Is this the greatest news ever or WHAT?!?!?!
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
review--DANGEROUS SEX GAMES
So this weekend saw The Husband and me in Nashville for The Wedding of The Husband's Best Friend From College and Her Boyfriend. We had the BEST TIME EVER, even though The Car broke down and needed a new oxygen sensor (whatever the hell that is) and I was forced to buy from Target what became my second pair of pants because my other pair were destroyed in an encounter with the Harpeth River. What made the weekend so special was not the awesome wedding, or the wonderful people we met, or the great food...it was the softcore porn we bought on the hotel TV for $11: DANGEROUS SEX GAMES.
DANGEROUS SEX GAMES--written by Nobel Prize winner Noe Wunn--was advertised as having a plot, which is the little I require in a porn. Which I know sort of defeats the point of porn, but when you think about it, sex is pretty silly and disgusting to watch when other people are doing it, so it helps if there's a bit of CONFLICT to keep you interested. Also, the synopsis warned of EXTREME NUDITY. How can you pass up something with EXTREME NUDITY? What is EXTREME NUDITY? How can you be more EXTREMELY NUDE than you are when you have no clothes on?
So the plot goes like this: Darren and Kia are a couple who are arguing about going to their friend Simon's house for his birthday. See, Simon likes to throw murder mystery parties and Kia can't stand them, because once Simon put a dead rat in a box or something. But then they have sex and Kia decides to go, because I guess the sex was awesome. But I wouldn't know because they didn't show it. So at Simon's house they meet up with friends Parker and Brianna, who reveal that they hate Simon, too, but they're at the party anyway because hey, free booze. Then there's Chelsea the maid who you know is the maid because she's in a French maid's outfit. And then Simon shows up with this ugly chick, Lizette. Simon's a total asshole, and he's come up with this awesome new game called "The Case Of The Bloody Knife." It involves a series of numbered envelopes, numbered in no particular order, which need to be opened in a particular order to reveal a series of clues which leads to a prize: two tickets to Anguilla. The clues all have to do with some aspect of mythology, which you know in real life none of these people would know anything about. And then they all have sex with each other, but they don't show any of it. Except for when the two chicks have sex, then they showed all of that. And then Simon's found dead, and Kia (after having sex with various people) figures out it was Lizette who killed Simon, because she was pissed that Simon was having sex with the maid. But Simon knew Lizette was going to kill him, so instead of ratting her out to the police he concocted a labrythine murder mystery game with lots of clues and envelopes. But he did actually leave four tickets instead of two, so everyone gets to go to Anguilla. And everyone lives happily ever after, and Darren and Kia profess their undying love for one another and then they have sex, YAY AMERICA and THE END!!!
So DANGEROUS SEX GAMES was only an hour long. For $11. And according to the internets, it was supposed to be 90 minutes, which would explain why there wasn't actually any sex or EXTREME NUDITY. But you have to wonder why they'd bother cutting that stuff out, especially if you're paying $11 for EXTREME NUDITY. I also think much of the plot was lost in the edits, because it was never actually adequately explained how Kia figured out Lizette was the murderer when Kia was dumber than a sock of nickles. And why any of them would want to have sex with each other, let alone be friends.
I'm still deciding if it would be worth it to hunt down the unedited version.
As for the weekend, there was no EXTREME NUDITY, but there was lots of GETTING LOST and HONKYTONK MUSIC and JEFF GORDON'S BIG HEAD HAWKING STUFF FROM BILLBOARDS. There was also lots of GREAT PEOPLE and COOL PARENTS and CUTE KIDS and SEARING HUMIDITY. The Husband's Best Friend From College And Her Husband are awesome. Their friends and family are all awesome. And The Husband and I have cemented our status as BEST TEAM EVER, as we put Lewis and Clark to shame with our canoeing prowess.
The Husband and I can do ANYTHING, we're so awesome. Everything except pick out porn.
But hey, it was either that or boxing.
DANGEROUS SEX GAMES--written by Nobel Prize winner Noe Wunn--was advertised as having a plot, which is the little I require in a porn. Which I know sort of defeats the point of porn, but when you think about it, sex is pretty silly and disgusting to watch when other people are doing it, so it helps if there's a bit of CONFLICT to keep you interested. Also, the synopsis warned of EXTREME NUDITY. How can you pass up something with EXTREME NUDITY? What is EXTREME NUDITY? How can you be more EXTREMELY NUDE than you are when you have no clothes on?
So the plot goes like this: Darren and Kia are a couple who are arguing about going to their friend Simon's house for his birthday. See, Simon likes to throw murder mystery parties and Kia can't stand them, because once Simon put a dead rat in a box or something. But then they have sex and Kia decides to go, because I guess the sex was awesome. But I wouldn't know because they didn't show it. So at Simon's house they meet up with friends Parker and Brianna, who reveal that they hate Simon, too, but they're at the party anyway because hey, free booze. Then there's Chelsea the maid who you know is the maid because she's in a French maid's outfit. And then Simon shows up with this ugly chick, Lizette. Simon's a total asshole, and he's come up with this awesome new game called "The Case Of The Bloody Knife." It involves a series of numbered envelopes, numbered in no particular order, which need to be opened in a particular order to reveal a series of clues which leads to a prize: two tickets to Anguilla. The clues all have to do with some aspect of mythology, which you know in real life none of these people would know anything about. And then they all have sex with each other, but they don't show any of it. Except for when the two chicks have sex, then they showed all of that. And then Simon's found dead, and Kia (after having sex with various people) figures out it was Lizette who killed Simon, because she was pissed that Simon was having sex with the maid. But Simon knew Lizette was going to kill him, so instead of ratting her out to the police he concocted a labrythine murder mystery game with lots of clues and envelopes. But he did actually leave four tickets instead of two, so everyone gets to go to Anguilla. And everyone lives happily ever after, and Darren and Kia profess their undying love for one another and then they have sex, YAY AMERICA and THE END!!!
So DANGEROUS SEX GAMES was only an hour long. For $11. And according to the internets, it was supposed to be 90 minutes, which would explain why there wasn't actually any sex or EXTREME NUDITY. But you have to wonder why they'd bother cutting that stuff out, especially if you're paying $11 for EXTREME NUDITY. I also think much of the plot was lost in the edits, because it was never actually adequately explained how Kia figured out Lizette was the murderer when Kia was dumber than a sock of nickles. And why any of them would want to have sex with each other, let alone be friends.
I'm still deciding if it would be worth it to hunt down the unedited version.
As for the weekend, there was no EXTREME NUDITY, but there was lots of GETTING LOST and HONKYTONK MUSIC and JEFF GORDON'S BIG HEAD HAWKING STUFF FROM BILLBOARDS. There was also lots of GREAT PEOPLE and COOL PARENTS and CUTE KIDS and SEARING HUMIDITY. The Husband's Best Friend From College And Her Husband are awesome. Their friends and family are all awesome. And The Husband and I have cemented our status as BEST TEAM EVER, as we put Lewis and Clark to shame with our canoeing prowess.
The Husband and I can do ANYTHING, we're so awesome. Everything except pick out porn.
But hey, it was either that or boxing.
Monday, June 12, 2006
interlude--GAK!!! I HATE THESE THINGS
Because Gigamatt demands it:
1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. In the Search box, type your birth month and day (but not year).
3. List three events that happened on your birthday.
4. List two important birthdays and one interesting death.
5. Post it.
Three Events:
1839 - In Boston, Massachusetts, the American Statistical Association is founded.
1924 - In New York City the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is held.
2005 - The first partial human face transplant is completed in Amiens, France.
Way Too Many Important Births:
1940 - Bruce Lee, American bad ass (d. 1973)
1941 - Eddie Rabbitt, American singer and lover of rainy nights (d. 1998)
1942 - Jimi Hendrix, American singer, guitarist and songwriter (d. 1970)
1953 - Curtis Armstrong, American Booger
1954 - Patricia McPherson, Bonnie from TV's Knight Rider
1955 - Bill Nye, American engineer and Science Guy
1956 - William Fichtner, American actor of total awesomeness who was just on TV's Invasion but who you may better know as the pilot in Armeggedon and the blind dude in Contact
1962 - Davey Boy Smith, The British Bulldog (d. 2002)
1963 - Fisher Stevens, American actor who was in Short Circuit, hahaha
1964 - Robin Givens, American actress who was on Head of the Class and then married Mike Tyson, hahaha
1966 - Andy Merrill, American voice of Brak and Oglethorpe
1968 - Michael Vartan, French actor from TV's Alias
1976 - Jaleel White, American actor and TV's Urkel
One Interesting Death:
1990 - David White, American actor (b. 1916), Larry Tate on TV's Bewitched
And now I toss it over to The Husband.
1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. In the Search box, type your birth month and day (but not year).
