Golden Age of Comedy

I hate to say I've been watching TV even more recently, ever since my right pin's out of service.  Luckily, we appear to be in a golden age of comedy.  How. Funny. Is. New. Girl? I ask you.  It's like my favorite show of all time.  It's Schmidt, really, who makes the show.  Except, did you hear that line where whatshisname is talking about college kids and he says, "Look at them!  They don't know what Saved by the Bell is and they've never felt pain."  That is solid gold, my friend. Solid. Gold.


I'm also like totally kvelling over Happy Endings?  Although, I truly think that to make that show, someone reads through my blog, and takes out all the cool parts of my personality, and then makes a, you know, totally hip, hilarious show out of it.  Here are merely some of the things they have clearly stolen from This Very Blog.

1. The characters make t-shirts for special occasions. Just like me.
2. They did a whole episode about how Chicagoans are like hibernating bears in the winter. (I said that back on 4/6/2008)
3. Penny is heavy into abbrevs. (I think they modelled P after moi.)
4. They love food trucks and like making fun of hipsters.  But, to be fair, that's everyone.  

Modern Family continues to kill, week after week.  Did you see the bit with the clown funeral?  And after it was over all the clowns piled into a tiny car?  Too funny.

Tonight's Community was wicked hilarious as well, but I'm trying not to get too attached to that show because it seems like it's going off the air soon.  Probably because they base entire episodes around the plot of 1984, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts.  Now, excuse me while I go make a blanket fort.

Bathroom Before and After

 I should really do a Before and Before and After, but I can't find the pics from the middle before... Anyway, here's what our bathroom looked like when we bought our house...

ewww granny light

After a while I painted the bathroom lavender and we put in new towel racks and a new light fixture, but we still had all that super-crappy stuff like the sink and the mirror and the tub and...

It took long time to decide what kind of tile I wanted, and I (we? M was curiously not obsessed with this like I was) finally settled on this gorgeous Carrera marble subway and basket weave for the floor. The walls are Tiffany blue.

Remodeling, any home-owner will tell you, is an outrageous pain in the ass that's barely worth the trouble, takes 4 times longer than you think it will and costs at least twice as much.  "Not us!" we thought.   "WE are organized and efficient."  Ha.  The sink you see below is the second one we bought, the other is sitting in the garage, with a leak.  We ordered three feet too little floor tile and had to overnight ship the remainder (guess how much it costs to ship marble overnight).  And for some reason one of the three lights is out, which makes me and M so mad we want to smash the whole room to pieces with a sledge hammer.  But, was it worth it?  Yes.  Yes, I think so.  Pretty much.  Well, it is absolutely GORGE, if I do say so myself.  I was going for Parisian Toilette - I think I got it, don't you?

Will you look at that? The damn light's out! ARG!

We have some mildly scandalous artwork in the form of dirty postcards we bought the last time we were in Paris (J.C., that sounds obnoxious, doesn't it?)  One was especially naughty, so I put it in a reversible frame (below) that we can flip when the very young and the very old are visiting.

O! Excusez-moi!

 

Hunger Games Movie!

The Mockingjay

So, we went to opening night of the Hunger Games, natch!  It was SUPER fun.  First we met some friends in the bar, and, like, so, a week ago?  We had gone to the bar, which is attached to the movie theatre, and asked them if they were going to make special drinks for the movie and the bartender said he hadn't read the books, so we wrote a bunch of ideas on a napkin, and gave it to him.  Anyway, Friday night they had two drinks, which I choose to believe were from our list - however obviously they might be - the Mockingjay and the Girl on Fire.  

The Capital

What I loved the most about the movie was the pacing - I thought they did a great job setting up the story, going to the Capital (which I thought was clearly influenced by Metropolis), as well as the actual games and the follow-up.  I loved the scenes with the people who operate the cameras, and how it became understood that the cameras were everywhere.  


