Mini-Break

We took a quick trip to LA this weekend to celebrate our friends' K & G's wedding - it was a beautiful wedding ceremony and a fun reception.  K ranks among the 10 Top Gorgeous Brides of All Time, I'd say.  Near the end of the reception she changed into a red satin cheongsam (pronunciation - btw, I've been driving myself crazy the last few days trying to remember what that particular kind of dress is called!)  They're great friends and we were very pleased we could be there to share in the fun day.  

This note was left in our hotel room, which we thought was particularly hilarious.  M and I spent a lot of time asking each other, "Whhhhhhaaaaad're yoooooooouuuuu doing?" a la The Californians - a skit on SNL that gently mocks Angelenos for their propensity to show of their comprehensive knowledge of the LA freeways.  Anyway, be sure to avoid specific substances in your hotel room.

Stay tuned for a few pics on our little camping trip!

investing sux

Us, on May 21st, a Play

Me: We should buy some facebook stock.
M: Yeah?
Me: How much is it?
M: about 33 dollars.
Me: Let's get some, just for funsies.
M: Really? OK. 
Me: What could go wrong?

I guess you don't make 1 million friends without making some dubious financial maneuvers with obvious questionable ethical implications with "long-lasting negative implications for an industry that can ill afford this kind of blemish." (source)

The Avengers!

We saw the Avengers this weekend and it was really great.  M's a big fan of the Avengers... I thought the whole thing sounded really stupid, but Joss Wedon wrote and directed it, so I figured it would probably be pretty good.  I guess I don't really understand the concept of putting a bunch of random superheros together, but apparently that is a not uncommon superhero comic book conceit.  So, like, for various reasons, all these superheros need to fight together for the fate of the planet and whatnot, but they don't exactly like/trust each other, so first they have to fight each other (this is also not uncommon, I guess.)  I don't think I'll ruin it for you by saying basically every combination of superhero has to fight another superhero.  The best was when Thor? He's like this demi-god from another universe and really hot?  He has to fight the Hulk for some reason?  And, anyway, when he realizes the Hulk is actually really strong and he can go ahead and beat him with his special hammer, he gets kind of excited.

There have been a couple of REALLY bad Hulk movies in the last decade... all I really care about is, what's the deal? He grows like 5 times his size but his pants still fit?  Come on.  Anywho, the Hulk is ably played in this movie by Mark Ruffalo.  Robert Downey Jr. is back as Iron Man, with le Gwyneth making an appearance, wherein they show of their amazing lack of chemistry (zing!).  The Natasha (Black Widow) character is played by Scarlett Johansson.  I don't think she has a previous movie and M doesn't know much about her.  She's in love with the Green Arrow, maybe?  The only thing is, as far as I can tell, she's not really a superhero, she's just really smart and a good fighter, so when they have to fight these giant whatevers and all the other guys are all tricked out with the flying whatnots, she pulls out this little gun, and it's like, damn girl, whatchugunnado with that gun?  


I could have stood for a few more quips, it being a JW film and all, but M felt it was plenty quippy.  Me? I was waiting for the moment when someone inevitably said, "We've got to figure out a way to close that PORTAL!"

Ooooo - Chris Helmsworth (Thor) is also the handsome boyfriend in Cabin in the Woods.  It's all coming together now!   So, it was great.  And, I think there's for-sure going to be a sequel - and maybe like, a Black Widow thing (let's try to get that started!).

awkward!

(Hulk) Smash

So, I did go ahead and delete Smash off the DVR - I just read this hilarious article in the New Yorker that sort of epitomizes how I feel. This Katherine McFee person, I suppose can really sing, but more and more her voice sounds like it came out of a can.  Megan Hilty is fabulous, though.    Nussbaum writes, "She has also delivered a few truly thrilling musical performances, a fact made possible by perhaps the most horrible thing about “Smash”: how good the songs from the musical within the musical are. The songs written for “Bombshell,” the musical about Marilyn Monroe, are generally zippy, magnetic numbers created by Marc Shaiman and Scott Whitman."  Did you know that?  I didn't know that.  

The Pirates!

This weekend we saw The Pirates! Band of Misfits - it was really fun.  It's made by Aardman Animations, which does Wallace and Gromit, that wonderful claymation video.  Here's a great featurette if you're interested in that sort of thing. It's very funny and witty and we had a good time.  Hugh Grant does the voice of the Pirate Captain, but, for some reason I was like, Oh, Hugh Grant would never do animation... so the whole time I was trying to figure out how else had a voice as buttery smooth as HG.

