them in the flag and hide them behind Jesus."Then there is a lot of the hate mail that says actors are too wealthy to understand what's going on. The actors live in Hollywood, all this kind of nonsense. Do they realize how wealthy the Bush family is or the Cheney family? The Ashcrofts? Bill O'Reilly? Tom Brokaw? Do they realize that if you are talking about the Administration now, Bush and Cheney in particular, the life of privilege, wealth, and elitism they have lived? If you are going to talk about somebody not understanding the common man, then look no further than the Beltway.
It is shocking that some people's lives are enriched by this nonsense – these boycotts and e-mails. They are proving themselves to be fundamentally anti-American and anti-democratic. They are against the First Amendment, so what are they defending? Unless they are trying to build a fascist Administration, unless they are trying to bring the American people to a point that we exist under a totalitarian regime.
I admit this freely, here and now, I have always wanted to be Janeane.
Awwwwww yeahhhh, boiiiiii! While the cat is away, the mouse will play. Play Grease 2, that is! *maniacal laughter*
I might even do the Cool Rider dance. Well, duh -- of course I'll do the Cool Rider dance. And the Back to School Again dance. And I'll sing Reproduction at the top of my lungs. If only I had a slutty gold lame dress so I could sing We'll Be Together in costume.
I want a C-O-O-L, R-I-D-E-R.....I wanna cool rider! A cool, cool, cool rider! Woo!
You know, come to think of it, I could probably recreate the Christmas tree costume from the A Girl for All Seasons scene. Of course, if I electrocute myself I'll be good and dead by the time Craig arrives home from D.C. tomorrow night. On second thought, maybe I should leave the Christmas tree lights where they are.
Stephanie, please don't cry....
There are only a few reasons I can think of for actually wanting to go to the great Garden State. The only reason that continually draws me over the Ben Franklin Bridge is the cheaper alcohol. Buying wine in New Jersey is not only less expensive, but all the wine shops post Wine Spectator ratings on the really good bottles and that makes it a lot easier to experiment without fear of picking up a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Of course, transporting liquor across state lines is illegal. But I'm a rebel like that -- breakin' the law, breakin' the law!
But before I made with the criminal behavior, Craig and I stopped at the Loew's in Cherry Hill and saw Identity. Let me just clarify one thing -- Identity is not a scary movie. And I haven't read more than one review that had any clue about this movie. It's suspenseful and it could be called a psychological thriller. Everyone is saying the movie is confusing -- trust me, this is not a thinking man's movie. Yes, there are a couple of plot twists and the ending is not concrete. It doesn't make it a confusing movie.
Plus, John Cusak is in it. How can you not like John Cusak, especially since he's dripping wet 99% of the time. I lurve me some wet John Cusak. Even without John Cusak I would have enjoyed the movie though.
And I will say this: I totally thought I had the whole thing figured out within 15 minutes of the beginning of the film but I was way wrong. And you know I just now realized that Rebecca DeMornay is in the film? It just didn't look like her.
I'm going to recommend this movie -- fins up!
Yep, so I came up to the studio to check my email and absently turned on the television. The talented kids thing is on and it's definitely a train wreck. If there's one thing worse than kids who think they have talent, it's the parents of children who think they have talent. Because you just know a six year old would never wear leather pants of his own accord.
I would venture to say that there is just something inherently evil about a kid who doesn't even have hair on his parts wearing leather pants and singing about "too much lovin' drives a man insane" and "I want to love you like a lover should." It's creepy and his plastic blonde mother is even creepier for enjoying it.
Not to mention that Mario Lopez is eerie.
Anyone catch Madonna on Will & Grace last night? You know, the only movie I've ever been able to get through with her in it is Desparately Seeking Susan. She's just gotten to be a suckier and suckier actress with age. Oy vey. She was wretched last night.
And please tell me that she did not pick her own wardrobe. What was up with the hot pink velour pants and long black belted cardigan? Velour pants always remind me of camel toe.
Coincidentally enough, it looks like the power of Madonna's fashion choices has not died. When I was out and about during my lunch hour today I ended up walking behind a woman wearing the exact same outfit -- from the hot pink velour pants up to the cardigan. I didn't get a chance to check out her camel toe, unfortunately. Or fortunately, depending on how you look at it.
Good news! Twisted Sister is reuniting for a USO tour:
"It's funny that back in 1985 we had to go before Congress and defend our music against censorship and now we're ambassadors for the Defense Department," guitarist Jay Jay French quipped in a statement.Dee Snider always scared the bejeezus out of me, and he has not gotten prettier with age.
So, uh, anyone notice that American Idol Josh has man boobs? It's true -- he's got a little pair of nubbins.
Maybe a perky rack is the newest trend in Marine physique.
You other brothers can't deny
That when a girl walks in with some big fat zits
And some whiteheads on her face
You get sprung
The stress from the American Idol competition is taking it's toll on Carmen's complexion. Holy schmoly, she's got those huge moundy zits that look like the roots are embedded deep in the middle of her head. And she must be on some good drugs, otherwise, why would she be so deluded as to think...
...that she could actually win the competition. Everytime she opens her mouth and that goat-like sound comes out it's an affront to hearing people everywhere.
Easily, the bottom three are Carmen, Josh, and Trenyce. If there's any justice in this world it'll be Josh that gets voted off. I swear that guy didn't hit a single note in that song. And his Jack Nicholson Joker smile is just too much to take.
Oy.
I want to know who is going to see The Real Cancun. No, really -- I do. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this totally marketed toward 16-21 year old males who have never smooched a girl or felt a boobie?
It's like the poor man's Porky's...and that can't be good.
Just a couple of American Idol comments...
Fer the love of Pete, what a weird couple of hours of television.
I knew what was happening on Buffy because I'm such a spoiler whore. No surprises there.
As for 24, I'm assuming that Jack's daughter is going to manage to find herself back in harms way again before the last show. Next week looks pretty good. I hated to see Yusef getting beaten half to death....fucking rednecks. And I have to say that I was a little surprised to learn who the turncoat in the government is. Huh.
I didn't watch the whole of American Idol yet, but I've made a decision -- I'm officially sick of Clay. There something really horrible about the way he sings the word "together" and I can't stand to see him sneer at the camera anymore. Now, granted, nothing can be as bad as goat girl Carmen and Opryland Josh. Hey, I wonder if any of my predictions came true?
I don't wanna get you excited or anything, but if you notice things acting a little bit, er, goofy around here within the next week, well, do not panic. A change or two is afoot. It's all part of Operation One Year Blogaversary, brought you next Friday [April 25] by the phrase "You stink."
Speaking of the phrase "You stink," it's my big television night this evening -- a new Buffy, plus 24 and American Idol. So if you've got my phone number I suggest you conveniently lose it between the hours of 8-11pm [mildly spoilery stuff below, so don't click unless you wanna know].
Only a handful of new Buffy episodes left until the end of the series forever. I'm not entirely upset -- the show is starting to smell bad. And tonight it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. I should really quit reading that damn wildfeed. Of course, I'm kinda happy that Xander is going to be half-blinded. And the fact that this new Caleb preacher guy calls girls "splits" really cracks me up.
And I heard it's Billy Joel night on American Idol. Egads, y'all. Here are my predictions:
I wonder about poll numbers. I've never received a phone call from someone asking me my opinion about the taste of ketchup, let alone the state of the nation. No one in my family or Craig's family has received such a call. None of my friends, acquaintances, or co-workers have ever answered poll questions. Have any of you?
I'm not saying that I know half of the East Coast. But with that many people in my network, you'd think at least one of them would have received a call from a pollster or filled out a poll survey. But I don't know one single person who has participated in approval rating polls of any kind.
Based on this suspicious discrepancy and the fact that I don't know too many people who trust the government right now, it just seems that to report George has a 73% approval rating seems wildly inaccurate.
And you know, I have a theory. A lot of us have policies when it comes to non-personal phone calls. Whether you hang up on solicitors, or you just don't answer calls coming from certain numbers, or you have one of those Telezapper whozits, the majority of normal people just don't speak to telemarketers or survey-takers, etc. So who does that leave to speak to the pollsters? That's right: people who are too stupid to avoid telemarketing calls and old people who just want someone to talk to. And both of those subsets of people are, generally speaking, more conservative in nature, which is where those high approval ratings come from. Sure, I could be wrong, but it's a nice theory.
The only good part of the article on approval ratings is this little reminder --
The increase mirrors the rise in popularity his father enjoyed immediately after the 1991 Gulf war, support that rapidly collapsed as images of the war were replaced by worries about the flagging economy.In an attempt to avoid the mistakes of his father, who lost his re-election campaign to Bill Clinton in 1992, Mr Bush is making an aggressive push to boost the sluggish economy even before the bullets stop flying in Iraq.
This week he is taking to the road to promote his tax-cutting economic recovery plan around the US during the Easter break.
Yeah, George -- good luck with that and all. I'm sure the thousands of people who have lost their jobs in your great economy will be thrilled to see you. And while there are plenty of Americans without basic math skills, there are plenty of us who understand that tax cuts+record spending=economic disaster for decades to come.
Yeah, I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the day I found out that not everyone was heterosexual. It was...
Oh wait, no I don't remember it. Because, well, who cares? It's really not that big of a deal. Sexual preference differences are about as important as the difference between have blue eyes and brown eyes.
So now, the media is making this huge deal out of the U.S.'s first daytime soap lesbian smooch. I'm sure Fred Phelps and his gang of miscreants, and Pat Robertson and his band of freaks will be issuing statements and picketing the studios as soon as they can wrap their tiny little brains around that one. And since George listens to the voices in his head, I'm sure he'll be sticking his nose in it too.
Because love is a very bad thing if it doesn't fall into the prescribed acceptable categories.
I've always wondered why it's such a big deal to see two chicks smooching or two boys necking. There was that whole brouhaha when Ellen Degeneres came out and then the subsequent lesbian story line on her show, and then when Roseanne Barr and Morgan Fairchild got a little smooch on. I can't remember any male kiss uproar, probably because there really hasn't been much of that.
People will sit their asses down and let their kids watch a hetero couple feel each other up and get nekkid, but a simple kiss between Roseanne and Morgan sends the parents racing to cover their kids eyes? Why? I don't understand.
I've often thought that maybe it's the "monkey see, monkey do" thing. You know, little boy sees two boys making out and decides to give it a try. Of course, if that means that the little boy is going to automatically be gay based on a one kiss with a boy at 5 years of age, that really should apply to everything -- that the kid is going to see a show where a girl kisses a horse, and then the idea of bestiality rubs off. Or the kid watches American Pie and automatically becomes fond of the idea of getting his kink on with baked goods for the rest of his life. In this case and according to that theory, perhaps haus fraus throughout the U.S. will see this daytime television lesbian liplock and decide to leave their husbands in pursuit of a lesbian relationship.
Those crazy religious fanatics will be the first to tell you that homosexuality is a sin against jeebus and all of that, all while the men are fucking their secretaries and the women are closet alcoholics and meth addicts. That particular fucked up hypocritical dynamic has always puzzled me. It's so funny -- they preach love, but only to others who think exactly like themselves.
What would really make me the happiest person on the face of the planet is if everyone just woke up one day with a changed outlook. Everyone in the world wakes up and accepts that life is short and we need to take happiness and love where ever we can find it -- whether I find joy with a man or a woman should make no difference to anyone.
I turned on Fox a few minutes before the 10pm news came on. I didn't realize Married By America was on. Holy crap, that was some funny stuff. I couldn't help but giggle uncontrollably as the blonde girl sobbed. And wow, her family and friends must all live in a trailer park. Half of them had mullets. Actually, I guess they could also live in my neighborhood. Because 3/4 of my neighbors have business up front, party in the back hair.
What's that girl's name? Billy Jeanne? Yeah, that's not a name straight out of the Ozarks. All she needs is a couple of spoons to play.
And didn't anyone notice that her groom is not straight?
There's a commercial for gum that I hate -- it's the stupid angry gumball who raps about how this special gum has ruined his life.
Sometimes I think ad execs are on crack. What's worse is that the ad was approved...which means the company execs are also on crack.
I have a sneaking suspicion that some movie studios in the 1980s subtly imbedded mind control techniques in their films. Everytime a John Hughes film comes on I feel compelled to drop whatever I am doing and watch it, slackjawed, laughing at all the same parts, saying the dialogue [which is committed to memory after 12 billion viewings] along with the actors.
Other movies that I must watch if they are on: Angus, Beetlejuice, Say Anything, Desparately Seeking Susan, Ghostbusters, Footloose, The Princess Bride, Back to the Future, and The Goonies.
I shudder to think of the massive time suckage I've been part of.
Holy schmoly, Kelly Clarkson looks like a beat up crack whore.
I can't believe that drag queen Trenyce is not in the bottom three, but Kim Locke is. Oy.
Honestly, what crazed bunch of uber-patriots are keeping Josh in the running? I have a theory that he could single-handedly take down any "Axis of Evil" country just by singing there...everyone would run for cover, clutching their bleeding ears. On second thought, maybe I should just send him to the White House.
How the hell did Carmen make it another week? Maybe there are a plethora of goat herders voting. She sounds baaaaaaaaaah-d.
What the hell is this Get Out of My Dreams travesty?
Huh. Ricky bought it, but off key girl Kim C. gets to stay?
Maybe Carmen and Josh made a deal with the deeeeeeevil.
So Craig and I are watching American Idol, and that dorky military guy Josh comes out and sings whatever it was that he sang.
Craig looks at me and asks, "Has that guy just gotten hick-ier and hick-ier with each passing show? Next week he's going to come out to sing in overalls and wife beater, chewing a piece of alfalfa, carrying one of those jugs with the three X's on it."
It was funny. Guess you had to be there.
On a cheerier note, did you notice? No "205" jersey on Ruben tonight! He looked hot!
Please tell me I will not be the only one seeing House of 1000 Corpses in the theatre. I mean, come on -- Rob Zombie as director and an "R" rating for "strong sadistic violence/gore, sexuality and language"...does good cheese get any better than this?
*This plea brought you by the poor sap who has seen every Halloween, Friday the 13th, Freddy Kruger movie in the theatre.
I don't want to be one of those old hags who constantly say, "I remember when bread was a nickel!" but I remember when Lollapalooza tickets were about $30.00 for all seats. It wasn't all that long ago.
In fact, it was around 1993 or 1994.
And now tickets are $60 for pit seats. That just seems outrageous to me. True, it's a day full of music. And I really wanted to see Jane's Addiction again. However, those tickets better come with crack to justify that kind of pricing when less then ten years ago they were half that price.
Do not go and see The Core. I repeat, do not see this movie.
I've readily admitted to being a total disaster movie freak, but The Core has to be right up there with that made for TV classic, Atomic Twister. I heard the special effects were phenomenal, but they weren't that great. The plot was kind of silly, and by the end of the film you're sorting hoping everyone dies.