I hear that a lot of folks who haven't read the book are wrongly assuming that the movie glorifies "kids killing kids", more of the opposite, in fact - although, one creepy aspect was that our crowd did applaude when presumed villains were killed.  That was more than a bit strange, but, people are idiots, what are you gunna do?  L'enfer, c'est les autres.  The best part of our audience was little girls in costume - there was a kid with a bow and arrow that was So. Adorable.  

so angry!

There was also a photo booth in the lobby where you could get a, uhm, commemorative Hunger Games set of pics.  Me and my friend M couldn't resist and we made faces like we were in the movie - here's "Imma kill that guy!"  

Happy Friday

Feetsies

Well, yesterday I had my foot operated on - it's been bothering me for many months now, and hopefully it will all be behind me soon!  I don't know why it's embarrassing to have a bunion surgery, but it kind of is... I guess it seems kind of "old lady" although my doctor told me it's genetic - and I suppose if you asked one of my favorite old ladies, my grandma, she'd be the one who has the most sympathy for me!

Do you wanna see something crazy?  Look at this prosthetic Egyptian toe from 710BC.

via

So, I'm just kind of lurching around in a Vicodin haze.  I have a nice pile of DVDs and my mom's coming up to keep me company, and perhaps relieve M of incessant fetching.  Which he is being a real sport about.

I had semi-encouraged M to take a video of me after surgery, just for a kick, really.  It turns out I didn't have an amusing David After Dentist or this poor goofball antics.  I asked my nurse what she thought of parents posting video of their anesthetized children on YouTube and she got pretty fired up about how despicable it is.  It is invasive, but it's also really funny?  I'm conflicted.

Hunger Games

This weekend I got my hair did and my stylist was all, "I'm Obsessed with the Hunger Games!" and I was like, "OMG! Me too!" and I was in heaven, not just because someone besides me was washing and blow-drying my hair.  With each. Passing. Day I get more and more excited about the movie - it looks like it's going to be really good, doesn't it?

So, for the movie, do you think it would be more fun to dress up like someone from District 12...

Or the Capital?

OMG, Look!  There's a Hunger Games nail polish.  I want that so bad!

And, did you know Jennifer Lawrence is dating Nicholas Hoult from Skins?  

She is.

The Capital, right?

Oscars 2012

We went to an Oscar party over at our friends' house - the party was fun but the Oscars are so boring, amirite?  Billy Crystal was recycling jokes from decades ago... we thought about playing a drinking game (with jello shots of White Russians my friend had created in a fish-shaped mold, if you can imagine that) but quickly realized that for the sake of our livers (and the fact that we're now Old and it was a School Night) that was a very bad idea.  About every 5th time Crystal laid an egg, we were like, Where's that FISH?

But!  There's always the fashion...  Oh, the fashion!  Here are my favorites:

Octavia Spencer is a gorgeous woman - I LOVED this dress by Tadashi Shoji.  There were a lot of these sunburst-y dressed last night, but I thought she wore hers best.

 Everything about Michelle Williams was ADORABLE.  That DRESS!  Her sweet little hair cut!  Her tiny little baby doll face.  That sweet little bow at her waist.  AAARGGGH!  She makes me LITERALLY feel like a troll.  Did I mention we once ate brunch at a the same cafe in Brooklyn as her?????????

 Some of my friends (who I'm henceforth going to refer to as my Agents Provocateurs, with a French accent, a la Christopher Plummer.  PS, who's still got IT?  The Captain does, that's who.) said they didn't like this Giambattista Valli dress on Emma Stone, but I thought she looked so stylish.  1. I love it when red heads wear red, 2. She looked really youthful and fun, and 3. She can really do no wrong.  Except for The Help. Snark.

Speaking of Doing No Wrong!  Meryl was right, we DID collectively groan when she won the Oscar!  Not because she didn't deserve it, but, it's like, Give some one else a chance!  Can I have that dress,  I mean, really?   I loved ALL the gold gowns at the Oscars - and there were quite a few, weren't there?