3. List three events that happened on your birthday.
4. List two important birthdays and one interesting death.
5. Post it.
Three Events:
1839 - In Boston, Massachusetts, the American Statistical Association is founded.
1924 - In New York City the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is held.
2005 - The first partial human face transplant is completed in Amiens, France.
Way Too Many Important Births:
1940 - Bruce Lee, American bad ass (d. 1973)
1941 - Eddie Rabbitt, American singer and lover of rainy nights (d. 1998)
1942 - Jimi Hendrix, American singer, guitarist and songwriter (d. 1970)
1953 - Curtis Armstrong, American Booger
1954 - Patricia McPherson, Bonnie from TV's Knight Rider
1955 - Bill Nye, American engineer and Science Guy
1956 - William Fichtner, American actor of total awesomeness who was just on TV's Invasion but who you may better know as the pilot in Armeggedon and the blind dude in Contact
1962 - Davey Boy Smith, The British Bulldog (d. 2002)
1963 - Fisher Stevens, American actor who was in Short Circuit, hahaha
1964 - Robin Givens, American actress who was on Head of the Class and then married Mike Tyson, hahaha
1966 - Andy Merrill, American voice of Brak and Oglethorpe
1968 - Michael Vartan, French actor from TV's Alias
1976 - Jaleel White, American actor and TV's Urkel
One Interesting Death:
1990 - David White, American actor (b. 1916), Larry Tate on TV's Bewitched
And now I toss it over to The Husband.
Monday, June 5, 2006
interlude--BITCH HURT MY FEELINGS
I suppose this is what happens to everyone, eventually, when you open yourself up to the throngs of people like yourself who roam teh intrawebs. I should have been happy with the lot I'd been dealt: all those comments about twinks and the like (I actually had to look that up on Urban Dictionary; the more you know, I guess). But then I got this in my inbox:
this is the worst site i have EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVER been to! it has no good facts because we already new all that if we watch the show! and plus the language and you totally go off topic! i wanted some info about the director but i guess i should check a BETTER site, well that wont be hard because a three year old could make a better site!
GOOD BYE
(K) (L) (K) (L)(K) (L)(K)
___________________
This was in reply to an entry I made back in 2004 when I started watching LOST. When I read it, my heart literally broke. I don't think I've ever been the recipient of a Cut-And-Paste exclamation of hatred. So I naturally felt the need to make it up to the letter-writer, fhfsh at sddsfdff@hotmail.com. BTW, I don't think that's a real email. So anyway, here is my 2 AM response to fhfsh, entitled BITCH HURT MY FEELINGS, or EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT LOST BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK.
*cough*
First, I feel the need to express at the outset that I actually don't watch LOST. I think (and here my memories are hazy as this was 2004) I may have watched the episode after the one I wrote about in the entry referenced above. Whether or not this episode was seen by me is moot, for I have not watched another episode since. I think my reason for this may or may not be "I could no longer give a rat's ass." I wanted more mutant polar bears; instead the show focused on Matthew Fox's stubble. I get my week's fill of stubble thanks to Hugh Laurie; I can handle no more.
Second, deep in my heart I fear your comment about mine being "The worst site i have EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVER been to" may perhaps be in reference to what even I agree is very poor web design. I know it's not enough to point out that the colors do not clash, there is no blinking text, no MIDI of "Wind Beneath My Wings" that tinkles cheerlessly in the background. I am loathe to admit that I attended and passed a rudimentary HTML design class. I fear my apparent lack of 733t haxOr skillz bespeaks poorly of my instructor. Unfortunately, we never reached CSS, so all I am capable of is changing the picture at the top of the page, and harassing my host to change the layout. Which he hasn't done. Because I so rarely harass him. And I could never settle on a layout that would satisfy both me and my obviously discerning audience.
Third, I would like to point out something lost among all the clutter of the site: This page is not about LOST. I should probably make it more apparent that this is first and foremost simply a BLOG; I do not claim any vast knowledge of anything for fear my hubris come back to haunt me. Instead, I try to give a different take on things of interest to no one except myself, and perhaps a few people who know me and lower themselves enough to care. When I wrote the entry in question, LOST had just aired for the first time; I was still under the delusion that ALIAS was a half-decent show, and was naively under the impression that this would be a show about people trapped on an island with mutant polar bears. Oh, how I was mistaken! Oh, how I no longer care if Charlie goes back on the smack, or who kidnapped Claire, or all they all really dead and trapped in a level of Dante's Hell? Normally, I would be experiencing a mighty orgasm of televised ecstasy at the very thought of such a mystery, but then American Idol came on and SOUL PATROL and lo and behold I no longer could muster any enthusiasm at all. So, please accept my most heartfelt apology that you were misled into thinking I could tell you Dominic Monaghan's birthday or Naveen Andrews's favorite color. All I know for sure is that at last look, Andrews is dating Barbara Hershey. I would again like to point out that I wrote my entry back in 2004, and I am well aware that much has happened on the show since then, what with the numbers and Walt's kidnapping and 108 minutes and all that food Hurley found, and how sad that was when he really liked Libby and then she got killed, especially because the only reason for her death was that she drove drunk in real life and had a very bad mug shot taken and embarrassed the show. But as I've said, I don't watch the show anymore so I haven't kept up, and this web site wasn't relly meant to chronicle the show.
Also, I know nothing about JJ Abrams. I know he created FELICITY and ALIAS. He also wrote that movie with Harrison Ford when he had brain damage, REGARDING HENRY. And he wrote the movie where Mel Gibson got all old and lived in Jamie Lee Curtis's basement, FOREVER YOUNG. He also wrote JOY RIDE, which stars Steve Zahn whom I totally love and who was in HAPPY, TEXAS with Jeremy Northam, who is also a totally hottie. HAPPY, TEXAS is an awesome movie, by the way. I saw it at the dollar theater, and it was really silly and cute. JOY RIDE is supposed to be really awesome; I haven't seen it, but I've read a lot of reviews for it that say it's underrated and pretty scary. The really scary thing is that JJ Abrams is attached to the next Star Trek movie, and no matter what happens in that movie, it's going to be all sorts of suck. I've long argued that they need to focus on the political strife such as was in Deep Space 9, but that will never happen. I just pray it's not ENTERPRISE, right? I mean, seriously?
Anyway, Fhfsh, it happens sometimes with the fickle world of television: shows we once loved lose our interest; the mighty fall; favorites fall out of favor. Other shows catch our eye for no apparent reason: case in point, I cannot stand GREY'S ANATOMY, and yet I cannot stop watching it, it's so bad. Why do I waste my time, I ask myself every week, and yet, there I am again, watching and probably crying my eyes out. I wanted to like LOST, but it just didn't happen. I may view it on DVD, in a sitting or two; I may like it better when I watch it all at once like that. You seem like you really enjoy the show. I wish I could see in it what you see.
Lastly, I would just like to say that I don't understand your comment about the language on this site. I try my utmost to maintain a family-friendly site. And of course by "family" I mean "Manson." FUCK FUCK FUCKITY FUCK FUCK FUCKTARD. FUCK, it's 3AM, I'm fucking off to bed. Unless there's awesome bad soft-core on the channel we barely get, then I may stay up.
Hmm, Night of the Wilding starring Erik Estrada. Maybe...mmm, maybe.
this is the worst site i have EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVER been to! it has no good facts because we already new all that if we watch the show! and plus the language and you totally go off topic! i wanted some info about the director but i guess i should check a BETTER site, well that wont be hard because a three year old could make a better site!
GOOD BYE
(K) (L) (K) (L)(K) (L)(K)
___________________
This was in reply to an entry I made back in 2004 when I started watching LOST. When I read it, my heart literally broke. I don't think I've ever been the recipient of a Cut-And-Paste exclamation of hatred. So I naturally felt the need to make it up to the letter-writer, fhfsh at sddsfdff@hotmail.com. BTW, I don't think that's a real email. So anyway, here is my 2 AM response to fhfsh, entitled BITCH HURT MY FEELINGS, or EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT LOST BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK.
*cough*
First, I feel the need to express at the outset that I actually don't watch LOST. I think (and here my memories are hazy as this was 2004) I may have watched the episode after the one I wrote about in the entry referenced above. Whether or not this episode was seen by me is moot, for I have not watched another episode since. I think my reason for this may or may not be "I could no longer give a rat's ass." I wanted more mutant polar bears; instead the show focused on Matthew Fox's stubble. I get my week's fill of stubble thanks to Hugh Laurie; I can handle no more.