Save your money -- see it on video. Or don't see it at all.
I refuse to watch any sporting event on television with the exception of cheerleading and gymnastics.
Just thought you'd like to know.
After thinking about this for a few hours, I would have to say that I will likely never have plastic surgery. I'm just a wimpy little girl and I really dislike pain. I've haven't been in the hospital for any kind of procedure since I was 5 years old and had my tonsils removed -- I can't even begin to imagine how freaked out and scared I would be by the whole thing.
Of course, it's more than just being scared of the pain. I have no reason to have plastic surgery. I like my face just the way it is. I joke, like almost every woman, about having my entire body lipo'd until I'm a cookie away from death's door, but I would never do it. I want the satisfaction of working to get my body back into shape.
This comes up because Craig schnookered me into watching some stupid plastic surgery segment on The Pulse earlier this evening. Apparently, some woman had this ridiculous 8 hour surgery to re-shape her nose and chin, and get breast implants, and hip and thigh lipo. There might have been more to it than that, but that's what I remember. And the reporter said that she did it because she was worried about losing her husband to another woman.
I snickered when I heard that. This flies in the face of everything I know to be true. A man who truly loves you will love you for who you are, not how you look. I know that Craig would love me even if I gained enough weight to be the fattest woman in the world, lost my limbs and my hair, and had a horrible and disfiguring accident. He loves me for the neurotic lunatic that I am.
But let's just say, for the sake of argument, that Craig left me for another woman....maybe traded me in for a younger model. I certainly wouldn't be moping around the house, wondering what I'd done or wishing he'd come back. I'm secure enough to know that I deserve all the good things that are coming to me and that I'd be better off without someone so shallow. It took me some time to learn that, but I've got a firm grip on it now.
But back to this woman and her husband...the reporter interviewed her post-surgery and she said that her husband has been way more attentive, and that he was always really pushing her to have the perfect body and now she does and everything is wonderful and perfect.
Which means that he'll be cheating on her within two years. When she starts to wrinkle up or some other part of her gets fat, she'll just be another Southern haus frau with a fake rack and the husband will have found some other perky moron to do his bidding.
That's the other thing - the woman wasn't ugly or excessively obese. She was smaller than the average woman and she didn't have a cleft lip or hairy mole or hook nose or anything. Her only imperfection was lack of sense for marrying the schmuck and letting herself feel badly enough about herself to have 8 hours of plastic surgery.
I'm not against plastic surgery. If you feel that your life would be infinitely improved by calf implants and a new nose, have at it. It's a proven fact that physically beautiful people have an easier time of it than unattractive people, and I'm not going to dispute it. I just feel sorry for people who have the surgery to fix their lives instead of enhance a certain aspect of it.
I've had a super exciting night. I just spent the last two hours alphabetizing my collection of CDs and then housing them in my new gigantic CD wallet. It goes without saying that I'm more than a little anal retentive, and now I feel slightly like Rob Gordon [High Fidelity], thinking that maybe I should re-arrange them autobiographically.
Of course, my collection is not near as vast as that. I'm still in that weird hybrid stage where half of my collection is on CD and half of my collection is on cassette tape, and I have a few stray vinyl albums floating around the house. It would be much easier [and cheaper] to convert if I had a CD burner. Luckily, Craig and I are getting a new PC within a month or two and then I'll be a CD burning fool.
Your music collection says a lot about you. I have no idea what mine says. There's no overarching theme or type of music. One of the weirdest things I have is an Elvira CD with Halloween songs. The CDs I have the most of are Rollins Band, Prince, Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam, and Sting. If you look at my cassette collection, I have every Psychedelic Furs album ever made and every Prince album ever made. And then there's my huge collection of disco CDs. Some of my favorite CDs in my collection are the G. Love & Special Sauce, Jill Scott, and Billy Holiday disks.
I really need to find a way to make my mixed cassettes into CDs. There's got to be a service available for that somewhere. Anyone know where I can get that done? I have some wonderful mixed tapes that have original mixes that I would love to get on CD. There's this one that a friend of a friend made for me that has a cut together intro of Andrew Dice Clay saying nothing except "fuck" for two or three minutes. It's a riot.
Or maybe I'm just weird.
Yep, my silly April Fool's joke fooled no one. I'm such a bad liar.
Speaking of April 1, today is Make Fun of Dick and Lynne Cheney Day because of the brouhaha over Whitehouse.org. Personally, there's not much I can say about either of them. Most of my feelings about Dick Cheney revolve around giving his pacemaker the evil eye. So, Dick and Lynne, should you be catching up on the latest here at go fish, consider yourselves made fun of. Now run along and get yourselves a sense of humor.
So I ran over to the gigantic Tower Records on Broad Street during my lunch hour and ended up with the Johnny Cash CD I wanted, and also a "best of" type of album involving New Order. The Tower is just so big I couldn't find any of the other suggestions I received. So it looks like I'll just order them off of Amazon or something.
If I told anyone in my family I was listening to Johnny Cash, I think they'd start looking for a plague of locusts or brimstone or something. I really dislike country music. My grandparents listened to nothing other than Conway Twitty, Johnny Cash, and Loretta Lynn when I was young, and it poisoned me forever. On long road trips I was subjected to the psychological torture that is blue grass music. I wanted nothing more than to pry my eardrums out with a jagged, rusty spoon. And now here I am, digging Johnny Cash. My grandfather, if he were still alive, would no doubt have changed his will to reflect that I had finally come to my senses.
Amy has talked before about being slightly intimidated by indie record shop employees, with their vast musical knowledge and superior attitude. Tower is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a small, indie-type store, but they staff their information desk with the snootiest audiophiles they can find. Today they didn't treat me like a smacked ass when I couldn't locate the Johnny Cash CD. Maybe my new glasses gave me an air of respectability, or maybe I'm too old to be cowed by uppity youths anymore.
Whichever, it was refreshing.
By the way, what the fuck is the deal with the Tony Hawk barbie dolls?
A young Smokey Robinson, my ass. More like a young Mike Tyson, minus the muscles.
Yes, that's right, my fondest dreams came true when Corey Clarke's criminal past showed up and bit him in the ass. I hear he's off the show, and that's music to my quivering ears. Everytime he sings my imaginary testicles shrivel up and fall off.
I admit that I'm excited for this evening's disco-palooza show. The only way I could be any happier is if they had an early '80s alterna-rock show. But, in antici-pation of this evening's show, here's what I'd like to see:
Craig drove me to work this morning so my delicate flower self didn't get frostbite. Aw, that's love. Anyway, we're in the car this morning and Hazy Shade of Winter by The Bangles comes on the radio. Craig and I both tend to sing along to whatever is on the radio. Unfortunately, Craig is a song lyric mangler.
We're both singing along and I notice he's singing something completely different. There's the one part of the song that goes "Look around/leaves are brown/and the sky is a hazy shade of winter" and he's singing "Look around/Lisa Brown." What?
And I feel justified in making fun of him because he does it constantly. True, I should be making fun of the both of us for being car singers. And I do, but it's worse that Craig's making up words to songs. And me...well, my mind is a steel trap when it comes to song lyrics.
I can barely remember my social security number or bank account numbers, but I can remember the lyrics to obscure songs. You want someone to add some numbers together -- look elsewhere. But if you want someone to recite the lyrics to President Gas by The Psychedelic Furs, I'm your girl.
Of course, this only applies when I'm sober. When drunk, I might try to tell Lisa Brown to turn around.
There's something gross about Vin Diesel that makes me want to cross my arms over my boobs. It could be the stupid stage name he chose...or it could be his stupid sneer...or maybe just his overall self-important "Van Damme" type of attitude. I don't know, I just want to kick him in the shins and run away.
Ew.
I just got back from the nail salon. I'm the owner of ten beautiful nails.
Here's the thing: everytime I'm in the salon daytime soaps or trashy talk shows are one. Today was different -- Cops was on. No one seemed to watching it, no one was engrossed in the high drama. I had nothing better to do, so I half watched it. It's the first time [and hopefully the last time] I've seen more than five seconds of Cops. I will have to assume that all shows are as trashy and cheesy as this one.
What I want to know is this: who watches this shit?
I'm far from squeamish. Blood and guts generally don't make me sick to my stomach, and I love horror movies and stuff like that. It comes as somewhat of a surprise to me that there are certain movies that I cannot watch, due to the fact that certain scenes in these movies are so painful for me to watch that I just can't watch without bursting into tears.
So here is my list of movies that, to me, are unwatchable:
There are other movies that come close to being on my list -- several David Lynch films and Deliverance, for instance. They just don't quite strike that awful feeling in the pit of my stomach like those others do. Sometimes that's just a little too much reality for me.
Has anyone been watching the show Bullshit that's on Showtime? You know, with Penn and Teller? Last night was the first time I've seen an episode. We have digital cable that has On Demand with it, so we can watch any of the Bullshit shows at any time. I likely would have never watched an episode because I generally don't like Penn and Teller -- I'm just not a big fan of magic tricks. Plus, I find Teller a little bit creepy.
However, Craig was fucking around with the On Demand service and started watching an episode. Considering I had been bitching to him about this smarmy national day of prayer, fasting, and humility, he forced me to watch the particular episode.
And now I fucking love Penn and Teller.
If you haven't see it, Penn and Teller highlight this particular school district in Marietta, Georgia that has instituted the teaching of Creationism as an alternative theory to Evolution. And they've put stickers in all their science books claiming that Evolution is only a theory and not in any way based in actual fact. And all these crazy, deluded people are absolutely convinced that the Bible is a literal thing. Yes, they believe that the world is only 6,000 years old, that the theory of Evolution has no absolute scientific proof to back it up, and the Grand Canyon was carved out by the Big Flood in a day or two.
What is particularly timely to the discussion that's been going on here and elsewhere with regard to the ridiculous day of prayer and fasting and Bush's faith based initiatives program and his assertions that his god has blessed America, is the tidy way in which Penn explains the issue of separation of church and state.
We belong to a club called the USA. As members, we pay dues [called taxes] to support public, government-run schools and those schools are run according to the club handbook -- the U.S. constitution. Now, the constitution says our club steers clear of religion. That's the deal we made. If we pay for it with taxes, it can't have religion in it. That's in the pesky by-laws. So as long as we're all paying, no religion in schools.
Simple, no? Apparently, somewhere along the way, certain people have forgotten this or they're choosing to ignore it.
Holy crap.
I'm up in my art studio right now checking my email, and channel 10 is on [that's NBC for me]...at 8pm the World's Most Talented Kids comes on [or whatever it's called].
Does this strike anyone as highly inappropriate? The first little girl was all hussied up singing about champagne, and this second little kid was just grabbing his crotch while rapping about ladies. Neither of them can be any older than six years old.
You just know there's some perv just totally getting off on this. And I can't stand Mario what's-his-name, Slater from Saved by the Bell. Egads.
It's all about food here for me today. Right now I'm eating my leftovers from a few days ago -- sundried tomato meatloaf and potato-carrot puree.
And I'm thinking about making chicken curry tonight for dinner.
Does anyone other than me obsessively watch the Food Network? The other day the show Unwrapped was all about foods that have "french" in their name but aren't French. I couldn't figure out if they were running the show to point out the stupidity of renaming french fries "freedom fries" when they aren't French to begin with, or if they just wanted to alert the uber-patriot segment of the public to french sounding foods that they didn't have to ban. Personally, I hope it was to point out stupidity.
I mean, how many uber-patriots watch cooking shows, unless it's how to cook possum on a budget?
Yeah, so I'm watching 24 right now. Interesting and timely storyline, considering the current events going on. Manipulation, you say? Now how could that be?
And on a lighter note, has anyone been keeping count of how many times Jack's daughter is about to get killed, raped, or otherwise injured this year? I hated her last year, but this year is even worse. It's clue time, honey -- don't wander around deserted parts in the middle of the night.
Yeesh. You'd think the writers would give her a bit more sense, what with a dad in the line of work he's in and all.
I starting watching the Miss USA pageant last night. Craig tells me that Miss USA is the trashy equivalent of Miss America. Some of the contestants appeared to be drag queens or, at the very least, pre-op transsexuals. One contestant was hovering somewhere in her mid-50s. Several of them looked like wind up toys.
Daisy Fuentes must not be able to get any kind of work at all. And Billy Bush? Don't even get me started. Maybe he's doing all the work he can before his family is run out of the country by farmers with pitchforks.
And then, my favorite part of the proceedings:
"We'd like to dedicate tonight's pageant to the U.S. military."Give me a fucking break. Sure, it's a nice sentiment, but I'm sure they were just hoping no one made a big stink about the show going on despite the war, like the Academy Awards.
Craig and I watched the evening gown part of the competition, cheering on each contestant to trip and take a header into the reflecting pools located on the stage. Craig declared that he would gladly give a testicle to see it happen. As far as I know, no one fell or tripped or anything. I saw "as far as I know" because I was forced to change the channel after Miss Louisiana USA told us all that if she won she would push for religion to be re-instituted in our school system, because "that's when all the violence started."
Yes, there wasn't any violence at all until school-sponsored prayers and bible-reading were ruled against in 1962. And after that, all hell broke loose. Poor Miss Louisiana USA. I feel like patting her on the head like a little mentally challenged girl and sending her off with a cookie for her troubles.
Is it my imagination, or has eating come back into vogue? I swear, Hillary Swank and Jennifer Connolly both looked, well, almost not starved! Of course, Calista Flockhart still looks completely emaciated. Maybe I harbor ill will toward the super scrawny, but I swear she just looked bored the whole time. Or it could just be that she's too hungry to show enthusiasm.
Of course, I have to thank my lucky stars that no one wore a pink tutu.
And I had to laugh and laugh and laugh when Michael Moore spoke...I mean, the blustering and name-calling emanating from the solidly "war at any cost" folks must have been staggering. Yep, I just sat there grinning, imagining it all. Of course, I prefer Adrian Brody's speech, because he showed that those of us who don't support the war can and do support the military and hope for their safety.
While I realize that celebrities do not represent us common folk, it must have gone against all that a lot of people believe to see so many that are obviously pro-peace. You know, with the believe that a staggering majority of citizens are firmly behind the President and the invasion of Iraq.
Look, I'm just saying...
Steve Martin isn't funny in the slightest tonight. Whoever wrote his politcal commentary should be taken out back and whipped.
Yikes.
Gosh, it's a good thing American Idol is on at 8pm. The show should be over by the time little George officially does what we all know he's going to do. And if I have to be depressed and worried, it might as well be after a good old-fashioned cheesefest.
My prediction for the bottom three:
I also wouldn't mind if Charles Grigsby or Joshua Gracin were voted off, although Josh has the "don't want you to get shipped out and die" sympathy vote going for him. I'm telling you, the show is just a shell of its former self without the stylings for Frenchie.