Special Note:  How cute was Cameron Diaz's hair?  I'm thinking about running straight to my hair dresser with this picture.  What was with that stoopid ass routine she and J Lo pulled?

w00t Pawn: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

M's been playing this game Skyrim on Xbox for about a month or so now.  As far as I can tell, it's not really about doing or accomplishing anything - you're just this elf guy that walks around this Medieval-y, Lord of the Rings-y type of place and interact with people and forge stuff and like, barter for cheese and special helmets and whatnot.  You know how when I review a game and I'm like, This game kind of sucks because all you do is run around killing things while what would be REALLY nice is if you just walked around and enjoyed the scenery while holding hands with someone you loved?  Well, THIS is that game, except, you don't hold hands with anyone, which I think is a real lost opportunity.

You operate this character who's some kind of Elf, even though you don't really see him because it's first person.  M says this is called a "Role Playing Game".  So, you walk up to people and you scroll through these questions you can ask them and then they say the answers, and then, I don't know, maybe you go to the next village or something?  M been a real sport about jumping in rivers and looking at stuff when I ask him.  Some of the physics in the rivers are screwed up so when you're in the water it's all wonky.  I did some research and apparently later he'll ride a horse up a mountain and it's kind of dopey.  There's this one guy?  And you walk up to him and ask him to sing a song?  And then he stands there are sings a damn epic tale.  That was hilarious.  Eventually he meets up with this lady who for some reason follows him around and grudgingly tells him, "I am sworn to carry your burdens."  I'm not sure what that's all about.  Some of the ladies have giant boobs but not everyone, so it's not the most misogynist game I ever saw.  So.  There's that.

So, it's very pretty, but to tell the truth it's a little boring.  Like sometimes M's character will LITERALLY sit down at a grindstone and sharpen his own knives and shit.  For realz.   And I'm like, What's going to happen next? And M's like, I don't know, I might walk over to that other village.  One time he did fight a dragon though.

For some reason it makes me really antsy when I can't tell when these games are going to be over.  It's like... he could play it forever.  I suspect this is happening...

The Voice?

The Voice is about as interesting as American Idol (not very), but for some reason I like watching it on fast forward and skipping past all the sad stories about dead and dying relatives and their high high hopes because occasionally you do hear something kind of interesting, like this:

Dang, that song is solid, amirite?

Eggs

I've become mildly obsessed with preparing eggs recently.  I like poached eggs very much and I believe I've tried all the methods of poaching - the vortex, the plastic wrap method, and even... the microwave (not recommended).  I finally bought those special silicone egg poaching cups and they seem to work best of all, although some perfecting still needs to occur.  

Then I decided to go the full nine and bought some egg cups and a soft boiled egg scissors thing - have you ever seen this marvelous contraption?  The soft boiled egg really does it for me. How have I lived my life this long without experiencing the unadulterated joy of using egg scissors and then poking my "toast soldier" and demitasse spoon into its glorious depths?  

egg scissors OMG!

The Bright Side of the Street

Well, my damn foot got worse and worse, until I now find myself wearing the dreaded BOOT around.  The good news is, as much of a drag as it is to drag around, it does help my foot feel a bit better.  Right now I'm trying to focus on the bright side of things and looking forward to summer when my feet will be in sandal shape and I can (hopefully) once again start enjoying my rather fabulous shoe collection.

I've been thinking about those people who face adversity with a smile and good sense of humor - the kind of person I'm definitely NOT!  But, I'm trying to work on it.

Here's a song that sort of reflects that idea:


As an aside, when M & I watched this, he said it looked like all the dolls were preparing to murder the people!

If it's not one thing, it's another

So, last weekend, on top of my damn foot problems, I got a bad cold, which developed into a sinus infection, and spent the entire week laying around on the couch, searching for the will to survive!  It was grim.  I watched a LOT of movies, including Out of Africa, and Love Actually, and a bunch of sad movies like Rabbit Proof and The Door in the Floor, based on the half-terrible book called A Widow for One Year (each title is worst than the other), but, at least it's based on the good half.  Although, I sort of wanted it to be based on the bad half because I quit reading it, and I always wondered what happened in the end.