Second, deep in my heart I fear your comment about mine being "The worst site i have EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVEREVER EVER EVER EVER EVER been to" may perhaps be in reference to what even I agree is very poor web design. I know it's not enough to point out that the colors do not clash, there is no blinking text, no MIDI of "Wind Beneath My Wings" that tinkles cheerlessly in the background. I am loathe to admit that I attended and passed a rudimentary HTML design class. I fear my apparent lack of 733t haxOr skillz bespeaks poorly of my instructor. Unfortunately, we never reached CSS, so all I am capable of is changing the picture at the top of the page, and harassing my host to change the layout. Which he hasn't done. Because I so rarely harass him. And I could never settle on a layout that would satisfy both me and my obviously discerning audience.
Third, I would like to point out something lost among all the clutter of the site: This page is not about LOST. I should probably make it more apparent that this is first and foremost simply a BLOG; I do not claim any vast knowledge of anything for fear my hubris come back to haunt me. Instead, I try to give a different take on things of interest to no one except myself, and perhaps a few people who know me and lower themselves enough to care. When I wrote the entry in question, LOST had just aired for the first time; I was still under the delusion that ALIAS was a half-decent show, and was naively under the impression that this would be a show about people trapped on an island with mutant polar bears. Oh, how I was mistaken! Oh, how I no longer care if Charlie goes back on the smack, or who kidnapped Claire, or all they all really dead and trapped in a level of Dante's Hell? Normally, I would be experiencing a mighty orgasm of televised ecstasy at the very thought of such a mystery, but then American Idol came on and SOUL PATROL and lo and behold I no longer could muster any enthusiasm at all. So, please accept my most heartfelt apology that you were misled into thinking I could tell you Dominic Monaghan's birthday or Naveen Andrews's favorite color. All I know for sure is that at last look, Andrews is dating Barbara Hershey. I would again like to point out that I wrote my entry back in 2004, and I am well aware that much has happened on the show since then, what with the numbers and Walt's kidnapping and 108 minutes and all that food Hurley found, and how sad that was when he really liked Libby and then she got killed, especially because the only reason for her death was that she drove drunk in real life and had a very bad mug shot taken and embarrassed the show. But as I've said, I don't watch the show anymore so I haven't kept up, and this web site wasn't relly meant to chronicle the show.
Also, I know nothing about JJ Abrams. I know he created FELICITY and ALIAS. He also wrote that movie with Harrison Ford when he had brain damage, REGARDING HENRY. And he wrote the movie where Mel Gibson got all old and lived in Jamie Lee Curtis's basement, FOREVER YOUNG. He also wrote JOY RIDE, which stars Steve Zahn whom I totally love and who was in HAPPY, TEXAS with Jeremy Northam, who is also a totally hottie. HAPPY, TEXAS is an awesome movie, by the way. I saw it at the dollar theater, and it was really silly and cute. JOY RIDE is supposed to be really awesome; I haven't seen it, but I've read a lot of reviews for it that say it's underrated and pretty scary. The really scary thing is that JJ Abrams is attached to the next Star Trek movie, and no matter what happens in that movie, it's going to be all sorts of suck. I've long argued that they need to focus on the political strife such as was in Deep Space 9, but that will never happen. I just pray it's not ENTERPRISE, right? I mean, seriously?
Anyway, Fhfsh, it happens sometimes with the fickle world of television: shows we once loved lose our interest; the mighty fall; favorites fall out of favor. Other shows catch our eye for no apparent reason: case in point, I cannot stand GREY'S ANATOMY, and yet I cannot stop watching it, it's so bad. Why do I waste my time, I ask myself every week, and yet, there I am again, watching and probably crying my eyes out. I wanted to like LOST, but it just didn't happen. I may view it on DVD, in a sitting or two; I may like it better when I watch it all at once like that. You seem like you really enjoy the show. I wish I could see in it what you see.
Lastly, I would just like to say that I don't understand your comment about the language on this site. I try my utmost to maintain a family-friendly site. And of course by "family" I mean "Manson." FUCK FUCK FUCKITY FUCK FUCK FUCKTARD. FUCK, it's 3AM, I'm fucking off to bed. Unless there's awesome bad soft-core on the channel we barely get, then I may stay up.
Hmm, Night of the Wilding starring Erik Estrada. Maybe...mmm, maybe.
Saturday, April 29, 2006
review--THREADS
Or, as this should alternately be titled:
WHY I COULDN'T LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE.
I don't know if you know this or not (which is why I'm here--to alert you to the up-to-the-minute internets happenings that you absolutely MUST know about) but a recent MEME making its way around the ether is this woman named Anne Sellors. I want to say I heard about this on Fark first, but I distinctly remember the email conversation I had with The Friend in NC. He was all like, "Hey, did you hear about this woman who was in this movie?" And I was all like, yeah, I totally heard all about it. But then he sent me video, which is way better than reading a description.
Anyway, google Anne Sellors and what you will discover is that she has the greatest entry on Internet Movie Database, EVER. She has one credit to her name, "Woman who urinates herself," in the made-for-British-TV movie THREADS. So you google her, and this is the basic information you get about her. And you can find video of this scene on YouTube. But for you, Dear Audience--and to satisfy my own curiousity--I rented THREADS from the library. I just finished watching it a half hour ago. I so totally need a cigarette right now, because I'm completely freaked the fuck out. And not in a good, SILENT HILL "Pyramid Head Is Coming To Get Me" sort of way, but in a "Now I can't read Fark or Yahoo news or Salon because I JUST DON'T WANT TO KNOW" way.
THREADS tells the story of a Russian nuclear attack on NATO bases in the West and its effects on the British town of Sheffield. The movie begins benignly enough with a young couple discovering they're accidently pregnant, and as their families try to deal with the "fallout" of this revelation, news broadcasts on TV and radio play in the background, documenting the growing tensions between Russia and the US over Iran. One precision nuclear warhead strike on a base leads to all-out annihilation. THREADS follows the decade long struggle of the survivors.
At the end of the movie, there's a list a mile long of technical advisors, Carl Sagan being one of them. I remember back in the day reading his book The Nuclear Winter: The World After Nuclear War, because we were all crazily obsessed with nuclear war (at least The Cousin and I were; I remember in 1986, when I was in eighth grade, and the Chernobyl explosion had happened. Tom Brokaw said on the news that all the lettuce in the world was irradiated. I wouldn't eat lettuce for the longest time after that). I had a dream once, when I was in sixth grade, that there'd been a war. The Brother and I were sleeping in bunk beds that were in an "L" configuration; I was in the top bunk. In my dream I woke up to find a portion of the roof had fallen, killing The Brother. Everyone was dead and I was the only person left. And at the end of the dream I was sitting on a tree stump, surrounded by cans of food that I couldn't open. I was so shaken by my own reaction to the idea of my brother dying.
When I was in college, I took a class on American literature since 1945. The last week of class was a free week, the professor said; "I'll let you guys choose the book we read, just give me a synopsis and I'll choose one for us to study." I suggested Generation X, which was my favorite book at the time. For some reason, the professor chose that one. He liked to spend most of the class time complaining about how much he hated it and thought it was overindulgent crap, which was ironic because everything we'd read up until that point was Russell Banks and John Updike and lots of middle-aged men having mid-life crises and writing self-indulgent crap about it. Anyway, I digress. One of the major complaints the professor had was that much of Generation X focuses on the narrator's fear of nuclear holocaust: he frequently has nightmares about it, and finds himself drawn to missle testing ranges. "What a bunch of CRAP!" my professor cried. "You kids have no idea what it was like having to live with air raid sirens going off and ducking and covering under your desks and fallout shelters!!!" "OH CONTRAIRE, MON FRERE!!!" I hollered back. I remember the drills we had in elementary school where we'd hunker down in the locker room. And The Day After. And the Doomsday Clock. Three Minutes to Midnight. "We begin bombing in five minutes." What a bunch of SHIT that your generation has sole rights to being afraid!!
When I got THREADS from the library, The Husband right off the bat said no to watching it. I was under the impression that anything with a credit such as "Woman who urinates herself" can't be THAT serious. I mean, I saw that part on YouTube. It was fucking hysterical. SHE PEED HER PANTS!!! HAHAHAAHHA!!
But then you see it in context, and it isn't so funny.
I did a quick look-see on the IMDB message boards about the movie. There's a thread, "parts that stick in your mind." The one that people remember most? Anne Sellors urinating on herself. And they don't remember it in a humorous way.
I forget where I was going with this.
So, yeah, nuclear war is bad. THREADS shows a lot of bloodly limbs and vomiting. OMG, there was this part, after the bomb dropped and there was rubble everywhere...they showed this pile of debris and there was a fountain of blood shooting out from it. And there was a lot of radiation sickness. And deformed babies.
And there's no Steve Guttenberg to save the day.
It was just all sorts of fucked up.