Feh.
Clay, why won't you love me?
I feel like a skanky, lecherous old lady. He's, what, 12 years old?
American Idol is turning me into a criminal.
As you might know, I caught a tremendous case of some horrible disease-like cold while I was in Paris. I was hacking up a lung for the last two days I was there. It was very pretty.
I was torn: continue to sight see and spread my germs where ever I might go, or rest for a bit. I did a little of both. I ran around Paris by day and became a sickly hermit by night. Being bedridden and phlegmy, I did what any normal person would do -- I watched television.
The available stations at the hotel were mostly in French, of course. And that did me no good, since I speak only a little bit of French. The only English station was CNN Europe. I'm a news whore, but even I have my limits.
So I was left with German MTV.
I have no clue why MTV was in German in Paris. Maybe French people don't watch MTV, or maybe they have a huge population of Germans in Paris demanding their MTV. Whatever the reason, watching German MTV was hee-larious.
I kept expecting to see a David Hasselhoff video. Because, you know, Germans love their Hasselhoff. Mostly it was the same Avril Lavigne video every 20 minutes interspersed with videos from Coldplay, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Jennifer Love Hewitt. Yeah: Jennifer Love Hewitt. Apparently she's huge in Germany. I think the Germans must be tone deaf.
What was especially funny is watching The Osbournes. The show was in English with German subtitles. And no bleeps. Part of what's funny about watching the show [to me, anyway] is the bleeps. With no bleeps I was able to really focus on how pathetic Ozzy is and the show lost some of it's appeal.
I also enjoyed watching commercials for Jackass: The Movie. The film is apparently about to premiere in Europe [to any Europeans reading: I'm so sorry]. There would just be this fast-talking commercial in German and then all of a sudden I'd be able to understand three words: Jackass: The Movie.
What can I say, I was ill and easily amused.
Lately I've been thinking about The Fonz when Craig and I are making with the sweet, sweet love. I know it sounds little strange, but hear me out. Craig's technique for unhooking a bra is just like Fonzie's!
No, really. I only realized it recently. Damn that TVLand! The very first episode of Happy Days was on about two months ago. You might remember it -- Fonzie shows Richie how to unhook a bra with a deft little one handed tweak in the bathroom of Al's. Do you remember that episode? The bra on the radiator?
So the very night that I watched the episode Craig and I are, well, being marital, and Craig reaches behind me, sort of twists his fingers on the bra hooks, and the bra sort of slingshots off of me in this weirdly fluid motion. I just never noticed it before, and I started to giggle uncontrollably.
Giggling never goes over well when you're half naked and about to get busy.
And then I had to explain the whole thing to him, which[along with my giggling] really ruined the mood. Then we had to have a whole discussion on how Craig learned to unhook a bra, and whether or not he practiced on a radiator, etc.
The problem is that now every time Craig goes for the bra hooks, I giggle. It's a vicious circle.
Um, yeah...I'm watching Joe Millionaire and feeling slightly nauseous.
If my mother referred to me as "robust" in such a gross, reverse-Oedipus kind of way, I'd be extremely squicked.
This show sucks. And I'm squicked.
Ew.
During my long and boring day held captive in casa de go fish I caught the last 20 minutes of that great Prince classic, Purple Rain. His Royal Badness may be a tiny, skinny, little guy but I fantasized about him from the time I was old enough to do so. I lurved me some Prince. Oh hell, I still do.
I have every Prince album ever made, even the not stellar ones. I'm working on converting my collection of vinyl and cassettes to CD. I'm about halfway there. It seems that almost every moment of my life can be connected to a Prince song. I used to hang his album covers on my walls, and my mother was especially outraged by the cover of LoveSexy [that photo to the left].
So seeing the end of Purple Rain made my whole day. After thinking about it though, I've decided that Prince is the innovator of something that people do that makes me insane -- using numbers and individual letters for words. I think I can forgive him just this once, though.
My favorite Prince songs:
There is one Prince song that I absolutely hate. That song is Darling Nikki. That song is the bane of my existence. My family calls me Nicki, and my entire high school knew it. So what do you think people sang to me at every opportunity? That's right: Darling Nikki. And just so you can share in the mortifying embarrassment, I'll share the lyrics.
Sometimes the world's a storm.
One day soon the storm will pass
& all will be bright and peaceful.
fearlessly bathe in the...
Purple Rain
OK, what's this I hear about Frenchie Davis getting kicked off American Idol for appearing in porn? What?
Clutch the pearls: Jenny Jones is going off the air.
Gosh, one less place where trailer trash pre-teen prostitutes with hand gun fetishes and twelve kids by 9 random boys plus their own father can congregate and be accepted by their peers.
Has it really been twelve years since Jenny Jones first appeared on the daytime trash scene?
I will admit to being home occasionally during the day, staring at the Jenny Jones show with that typical slack-jawed expression that most people have when they watch. The difference is that my slack-jaw is really all about not being able to comprehend what the hell is going on.
Just a sampling of what's going on this week on Jenny Jones...
Thursday - I Slept With Several Men...DNA Will Prove Which One Fathered My Child
Meet men who take paternity tests to prove fatherhood. One woman slept with two men in the same day and isn't sure which man fathered her 10-month-old baby so both men take paternity tests. Also, meet a woman who wants her ex-fling and her boyfriend to take paternity tests to determine which man fathered her baby.
This is why I love my boss: the Vice President of my department left yesterday for a three week vacation to Vietnam. Today she gathered us all up at 2pm and told us to get out. In fact, she ordered us to have a meeting at our local art house theatre. So we went to see Far From Heaven.
What a beautifully filmed movie. And an interesting story. Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, the hot actor who plays the President on 24 whose name I can never remember. Normally I'm not a huge fan of period dramas, but it's a movie that left my heart aching.
I'd like to see the film again. I tend to get sidetracked by color symbolism and play of light and shadow in a film, and I think I may have missed some other things. There's this whole thing in the movie with highlighting transition and nature vs. nurture with regard to race relations and being gay. I won't say anymore about it because I don't want to spoil it, but it's such a great movie -- go see it!
I'm officially prepared to throw my support behind a few American Idol-ators.
Personally, I hope Frenchie takes it all. Oh sure, I could say it's because her name is Frenchie or because she has a great voice. And to some extent, that really is why. But the truth of it is that I want to see someone win who doesn't look like a Barbie.
Now true, Kelly Clarkson isn't your typical size negative 14 pop singer. But what is she, a size 4, maybe a 6? That's still pretty thin.
I'd also like to see Kim and both Patricks make it to the final 10 for the same reasons. And when Clay opens his mouth I get a little sexed up -- I can't help it, he reminds me of Rick Astley...I just wish Clay would re-dye his hair red.
And, you know, I'd like to see Julia make it to through the final 10 just so she can see a stylist. That girl is so South Jersey it's not even funny. Yeah, I know she's from Connecticut, but she is so white trash. But she can sing.
The villain of the show this year may just be bitchy Kim. I'd like to see her fall off stage or something before she gets voted off though. Just for the fun of it.
I'm so 10 years old.
So I took a look at the State of the Union Address drinking game. I had to stop reading all the rules about 20 lines down. You know, the key to a good drinking game is to keep it simple. But maybe the beauty of this particular game is that we should all just drink heavily before, during, and after the Address.
But looking at the game, just without my accompanying baggage, makes me wonder if anyone has ever played the game right. There must be 50+ words that required a shot of alcohol. Just to keep track of what words warrant what drink, you'd need a spreadsheet and a designated sober person to declare it time to drink.
I like the classics -- like Drunk Driver or Who Shit. I'm just a simple girl.
I'm fucking miserable today. Our water pipes froze overnight. After get about three hours of sleep last night I got out of bed, made use of the facilities, and then flushed the toilet. It made a weird, deep gurgling sound and, well, nothing.
Not to mention that I'm feeling slightly flu-ish.
But I don't want to think about that. The more I think about it, the worse I feel.
I wonder if the brothers who dismembered their mother were sleep-deprived. There would have to be something wrong with you to be able to pull off some sick shit like that.
I hate the fact that those asshats are trying to pull The Sopranos into their little delusional world of excuses. It always leads to the same thing -- the Deeply Religious and other crazed conservatives will get all pissy about the level of violence on television and in the movies and more ratings will be introduced.
I know that conservatives can pull all sorts of statistics out of their asses to show that warning labels and violence ratings work to keep children from seeing what they shouldn't, but they're polling the wrong people. Who remembers the Parents Music Resource Center debacle from the mid-1980s? Who remembers seeing the list of their top dirty songs, and then running right out to buy the album? I was already a big Prince fan, and he seemed to piss them off quite a bit. So I listened to him more.
And who remembers when the PMRC made 2 Live Crew, arguably one of the least talented rap groups ever, into recording superstars? 2 Live Crew would have lived on in obscurity but for the efforts of the the PMRC. Great job, PMRC! Glad to see your efforts to censor and rate have the exact opposite effect of your intentions! Excellent work!
So what happens when those same morons concerned authority figures try to regulate television viewing through ratings [begun in 1996, I think]? Well, the same thing! Has anyone noticed that South Park is pretty popular, due in part to the efforts of conservative groups who lobbied for television ratings in the first place? Because South Park has a TV-MA rating, every 8 year old boy in the world wants to watch it.
Are more ratings just what we need to reign in the violent youth of today? I seriously doubt it. More ratings are just a way for righteous do-gooders to feel better about themselves for a couple of months. Maybe they think they get extra points in heaven or something.
It has come to my attention that I'm too tired to sleep. How the hell does that happen?
Of course, it probably isn't helping that I'm sitting around on the couch, buried under my down comforter, watching Cry-Baby. The other day Statia and I were talking about Grease 2 and how someone's husband won't let her have a copy in the house, and how it has a huge cult following. I think all John Waters' films also fit in the cult love category.
There is no end to my love for John Waters for Pink Flamingoes and Cry-Baby and Hairspray. So how can I sleep when Cry-Baby is on?
...Allison, you got it raw! Bwah!
Is it all wrong that I'm sitting here watching Dirty Dancing instead of watching the Superbowl? Is it an affront to decent hard working people all over the country that I'd rather watch Patrick Swayze flub a Brooklyn accent than watch those cheesy ass Budbowl commercials and listen to Celine Dion warble her way through whatever horrible song she's singing?
I'd rather poke my eardrums and eyes out with a ragged rusty spoon then have to listen to or watch that awful-ness. All that chest-pounding leaves me a bit aggravated.
So I watched Joe Millionaire again last night. I totally felt like I needed a shower to make myself feel clean again afterwards. Evan Marriott totally creeps me out, especially after those pictures surfaced in which he does a great impression of a sundail. Creepy!
But I wanted to see it because he takes his little harem to Paris, and I'm doing all the research I can before I head off next month -- yes, even if it involves watching cheesy ass TV. I'm willing to make the sacrifice.
Is it just me or do those emeralds look a little on the synthetic side? And who takes a date to a topless show? I know it's the Moulin Rouge and all, but really -- if someone took me on a first or second date to a titty bar I'd be more than a little squicked out. And that hat, that horrible hat! That girl must be stopped.
Ugh.
Tonight, however, promises to be full of television viewing pleasure. Tuesday night is the one night of the week that I take my phone off the hook, put my knitting down, and put tape over Craig's mouth: it's Buffy and 24 night. The only night that I never leave the house. However, American Idol is on tonight, which presents a problem. I'm not sure if I will tape Buffy and 24, or tape American Idol. What to do, what to do? And how completely sad is it that I'm sitting here debating this?
Dear Diary,
Last night I went to the Golden Globes. I had a beautiful dress picked out -- a few designers sent me some gowns and Jack came over to help pick one out. He brought over some cookies, but I wouldn't let him in the house with them. You know I have that rule about no food in the house.
Anyway. I don't know what happened. I woke up today in my 4th grade tutu covered in chocolate ice cream! Before I noticed that I had handfuls of cherries in my bodice I got really scared that I had grown breasts overnight! I was horrified.
But what makes me even more nervous is that I just turned on the The Today Show [I like to make fun of how fat everyone is] and Matt and that fashion freak were on there showing pictures of me in the tutu with a pair of hideous shoes I wore for Halloween a few years ago. I'm afraid that I blacked out from hunger and actually left the house in my tutu! Maybe I should have given in to my stomach and had that forkful of lettuce, even if I had used up my food allotment for the week.
Funny, I don't feel very hungry right now. I haven't felt this way in years. Oh god! The chocolate ice cream! I have to go throw it all up now. And then I'll spend the day on the stairmaster. You know the American public prefers women with the body of an 8 year old boy!
So upset.
As always,
Laura
Sure, I'm embarrassed to say it, but I watched most of The Disco Ball last night. I even enjoyed some of it.
Usher, however, does not have the voice for Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now. And because I happen to catch some MTV special about celebrity fitness a few months ago, I know that Usher has regular enemas. So now when I see Usher I imagine him on a table with a water tube up his heiney. Usher=fecal matter. I had to avert my gaze.
Many of you may not know of my deep and undying love of The Bee Gees, but you may know of my fiery hatred for cheesy little boy bands. Who, then, is Natural and why were they chosen to butcher a perfectly good Bee Gees tribute? I wanted to scratch their eyes out for attempting to sing the patented Bee Gee falsetto. Leave it alone boys! I had to hit the mute button because Natural was so very bad.
That brings me to Aaron Carter. I have no words to describe how much I wish Aaron Carter would get run over by a large truck. And after assaulting my ears with his strangled rendition of I Just Want to Be Your Everything, I'm reading to drive that truck myself. To begin with, there's something so smarmy and smug about Aaron Carter I want to vomit. To continue, his voice is wretched. And then to desecrate a good song, well, he's taken it too far. I turned the channel after the first 30 seconds.
By the way, who the hell is Roselyn Sanchez? She did such a horrible job with Hot Stuff I almost passed out laughing. Was she drunk?
Come with me and you will see.
A late-night-freak-show-Jubilee!
Kick the Sandman in his sack;
Stay up late - Insomniac!
What kind of construction work only makes $19K a year? Does old Evan the "millionaire" only work three hours per week? He obviously isn't in the union. Most of the construction workers I know are pulling in at least $40K.
Yeah, so I am grudgingly admitting that I tuned in to watch Joe Millionaire last night. The whole thing. I feel so dirty.
And those women! I'm assuming that FOX went through and chose the money-grubbingest, most devious and petty chicks they could come up with. Of course, I don't know what would possess a chick to put in an application for something like that anyway -- you'd pretty much have to be starving for affection, dying to get on television, and intent on marrying rich. Personally, I would feel like a complete ass trying to win the love [OK, lust] of some guy on national television. And then there's the issue of disease. Evan gets to smooch on [at the least] all these chicks, and if even one of them has mono [or something worse], they'll all have mono. Gross!