I kept expecting them to break into song - something from The Pirates of Penzance, which I really really wish were on DVD, or, better yet, HD streaming on Netflix*.  If you haven't seen this movie, let me tell you... it is amazing.  Kevin Kline, Linda Ronstadt, Angela Frigging Lansbury and that guy from The Greatest American Hero.  Know who I mean?  With the hair?

Anyway, it's great.  Here's one of my favorite songs:



* Hey!  It turns out it IS available on HD streaming on Amazon Instant whatever that is.

I watch too much tv

Is anyone watching Awake?  It's about this guy who lives two realities, post car accident - in one reality, his wife's dead, in another, his kid's dead, and he doesn't know which one is real.  It stars Jason Issacs, who is... guess who?

Mr. Malfoy, that's who!  Turns out he's wicked handsome when he doesn't have Stevie Nicks' hair.  

I really like Awake, although I'm worried they're going to do something stupid.  So many shows just haven't really thought past one season and then they poop out.  I can't even watch Smash anymore, I just fast forward to the songs.  Eww,  I'm watching it right now, actually, and that weird Bollywood bit sounds more like the death toll of Smash on my DVR.  

But, back to Isaacs, if you're recording Downton Abbey, you're probably getting all the Masterpiece stuff, which is so great.  I first saw a post-Malfoy Isaacs in Case Histories, based on a novel by Kate Atkinson.  I'm a big Atkinson fan and have read everything she's written.  Case Histories was great but a little hard to follow, and some of the Scottish accents were so thick it was kind of hard to follow.  In Awake he does an American accent. Back then I just spent the whole time going THAT'S MALFOY?????   

So, on Awake, in both realities, he sees a therapist, and one of his therapists asks him to open a book and read it randomly, and, it turns out it's the constitution - and she says, well, that proves THIS is reality unless you have the whole constitution memorized.  And then they sort of dropped it.  For some reason that kind of captured my imagination because like, say you're dreaming, you can do anything - speak foreign languages you've never studied or whatever and your brain just smoothes out the inconsistencies for you.  It would be funny if there were a third reality where he was a blonde wizard.  

The Cabin in the Woods (no spoilers)

This weekend we saw The Cabin in the Woods - I really wanted to see it because it's written by Joss Wedon.  It's nice for any Wedon fan because it's basically like a really great two-hour episode of Buffy meets Dollhouse meets the last episode of Angel.  It's partly a commentary on traditional horror movies and the standard stereotypes that are included (the jock, the nerd, the virgin, etc) and how we conform people to meet expected stereotypes and there's also this whole other element that I won't mention for fear of spoilers, except, I will say that I wish the trailer hadn't given so much away.  It's really interesting that this movie came out the same season as The Hunger Games, they have a lot in common.  Well, it's really interesting movie and I'd recommend it.  BTW, it's not really scary, at least not I-can't-sleep-now scary.  Remember when Scream came out and everyone said what a brilliant movie it was, social commentary, etc?  Back then I was like, We've got to see this movie! and then, I couldn't even so much as walk to the bathroom by myself in the middle of the night for the next six months, I was so freaked out.  M was like, Are you SURE we should go see this?  So, it's jumpy-scary in parts and and over-the-top gross in others, so over-the-top that it's funny.  I wouldn't like, recommend it to my mom, but I would to my sister.

The Killing

I got crazy addicted to season one of The Killing on AMC.  Remember that red-haired twin on Big Love that married whatshisname's brother?  She's in it.  Season 1 is really good and I almost watched the whole thing in 1 day.  Only (mini-spoilers coming) it was such a drag that they didn't say who the murderer is at the end.  I thought they were totally going to do like a Veronica Mars/new mystery every season sort of thing.  Now it's like... what? The mystery will never be solved?  I can't stand that sort of Lost/Heroes nonsense.  But, what I don't understand, and if you do, please tell me - how can it be that the mayor-candidate is not the killer when he's the one who sent the creepy emails to the high-class hookers?  Too many shows, I'll tell ya', just plan out one great season, then they get renewed, and it's like, oh shit, we have to think up some more ideas?!?!  

Don't just sit there, Draw Something!

So, I started playing Draw Something this weekend and it. Is. Awesome.  Will you please play with me?  I cannot get enough games going.  I drew like, a totally amazing Katniss and M got it.  Although, something funny happens in my mind, where I get a clue like Rabbit, for example?  And what I picture in my mind is something like this:

Durer

and what I actually draw is something like this...

me

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.