Oh, now I remember. The WORST, THE WORST!!!!! PART OF THIS MOVIE!!!! Is that it takes place in MAY (which is coming up) and the war is between Russia and the US over control of Iran. So listening to the news in the movie was a lot like listening to the news right now. Which is why I'm so freaked out about the news right now. It reminds me of when I first read Stephen King's The Stand. I started reading it in 1985, a few days before the action in the book starts. It upped the freakout factor of the book by a billion. So THREADS ends up being all the more difficult to watch because the cause of the war is so close to what's going on politically in our own world. It's just totally fucked up.
In conclusion, THREADS kicked ass in the way that only British people can kick the soap opera-y ass of American films. It's not as chokingly difficult as TESTAMENT, another really horrible-to-watch nuclear war movie. THREADS is far more scientific in its methods. I can't breathe. I should have never watched it.
That being said, get it from the library. You NEED to see it. Because I think we've all been living with a false sense of security. That doesn't sound right at all, what with the Iraq War and everything, but it could get so much more worse. There's this really awful part of the movie where all these people are attending a rally, and someone's making a speech about the consequences of war and whatnot, and the people attending the rally are pissed because there's nothing worth saving about their lives as they are, anyway: there's a recession, and everyone's out of work, so what's the point about getting all worked up about bombs? And it was just another thing about this movie that hit unpleasantly close to home. And it's not just because Iran is threatening to make a bomb, but because our current government is desperate to use the ones we already have. We need to make sure that it gets back into the human consciousness: A nuclear war is unwinnable.
In the movie there's an awesome line spoken by a peace activist: "The Russians would have conquered a corpse of a country." How can I sleep at night knowing my indifference helped kill it?
WHY I COULDN'T LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE.
I don't know if you know this or not (which is why I'm here--to alert you to the up-to-the-minute internets happenings that you absolutely MUST know about) but a recent MEME making its way around the ether is this woman named Anne Sellors. I want to say I heard about this on Fark first, but I distinctly remember the email conversation I had with The Friend in NC. He was all like, "Hey, did you hear about this woman who was in this movie?" And I was all like, yeah, I totally heard all about it. But then he sent me video, which is way better than reading a description.
Anyway, google Anne Sellors and what you will discover is that she has the greatest entry on Internet Movie Database, EVER. She has one credit to her name, "Woman who urinates herself," in the made-for-British-TV movie THREADS. So you google her, and this is the basic information you get about her. And you can find video of this scene on YouTube. But for you, Dear Audience--and to satisfy my own curiousity--I rented THREADS from the library. I just finished watching it a half hour ago. I so totally need a cigarette right now, because I'm completely freaked the fuck out. And not in a good, SILENT HILL "Pyramid Head Is Coming To Get Me" sort of way, but in a "Now I can't read Fark or Yahoo news or Salon because I JUST DON'T WANT TO KNOW" way.
THREADS tells the story of a Russian nuclear attack on NATO bases in the West and its effects on the British town of Sheffield. The movie begins benignly enough with a young couple discovering they're accidently pregnant, and as their families try to deal with the "fallout" of this revelation, news broadcasts on TV and radio play in the background, documenting the growing tensions between Russia and the US over Iran. One precision nuclear warhead strike on a base leads to all-out annihilation. THREADS follows the decade long struggle of the survivors.
At the end of the movie, there's a list a mile long of technical advisors, Carl Sagan being one of them. I remember back in the day reading his book The Nuclear Winter: The World After Nuclear War, because we were all crazily obsessed with nuclear war (at least The Cousin and I were; I remember in 1986, when I was in eighth grade, and the Chernobyl explosion had happened. Tom Brokaw said on the news that all the lettuce in the world was irradiated. I wouldn't eat lettuce for the longest time after that). I had a dream once, when I was in sixth grade, that there'd been a war. The Brother and I were sleeping in bunk beds that were in an "L" configuration; I was in the top bunk. In my dream I woke up to find a portion of the roof had fallen, killing The Brother. Everyone was dead and I was the only person left. And at the end of the dream I was sitting on a tree stump, surrounded by cans of food that I couldn't open. I was so shaken by my own reaction to the idea of my brother dying.
When I was in college, I took a class on American literature since 1945. The last week of class was a free week, the professor said; "I'll let you guys choose the book we read, just give me a synopsis and I'll choose one for us to study." I suggested Generation X, which was my favorite book at the time. For some reason, the professor chose that one. He liked to spend most of the class time complaining about how much he hated it and thought it was overindulgent crap, which was ironic because everything we'd read up until that point was Russell Banks and John Updike and lots of middle-aged men having mid-life crises and writing self-indulgent crap about it. Anyway, I digress. One of the major complaints the professor had was that much of Generation X focuses on the narrator's fear of nuclear holocaust: he frequently has nightmares about it, and finds himself drawn to missle testing ranges. "What a bunch of CRAP!" my professor cried. "You kids have no idea what it was like having to live with air raid sirens going off and ducking and covering under your desks and fallout shelters!!!" "OH CONTRAIRE, MON FRERE!!!" I hollered back. I remember the drills we had in elementary school where we'd hunker down in the locker room. And The Day After. And the Doomsday Clock. Three Minutes to Midnight. "We begin bombing in five minutes." What a bunch of SHIT that your generation has sole rights to being afraid!!
When I got THREADS from the library, The Husband right off the bat said no to watching it. I was under the impression that anything with a credit such as "Woman who urinates herself" can't be THAT serious. I mean, I saw that part on YouTube. It was fucking hysterical. SHE PEED HER PANTS!!! HAHAHAAHHA!!
But then you see it in context, and it isn't so funny.
I did a quick look-see on the IMDB message boards about the movie. There's a thread, "parts that stick in your mind." The one that people remember most? Anne Sellors urinating on herself. And they don't remember it in a humorous way.
I forget where I was going with this.
So, yeah, nuclear war is bad. THREADS shows a lot of bloodly limbs and vomiting. OMG, there was this part, after the bomb dropped and there was rubble everywhere...they showed this pile of debris and there was a fountain of blood shooting out from it. And there was a lot of radiation sickness. And deformed babies.
And there's no Steve Guttenberg to save the day.
It was just all sorts of fucked up.
Oh, now I remember. The WORST, THE WORST!!!!! PART OF THIS MOVIE!!!! Is that it takes place in MAY (which is coming up) and the war is between Russia and the US over control of Iran. So listening to the news in the movie was a lot like listening to the news right now. Which is why I'm so freaked out about the news right now. It reminds me of when I first read Stephen King's The Stand. I started reading it in 1985, a few days before the action in the book starts. It upped the freakout factor of the book by a billion. So THREADS ends up being all the more difficult to watch because the cause of the war is so close to what's going on politically in our own world. It's just totally fucked up.
In conclusion, THREADS kicked ass in the way that only British people can kick the soap opera-y ass of American films. It's not as chokingly difficult as TESTAMENT, another really horrible-to-watch nuclear war movie. THREADS is far more scientific in its methods. I can't breathe. I should have never watched it.
That being said, get it from the library. You NEED to see it. Because I think we've all been living with a false sense of security. That doesn't sound right at all, what with the Iraq War and everything, but it could get so much more worse. There's this really awful part of the movie where all these people are attending a rally, and someone's making a speech about the consequences of war and whatnot, and the people attending the rally are pissed because there's nothing worth saving about their lives as they are, anyway: there's a recession, and everyone's out of work, so what's the point about getting all worked up about bombs? And it was just another thing about this movie that hit unpleasantly close to home. And it's not just because Iran is threatening to make a bomb, but because our current government is desperate to use the ones we already have. We need to make sure that it gets back into the human consciousness: A nuclear war is unwinnable.
In the movie there's an awesome line spoken by a peace activist: "The Russians would have conquered a corpse of a country." How can I sleep at night knowing my indifference helped kill it?
Friday, February 10, 2006
review--COLLEGE ALUMNI MAGAZINES
So today I received in the mail a copy of the current Alumni Magazine from my undergrad alma mater. This is the equivalent of a literary car wreck: I don't want to look but I have to, and when I'm finished I find myself going much slower than I was before I saw the accident.
Here's the deal...you may or may not be able to empathize. But I think the hoary truth is that we all occasionally run head-first smack into a wall of our perceived failures and flailings. I just hate that mine shows up periodically in my mailbox at work. Because work is not a place where I like to be reminded of what I feel is my dismal showing in life.
Just a bit of back story: I went to a small liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere. Before that, I was a willing slave to the public school system. I loved my mas'ser. Praised him as he beat me down. I was also a huge nerd, and I was too smart for my own good, and I was terrified of boys. So high school really, really sucked. I swear to you I will NEVER ever go to a reunion so long as I live, unless I become Bestest Friends with Keanu or Vince Vaughn or someone of that caliber and they acquiesced to go with me purely to cause jealously. Because that would kick ass.