It really wasn't even very interesting to watch. The little Pygmalion thing in the beginning with the butler was kind of funny, but also kind of pathetic. Urgh.
I just had kind of a funny thought. Maybe the U.S. government should be the official sponsor of Joe Millionaire -- the sponsorship could be linked in with the Bush administration's $2.2 million marriage promotion fiasco. Heh, now that would be funny.
Everyone knows of my love for Henry Rollins, right? It is with great joy that I found out today that Rollins is doing a spoken word show at the TLA on February 6. I am so going to be there.
And it's even the month of my [and Henry's] birthday! I think I'll send Henry a little something this year...a specially made journal maybe, since I doubt he'd be too thrilled about a handmade scarf from me.
Did that come off a little stalkery? I guess I should dial that back a notch or two, eh? At least Henry's book will not be made out of my hair or fingernail clippings...
Because you asked, this is my bad hair. Notice my scrunched up face -- I really hate this hair. Is this Rose McGowan red, I ask you? Is this even remotely red?
In other news, I watched Will & Grace last night. Does anyone think Debra Messing looks good? She looks like a bag of bones. Eat a fucking cookie!
Craig turned to me and said, "She looks like a 10 year old boy. That's just gross. Ew, and you can see the bones of her chest. Ew, and look and how knobby her shoulder and elbow joints look."
Ms. Messing, please consume some food.
The eating disorder clinics to the stars must be chock full of people right now, nary a bed to be found. All these women are wasting away to nothing. I hate the media.
I guess I did kind of forget to say whether or not I liked Punch Drunk Love! I really enjoyed the hell out of it! I am usually not a huge Adam Sandler fan [I'd rather shoot myself than watch The Waterboy again], and so ....
Oh my god. I'm watching Angel right now and I can't believe the pure cheese factor of what just happened. A demony Satan type of thing popping out of the spot where Connor was hatched? I think I need to stop watching this show.
Anyway, yeah, I really liked the movie and I won't say much more about it except that the way it is filmed is brilliant. Brilliant.
In other news, I didn't make it into the final five in The Dress contest. Oh well. Good luck to the five finalists! It looks like sleeves were not popular with the judges this year [she said, like the bad loser she is].
Last night Christy, Craig, and I went to see Punch Drunk Love. The fact that it was raining and raw outside should have tipped me off to stay home, but I was determined to see the movie.
By the time we got to the Ritz 5 theater the three of us looked like drowned rats. You know, because umbrellas were of no help. Not to mention that we got sprayed with gutter water from a passing speeding car. Y-e-e-e-s-s-s-s-s-s-s! It was exactly the way I wanted to spend the next 90 minutes - wet and smelling of gutter water.
Buoyed by a strange euphoria no doubt brought on by acid rain having soaked into my skin, we decided afterwards to hit a restaurant. We went to Viejo San Juan, a new tapas restaurant on Girard Avenue. I never thought in a million years that we'd need a reservation -- it's in the middle of the ghetto practically. But I'm a dumbass obviously -- we ended up waiting for 30 minutes for a table and then the kitchen was so backed up we had to wait over an hour for tapas.
But you know, the food was kick ass. I'm a sucker for good tapas -- mussells in marinara, clams in garlic broth, shrimp and chorizo, shrimp and scallops, pork and plantains, and mini enchiladas. We completely inhaled all of it within about five second of the food actually arriving at our table. Of course, we had been sucking on a pitcher of sangria for an hour with no food....so it might just have been the munchies.
On the way out the door I was attempting to put my umbrella up, missed a step and fell on my face in the middle of the sidewalk. Yeah, so that was good too. No, I didn't hurt myself -- all the sangria had made me pliant.
Ugh.
I go through phases about the holiday season. One year I am completely caught up in feeling the spirit and magic of the season, and the next year I just can't quite get there. I have already achieved my groove on with Christmas this year.
It is largely due to the cold weather combined with copious amounts of Christmas movie and animated feature watching this weekend. I watched A Christmas Story twice over the last few days, plus all those excellent claymation types with the exception of Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer, which is my absolute favorite.
I'm also thrilled and buying into the holiday propaganda because we're getting our Christmas tree on Thursday. IKEA is having their annual tree sale beginning Thursday, and that is our little tradition -- I take the train out to Conshohocken where Craig works and we go to IKEA and pick out a tree. It's really a great deal for anyone needing a tree -- for $20 you pick out a great live tree [all sizes and types available], and then you can return it after the holiday for a gift certificate and IKEA will recycle your tree. Because I'm all about the environment you know!
We even have a holiday feeling-inducing plan for the next two weeks. This coming Sunday Craig and I will brave the elements to watch the annual holiday light show at Wanamakers Lord & Taylor's. Following the light show/slobbering kid extravaganza we will partake in cocoa at the Ritz Hotel. And then the following weekend we're going to take a drive to see the Festival of Lights in Cobb Creek Park. Even Craig will have to be in the Christmas mood after that.
Craig likes to pretend he hates Christmas. In reality he loves it, but just doesn't want to tell me for fear it will ruin his reputation as curmudgeonly. He likes to reinforce his beliefs every now and then by telling the kids playing near our house to play somewhere else. I swear I married an 80 year old man.
Oh, and here's a spot of good news -- Christy made it onto the plane to South Africa yesterday. What's especially thrilling about this will only be of interest to those of you who knit. Christy made it through security and onto the plane with the wooden knitting needles I gave her for her birthday. They were more concerned with her eyelash curler, because no one had ever seen one before. So if you'll be travelling anytime soon and want to while away the time on the plane with knitting, wooden needles are the way to go. I bought her 10" size 8 needles...and I bought a pair for myself as well -- you know, for Paris in February.
Speaking of knitting, I think I'm developing the most powerful hand muscles anyone ever had. I think I knitted almost nonstop this weekend -- I'm knitting this sweater as a Christmas gift and I'm about 1/3 of the way done.
When I'm done I'll be able to crack walnuts with my bare hands! Fear me!
That reminds me -- my review of the The Ring. I didn't think it was as scary as everyone else has been saying it is. However, I liked the movie and thought it was suspenseful and interesting.
Oh, and don't forget about the Go Fish six month anniversary contest to win the silly hat I knitted! If you haven't already done so, leave me a comment for this entry to win the hat!
I saw a promo for the Maury Povich show today, and I started wondering what things must be like in the Maury Povich and Connie Chung home.
Doesn't it seem like it must be the equilvalent of a Nobel Prize winner being married to an adult with a fifth grade education. They say you learn everything you need to know in the first grade, but...well, it just seems all wrong.
The problem is that I'm equating intelligence with job. I know that's not true [um, I could name a certain politician that proves that point, but he shall remain nameless for the sake of maintaining the peace]. I'm sure Maury is a smart guy. And, of course, maybe Connie is a dim bulb -- just because she's a Serious Reporter doesn't mean that she can find her butt with both hands [what is with the theme of ass running through my posts today?].
But I imagine that Connie comes home from work, sits her briefcase on the counter, takes her jacket and shoes off. Maury is already home and is waiting for her in the living room of their massive estate. Maury asks Connie how her day was, and Connie says she interviewed Stephen Hawking. Hawking announced during the interview that he has unlocked the secret meaning of life.
And then Maury says he did a show today about closet case drag queens who love animal sex and big guns and want to come out to their uber-religious families.
How does that work? Maybe they both just leave their respective work stories at the office, come home and watch America's Funniest Home Videos together or something.
In alot of ways, the two of them remind me of Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller. Marilyn was supposed to be the dumb one and Arthur Miller is brilliant. But I'm sure that, in reality, they were happy to be together and play checkers.
I guess that's what true love is -- it doesn't matter what either of you do for a living or your IQ. With Craig, it has always seemed unimportant that I make a little more than he does or that I went to college and he didn't. It's just this thing that I recognize in him -- a spark of something. I'm not sure I believe in the concept of the soulmate, and I'm not sure I believe in reincarnation, but if those things exist Craig is surely my soulmate and we've known each since the beginning of time.
Love is love, no matter where you find it or in what form it comes in [animal sex and pedophilia, notwithstanding]. If you understand that to deny love is to deny yourself true happiness [and, if you believe in this sort of thing, a gift from the Universe or from your god], than you can't possibly have any prejudices. Gay, hetero, black, asian, white, quadrapeligic -- love is love.
The more I meet people who think homosexuality is wrong or interracial dating is wrong, the more I come to realize that these people have never truly been in love. If you have truly been in love, than you know it's uncontrollable. Who you love is not a conscious choice -- it just happens.
That's what I imagine it must be like with Connie and Maury.
Tuesday night is my television night. I can not turn on the television any other night of the week and I'm perfectly OK with that. I don't miss it. However, Tuesday night from 8-9 pm you will find me camped out on the couch in front of the TV.
Hey, it's Buffy night.
I admit to feeling silly about it. It's a show that is so obviously not meant for me, yet I love it. Even when it's terrible, it's good. And after the crap-fest that was last season, I wasn't expecting much from this season.
I have tell you -- the final 5 minutes of Buffy last night was the best stuff in years. I'm serious. Half-nekkid Spike laying it out to Buffy about his new soul, Buffy in tears for who knows what reason...I'm sold. Sold, I tell you. It was just as good as when Buffy had to kill Angel at the end of season 2.
And I'm totally 13 years old.
I wasted two hours of my life last night. Two golden hours that will never be returned to me because I could not tear myself away from the horror that was the American Idol reunion show.
Maybe Fox or Idol-producers had a beef against the contestants who lost, or didn't make it into the top 10. Why else would they force the girls who lost to dress up in harem-wear and sing "Midnight at the Oasis" in the middle of a desert set? It was atrocious and cheesy and made for preteens. I was embarrassed for them. I was too stunned to even laugh. It was crazy!
I know for a fact that the audience is being punished for some horrible unknown crime. The reason I know this is because Sad Clown Boi [™ Television Without Pity] Jim sang. Several times. He's so smarmy and gross and not attractive and completely untalented. AJ sang "My Cherie Amore" and pissed off anyone who has ever taken French. It's not "My Chedie Amore," pal -- learn it, love it. Badgerwear spokesmodel Ryan Starr sang...over and over. RJ hulahooped/danced his way around the stage with his teeth. I had to hit the mute button.
And what the hell did those makeup and hair people do to Kelly? Holy crap! Take it easy on those crimping irons, boys, this is not 1985! Craig said she looks "whore-ified" and I can't disagree.
And how totally cheesy and preteen do I feel for ranting about American Idol?
Speaking of feeling cheesy and preteen, the season premiere of Buffy is this evening. While I have already read the Wildfeed preview of the episode, I'm all tingly with excitement. Grrrr-argh.
Was Kelly Osborne wearing a wig last night on the Emmy's?
I have a love-hate relationship with award shows. They're so fucking boring, but I feel compelled to watch in order to snark on the fashions. What is it about being in front of hundreds of paparazzi that make people want to dress as horribly as possible?
To be perfectly honest, I didn't really watch most of the Emmy's last night. I watched Six Feet Under at 8:00 because I missed it Saturday night. And then I studied for my Spanish class, because I'm a good student like that.
Speaking of casa de faux punk, the house was quiet as a mouse last night. It was almost disappointing. I had a dream last night that faux punk boy and his little preteen friends were inside plotting to throw an explosive party this weekend, involving grenades and automatic weapons. Let's hope that my dream doesn't turn out to be prophetic. That's right, I am Prophecy Girl [a shout out to all you Buffy fans].
I have very vivid dreams. Only a handful have ever really come to pass luckily. Most of my dreams are of horrible things; I never have those nice fluffy dreams where I get to do cool things.
The first dream I ever remember having was when I was six years old. It was October and my mom had just put up all the Halloween decorations. She hung one of those weird little plastic ghosts [the ones that look like they're made up of little plastic dots that have been semi melted together. Do you know what I mean?] over my closet. Well, it freaked me out and I had a nightmare that is so vivid the memory of it is clear to this day.
I dreamt that on Halloween everyone buried would rise up out of their graves. It wouldn't be gross or scary though -- they'd look just like they did when they were alive, but they were just really pale. When people died they'd be buried with certain things in a manilla envelope, and on Halloween they would stand on their grave with this manilla envelope in hand. Live people could stroll the graveyard and look through the manilla envelope to see what the dead were buried with. OK, so my Uncle Ed and I went to the graveyard around the corner from my house and we were looking through manilla envelopes. The only rule to all of this is that if you jingled the change that was in the envelope, something very very bad would happen. Gilligan was buried in the cemetary and I wanted to see what he was buried with. So I reached to take his envelope and I dropped it, thereby jingling the change.
That was the point when the dream turned vivid and scary. All the dead people howled and started turning into what you would imagine a dead person would look like [rotting flesh, etc.]. And then they started chasing me. The dream seemed to last forever -- the dead people chased me all over town and finally I fell down and they were about to get me. And then I woke up.
Scariest dream I ever had. And it involved Gilligan. Heh.
There's a commercial I've been seeing on TV recently that is kind of grossing me out a little. It begins with an elderly couple in their bedroom. The old woman is lying in bed in one of those old person flowered muumuus. The husband enters the bedroom shaking a can of something called Vigoroso, leering at the wife. The wife gives the husband a come hither look and unties the top of her nighty. I think the commercial is for some sort of motor oil.
I get the heebies everytime the old woman unties her nighty. It's not like I think old people don't have sex, but I certainly don't want to think about it. It's like the difference between knowing your parents have sex and actually witnessing them having sex. Uh, no thanks.
My grandparents are around 75 years old. My grandfather has had one hip replaced and both of his knees. My grandmother has a chronic back problem and asthma. I love them dearly but I don't want to know anything about their sex life.
When I was in high school I used to spend a week in the summer at their house [they lived in Carlisle, PA]. I remember laying in the guestroom, which is directly across the hall from their bedroom. They didn't believe in shutting doors, so this is what usually transpired on a nightly basis...
...sounds of people rolling around in bed, hopefully just trying to get comfortable...then a fart from my grandfather...
Arlene [my grandmother]: Richard, stop it!
Richard [my grandfather]: Give me a kiss!
Arlene: Stop it! [giggle]
[a belch from grandmother]
[sounds of smooching]
Arlene: Now stop that Richard!
And that's pretty much when I gouged out my eardrums.
The very thought of my grandparents getting it on is icky, and I don't want the visual in my head. But yet everytime I see that commercial I get really really squicked.
My mother is much more subtle. She is a firm believer in closed doors. I'm not home much, but when Craig and I go to visit we sleep in my old room which shares a wall with my mom and stepfather's room. Most of the time there's just a lot of snoring, but every so often there's moaning. And then Craig and I have to abandon the room in favor of sleeping in the car. Because, well, no. Not so much.