My Doctor told me that I should carry on with my netti pot, but only if I used distilled water because people had DIED of a BRAIN-EATING AMOEBA.  Ugh.  I did some research and it seems it happened in Louisiana.  "Louisiana!" I thought.  "Well, sure, in Louisiana they have brain-eating amoebas in their tap water."  Of course, one doesn't like to take chances with that sort of thing.


Mostly I've been really bored, so I'm vaguely happy (that's not the right word) to be going back to work tomorrow.  

Pain Scale

So, darn it all!  My aforementioned plantar fasciitis has gotten really bad.  I went to the orthopedist today and got some bad news.  My feet are basically going to need to be removed at the ankle.  It's fine.  I'll be double pegged, and I will henceforth speak in Pirate. We looked at xrays of my feet, and it was as if... a demented lunatic could not have created a more bizarre picture of what human feet could look like.  My orthopedist actually shouted things out like, "Oh My God! This is terrible!" and "Look at that one!"  Even my untrained eye could tell these were some seriously jacked up feet.  In fact, just now, I googled "jacked up foot xray" and none of them look as bad as mine.  On the internet, ye lads and lassies!  On. The. Internet.



Which brings me to the pain scale.  My doctor had one of these hanging in his office:

Whereby I am, obviously, a 10.

However, as everyone knows, that is an inadequate pain scale, and the most accurate one was created by the Brilliant Allie Brosh at Hyperbole and a Half:

(It's really best to read her descriptions.)  In her (more accurate) scale, I am clearly an 11.  I tried to explain my level of pain to loving husband after a routine day at work with as little walking as I could get away with.  It was as if I walked 10 miles on my left foot and 20 miles on my right foot while carrying a 100 pound sack, and every half mile a Nazi in uniform beat the bottoms of my feet with a switch.  

Coffee

What is the best method of coffee preparation?
    A. Italian stovetop cafetiere
    B. French Press
    C.  Pour over coffee


I've been drinking pour-over at work because I'd finally had it with the swill they serve in the cafe.  It's quite good, but I'm not sure it's as good as my cafetiere.  Although, coffee out of the cafetiere is served in the comfort of home and hearth, where everything tastes better, while the pour-over is "enjoyed" at my desk at work, where everything tastes like misery. We first had pour-over in Seattle (natch) at what I believe the locals call "Fake-bucks".  It's a Starbucks in disguise that looks all fancy and stuff.  When you order a coffee, they start the pour-over and you have to stand around for several minutes (apparently a three-minute pour is perfect), which is all very fine and good when you're on vacation in Seattle in the afternoon, but what if it's morning and you are standing in a line full of asshats ordering pour-over coffee?   Sometimes at work I try to spend three minutes pouring out the water, but that's mostly impossible.  Amazon actually sells a pot which will slowly pour your water which sells for $50!  It's an effing watering can.

$50

Stay tuned for my thoughts on poached eggs.

Uhm, you guys?

Uhm, you guys?  Did everyone watch my movie yesterday?  I think it should get an Oscar nomination, but EVERY year, the academy IGNORES me.  It's a hard life I lead.  For example, we are deep in a Chicago winter, with approximately 14 months of winter yet to go.  I have little to do but lay around on the couch complaining about my damn plantar fasciitis^* and watching videos on Youtube about the latest in fingernail decorative techniques (if you've been living under a rock, the answer is the Ombre Manicure).



^*It's when your bananas are fascists.

A Heart-Warming Holiday Movie for the Whole Family!

I finally got my movie from Christmas-time in Indiana put together - we had such a good time, and, I think you'll agree, I have the most charming nephews you ever laid eyes on.



Oh, for context, nephew #1 is pretending to be Cobra Cat and "Thriller" Cat. 

It's probably better  in full-screen (my first HD camera on my new video camera - present from perfect husband, M!).

Movies

Here are some movies I've seen in the last month or so:

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Oh, Tom Cruise!  Awesome movie - to me, it brought back the fun of the first Mission Impossible movie, which is one of my favorites.  Idiotic plot that doesn't make any sense, but, who cares?

Young Adult
Depressing as hell, but cool concept.  YA writer of the Gossip Girl variety, the mean girl in question is stuck in a high school mindset.  Lot to think about - probably best as a rental.