Anyway, I'm digressing. So with dreams of internationally recognized journalism excellence in my head I left for the aforementioned small liberal arts college, where I proceeded to have a nervous breakdown. My senior year of high school, I was in at least seven different student organziations; two of them, I was in charge. When I got to college I attended one, maybe two yearbook committee meetings and then promptly disappeared. I tried to keep up the crazy schedule, but a life of sleeping until all hours was too tempting. Yet there was that little over-achieving Kelmeister who'd sit on my shoulder and say, You know your father's going into the poor house to pay for you to stay up until two watching cable, and I'd get back on track and go nuts with the work. But then I'd come to realize that college is exactly like high school except for longer books, and then the next thing you know I've started smoking and cutting myself, and I stop eating except for those times that I'm pigging out, and then I'm taking the semester off for "a much needed break." When I come back, I develop a love of dollar a bottle 40s at the market. (You know, They don't like it when you consume alcohol while on anti-depressants. It makes you much drunker, much faster, much more cheaply than drinking alone. That'll be our little secret.) I lose one of my best friends because I'm an asshole when I'm drunk, skip a lot of classes, and spend the final two days of my college career thanking the gods that I got mono so that I have an excuse to make up all the papers and exams I never finished that last sememster. I write the entirety of my senior thesis in 14 hours.
To top it all off, I would have graduated Magna Cum Laude if I hadn't double majored in art.
This is not meant to be an indictment of my college. It's a great school. It's just to point out that I was a complete nutcase while I was there, and to this date regret that I wasted my time while I was there. I just didn't know how totally fucked in the head I was until after I got there.
So where'm I headed with this? Here's the thing: I graduated a decade ago, and I'm getting the Alumni Magazine from my school. This school is really fucking expensive. So much so that if I were to get in today, there'd be no way I could afford to go. My kids, brain surgeons-to-be that they'll probably be, will not be able to go. This means that many--I'd dare say a good 75% of the student body--HAVE MONEY AND CONNECTIONS. So the Alumni Magazine comes in the mail and it's chocked full of stories about this girl in my class and her Tony-award winning play. Or that guy that graduated after me who has his own television show. Or the books that people have written, the government grants to study cold fusion people have won. And that's not including all the tidbits in the back about the successes not notable enough to warrant full-page articles. Partnerships, movie deals, safaris.
My one and only mention in the Alumni magazine was for when I married The Husband. It's on the refrigerator. The Best Friend was in my wedding party, or else he'd probably not have gotten a mention in the Alumni Magazine, either.
The Best Friend and I are total slackers. We recognize this, and embrace it with all our strength. We enabled much of each other's slacker behavior in college. Nowadays, we commiserate about our current slacker behavior, although real life necessity has forced us to curb our most slackerly tendencies.
And I think this is what upsets me most about College Alumni Magazines. They don't do enough to celebrate the little people who're just getting by. I haven't discovered a new species of anything, but here's what I have done:
I pulled myself up out of a debilitating mental illness; I married a really awesome guy whom I love more than Duran Duran and Hugh Laurie and pie; I own a house and a car that I paid for out of my own pocket that was filled with loan money from banks that gave me the money because I pulled my own ass out of credit default; I got my Masters that I paid for out of my own pocket with no loans and as soon as I got my diploma in my hand I enrolled in art school; I have three fish that are still alive against all odds after eight months; I love my job and my co-workers and my friends and my family and for the first time in my life I feel truly, deep-into-the-bones happy.
I'm totally not at all where I thought I'd be when I envisioned myself way back in study hall in high school, but I can't complain. I have my health and my limbs and two cats who adore me and a husband who doesn't mind that that I can't scold said cats and sound like I mean it.
But it never fails that reading the Alumni Magazine makes me feel like a total, unadulterated failure.
So, Kelmeister, I hear you saying, why bother reading it if you know how upset it makes you?
Simple.
It's because I'm obsessed with finding out if anyone I know has died since the last magazine.
Here's the deal...you may or may not be able to empathize. But I think the hoary truth is that we all occasionally run head-first smack into a wall of our perceived failures and flailings. I just hate that mine shows up periodically in my mailbox at work. Because work is not a place where I like to be reminded of what I feel is my dismal showing in life.
Just a bit of back story: I went to a small liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere. Before that, I was a willing slave to the public school system. I loved my mas'ser. Praised him as he beat me down. I was also a huge nerd, and I was too smart for my own good, and I was terrified of boys. So high school really, really sucked. I swear to you I will NEVER ever go to a reunion so long as I live, unless I become Bestest Friends with Keanu or Vince Vaughn or someone of that caliber and they acquiesced to go with me purely to cause jealously. Because that would kick ass.
Anyway, I'm digressing. So with dreams of internationally recognized journalism excellence in my head I left for the aforementioned small liberal arts college, where I proceeded to have a nervous breakdown. My senior year of high school, I was in at least seven different student organziations; two of them, I was in charge. When I got to college I attended one, maybe two yearbook committee meetings and then promptly disappeared. I tried to keep up the crazy schedule, but a life of sleeping until all hours was too tempting. Yet there was that little over-achieving Kelmeister who'd sit on my shoulder and say, You know your father's going into the poor house to pay for you to stay up until two watching cable, and I'd get back on track and go nuts with the work. But then I'd come to realize that college is exactly like high school except for longer books, and then the next thing you know I've started smoking and cutting myself, and I stop eating except for those times that I'm pigging out, and then I'm taking the semester off for "a much needed break." When I come back, I develop a love of dollar a bottle 40s at the market. (You know, They don't like it when you consume alcohol while on anti-depressants. It makes you much drunker, much faster, much more cheaply than drinking alone. That'll be our little secret.) I lose one of my best friends because I'm an asshole when I'm drunk, skip a lot of classes, and spend the final two days of my college career thanking the gods that I got mono so that I have an excuse to make up all the papers and exams I never finished that last sememster. I write the entirety of my senior thesis in 14 hours.
To top it all off, I would have graduated Magna Cum Laude if I hadn't double majored in art.
This is not meant to be an indictment of my college. It's a great school. It's just to point out that I was a complete nutcase while I was there, and to this date regret that I wasted my time while I was there. I just didn't know how totally fucked in the head I was until after I got there.
So where'm I headed with this? Here's the thing: I graduated a decade ago, and I'm getting the Alumni Magazine from my school. This school is really fucking expensive. So much so that if I were to get in today, there'd be no way I could afford to go. My kids, brain surgeons-to-be that they'll probably be, will not be able to go. This means that many--I'd dare say a good 75% of the student body--HAVE MONEY AND CONNECTIONS. So the Alumni Magazine comes in the mail and it's chocked full of stories about this girl in my class and her Tony-award winning play. Or that guy that graduated after me who has his own television show. Or the books that people have written, the government grants to study cold fusion people have won. And that's not including all the tidbits in the back about the successes not notable enough to warrant full-page articles. Partnerships, movie deals, safaris.
My one and only mention in the Alumni magazine was for when I married The Husband. It's on the refrigerator. The Best Friend was in my wedding party, or else he'd probably not have gotten a mention in the Alumni Magazine, either.
The Best Friend and I are total slackers. We recognize this, and embrace it with all our strength. We enabled much of each other's slacker behavior in college. Nowadays, we commiserate about our current slacker behavior, although real life necessity has forced us to curb our most slackerly tendencies.
And I think this is what upsets me most about College Alumni Magazines. They don't do enough to celebrate the little people who're just getting by. I haven't discovered a new species of anything, but here's what I have done:
I pulled myself up out of a debilitating mental illness; I married a really awesome guy whom I love more than Duran Duran and Hugh Laurie and pie; I own a house and a car that I paid for out of my own pocket that was filled with loan money from banks that gave me the money because I pulled my own ass out of credit default; I got my Masters that I paid for out of my own pocket with no loans and as soon as I got my diploma in my hand I enrolled in art school; I have three fish that are still alive against all odds after eight months; I love my job and my co-workers and my friends and my family and for the first time in my life I feel truly, deep-into-the-bones happy.
I'm totally not at all where I thought I'd be when I envisioned myself way back in study hall in high school, but I can't complain. I have my health and my limbs and two cats who adore me and a husband who doesn't mind that that I can't scold said cats and sound like I mean it.
But it never fails that reading the Alumni Magazine makes me feel like a total, unadulterated failure.
So, Kelmeister, I hear you saying, why bother reading it if you know how upset it makes you?
Simple.
It's because I'm obsessed with finding out if anyone I know has died since the last magazine.
Wednesday, January 4, 2006
interlude--WHY IS EBAY LIKE CRACK?
So I'm going after more shampoo. I forgot that ebay makes me physically feel like I'm having a heart attack, waiting to be outbid.
Refresh.
So no one took me up on my offer to buy me shampoo. I've had to take matters into my own hands.
Five minutes.
Look, I don't really buy that much for myself, save the Frappacinos I indulge in pretty much every day.
Four minutes.
Yeah, I only own one pair of jeans that I wear every day.