I'm not squeamish about other people having sex. But I don't want any sort of window into the sex life of my parents or grandparents. I don't want to go shopping for naughty lingerie with my grandmother, or shop for sex toys with my mom.
Oh great...now I've got the heebies.
So it's been established that I'm a total literature nerd, right? I'm the dork who gets the obscure jokes about The Metamorphosis or The Yellow Wallpaper. Today I saw something that made my geeky, book-loving heart leap for joy: a performance by the Headlong Dance Company called Britney's Inferno.
Imagine Britney's journey of discovery, rise to the "top," and predictable descent to the bottom told in a sort of allegorical dance piece a la Dante's Inferno. Bwa hahahaha! It was some of the best contemporary commentary performance art I've seen in quite some time. The show was complete with a segment about Britney learning her choreography ["OK, now what do we see in the reflecting pool? A mean angry dog. Shoo the dog away! Shoo the dog away!"]; Britney realizing that she's yesterday's news, marking herself up for plastic surgery and wrapping herself in plastic; and a chorus of dancers interspersing spastic ADD dance moves with Backstreet Boys choreography to N*Sync music. It was brilliant! Behold the power of the hair! So sayeth the dancers: "She's a complete lame loser who sings sucky music."
Can I get an Amen?
After the show Renee and I stopped at Bluezette where my spinach salad was comped because the dumbass waitress forgot to put the order in. But the peach cobbler was pretty excellent. Doesn't it always seem to come back to dessert with me?
Philly's Olde City neighborhood has become somewhat of an expired scene. And what I mean by that is there's a bunch of people running around who want so hard to be cool that it's obvious they are wannabes. Case in point: an obviously almost 40 year old woman with a completely fake body and face parading around in a denim jumpsuit that laces up the front from the crotch. Give it a rest: no one knows who you are and no one cares.
You can tell a neighborhood has gone beyond it's peak days when midwestern tourists start snapping pictures of you while you're eating. Move it along, nothing to see here.
I swear, the next haus frau in walking shorts who comes near me gets attitude.
"Spot the Baptist" has become a Philly-wide pasttime since the National Baptist Convention came to town. It isn't difficult to find them. They travel in groups, wearing outrageous millinery creations with matching churchwear. I saw a man yesterday wearing a powder blue sharkskin suit with little pink squares all over the suit, powder blue shoes, and a matching fedora.
It's a scary world we live in.
To prove that, I submit the antics of my hair stylist, Lisa. Last night I went to get my monthly root job only to discover that Lisa has lost her damn mind. She is so vested in American Idol that she actually is refusing to speak to anyone who didn't want Justin to win. Lisa is completely bitter and on the verge of tears at all times because Kelly won. I was there for two hours last night and it's all she talked about. The woman is 26 years old. She told me she voted for Justin 207 times Tuesday night. 207!
In addition, one of my co-workers, Maryellen, came running in to my cubicle this morning screaming, "Nicole, you look just like a woman on Big Brother!" I've never seen more than one or two episodes of Big Brother [and that was during the first season], so I had no idea I had a doppelganger on the show. And Maryellen only watched her first episode last night. Brooke, who is a Big Brother junky, agrees with Maryellen and tells me that she didn't want to let me know about it because this woman on the show [named Amy] is an alcoholic floozy. So I guess now I will have to break down and watch the next episode of Big Brother.
OK, so you know I watched American Idol last night. All two hours of it.
I can't carry a tune in a bucket. My singing voice is sucky. After seeing the recap of some of the auditions the poor judges had to sit through, I think I may be among the more talented singers in the U.S. Come to think of it, my singing voice is better than Sad Clown Boi™ Jim Varraros. Did anyone else notice that he didn't have any solos during the group sing?
Speaking of the group sing, did anyone else immediately think of The Brady Bunch? I kept expecting A.J. to bust out with "When it's time to change, it's time to re-arraaaaange!" The choreography was all Brady Kids-esque. That shit was weak.
My personal favorite moment from last night is when Tamyra and Justin sang part of Born Again. It's only one of my all time favorite songs ever. And they sounded excellent. I hope they record it and it gets released as a single, because I would buy it.
I would not, however, buy that lame ass song that Kelly will be releasing. The radio station I listen to at work played it this morning. It's a bit too Celine Dion/Whitney Houston-esque for me. I'd like to hear her record something Jill Scott-y.
Did anyone catch the total spaz that won the UK American Idol? Holy cow, he's wretched and has Ed Grimley hair. I have no doubt he'll be a huge star with the 8-11 year old girl crowd.
I just went out to grab a coffee and I stood in line behind a man wearing a pair of pants that had a really dumb little buckle in the back. It reminded me of a song in the movie Grease 2 that goes, "...with a cute little buckle, that fastened in baaaaaack..." I think it was called Brad or something silly like that.
Grease 2 is one of my favorite bad movies of all time. In fact, that movie is so bad it's good. I've seen it hundreds of time and own it on video. I may be the only person on the planet who owns that movie on purpose.
Where else can you see Michelle Pfieffer dancing up a ladder, singing, "Coool riiiiider, cool cool cool cool rider! I want a C-O-O-L R-I-D-E-R, I want a cooooooool rider!" Come on, that's gold! My other favorite is when Max Caulfield/original Man of Mystery is presumed dead in a bike wreck and Michelle Pfieffer's character has a nervous breakdown/spontaneous song outburst on stage, and she and old Max have this hilarious exchange:
Michelle: It all seems unfair! Just when I found you I lost you.
Max: That doesn't matter now, the only thing that matters is the time we had together!
Michelle: But! I don't even know your name!!!!
Max: The only thing you have to know is that I love you, and you're the only one who can keep our love alive!. So Stephanie, Don't forget me!
Michelle: I promise.
It's so cheesy! And I am, if nothing else, a huge fan of cheese. My middle name should be Cheddar. It has a nice ring to it.
I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I watched the Mtv video awards show last night. And I really don't understand why I'm so mortified to admit it, considering I readily admit to being glued to my television set during American Idol.
Britney Spears' stylist should be shot. She usually looks like a crack whore anyway, but last night, well, let me just relay to you what Craig said: "Did she escape from the Village People? What's with the stupid hat? She looks like a whore." How can you argue with logic?
I have a big problem with people who take themselves way too seriously. The music industry is filled with people who do. Most of them seem to be rappers [yes, Sean Combs and Marshall Mathers, I'm talking to you]. Britney definitely fits into that category, and so does that Michael Jackson wannabe, no talent Justin Timberlake. I don't think he could be any cheesier, or any more painful to watch. I actually had to hit the Mute button on my television just to get through the performance and it was still bad. I live in hope that he and the rest of his brethren will fade away into obscurity one day soon.
I'm just going to come out and say this: Eminem is a pussy. I never use that word, but he is the whiniest little bitch on the planet, and has zero sense of humor. I'm not sure who started this mock feud between him and Moby, but I would have to assume that it was Marshall. I read Moby's online journal every once in a while, and he's been nothing but funny about the whole thing. Every so often he'll post something hysterically funny about some illiterate Eminem fan coming to his boards and posting dyslexic and grammatically incorrect rants about him [Moby]. So if you were watching last night, I'm sure you noticed that whole episode with that stupid rubber dog [what is he called? the insult dog?]. OK, first of all, is there any reason that Marshall needs a bevy of thugged out dorks following him around all the time? And then to threaten to hit Moby on stage? Sorry pal, that doesn't make you look tough, it just makes you look like a little bitch.
I had to turn the station when Sean Combs performed. He is so self-important that I can't even watch him. Honestly, who does he think he is? Sean, Marshall, and that dork from Creed are three of the most annoyingly humorless fuckers imaginable.
Watching Mtv generally makes me feel like an old lady. I remember when Mtv was like 10 videos that were played over and over and over. I can re-enact every scene from Video Killed the Radio Star. I hate that the minute you turn 10 you are no longer in their prime demographic. And by the time you turn 20 you are officially fodder for VH-1.
Why grandma, how bitter you are today!
If I hear one more person say that something is "off the hook" I may have to commit hari kari. I have seen that stupid commercial for Fastlane about twelve billion times, and I have not yet been brainwashed schnookered into wanting to watch it. I don't care about your party!
The last straw for me was last night. I was watching the afternoon news. One of the super uptight news anchors was plugging an American Idol watching last night at a club on Delaware Avenue and then he said it: "The party is going to be off the hook!" Yes, he said it in his uptight guy voice, too. I felt like reaching through the television, grabbing him by his newsanchor tie, and bitch slapping him a few times.
I have been considering having my own American Idol party for the last showdown. I could serve lots of cheese. We could all perform a Paula Abdul tribute group sing. Shouts of "Kelly, Kelly, Kelly" would ring from the rafters.
At 9pm last night I excitedly sat down in front of the television. Obviously many people think Nikki is talented. I think she's pretty, but talented? Not so much. My jaw dropped when she compared her voice to Stevie Nicks. Whaaaaaaaaaaat? Uh no. She needs to pack up her Pop Stars reject self and her trailer trash family and go back to Texas so she can continue her career in karaoke.
I think I may just be the laziest person on the planet. I have done nothing today except lay on my couch and watch bad daytime television.
Today on Maury: watch as Maury's crack team of beauty professionals transform raging drag queens back into boys for the sake of their mothers. Um, yeah...that's alot of hard work there -- take the makeup off and put them in a pair of jeans [no, not Jordache].
It cracks me up when the mom's think that by dressing again as a boy for a few minutes any queen is going to have this momentous epiphany that he wants to give up his life of drag. Why would anyone not want to be a drag queen? If I were a thin pretty boy, I'd be a queen too! Breast implants? Yes please!
I'd like to know where Maury and Jerry Springer and Ricki Lake get their guests. It's obvious from their audience demographics and IQ level that the producers just drive a bus into South Central or the Badlands or wherever and pick up the unemployed masses. But there can't be that many transvestite drug addicts who are dating their fathers and brothers simultaneously. Or maybe I live a sheltered life.
I am occasionally very glad I decided not to major in Journalism. This morning was one of those times.
My morning routine includes watching The Today Show while I'm getting dressed and making myself pretty. Poor Matt Lauer had to interview Eve Hibbits.
Maybe you saw the interview. If you didn't, imagine a frumpy middle-aged Southern white trash woman with a monosyllabic vocabulary. Now imagine that she has had her favorite toy taken a way and she's got her arms crossed and is pouting. Oh, and she shops at Kmart. Now that you have the whole image, here's what the interview was like [paraphrased, of course]:
Matt: Mrs. Hibbits, do you believe your kids were in any danger.
Mrs. Hibbits: [glares at the camera defiantly, snarls and spits out] NO
Matt: Mrs. Hibbits, what were those days in jail like for you?
Mrs. Hibbits: [suffers a mildly confused facial tic, then sucks on her teeth] Yes, I wuz in jayle.
[uncomfortable silence]
Matt: Yes, I see. That must have been frightening. Mrs. Hibbits, tell me about your children. Are they OK now?
Mrs. Hibbits: [picks her nose] Yeah.
The whole interview was like that, and most of the time the woman just sat there like a moron when a question was asked until her hokey lawyer finally just answered the question, and then poor old Matt basically made fun of her. It was comical.
I admit to having a screaming mild obsession with American Idol. It's not that enjoy the show because I think it's a great idea and the talent is top notch. The show has a certain high degree of suckiness that's hard to match, and I just find it amazingly bad television in an entertaining way.
Maybe I'm just a masochist.
I'm sitting here in the studio awaiting the start of American Idol with bated breath. Will Paula Abdul wear a horrible outifit [again] this evening? Last night she looked like Eddie Haskell on crack. Everytime she opens her mouth I am stunned by her stupidity. And Randy Jackson knows only two phrases: "Kelly, Kelly, Kelly..." [or insert contestants name here] and "You did your thing." I want to throw things at him to make him be quiet.
I have a weird crush on Simon Cowell -- maybe it's because I am completely enamored of snark. And I'm a sucker for an accent that isn't American. Of course, sometimes I think he's deaf.
It's really the contestants that I love to bitch about. Last night was especially atrocious. Tamyra wrecked a Patti LaBelle song. Kelly murdered It's Raining Men. I was embarrassed for Justin when he sang PYT. You know it's the apocalypse when Nikki is the good one.
And then I feel guilty for watching the show and perpetuating the stupid criteria for which the "american idol" is chosen. I mean, by their criteria, Jill Scott would not be a recording star.
Argh.
Yet here I sit, waiting for the show to start.
My entire day has been made -- the new Black Flag tribute CD will be out in October and it looks amazing! Two of my very favorite people on one CD: Rollins and Ice T! Be still, my ever fluttering heart! And Mike Patton! And Iggy Pop! I'm getting really excited!!!!! And, to top things off, Hank's new book of song lyrics will be out in September! Yay!
Over lunch the other day a bunch of us were talking about "celebrity boyfriends." I don't have many, but here is my list:
1. Henry Rollins
2. Busta Rhymes
3. Ice-T
4. Nicolas Cage
5. Willem Defoe
They're all mine girls -- get your own! Of course, I'd probably get slapped with a restraining order if any of them knew they were my boyfriend.
I can't believe the end of summer is nearing. Where did the time go?
After an entire summer of sweating glowing, and the super humidity, I guess I shouldn't be too upset. But summer always reminds me of not working, and a girl can dream, right?
Occasionally I get upset because I'm not Anna Nicole Smith. Don't get me wrong: I don't actually want to be her. I don't want huge boobs and a small IQ. Millions of people making fun of me is not my idea of a good time. That said, why couldn't I have been conniving enough to hook up with a rich old guy?
I guess the real answer to that is it would be like having sex with your grandfather, and: ew! Yuck! But a rich guy would have been OK.
I imagine myself as a kept woman, spending my days poolside in my fabulous house or shopping with credit cards I will never have to pay off. Then summer really would be exactly as I remember it from my youth. OK, maybe not.
Summer for me as a kid [or before I was forced to get a job] was spent dodging crazy country drivers on my bicycle. We lived out in the middle of nowhere and I had to peddle my ass 3 miles into town if I wanted to see my friends. And the drivers I'm talking about are the kind who own pick up trucks with antlers on the front, a gun rack in the back, and a horn that plays Dixie. They swerve to hit cats and other small animals on the side of the road. So imagine the points available for running over a little girl on a bicycle!
It's probably why I get misty playing Frogger.
There is nothing like a day when you have no real commitments. Craig and I woke up late, went to see Signs, and then went grocery shopping. And tomorrow promises to be more of the same with less actually leaving the house. I feel like I've died and gone to summer camp!