Hugo 3D
 Beautiful film - I liked the bits re: silent movies the best.  A real film-lover's movie, no matter how old you are.

Underworld: Awakening
Rotten Tomato critical reviews: 27%; audience reviews: 80% positive.  Oh, snap!  I also went with popular appeal - except I wish the younger girl would have been a serious ass-kicker like Summer in Serenity.  Has anyone ever noticed Kate Beckinsale sounds just like Julie Andrews?  I wonder if she can sing?

Baby Momma
Why Tina Fey? Why!  80's-style comedy about "career woman" (we're just called women these days) who put her job before husband and family!  Now look what happened, you stupid bitch! You don't have no baby!

Temple Grandin
Totally worth seeing, I'd recommend this movie to just about anyone.  Makes you think about cows in a whole new way.  Brilliant line: "You think we'd have cattle if people didn't eat 'em everyday? They'd just be funny-lookin' animals in zoos. But we raise them for us. That means we owe them some respect. Nature is cruel, but we don't have to be. I would'nt want to have my guts ripped out by a lion, I'd much rather die in a slaughterhouse if it was done right."

Crazy, Stupid Love
Like everyone else in America, I cannot get enough of Ryan Gosling!  He is amazing (to look at) in this movie, and Steve Carrell is so funny.  Stupid plot twist at end doesn't even ruin it.

Beginners
Beautiful film starring Ewan McGregor and absolutely perfect Christopher Plummer.  Reminded me a lot of A Single Man, but mostly because of gorgeous LA architecture.

Whatcha cookin', good lookin'?

My mom made us gals these adorable aprons for xmas - they're reversible and everything!  Aren't they the cutest things you ever saw?  I LOVE aprons, so I was pretty happy to have a special one made by my mom (and knowing that I have some twinsies around as well!)

My mom: the original crafter!

Dirty Harry

We watched Dirty Harry a few nights ago - I'd never seen it before - it's quite good!

But, check this out...

I'm just sayin'... 

Oh, this scene right here was awesome.   

I've actually seen a ton of movies lately that I haven't had time to blog about. I'll try to do a quick and dirty recap soon (for my legions of fans!)

Pillow Spree

I have been on a pillow spree lately!  I recently learned that it's not too difficult to put a zipper in a pillow -  in fact, I would say that it's actually easier to put a zipper in a pillow than NOT to, and it looks better as well - so... zippers in pillows, all the time, yo.

balls on the inside

I bought this vintage tablecloth at my local shop and have been putting it to good use for years.  You may recognize it from the curtains in my kitchen.  I've been wanting to make a pillow as well and finally it all came together when I was admiring my trim hoard.

It was quite easy to make - I just free-handed the trim around, then pinned it down and then sewed it down, then trimmed off the extra fabric, cut a coordinating fabric and sewed that on, right sides together, balls stuffed inside, and... voila!  Bob's your uncle.


Then I made another pillow so that one wasn't lonely and because I was on a ROLL that could not be stopped after merely one stunningly fabulous, Grandma Chic pillow creation.  This one I made out of some cute orange fabric I've had laying around with some adorable blue stripes on the reverse.  Plus a little yellow rick rack from that aforementioned Hoard o' Trim.

The front

I only wish I had finished this when my sister and my nephew were in town because I think he would have liked those turquoise  pom poms.  He did something very funny with my lavender eye pillow which was to first try to throw it like a bean bag and then, after being admonished that it was not a "play toy" and meant for "meditative relaxation" (I remain, by the way, a favorite aunt, even after that conversation). Then he enjoyed running into our room, leaping and bouncing on the bed, and then throwing himself down and shouting, "Look at me, Auntie!" Whereupon he would grab my eye pillow, slam in it on his eyes and pretend (N.B.) to relax.  For about 10 seconds.  

The back... or the front?

So happy together!

Those are not even ALL the pillows I have made recently!  Stay tuned for more... pillows!  And more zippers.  And, possibly more stories about my adorable nephews.