My hands are shaking. Three minutes.
Yeah, I only have one bra. Yeah, I'm asking myself right this very minute, "Where the hell DOES all my money go?"
Because seriously, I'm not on ebay buying shampoo every day.
Two minutes.
I think I have a shopping addiction. It doesn't happen very often. Just in fits and spurts, like right now.
One minute!!!
I'm totally going after all the other bottles!!!
So I lost that one. Some ass came in at 17 seconds and took it from me!!! Well, she ended up paying a shitload for it, so there!!
Now I'm waiting around for the next one to end.
The Husband just cleaned the litter boxes, which are right aross from me. He used bleach to clean the floor, and now it's reeking of mustard gas or something. My brain is fried, my brain is fried.
Yay!!! I won!!! Funny thing is, there are five lots left, and the same five people are all bidding. It's going to come down to the wire. I have to think of things to do to kill the next twenty minutes.
Boy, I suck.
Refresh.
So no one took me up on my offer to buy me shampoo. I've had to take matters into my own hands.
Five minutes.
Look, I don't really buy that much for myself, save the Frappacinos I indulge in pretty much every day.
Four minutes.
Yeah, I only own one pair of jeans that I wear every day.
My hands are shaking. Three minutes.
Yeah, I only have one bra. Yeah, I'm asking myself right this very minute, "Where the hell DOES all my money go?"
Because seriously, I'm not on ebay buying shampoo every day.
Two minutes.
I think I have a shopping addiction. It doesn't happen very often. Just in fits and spurts, like right now.
One minute!!!
I'm totally going after all the other bottles!!!
So I lost that one. Some ass came in at 17 seconds and took it from me!!! Well, she ended up paying a shitload for it, so there!!
Now I'm waiting around for the next one to end.
The Husband just cleaned the litter boxes, which are right aross from me. He used bleach to clean the floor, and now it's reeking of mustard gas or something. My brain is fried, my brain is fried.
Yay!!! I won!!! Funny thing is, there are five lots left, and the same five people are all bidding. It's going to come down to the wire. I have to think of things to do to kill the next twenty minutes.
Boy, I suck.
Tuesday, January 3, 2006
interlude--DISCONTINUE THIS, BITCH
Don't mind me. I'm just biding my time till the end of the ebay auction I'm currently engaged in. Trying to win super-sized bottles of my favorite shampoo of all time, which Bath & Body Works has so graciously chosen to stop making.
This past weekend, I bought up the last remaining stocks of the travel-size bottles at the store in the Mall on the East Side. Thirty-two bucks and a shake of The Husband's head, that earned me.
Hold on...have to refresh.
Seven minutes...I'm practically chewing my nails.
Refresh.
Earlier I was bidding against someone who would immediately jump on and bid up in really weird increments.
Refresh.
That totally seemed like I took a whole minute for that sentence, but apparently not.
Refresh.
Okay, five and a half minutes. This was really lucky: we got SLAMMED with mail today at work, because we were off for the week. So when...
Refresh.
...I should have been working, I for some reason thought of my favorite shampoo, and then looked it up on ebay...and found myself engaged in this battle of wills.
And, refresh.
GOD DAMNIT!!! Four fucking minutes!!!! This is the longest four minutes of my life.
Refresh.
The Husband's on his computer right behind me. I think he's engrossed in a game. I do not want him to know what I'm doing.
Refresh.
Two minutes. I'm going to wait this out in my other browser window. Be back in a sec.
I seriously have this bad feeling I'm going to get swiped on this.
YAY!!!! I WON!!! Now I can go was my hair with total abandon, knowing this stuff is mine, all mine.
It's rose hips and aloe, by the way. Not really all that exciting to someone who's not totally obsessed about shampoo like I am. I think I may have told you once about how The Husband complains about the vast collection I've accumulated. This stuff, though...it smells so good. I can't even describe it...you'd have to smell my head.
That sounded vaguely sexual.
So anyway, Bath and Body Works had this stuff called Botanical Nutrients which was all about the wheat germ and the patchouli. I don't know how that smells, but the rose hips and aloe is AWESOME.
They also had another line, BIO, of which their Restorative also smells awesome and also has been discontinued. There's lots on sale at ebay, as well, but they've all been bid on by the same person, who's probably just as pissed as I am, and I just spent an assload on the stuff I just won.
But, if you feel it is my destiny to be united with a few more bottles, search ebay for NEW BIO' BATH AND BODY WORKS RESTORATIVE SHAMPOO. Hint, Hint.
They all end tomorrow, by the way.
Not that you want to buy me shampoo.
I just donated my hair to cancer kids, so if you help me buy more crack--*COUGH* I mean take care of my hair, a deserving child will reap the benefits.
Ha. Don't buy me shampoo. I'm just kidding about all this.
OR AM I?!?!?!?!
This past weekend, I bought up the last remaining stocks of the travel-size bottles at the store in the Mall on the East Side. Thirty-two bucks and a shake of The Husband's head, that earned me.
Hold on...have to refresh.
Seven minutes...I'm practically chewing my nails.
Refresh.
Earlier I was bidding against someone who would immediately jump on and bid up in really weird increments.
Refresh.
That totally seemed like I took a whole minute for that sentence, but apparently not.
Refresh.
Okay, five and a half minutes. This was really lucky: we got SLAMMED with mail today at work, because we were off for the week. So when...
Refresh.
...I should have been working, I for some reason thought of my favorite shampoo, and then looked it up on ebay...and found myself engaged in this battle of wills.
And, refresh.
GOD DAMNIT!!! Four fucking minutes!!!! This is the longest four minutes of my life.
Refresh.
The Husband's on his computer right behind me. I think he's engrossed in a game. I do not want him to know what I'm doing.
Refresh.
Two minutes. I'm going to wait this out in my other browser window. Be back in a sec.
I seriously have this bad feeling I'm going to get swiped on this.
YAY!!!! I WON!!! Now I can go was my hair with total abandon, knowing this stuff is mine, all mine.
It's rose hips and aloe, by the way. Not really all that exciting to someone who's not totally obsessed about shampoo like I am. I think I may have told you once about how The Husband complains about the vast collection I've accumulated. This stuff, though...it smells so good. I can't even describe it...you'd have to smell my head.
That sounded vaguely sexual.
So anyway, Bath and Body Works had this stuff called Botanical Nutrients which was all about the wheat germ and the patchouli. I don't know how that smells, but the rose hips and aloe is AWESOME.
They also had another line, BIO, of which their Restorative also smells awesome and also has been discontinued. There's lots on sale at ebay, as well, but they've all been bid on by the same person, who's probably just as pissed as I am, and I just spent an assload on the stuff I just won.
But, if you feel it is my destiny to be united with a few more bottles, search ebay for NEW BIO' BATH AND BODY WORKS RESTORATIVE SHAMPOO. Hint, Hint.
They all end tomorrow, by the way.
Not that you want to buy me shampoo.
I just donated my hair to cancer kids, so if you help me buy more crack--*COUGH* I mean take care of my hair, a deserving child will reap the benefits.
Ha. Don't buy me shampoo. I'm just kidding about all this.
OR AM I?!?!?!?!
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
review--THE MAURY POVICH SHOW
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!! I'm on vacation. I'm supposed to be moving stuff to the basement while The Husband works. I did just vacuum up a shitload of cat hair, so my allergies are making my chest hurt. This means I have to take a Benadryl and a nap with the cats. But first, I thought I'd share with you the joy of my all time favorite show, THE MAURY SHOW.
I never get to watch MAURY, even though it's on twice a day. It's on at 10am when I'm at work, and at 4pm before I get home. So it's the greatest thing in the world when I'm sick or on vacation because I can catch up.
The MAURY show really doesn't have much in the way of creative show ideas. There're basically seven types of shows that are in repeat ad nauseum:
1) I'm fat/a midget/black/albino/without arms and I'm in love with a skinny person/tall person/white person/normally colored person/person with arms. Aren't we a novelty!!!
2) I have a secret crush on a guy who hated me when I was a fat nerd but now I"m a skinny slut so I want a second chance at love!!!!
3) I have a kid and I need to test fifteen guys to find out who the father is!!!
4) My infant weighs 150 pounds because all he'll eat are chicken wings and pizza!!!!
5) I'm a singing kid!!!! I"m cute!!!!
6) I have no arms/no legs/progeria/a feeding tube/a colostomy bag/a hang nail that has made my life a living hell!!!! But I'm persevering!!!! I need a makeover!!!!
7)I'm ten and I want to have a baby!!! I have sex 300 times a day because I want a baby!!! My mom sucks ass!!!
Number seven is currently on the air. I can't decide which is my favorite: the girls who want a baby NO MATTER WHAT, or the women who are 150% sure this guy IS THE FATHER while he's 300% sure SHE WAS SLEEPING WITH MY BROTHER.