Craig rented a DVD that we watched tonight. He picked up Dragonfly. I hate Kevin Costner movies, and Dragonfly only confirmed my absolutely dislike of any movie he appears in. What a piece of crap. Since we all know I believe in life after death, it is unusual for me to totally pan a movie that treats the subject matter. I'll at least give it points for effort, but that was just insipid! Argh!
Craig has the worst taste in movies. Blockbuster should revoke his privileges. Unless I go with him, he usually comes back with crap like, well, Dragonfly or Resident Evil. His favorite movie is Dazed and Confused. Seriously.
He hates the movies that I love. When Grease is in the DVD player, he has to leave the room. He hates Willy Wonka. He loathes Valley Girl and The Wedding Singer. He doesn't even like Marilyn Monroe movies! The only movie we have ever both liked is What Ever Happened to Baby Jane. And he wonders why I prefer to go to the movies by myself!
Oddly, I have been put up for nomination for The Best New Blog category at The Bloggys. So if you love me, go and vote for me. Geez, best new blog, eh? If I win, do I get to make a speech?
The liklihood of me winning is slim, however. I'm just not a lucky person -- I rarely win anything! The first thing I ever won was when I was 5 years old -- Hatchey Malatchey [a kids show in Northeast Pennsylvania] called me one day and we played a game on TV where I had to pick a number and I won whatever was behind the number. I picked 4, and won a huge tootsie roll bank filled with tootsie rolls and tootsie pops. When I was 15 I won a giant Swatch wall watch -- it was hideously ugly and broke within days. When I was 20 I won a ski vacation that I couldn't use. When I visit Atlantic City I only ever gamble $10 because I know that I have no luck for winning.
That's probably why I'm so aggressive going after the things I want: I know that I'm not particularly lucky with the "if you wait, it will happen just the way you want it to" attitude.
Yeesh, I'm tired and need sleep.
I'm super wired right now. That's obvious since it's after midnight and I have to get up at 7am tomorrow morning in case my father actually drops off Crystal at the time advertised. I had a shot of expresso with my fabulous Il Cannituccio dinner this evening, and my eyes will not close. I'm such a dumbass.
Has anyone been watching The Rerun Show? I thought it was seriously going to suck, but it's one of the funniest shows on television. Of course, you must be between the ages of 27-35 to get the outright hilarity of it. Since I grew up watching The Facts of Life, Diff'rent Strokes, and What's Happenin', I think that show is comedy gold. I missed the one this week where they redid a What's Happenin' episode.
A little-known fact about me: I can do the Rerun dance from start to finish. Of course, I look nothing like Fred Berry because I am not a 400 pound black man -- I'm 140 pound white girl. I add a certain piquant caucasion flavah to the dance. I'm cool, what can I say.
I'm fervently wishing that the cast does a spoof of a Benson episode or an episode of Three's Company.
Another little-known fact about me: I made my mother do my hair like Chrissie Snow (Suzanne Somers)...you know long and curled under with two stupid pigtails at the top. I even have school pictures with my hair like that.
I also found a picture in which I was wearing Wonder Woman underoos and my bed had Superfriends sheets on it, complete with Hall of Justice pillowcases. Sometimes I wish things were just that simple.
Don't get me wrong, I would never in a million years want to relive my childhood. There's enough trauma there for 12 people...and I'm pretty happy with the way things are going for me right now. But sometimes I think about how nice it would be to worry about nothing more than if my Barbie has the right shoes for her outfit.
It occurs to me that I am easily amused.
Every year in August Staples starts running that commercial where the dad has taken his two kids to Staples for school supplies and the song "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" plays throughout the commercial. The part where the dad clicks the staplers is one of the funniest TV commercial moments ever.
And it's American Idol time almost! I'm really disappointed though -- this evening is not the eighties night that I was looking forward to. It's supposedly a Big Band night. Dammit. No Rick Springfield covers, no Duran Duran...no cheesy outfits involving flourescent yellow shirts, slouch boots, and big hair. Waaaaa.
Like I said: easily amused.
I read Turning on the Girls last night. I couldn't help myself! And I really liked it alot -- it was hilarious in spots. I've always wondered what would happen if women took over the world, and I now I know one scenario. And the porn! Heeeeeeeeeeeee! A highly recommended read to all and sundry.
It's been really hot all week, which always puts me in mind of my least favorite summer job. That would be working at Sesame Place. You know I'm not a fan of children, right?
So how does someone who dislikes children get a job working with children? Well, the pay is good. And I wasn't actively working with kids -- I was working in Group Sales. So I had to deal with their parents, which is almost worse. I can forgive a kid for being stupid and inconsiderate because maybe they just haven't learned anything yet. But when an adult throws a hissy fit because his or her coupon expired three years ago and I refuse to honor it, well....it isn't nearly as forgiveable.
At face value the job sucked simply in terms of uniform. The polo shirts were bright yellow, the shorts were kelly green, and the belts were super red. Oh, and did I mention the fabulous kelly green satin jackets? Right off the bat, it's just a bad situation.
Oh, and then there were the morning calisthenics we were required to perform in front of the entry point...you know, to show the salivating kids and parents waiting to get in that we were just rarin' to go, ready to serve. It's always fun to do 50 jumping jacks in a polyester uniform when it's 110 degrees with 80,000% humidity.
I felt relatively lucky -- I rarely worked inside the park. I was almost always in a booth just outside the entrance. Inside the park was like hell on earth. Parents fighting with each other, fighting with the characters, fighting with their kids, fighting with the food service people. It's almost an exact replica of Dante's Inferno, with each ride being a different level of hell. The pee-infested waters of the Rambling River, the vomit inducing Vapor Trail, the constant scene of drowning that is the Teeny Tiny Tidal Wave....all are reserved for a different brand of sinner, and I was sort of the gatekeeper.
That summer may just have sealed the deal for me in terms of my rabid dislike of children. And I'm convinced that the park is some sort of evil joke -- last year some parent actually physically attacked one of the characters. How sick is that?
I just blew a small fortune on new reading material.
Here is the list of reads:
I seriously miss being able to read maniacally. Working full time, going to school part time, and working on art-related stuff leaves very little time to read. But since I will be lying on the lovely shores of LBI in less than 48 hours I can read and read and read, and read some more.
Christy met me for lunch and came with me to Borders for my book purchasing extravaganza. Eric dumped her, and she's sad. The funny thing is that she was never serious about Eric and never considered herself his girlfriend anyway. But she's sad anyway.
What's fucked up about the whole situation is that he broke up with her because he misses his ex-girlfriend. I was under the impression that the whole issue with her was over and done with. So Christy feels even worse because he broke up with her for someone else.
And she's weirded out because Eric hangs out with colleagues of hers from work, so she is now left wondering if they're all discussing it behind her back. See, that's why you should never date someone you work with or who hangs with people you work with.
I'm not a sympathetic person, which kind of sucks for Christy. She says that she just wanted to tell someone, just to get it out of her system...but she really wanted to get some sympathy. My response when she told me the whole sordid story was to laugh and demand details. No, I'm not comforting in any way.
Am I the only one totally excited for this evening's American Idol cheese-a-palooza? It's Seventies Night, you know!
I'm sure that Tamyra and Justin and Kelly will all do fabulous, so it's really only the less talented bunch that I care about. What will RJ sing? Will he look like he's surfing when he's dancing? Will Christina sound like a telephone? Will Little Bo Peep storm the stage in search of her lost sheep? Will Nikki manage to hit some notes? Will Ryan manage to wear something that doesn't look like it was stolen from Hulk Hogan's line of clothing?
I will admit to loving most of the music from the seventies. I love disco, soul, rock, even pop. So in my own perfect world, here is what we'll hear tonight....
Tamyra - Don't Leave Me This Way by Thelma Houston or Dim All the Lights by Donna Summer
Kelly - Son of a Preacher Man by Dusty Springfield
Ryan - Paint It Black by The Rolling Stones or Highway to Hell by AC/DC
Nikki - Sunday Girl by Blondie
Christina - Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves by Cher
Justin - Maggie May by Rod Stewart or Hot Child in the City by Nick Gilder
RJ - Maybe I'm Amazed by Paul McCartney or Rock with You by Michael Jackson
Yes, I feel like a preteen for obsessively thinking about American Idol, but it's just so funny! Wait until next week -- the Eighties! Someone has to sing some Rick Springfield!
I've heard alot of talk recently about how music in the last year or two hasn't really produced any standout songs, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that entirely. I mean, it's really been the Year of the Boy Band/Britney for the last few years. But I've heard even more people talk about what a wasteland the eighties were for music...and that is just false.
Yes, there was some uber-cheesy music, but there was also Depeche Mode, REM, B-52s, and lots of utterly fantastic new wave music. I will always have a soft spot for Echo and the Bunnymen.
Speaking of favorite bands, did anyone see the spot on Comedy Central that's been running about Henry Rollins? Apparently they are airing one of his spoken word shows this weekend....I fervently hope I can get Comedy Central at the shore house or heads might roll!
Heeeeeeeeee! The Philadelphia Gay News has an article on the front page today about mullets! The headline reads, "The Mullet: a Hair-do that's a Lifestyle." Bwa hahaha!
Philly chicks are tough, that's all there is to it. If you've been paying attention to all the child abduction stories you know that 7 year old Erica Pratt was abducted two days ago. Yesterday afternoon she gnawed through the duct tape she had been wrapped in, found her way up the cellar stairs, busted through the cellar door, and then busted out the front window of the house to call for help. Girl Power! She should be on a Wheaties box.
If you watch Iron Chef, you might be excited by this -- I get to have lunch today at Morimoto. Since I do watch Iron Chef, I am falling down thrilled about it -- we've been trying to get a reservation for months! I'll have a full report later today.
Instead of obsessing over my Logic homework last night, I watched American Idol. As much as I absolutely can't stand to hear RJ or AJ sing, that trailor trash Ryan Starr has got to go. Way to sing something with lyrics, sweetie! Tamyra sang the hell out of her song though.
Craig has only been to one concert in his entire life. Isn't that weird? I don't even think he's seen local bands perform anywhere.
My first large stadium concert was when I was in elementary school -- it was the J. Geils band. I went with my mom. Berwick isn't a hotbed of concert activity, so it's not like I was out seeing bands every weekend...I think my next show was when I was 15. I saw Richard Marx in Scranton. Yay! Oh hell, I thought it was cool.
I really didn't start going to shows regularly until I got to college. Philadelphia is an easy place to see a show. Strangely, the first show I saw in college was in Trenton, NJ at a small little warehouse in the crappiest part of Trenton imaginable. I saw Nine Inch Nails. After that, I started seeing shows regularly. My favorites have been NIN, Chili Peppers, No Doubt, Rollins Band, and Beastie Boys.
What's so strange about Craig not seeing concerts is that he grew up within 20 minutes of Philadelphia and really likes music. That is just unfathomable to me.
You know what concert he saw? Van Halen. Hmmmm....
I'm happy to say that my Busta love has been realized. Halloween Resurrection was, indeed, cheesy. But still entertaining and kind of funny in that pathetic slasher film way.
I have also finished all of my books with the exception of one. And the only thing I need to finish on the one is a chemical transfer, which will take all of 2 seconds. I'm really happy with the way they all turned out. And everything I made today scans much better then the books from yesterday.
Now I can work on the outlines and supply lists until Thursday.
Most of my second round of books are finished. I woke up at 8am and got to work -- so now I have two little travel journals with their own luggage [both journals of which I have to actually put art onto, and then I have to find a handle and closure for the second box], 2 albums [the first is completely finished, and the second needs to have the paper cut and then I have to bind it], and I have two piano hinge books [although I have to find 4 more skewers so I can finish binding the second one. The first is finished].
I feel pretty good that most of the real work is done. I just have to mock up some class outlines and supply lists. I think I will charge a $10 supply fee -- and then I can supply boards, spackle, bookbinding thread, etc.
I'm so obsessive-compulsive about all this. It's boring even to me.
I have had a fairly low key weekend, thanks in large part to the huge round of bookbinding that I've been involved with. Craig took me to Las Caszuelas yesterday for dinner and that is the only time I've left the house. I really want to go to the movies today so I can get my Busta love on, but I don't know that it's going to happen. Don't get me wrong -- I don't expect Halloween Resurrection to be good, but I do expect to be entertained by the sheer cheese factor. And then there's Busta.
It's been a news free weekend for me. On some level I feel free from stupidity -- it's nice to be completely ignorant of the foibles of our government every once in a while. However, I feel strangely sure that I have missed some vital information. It's a catch 22.
Mwa ha ha! This day has been well worth taking the personal day. By 10am I had already had a mushroom tart made, and the rice made for sushi, and a load of clothes in the dryer. And now at almost 2pm, I have the sushi made [about 4 dozen maki rolls actually], another load of clothes in the wash, and I just purchased my logic text at Half.com for the low low bargain basement price of $9.99. It's the right edition and everything -- take that, you dastardly thieves at Temple University bookstore!
You can't see me but I'm doing my happy dance. Trust me, it's really creative.
On top of all that, Cry Baby was on some movie channel today. I love John Waters -- the man is a genius. Who else would make a movie with Divine eating dog shit? Who is the Filthiest Person Alive? Ha! And Hairspray, my stars, what a brilliant movie! Ricki Lake should have stuck to acting -- the line "I feel like dancing!" has featured prominently in some of my odder nightmares. I wanted the roach dress for my senior prom but I couldn't find the right fabric.
So yeah, my day is complete.
OK, not really -- I still feeling like cooking. So I might make some pizza dough to have on hand. If I had apples I'd make pies, but it's too hot for me to leave the house.
Sometimes a good day off full of cooking is exactly what I need to feel better. That, and some good conditioner.
It's official that I am a pathetic person. I ran over to Temple Campus during lunch hour to pick up the textbook for my logic class [which begins this evening]. I took a look at the room assignment list -- I'm in room 314.
Do you know what my first thought was? Think real hard about Buffy and why that number would have significance. That's right -- season 4 and all that crap with The Initiative. 314 was the room where Professor Walsh was keeping Adam.
See what I mean now? Only someone with useless and exhaustive knowledge of Buffy would know that, and only a loser like me would put it out there for all the world to see. It's just sad.
Craig is ready to throw out my Buffy DVDs....he's sick of seeing them. I can easily say that I watched at least 30 hours of Buffy over the last 4 days.
So I spent some time in the car this past weekend, travelling to Craig's parents' house for a mini-visit [always a good time]. One of the radio stations was having the traditional holiday countdown. This one was the top 200 "Modern Rock Songs that Matter." Hmmmmm. Well, OK. Your know it's not going to be good when The Clash and Talking Heads get ranked below some silly ass songs by Papa Roach or Linkin Park. Not to mention that Bob Marley is on the countdown...and so is Rob Zombie. Since when are they "modern rock"?