On today's show, a girl made the enlightened observation that she's only going to have sex with older men, because "They make the mad money and can afford child support because I sure as HELL ain't gonna work!!!"
I especially love the ones who've evolved enough in their pursuit that they've begun taking money for the sex, because then not only do they get sex and the chance for a baby, but hey, I gotcha money!!! HEY!!!! But, by god don't call them prostitutes. Because they aren't prostitutes. Well, okay, yeah, maybe we are, but we love sex and are trying to have a baby!!! We need money for nice clothes!!!!
"YOU DON'T KNOW ME!!!" No...you're right. We don't. Who are we to judge a 12 year old who so desperately wants a baby you'll DO ANYTHING!!!
Quote of the day: "I don't know why she wants to have a baby, she can't even make herself a bowl of cereal."
Thank god D is on the case. D is a "motivational speaker" and an enormous bald man who yells a lot. He takes the girls to prison where female inmates yell at them and then the girls magically change their slutty ways. He gives them borrowed infants so they can see how much having a baby sucks ass, and secretly they deep down don't want to take care of a baby as much as they want one, because they thought that after they had the baby their mom would end up taking care of it anyway, so now that they know THAT'S not going to happen they'll NEVER have sex again!!! So you get unbridled hoe-ness and sweet redemption in one episode. It's awesome.
I just reread this entry, and it sounds really mean. It's not meant to be. Because MAURY gives me a lot of pleasure. Even though I should probably feel like a horrible person for feeling that way.
The moral is we shouldn't take pleasure in other people's misfortunes.
I feel like I missed out on a whole world of adolescence that I could have had, had I not been a fat, nerdy, goody-two-shoes.
I never get to watch MAURY, even though it's on twice a day. It's on at 10am when I'm at work, and at 4pm before I get home. So it's the greatest thing in the world when I'm sick or on vacation because I can catch up.
The MAURY show really doesn't have much in the way of creative show ideas. There're basically seven types of shows that are in repeat ad nauseum:
1) I'm fat/a midget/black/albino/without arms and I'm in love with a skinny person/tall person/white person/normally colored person/person with arms. Aren't we a novelty!!!
2) I have a secret crush on a guy who hated me when I was a fat nerd but now I"m a skinny slut so I want a second chance at love!!!!
3) I have a kid and I need to test fifteen guys to find out who the father is!!!
4) My infant weighs 150 pounds because all he'll eat are chicken wings and pizza!!!!
5) I'm a singing kid!!!! I"m cute!!!!
6) I have no arms/no legs/progeria/a feeding tube/a colostomy bag/a hang nail that has made my life a living hell!!!! But I'm persevering!!!! I need a makeover!!!!
7)I'm ten and I want to have a baby!!! I have sex 300 times a day because I want a baby!!! My mom sucks ass!!!
Number seven is currently on the air. I can't decide which is my favorite: the girls who want a baby NO MATTER WHAT, or the women who are 150% sure this guy IS THE FATHER while he's 300% sure SHE WAS SLEEPING WITH MY BROTHER.
On today's show, a girl made the enlightened observation that she's only going to have sex with older men, because "They make the mad money and can afford child support because I sure as HELL ain't gonna work!!!"
I especially love the ones who've evolved enough in their pursuit that they've begun taking money for the sex, because then not only do they get sex and the chance for a baby, but hey, I gotcha money!!! HEY!!!! But, by god don't call them prostitutes. Because they aren't prostitutes. Well, okay, yeah, maybe we are, but we love sex and are trying to have a baby!!! We need money for nice clothes!!!!
"YOU DON'T KNOW ME!!!" No...you're right. We don't. Who are we to judge a 12 year old who so desperately wants a baby you'll DO ANYTHING!!!
Quote of the day: "I don't know why she wants to have a baby, she can't even make herself a bowl of cereal."
Thank god D is on the case. D is a "motivational speaker" and an enormous bald man who yells a lot. He takes the girls to prison where female inmates yell at them and then the girls magically change their slutty ways. He gives them borrowed infants so they can see how much having a baby sucks ass, and secretly they deep down don't want to take care of a baby as much as they want one, because they thought that after they had the baby their mom would end up taking care of it anyway, so now that they know THAT'S not going to happen they'll NEVER have sex again!!! So you get unbridled hoe-ness and sweet redemption in one episode. It's awesome.
I just reread this entry, and it sounds really mean. It's not meant to be. Because MAURY gives me a lot of pleasure. Even though I should probably feel like a horrible person for feeling that way.
The moral is we shouldn't take pleasure in other people's misfortunes.
I feel like I missed out on a whole world of adolescence that I could have had, had I not been a fat, nerdy, goody-two-shoes.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
review--Michael Flatley's CELTIC TIGER
No, it's not a movie. Yes, I know what you're thinking. Kelmeister, you're thinking, WTF? What is CELTIC TIGER? And more importantly, why? Allow me to explain.
Take a seat while I explain a little something to you. Every year, your local PBS station does what is called a "Pledge Drive." On the surface it's little more than an attempt to collect monies from viewers to supplement the meager funds supplied by the government. In reality, it's an insidious plot by the Illuminati to brainwash the nation's middle-aged and eldery into spending their hard-earned money on carefully constructed "talent" created in part so that Middle America believes it's being exposed to "culture." This occurs every year in waves, which if you pay careful attention to the morning news you will soon be able to decipher. Riverdance was probably the first big phenom to come from PBS fundraisers; other notables are Andrea Bocelli (otherwise known as "Blind Opera Guy"), Josh Groban, Sarah Brightman...you see where I'm going with this. These people appear in concert on PBS and for a pledge at the $125 level you can get a copy of the companion DVD.
My parents LOVE these people.
But, going back in the Wayback Machine...poor, dear Father. When I was younger, The Father was forced to drive me and my friends all over Hell and back, usually Cleveland and Cincinnati, to see various incarnations of Duran Duran. The Father would usually wait in the car. Not because of me, mind you!!! I wasn't so bad a child that I would force The Father to excise himself from my sight so I Would Not Be Embarrassed To Be Seen With My Father. No, he pretty much hated Duran Duran and didn't want to be bothered and preferred to nap. This went on until Kelmeister entered college. By then I could drive myself. By then, The Parents preferred that I drive.
By then, payback.
Yes, kiddies, I found myself in an unenviable position: I had to drive THE PARENTS to SHOWS. See, this is the thing: when you're young, and you're bouncing off the walls and climbing all over the furniture and you won't go to bed when you're supposed to and you and The Brother are beating the shit out of one another in the living room The Parents have a tendency to utter the following curse in an attempt to calm you down:
I HOPE YOU HAVE KIDS WHO ARE JUST LIKE YOU.
What Karma and God don't tell you is that there's a secret inverse to this curse that also goes into effect at the same time:
I HOPE I TURN INTO YOU WHEN YOU'RE MY AGE.
And you know what? It happens. Seriously. One day, you're driving yourself and some friends two hours away to Nine Inch Nails; next thing you know, you're escorting The Mother to see Michael Crawford sing a tribute to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Payback.
Okay, God Damnit. I ENJOY GOING TO THESE FUCKING THINGS WITH MY PARENTS. Are you satisfied?
Once, The Mother and I went to see a production of Love's Labours Lost. We had to leave during the first act because we couldn't stop laughing. We also saw Blind Opera Guy.
But The Father and I have a tradition all our own: We bond over Michael Flatley. I think it started with RIVERDANCE. I'll admit, watching it on PBS during a Pledge Drive with The Father. Thinking the music was so amazingly alive. Thinking Michael Flatley was kind of hot, and Jean Butler was so beautiful. I admit I cried at the end. So it seemed only appropriate that when it came to town we'd go see it. And when Flatley came through with LORD OF THE DANCE and FEET OF FLAMES it made sense for us to go together to see them.
You know, at the end of FEET OF FLAMES, Michael Flatley danced real fast and there was smoke coming out of the floor and IT WAS JUST LIKE HIS FEET WERE ACTUALLY ON FIRE. It was pretty cool.
*cough*
So anyway, it's more about spending some quality alone time with The Father. And making fun of people who are at CELTIC TIGER, because in actuality, we're way cooler than the other people there because we're there IRONICALLY. Because really, these shows are starting to get kind of repetitive. Here is an ACTUAL EXCHANGE The Father and I had at the intermission of CELTIC TIGER:
The Father: You know, some of this music...I think they just changed a couple of measures or something from the other shows.
Me: I warned you going in...when I saw part of this on PBS, it was the exact same thing as last time.
The Father: It's like FEET OF FLAMES Part 2.
Me: No, it's more like FEET OF FLAMES version 1.2.
The Father: Critical update 1 for FEET OF FLAMES.
Me: More like a patch.
The Father: Critical Service Pack 1 for FEET OF FLAMES.
Me: This would be Critical Service Pack 2. FEET OF FLAMES was Service Pack 1 for LORD OF THE DANCE, so this is Service Pack 2.
The Father: [laughter]
Me: It removes a trojan virus installed in the program which made you think you were watching something completely different from the last show you went to.
As The Father said as he dropped me off (I would have driven, as is required in these situations, but The Husband needed the car to visit His Boyfriend), this is more about Being Together and The Power of Love and We Should Really Do This More Often. Which we should. But Michael Flatley's only one man. And there are only so many PBS specials. And The Parents went to Sarah Brightman of their own accord.
OH!!! So you want to know about the show!!! Well, the first half was A Brief History Of Ireland. Much Like LORD OF THE DANCE and FEET OF FLAMES. Only this time, Michael Flatley, acting as a modern day St. Patrick, drove the British from Ireland with the Power of His Dance. Did you know West Side Story is actually a retelling of the Irish Rebellion against British Tyranny? I didn't know that either. So there was dancing and some guy sang a song and it sort of reminded me of American Idol for some reason. And then there was this really awesome part where the British troops burned down a cottage and there were flying dead Irish baby spirits. It was AWESOME.
The second act, everybody came to America and became gangsters. And Michael Flatley's feet were aflame, and some chick was wearing an American Flag bikini. The BEST PART was this celebration of everything that makes America Great. All the things terrorists hate: eagles, and the Statue of Liberty, and cheerleaders, and football players, and more cheerleaders, and another eagle, and a seedy roadside motel, and disadvantaged black youth playing basketball and more football and cheerleaders and THE FLAG!!! And YAY AMERICA!!! And then there was more dancing, and some explosions but no one died because an angel came down from Heaven and brought all the soldiers and Irish rebels back to life, and that biniki chick again, and Yankee Doodle Dandy. THE END.
It was EXACTLY LIKE the other two shows, only this time there were more American flags. It was very silly. But I bought a copy of soundtrack (some of the songs would be awesome for mixes because it's lots of Gregorian chanting and beatboxing) which I am listening to right now so I may better convey to you the beauty and power of this spectacle. And I also bought a t-shirt for The Best Friend's birthday, because I know he'll totally kill me, and that's what birthday presents are all about: embarrassing your friends.
So it's late. The Husband will be home soon, reeking of cigarettes and barbeque sauce. But before I go...
Dad, I had an awesome time. Next time Charlotte Chruch is in town, WE ARE SO THERE!!!!
Take a seat while I explain a little something to you. Every year, your local PBS station does what is called a "Pledge Drive." On the surface it's little more than an attempt to collect monies from viewers to supplement the meager funds supplied by the government. In reality, it's an insidious plot by the Illuminati to brainwash the nation's middle-aged and eldery into spending their hard-earned money on carefully constructed "talent" created in part so that Middle America believes it's being exposed to "culture." This occurs every year in waves, which if you pay careful attention to the morning news you will soon be able to decipher. Riverdance was probably the first big phenom to come from PBS fundraisers; other notables are Andrea Bocelli (otherwise known as "Blind Opera Guy"), Josh Groban, Sarah Brightman...you see where I'm going with this. These people appear in concert on PBS and for a pledge at the $125 level you can get a copy of the companion DVD.
My parents LOVE these people.
But, going back in the Wayback Machine...poor, dear Father. When I was younger, The Father was forced to drive me and my friends all over Hell and back, usually Cleveland and Cincinnati, to see various incarnations of Duran Duran. The Father would usually wait in the car. Not because of me, mind you!!! I wasn't so bad a child that I would force The Father to excise himself from my sight so I Would Not Be Embarrassed To Be Seen With My Father. No, he pretty much hated Duran Duran and didn't want to be bothered and preferred to nap. This went on until Kelmeister entered college. By then I could drive myself. By then, The Parents preferred that I drive.
By then, payback.
Yes, kiddies, I found myself in an unenviable position: I had to drive THE PARENTS to SHOWS. See, this is the thing: when you're young, and you're bouncing off the walls and climbing all over the furniture and you won't go to bed when you're supposed to and you and The Brother are beating the shit out of one another in the living room The Parents have a tendency to utter the following curse in an attempt to calm you down:
I HOPE YOU HAVE KIDS WHO ARE JUST LIKE YOU.
What Karma and God don't tell you is that there's a secret inverse to this curse that also goes into effect at the same time:
I HOPE I TURN INTO YOU WHEN YOU'RE MY AGE.
And you know what? It happens. Seriously. One day, you're driving yourself and some friends two hours away to Nine Inch Nails; next thing you know, you're escorting The Mother to see Michael Crawford sing a tribute to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Payback.
Okay, God Damnit. I ENJOY GOING TO THESE FUCKING THINGS WITH MY PARENTS. Are you satisfied?
Once, The Mother and I went to see a production of Love's Labours Lost. We had to leave during the first act because we couldn't stop laughing. We also saw Blind Opera Guy.
But The Father and I have a tradition all our own: We bond over Michael Flatley. I think it started with RIVERDANCE. I'll admit, watching it on PBS during a Pledge Drive with The Father. Thinking the music was so amazingly alive. Thinking Michael Flatley was kind of hot, and Jean Butler was so beautiful. I admit I cried at the end. So it seemed only appropriate that when it came to town we'd go see it. And when Flatley came through with LORD OF THE DANCE and FEET OF FLAMES it made sense for us to go together to see them.
You know, at the end of FEET OF FLAMES, Michael Flatley danced real fast and there was smoke coming out of the floor and IT WAS JUST LIKE HIS FEET WERE ACTUALLY ON FIRE. It was pretty cool.
*cough*
So anyway, it's more about spending some quality alone time with The Father. And making fun of people who are at CELTIC TIGER, because in actuality, we're way cooler than the other people there because we're there IRONICALLY. Because really, these shows are starting to get kind of repetitive. Here is an ACTUAL EXCHANGE The Father and I had at the intermission of CELTIC TIGER:
The Father: You know, some of this music...I think they just changed a couple of measures or something from the other shows.
Me: I warned you going in...when I saw part of this on PBS, it was the exact same thing as last time.
The Father: It's like FEET OF FLAMES Part 2.
Me: No, it's more like FEET OF FLAMES version 1.2.
The Father: Critical update 1 for FEET OF FLAMES.
Me: More like a patch.
The Father: Critical Service Pack 1 for FEET OF FLAMES.
Me: This would be Critical Service Pack 2. FEET OF FLAMES was Service Pack 1 for LORD OF THE DANCE, so this is Service Pack 2.
The Father: [laughter]
Me: It removes a trojan virus installed in the program which made you think you were watching something completely different from the last show you went to.
As The Father said as he dropped me off (I would have driven, as is required in these situations, but The Husband needed the car to visit His Boyfriend), this is more about Being Together and The Power of Love and We Should Really Do This More Often. Which we should. But Michael Flatley's only one man. And there are only so many PBS specials. And The Parents went to Sarah Brightman of their own accord.
OH!!! So you want to know about the show!!! Well, the first half was A Brief History Of Ireland. Much Like LORD OF THE DANCE and FEET OF FLAMES. Only this time, Michael Flatley, acting as a modern day St. Patrick, drove the British from Ireland with the Power of His Dance. Did you know West Side Story is actually a retelling of the Irish Rebellion against British Tyranny? I didn't know that either. So there was dancing and some guy sang a song and it sort of reminded me of American Idol for some reason. And then there was this really awesome part where the British troops burned down a cottage and there were flying dead Irish baby spirits. It was AWESOME.
The second act, everybody came to America and became gangsters. And Michael Flatley's feet were aflame, and some chick was wearing an American Flag bikini. The BEST PART was this celebration of everything that makes America Great. All the things terrorists hate: eagles, and the Statue of Liberty, and cheerleaders, and football players, and more cheerleaders, and another eagle, and a seedy roadside motel, and disadvantaged black youth playing basketball and more football and cheerleaders and THE FLAG!!! And YAY AMERICA!!! And then there was more dancing, and some explosions but no one died because an angel came down from Heaven and brought all the soldiers and Irish rebels back to life, and that biniki chick again, and Yankee Doodle Dandy. THE END.
It was EXACTLY LIKE the other two shows, only this time there were more American flags. It was very silly. But I bought a copy of soundtrack (some of the songs would be awesome for mixes because it's lots of Gregorian chanting and beatboxing) which I am listening to right now so I may better convey to you the beauty and power of this spectacle. And I also bought a t-shirt for The Best Friend's birthday, because I know he'll totally kill me, and that's what birthday presents are all about: embarrassing your friends.
So it's late. The Husband will be home soon, reeking of cigarettes and barbeque sauce. But before I go...
Dad, I had an awesome time. Next time Charlotte Chruch is in town, WE ARE SO THERE!!!!
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