I guess I should be thankful The Ramones ended up at number 1. But I can still bitch about the lame songs they chose in their Top 20. I hate countdowns....inevitably, they are wrong. I'll never understand why Jeremy always gets rated among the top songs. I mean, it's an OK song, but Pearl Jam has much much better songs. And that stupid Under the Bridge....I lurve me some Anthony Keidis, but where is Suck My Kiss or Taste the Pain?
Geesh....
It's "fry an egg on the sidewalk" hot today. Waiting at the corner for my bus this morning at 7:30am, all I could do was hang around and sweat profusely. It's a good look for me.
American Idol was more pure entertainment last night. Craig sat around and complained about his balls shrivelling because of the bad singing. And really, most of the "talent" from last night was just wretched. Oh, and the judges all did this silly choreographed near fist fight thing. Organized violence is just stupid, much like organized fun.
You know, it's sad -- my TV viewing habits are pretty much equal to that of a 12 year old girl. Not only did I watch American Idol, I also re-watched the musical Buffy episode last night. And the song that Tara sings to Willow actually made me mist up a little.
What's worse is that I have been spending an inordinate amount of time during the past two weeks looking for the least expensive Buffy Season 2 DVD box set. I'm cheap and I'm on a mission.
Of course, now that I have gotten a refund check from the IRS I can afford to just buy the damn thing. That's right, you read correctly: a refund check from the IRS. For $300, no less. They're telling me that I did my taxes wrong and I overpaid. Do you think it's a payoff to shut up? It seems timely considering I've emailed President Bush several times in the last few weeks bitching and complaining about various issues. Maybe I'm a threat....yeah, that's it: I'm a big threat to Bush's continuing Presidency! His FBI lackeys have discovered my little blog journal thingy, noticed the huge amount of hits I get [she says, eyes rolling], and are determined to keep me quiet by plying me with money. Well damn the Man! Damn the Man!
The heat has gone to my head.
I hate to make fun, but this girl says that the music of Hanson has kept her alive. And they're inspirational. What? Mmmmmmmmm Bop is inspirational? Are there any other lyrics in that song? Is it secret code for "do not kill yourself, disenfranchised teeny bopper?" I don't get it. It's like saying Brittany Spears is a great role model for girls -- bizarre and alternate reality-ish. I feel remotely bad for picking on the poor misguided girl who wrote those crazy words, but people like that grow up to be spreaders of lunacy. You know the ones: bible toting hypocrites who push the koolaid.
I'm just in a really snarky mood today.
There's just stuff to make fun of all over the place today -- some girl buys a pair of shoes for $27.00 and claims "they are so expensive!" What? $27.00 for shoes is dirt cheap!
I would complain about the overabundance of bad poetry going on today, but I've been there. You're 15 or whatever, you have an emotion and you think you're the first and only person to feel it. You must capture this feeling in a poem, a rhyming poem. Yeah, I have entire collections of cheesy ass poetry from junior high and high school. I keep it to ensure that I never act that stupid again.
The first movie I can ever remember seeing is Halloween. I was 5 years old in 1978 when it was released. I saw it at a drive in movie with my mom and dad.
I remember it so vividly. My dad had a big black van without windows in the back, and he parked so that the doors in the back opened up and we could lay in the back and watch the movie.
My mom and dad had a big fight about what to see. My mother hates horror movies and has the sense to know that horror movies and five year olds don't mix. My dad...well....not so much. He has the mental capacity of a ten year old.
I'm sure that on some level I've been warped by this first recollected experience. I've never really liked the Halloween movie series although I am a big horror movie junkie. My favorites are The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby.
Sometimes I wonder why I turned out to the be such a fine upstanding citizen when my brother turned out to be such a dirtbag.
It must be the extra horror in my diet.
I broke down and watched American Idol last night. That show is pure comedy gold. I can't believe I missed the first night.
Simon, the British judge record exec guy, is such a bastard! I imagine that he goes home at night to a bachelors apartment where not even his parents call him. He just sits there in his leather barcalounger clutching a bottle of whisky as he thrusts pins into a voodoo doll with pictures of the contestants glued to it. He doesn't seem like a very happy guy. Maybe he just needs a hug.
My two favorites from last night were the white guy who lost 300 pounds and kinda looks like Jack Black, and the black guy who screwed up his song and then yelled at Simon for questioning his talent.
The Jack Black looking motherfucker.....where do I start? Apparently on the first show they told him he needed to update his look....so he went to a salon, but he was still wearing that South Philly stud style pleather lizard jacket from 1980. I'm not sure what he was trying to say with that, but it was so horrible. And then offering to work out with the one judge....that was so wretched it was riveting!
And the guy who yelled at Simon....I don't even know where to start. First off, is it my imagination or does that guy have the largest nostrils on the planet? It could have been a trick of the camera but I was fixated on the size of the kids nostrils. Secondly, who yells at a judge that can cut you from a competition? I think the guy has issues with sabatoging his own success...not that he was all that talented.
In the "I can't believe she didn't get cut" category --- that blonde chick who was wearing what resembled a red sports bra with a torn up leopard print rag thrown over top. She must have hypnotic body glitter or something because she schnookered the judges.
Oh, and the toll free voting number! I can't imagine how often I'm going to call....this is going to be my diversionary fun for the summer. Yes, I'm a total cheeseball.
I think I have an old enemy I'd like to sign up to be on the next American Idol....
I must admit to something that has already been hinted at: I am a Buffy junky. The reason I know this to be true is the first DVD I bought for myself when Craig got the DVD player working last week is the First Season of Buffy. It is currently winging it's way to me from Amazon.com right now.
It makes me feel slightly stupid to admit it. And it horrifies me to acknowledge the fact that I have wept copious tears of grief during the show. Even worse, even when the show makes no sense [and in the Buffy-verse, not making sense is rampant] I still love it. Guilty pleasure? Maybe.
But here's the killer: I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie. Yes that's right -- I was a Kristy Swanson wannabe, Luke Perry with the soul patch-loving total fan. Oh, I know it's a cheesy movie. But the reason I love the movie so much is really for Paul Reubens' death scene. Those 10-15 minutes are worth the watch. Really. I swear it.
And that is why I started watching the series. Yes, I have seen every episode repeatedly. Yes, I've been watching it since the very first episode aired 6 years ago. Yes, I can quote Buffy lines like nobodies business. It's a sickness.
And now that there is no new Buffy until September or October.....how do I spend my time? That's right, I obsess and speculate wildly over Season 7. If you think I'm bad, visit the folks at the Buffy Spoiler Topic board at Television Without Pity....they know Buffy even better than I do.
Sometimes I sit around and watch Beat the Geeks on the Comedy Channel and fantasize that I will be called to be the Buffy Geek. It's a strange fantasy, but I can guarantee I'm not the only one.
Does this make me cheesy? I hope not, but deep down I know it's true -- I'm a total cheeseball.
I really love tattoos. When I was single I wouldn't date a man unless he had gorgeous long hair and at least one tattoo or a couple of piercings.
My tattoo is silly -- I got mine a few days after I turned 18. I really didn't know who I was or what I wanted or what I stood for....so I went with something small and common: a shamrock. I've been scheming ever since to get it covered with a different tattoo that is more me.
The time might be near -- I'm really thinking hard about it. And looking at other people's tattoos makes me want a new and improved one even more.
On a completely different topic, Craig and i went to see The Sum of All Fears yesterday. Quite possibly it was the scariest two hours ever....I know that the U.S. has come close to dropping nukes on other countries. However, the whole idea of how it comes to that is absolutely frightening (mostly because it could happen)...and the scene where the bomb gets activated is chilling.
Coincidentally, there was an absolutely stunningly bad movie on TBS last night called Atomic Twister. I knew it would be bad -- Sharon Lawrence has never done a good movie and, besides which, it also had Zack in it. The acting was so bad...I could just picture some Joe Schmoe director pacing the sidelines yelling, "No, that's too subtle -- emote, goddamn you, emote!"
Late addition: Why I love Matt Damon....
I think I want to adopt The Goo Goo Dolls.
The poor guys played the Today Show this morning. They seemed sort of embarrassed to be doing it, which is understandable....it's sort of a silly thing to do, but probably a necessity in order to promote their tour.
They had to play indoors because it's pouring outside. That's never good -- because the sound is usually pretty bad and the performance is sort of off....after all, who would rather play for The Today Show staff rather than a crowd of real fans?
That said, The Today Show ran this little blip of a Behind the Music from VH-1 on the band and then they played. Unfortunately Ann and Katie decided they had to say a few words to them.
First of all, Katie was really touchy feely in kind of a skeevy way. I could barely watch...my skin started to crawl. And then she asked if they were surprised by their success and Robby Takac said something about being surprised every day. Katie made some dumb ass crack about his hair and how she'd be surprised if she woke up to that color hair too.
Rude.
But he was so cool about it...just sort made it into a joke and made everyone laugh. And then I felt like I was watching a reporter for Teen Beat magazine. Ann turns to John Rzeznik and say, "So are you single?" No lead in, no "I bet you have girls beating down your door"...just "are you single"....hey, inquiring minds want to know.
But what really was the dumbest moment of the interview was when Katie takes hold of John's arm and compliments his tattoo, saying it's "so Picasso like".....to which John replies, "Yes, it is Picasso." Oh it's a sad sad day.
Obviously I am at home today -- I'm playing hooky today from work so I can hang out here and write my paper for BritLit. It's nice not to be at work, but the last thing I want to do is write this paper.
I can't express how much I love Iron Chef. Everything about it just rocks -- I have a particular love of the commentator because it's so ridiculous. This evening was the lamb battle.....when there was a U.S. verson of the show with Shatner it just sucked. There has to be the dubbed English and the subtitles and the serious with which the show is presented to make it so bizarre and ultimately watchable.
Craig and I rented From Hell this evening. It was not the best movie on earth but visually appealing. What made it interesting was the theory of who Jack the Ripper was, and why he did what he did. To my horror, both my grandfather and Uncle Dale are Freemasons. I've long suspected that it is just sort of a front for some aryan nation type of activity....and neither one of them will talk about what the Freemasons are, so I've been left to speculate. From doing my own research, I understand that Freemasons are a religous fraternal order, one that stresses morality in its members. Of course, knowing what a hypocrite my grandfather is and what a greedy schmuck my uncle is....well, let's just say that I have serious reservations about believing that "morality" is something they stress all that much. And of course, Freemasons have been linked to President Lincoln's assassination, beliefs of Nazi Germany, the murder of Pope John Paul I, establishing the Ku Klux Klan, the Jack the Ripper Murders in England, the JFK assassination conspiracy, and many others. And of course there isn't a lot of evidence to support the connections....
What really cracks me up is the fact that my grandparents are Methodist, but Methodists are historically anti-Freemason. I don't know what the truth is, what Freemasons really stand for......but it's interesting to think about.
I'm sitting here in the studio watching a rerun of Buffy.....it's the one where Buffy sort of joins The Initiative and we find out what Dr. Walsh is doing. I really don't like all the eps with Riley and The Initiative......stupid.
Funniest line in the show, by Xander:
"Spike, you may want to give up these morning runs of yours."
I've been feeling kind of blobby lately -- I just haven't felt like running or anything. But I think maybe I'll do a pilates tape later, just to do something. It's kind of cloudy today and there isn't much to do -- we were thinking of going to the movies later or maybe to the Pennsylvania Fair.
Yesterday we had Christy and Eric over for a little Memorial Day picnic type of thing. I really like Eric, but he's about 6 years younger than we are. Granted, Christy acts like she's 10 most of the time so it works out just fine, but it's sort of funny when we talk about some things and he doesn't know what we're talking about -- 6 years shouldn't make such a huge difference, but he doesn't really know who A Flock of Seagulls are, and doesn't realize the significance of the bizarre hairstyles in the group. That's kind of silly -- but it's a huge cultural difference. Odd.
It was the first time that Craig met him -- Craig was amazed to meet a normal boyfriend of Christy's....normally there are serious things wrong with them -- police records, social and emotional problems, etc. Craig thinks that he would probably hang out with Eric, which is also an unusual quality.
We had hamburgers, turkey burgers, hot dogs, sausage, pork roll, pasta salad, a kick ass cheese selection and olives, fruit, nuts, etc. And lots and lots of wine. It was a good time.
This Scooby Doo movie looks ridiculous -- and Freddie Prinze Jr is totally the wrong person to play Fred. I mean he's a little skinny guy who is supposed to be playing a big hulky guy. Buffy is a good Daphne (physically), and the guy who plays Shaggy was a good choice......and Velma is OK, although I think Thora Birch would have been a better choice. Who would I have chosen to play Fred? I'm not sure...most of the young actors right now are little pretty girly men.
More terror warnings over the weekend....it makes me think of Rocky Horror when Frank-en-furter says, "I see you shiver with anticip ----- ation." No one wants anything to happen, but the suspense is almost worse. If it's going to happen, happen already....just don't jerk us all around and make us crazy. We already know that we're under high alert -- telling us that we should be even more vigilant doesn't really help the situation.
I'm listening to a radio station that is playing the best 300 songs of the '80s. That Thomas Dolby pleaser was on.....I love the music of the '80s but I hate thinking about who I was and where I was in the '80s.
Living in a small town is harder than you would expect -- no, there's not really crime to worry about or anything like that....no chance that the school's arts, music, and sports programs will be cancelled because the money isn't there.....but it's hard: you do one thing that someone doesn't like and your life is ruined for the rest of the time you live there. Rumors are started easily since everyone knows you and they never go away. I barely remember any moments in high school when I was really truly happy -- I was mostly just trying to get by, unnoticed.
Of course, that makes it sound like I was an outcast. That's not true -- I was popular, played sports, blah blah blah......but that's how it is for most people when they're in high school. They struggle just to not be too conspicuous, to go along with what will keep you from being singled out. I don't know anyone was ever completely satisfied with their high school experiences.
And then there's the rub: if I didn't have all those horrible, mortifyingly bad experiences in high school I might not be who I am today. And the cool thing is that I really like who I turned out to be. People are always saying that they wish things had been different during [insert time period here], and to some extent there are things that I would change just a little, but on the whole crappy times make you so much smarter.
That song from Eddie and the Cruisers is on......I hate that song.
Only about an hour and 30 minutes until it's time to go. I really can't wait to get out of here and go home and relax. To compound matters I was drinking my Diet Pepsi earlier and I gerbered a little on my nice cream colored sweater....so now I'm walking around with this little stain on my boob. This is why I don't often wear light colors. See, there's a method to the madness....
I'm reading some weird news stories....some guy who had stomach surgery won a quarter million dollars because the surgeon left a 14" knife in his stomach. I'm surprised he didn't get more -- that's a pretty big mistake. Normally I am not a proponent of litigation but even I can see the logic in that case.
I'm relieved to say that I think my Eng 115 class is going to be good....the instructor realizes that to cram ALL of the literature into 6 weeks is ridiculous, so she is just going to hit the highlights. Plus Prof. Cotungo didn't keep us for the whole class last night.
So right now I'm reading two things -- A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift and The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope. I finished A Modest Proposal, which is hilarious...I'm just making sure I know what's what before I move on to Pope. Luckily, I'm a huge fan of satire so the first two readings are of interest to me. After that it looks like we are moving on to the Romantics, which of course I hate with the fiery passion of a volcano....damn you Marilyn Gaull!
I guess I am Intellectual Girl now......able to discuss British Literature in a single bound.
It's lucky that I have such a boring job, I suppose -- I can do all sorts of research while I'm "working".
OK, so last night Craig and I are watching this ridiculous movie called Deep Blue Sea. I thought it was just going to be really dumb -- but then I found myself laughing so hard I started actually crying. These MENSA sharks (read: genetically altered) are trying to kill all of the crew at a research facility -- Samuel L. Jackson reminds us all that he survived an avalanche and that everyone has to pull together, blah blah blah....all of a sudden one of the SMARTsharks leaps out of the little pool and bites his ass in half. It was one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life. There was an encore presentation of it afterwards...I had to watch that part again just for the sheer entertainment value.
This weekend has been relatively laid back -- yesterday morning I went for a short jog and then Craig and I went to the nursey up by Franklin Mills Mall....I bought some tomatoes, peppers, and dill. I can't plant them yet for a few days because all of a sudden it's like the frozen tundra outside. For lunch we hit Olive Garden, which sucked. And then we just vegged out the rest of the night. Today I got up at the crack and went to yoga, which was fabulous! And then Craig and I went to La Cazuelas for brunch.
I tried to guilt Craig into coming to yoga this morning -- he went out and bought his own mat and said that he was planning to come once per week. I have a feeling that it's going to be like all of his other passing interests - surfing, learning spanish, painting, carpentry......yep, had to have that surf board and now its taking up space in my studio....unused....ever. Now he's talking about getting a kayak......and he says that he can store it outside but I don't know where he thinks he can put it -- our patio is about the size of a postage stamp. I just wish he'd actually do any of the many things that he says he's going to do. I have a letter from PECO about installing readable meters that he promised to take care of 2 months ago.
The other thing here is that I'm beginning to worry about his health -- he eats like crap and never ever does any sort of exercise. He realizes that he's gaining weight but he just jokes about it most of the time. I'm worried that he's going to have a heart attack at 30. He won't run with me or go to yoga with me or join a gym...the only time he'll walk is to go to get ice cream.
I've got that stupid song in my head, thinking of Beavis and Butthead --- oh yay for me!
I'm playing hooky kind of....there is an All Staff meeting going on downstairs and I'm skipping it. I can't deal with too much tedium today and I have other stuff to do anyway. I was basically ordered to attend the Resource Development meeting though - dammit.
So Cause Celeb was ...OK. It really just was a retread of Bridget Jones' Diary. I hate it when writers tell the same story over and over again. I guess not everyone can be John Irving or Kurt Vonnegut. So now I'm reading something called Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre. It's this crime novel that is supposed to be funny, but so far is just a bit too British for my tastes. I don't know that I will be able to finish it -- so far it seems tailor made for a 12 year old boy: lots of farting and the leaving of a giant turd on a mantle. Ding dong.
I'm feeling kind of angsty today -- I have work to do, don't want to do because I'm bored of the whole thing, but will do it anyway. But this has become a running theme here, and I just can't stand to bitch about it anymore.
So in addition my work angst, I have subconscious angst. Apparently there is a threat against an Eastern nuclear plant on July 1. I suppose that is why those pills are being handed round -- my mom told me while they were here for Mothers Day that the county has distributed pills to everyone within a 10 mile radius of the plant...pills that supposedly combat the effects of leaked radiation. Personally, I can't see how a pill would help if you're within 10 miles of a meltdown. But anyway, considering most of my family lives within 5 miles of a reactor, and I live about 15 miles from a reactor....well, let's just say I'm a tad concerned, especially knowing some of the schmucks who work run said nuclear plant near my family.
And here's a little tidbit from the British papers that hasn't been reported here (at least not widely) - there is some mysterious flu-like illness going around the troops in Afganistan. After seeing last night's ER I can't help but be slightly paranoid.
Danger wordy mcword: danger!
This &#$)@_!#% PC has frozen up and/rebooted on me at least a dozen times today. I'm getting awfully frustrated. How dare my work computer misbehave while I'm fucking off.
CNN has done a "10 best" list of X-Files episodes. I must say that whoever wrote the list is a serious fan of the whole alien mytharc. The only ones that I really really liked that they picked are "Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose" (the insurance salesman able to foresee death) and "Home" (the freaky Peacock family).
My picks for my faves (aside from the 2 above) would have been Shadows (chosen for no other reason other than it was set in Philadelphia -- hey, its a hometown shout out), Tooms (hello, gross!), Humbug (can't get enough of circus freaks), Unruhe (I love this one, alot!), The Field Where I Died (a great past life story), Elegy (creepy!), Mind's Eye (great one!), Terms of Endearment (its a shout out to Rosemary's Baby!), and Monday (Groundhog Day, anyone?). I guess you could say I'm not a huge fan of the mytharc.
Woohoo! I finally got a template that I like! It took days, weeks even, of searching and tweaking and good stuff like that. I just hope it isn't too hard to read or doesn't take too long to download. If anyone happens to read this and wants to give me some feedback, I'd love to hear it.
Craig was trying to talk me into calling out of work today...true, I do now have some personal days to work with but I know he just wants to go to the movies to see the new Star Wars flick. I have never seen any of the Star Wars movies and don't intend to start now (you know, on principal)....so I came in today. Of course, it's beautiful outside and I wish that I were at home. Go figure.
No musical ramblings today....I left the CD player at home. But I was able to buy a few new books yesterday....so today I'm reading Cause Celeb by Helen Fielding. Fielding wrote Bridget Jones' Diary, which I did like quite a bit and, surprisingly, did not hate the movie too badly (unlike the horrible train wreck that was Simon Birch.....poor John Irving.) The new book is none so bad yet, but v. v. like Bridget Jones (god, I'm so clever)...and so I'm not impressed with it as I would be otherwise.
Of course, I wish there were a new John Irving book for me to read....the last was pretty good....the one about the hand. Nothing will be as good as A Prayer for Owen Meany for me though. Ever.
When I was at the book store yesterday I was musing, as usual, about how I will not (ever ever) purchase and/or read a book that has the "Oprah Seal of Approval" or whatever the fuck that is. I broke down and read one by Oates...."We Were the Mulvaneys".....and of course it was good but I noticed that there are certain types of books that Oprah picks for her Stepford Wife certification.......I guess I shouldn't complain too much -- it probably led the unwashed masses of middle American housewives to read some fairly good literature, and put some new ideas in their heads. I just (on principal) hate anything about, condoned by, near Oprah -- she is the antichrist. Right up there with Martha Stewart.
I hear that Kelly Osborne has done a cover of Papa Don't Preach and that Staind has done a cover of Black. I'm bothered by both on very different levels, but I can't decide which is more disturbing. Of course, I hate Staind because they are, well, sans talent....but to desecrate such a great song makes me want to hurl....and Kelly Osborne, well, don't get me started. It's a sure sign of the coming apocalypse.
Another "sure sign" is the fact that there is yet another celebrity boxing match......something about Chynna and Joey Buttafucco......and Minut Bol and somebody Perry, who is a fat bastard (no, really, actually looks like Fat Bastard from Mike Myers movies). I can hear thousands of trailer parks around the country cheering in wild anticipation. Oh, it's a sad sad day....or to quote Daria - it's a sick, sad world.
I'm listening to Jill Scott today...I threw her CD into my walkman before I left for work this morning. It's such a great CD - very soulful and I can't seem to stay still when I'm listening to it. On the street while waiting for the bus, I'm just standing there dancing....people must think I'm crazy....considering my neighborhood, I'd be better off if I had a mullet I guess.
Anyway, my favorite Jill Scott line:
...queens shouldn't swing, if you know what I mean,
but I'm about to take my rings off, get me some vaseline....
Makes me giggle every time......
So I guess some guy shot a priest yesterday -- the priest molested him some time ago and refused to acknowledge him when the guy tried to talk to him about it. I was sort of wondering when something like that would happen......people have it in their heads that these priests are literally men of god, when in reality many of them are assholes.
Craig thinks all these people coming out of the woodwork to be a part of the lawsuits against the church/priests are taking advantage of the situtation. He doesn't get why they wouldn't have gone public years ago -- I tried to explain the stigma of molestation, especially for boys and in the church. Craig actually grew up in the Catholic church, so it surprises me that he just refuses to acknowledge how hard it must be for people to come forward.
I've always thought the Catholic church was a little bizarre - this priest scandal thing is doing nothing to allay my concerns. I don't understand why priests are supposed to be above the law.....why not just arrest the schmucks and throw them in prison where they belong? Why require nuns and priests to be celibate? Is there some hidden benefit to it, or does it fall under the heading of "suffering brings you closer to god"? I'm very suspicious of the Catholic church, and the whole notion of confession purging you of your sins, no matter how grievous.
I just stopped by the Henry Rollins site...apparently there is a crazy woman from Jersey who has been impersonating him online. Weird....who would want to impersonate my boy Hank?
I'm so happy today is Friday. I don't know that I could take even one more day of work. In an effort to pretend that I am still in high school, I am listening to The Cure today. I threw Staring at the Sea into my CD player before I left the house today. It was somehow unsatisfying though -- for some reason the CD was recorded at a much lower sound level than my other CD's and I have to listen to The Cure at top sound to be purely happy about it. Luckily I had grabbed another CD before I left the house, which was So Far by Crosby Stills Nash and Young. Not quite so demonstrative of my youth (most songs recorded before I was born), but still a good CD. I think I may have preferred something a little more angry for this morning though....although Ohio is definitely a very pissed off song.
I tried to find my Rollins Band Yellow Blues CD but it is AWOL. I think it might be in the box of CD's I took with me to Seattle last month. I haven't seen it so I hope it isn't missing as well.
I think tonight after work I may go running. I need to build up a little for the race on Sunday. It's going to suck -- it's supposed to rain and I haven't been running at all.
I was watching something on VH1 last night about the top 100 one hit wonders. The problem is that not all of the bands named were really one hit wonders. I mean Devo, Modern English, Big Country -- not exactly one hit and gone. It was driving me nuts. And what we noticed is that for every 10 bands named, at least one person was dead. Odd.
So the standoff at the Church of the Nativity has ended "peacefully".....everyone seems to be making such a big deal out of it, but ending it isn't going to make even the slightest difference. Yes, Israel has pulled out of Bethlehem and lifted the curfew restriction, but they have more tanks waiting to go into Palestinian territory to kill other people in retaliation for more suicide bombings. It's all so stupid and there is doesn't seem to be any real ending in sight.
The session last night went fairly well, I suppose. Not too many complaints from the participants...and Angela showed up (albiet 5 minutes late). I'm glad that one is over. 2 down, 2 to go! Woohoo!
My real reason for getting home last night was to watch Buffy and I'm glad that I did. It was quite an episode....so glad that I was completely spoiled for it. The AR scene was, yes, hard to watch...but I didn't think it was as bad as some people made it out to be. The whole leaving of the jacket thing was the real perfection of that episode though. The last 5 minutes was really excellent -- I hate to say it but, aside from the musical episode, that was the best show of the season. And next week looks pretty good too -- can't wait to read the Wildfeed on Monday!
I was obsessively checking out this woman on the subway this morning....she was kind of a heavy woman (probably about a size 28 or so) and she was wearing a flowered skirt and short sleeve yellow blouse. She was one of those really hippy women....not like she was small elsewhere but she had the kind of hips that you could set drinks on. Anyway, the outfit she had on was very clean and well pressed and all of that, but you could tell it was kind of old and had been washed too many times because all over the back of it it had these little pills. I don't know why but it was driving me nuts to look at. I didn't really get a look at her from the front.
My mood today is middle of the road I guess. Mostly I just wish that I was doing something fun that I enjoy. Soon! Of course, I'm also sort of obsessive over the latest from Israel. This peace agreement is never going to work out -- there were two new suicide bombings in the last 24 hours. I'm not sure there can be any peace resolution. Ever. Sharon thinks its all Arafats fault, and maybe to some degree it is. But how did the whole thing start? There has to be a single act that began everything. It makes me so sad -- all this crap over religion....it makes no sense at all.
I found this journal today. Very interesting.....
It's definitely tourist season here in Philadelphia. Some of the things I see here just crack me up...this morning I was on my way from Suburban Station to work...you know, just walking along, minding my business, listening to some old Pearl Jam (be still my heart - Eddie Vedder with long hair)....all of a sudden this huge family of inbreds practically knocks me over in their haste to see (probably) Love Park. And they shoot me a dirty look for being in their way.
Other things are less annoying, more funny. Some older guy came out of the Embassy Suites on the Parkway and started jumping up and down, waving his arms like a wildman to flag a cab. Who hails a cab like that? Luckily I don't work down near the Liberty Bell anymore....now until the end of summer was always hellacious -- you couldn't walk 3 feet without some idiot tourist asking where the Liberty Bell is (hello, open your eyes, it's behind you). Maybe I just look helpful...I don't know.
So on my way to work today I was, as I said, listening to Pearl Jam. And I started to wonder what it is about some music that makes me like it better than other music. And I think I figured it out -- I like music that is slightly angry, and so what I really like is to hear someone singing the shit out of a really really good song. So even Barry Manilow or Destiny's Child has a shot at being good -- if they would just put some anger into their singing it might be pretty good. It makes perfect sense -- I really like Rollins Band (my bizarre crush on Henry Rollins notwithstanding)....they aren't a great band, but Henry can sing the shit out of a song.
So I have a BOP meeting after work today...it's the last thing in the world I feel like doing. Luckily, I can leave early -- and I plan to. I'm leaving a 7pm, and Craig is going to pick me up. That way I don't miss even a second of Buffy.
Speaking of which, there was a new Angel on last night. It was atrocious -- all this Matrix-y, slow-mo action crap....and there's baby Connor as a waif-y teen, all Les Mis'd out. It was ridiculous. This show is just getting worse and worse.
I spent most of my lunch hour outside today - I bought an order of steamed dumplings from the Chinese cart on the corner and just sat in the courtyard. I also wrote an entry in my art journal. But then I went inside and took a nap for 30 minutes. I guess it's important to note here that my lunch hour is never only an hour unless I have something vital to do.
It's 2:30p now and that means I get to leave in 1.5 hours for my meeting. I just want to go home and rest....I've been really lazy over the last week or two -- when I should be gardening or cooking or making art I am just becoming one with my couch.
