Monday, March 30, 2009

Alice Must've Known I'd Need a Book...


Every once in a while, I get overwhelmed by technology and terrified that society's becoming 1984 and that the robots are going to take over my apartment, eat my brain, and watch my season 3 of Gilmore Girls. It's a fear that I'm able to shove to the back of my mind...until things like this happen.

Because there's only a month left until the end of the semester, I am currently buying the books I need for class on Amazon. I purchase Waiting for Godot in English (which is a cruel, cruel joke because I've already read it in French), and Amazon recommends the following items:

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
The Stranger by Camus
No Exit and Three Other Plays by Jean-Paul Sartre
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Two different, more expensive versions of Waiting for Godot
Murphy by Samuel Beckett
and
the Twilight movie

It is all too clear to me that someone...or something...has been watching me since at least last Thursday. Someone knows that I have watched Twilight (insert non-embarrassing and way less than the accurate number here) times over the past 4 days. Also, blogging about it definitely makes this information available to more people. Here's what I've been thinking.

Theory #1: The new building next to mine is called THE MORGAN and has obnoxious signs on it that say things like, "Morgan never has a bad hair day with a salon downstairs!" Perhaps Morgan has been watching me and intends to kill me 2001: A Space Odyssey style.

Theory #2: This was simply the only way Edward Cullen knew to contact me. He would like me to know that he enjoys fine European literature and would love it if I could join him for a night of dinner, dancing, and discussing Tartuffe in a context of 20th century religious struggle. Also, there may be some death involved.

Theory #3: A small division of the government that no one knows about save Mulder and Scully think that watching Twilight is a much better use of my time than reading about existentialism.

I'm gonna have to go with Theory #3.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

The Secret Is...You Spooned With Your Daughter...Weird.


Today I watched the best film ever created. This is an exaggeration, but I've been known to exaggerate. I spent two hours glued to the screen watching The Secret (or Si J'etais Toi, translation: If I Were You)...NOT the popular, you can do anything if you just put your mind to it The Secret, but rather, Lifetime's version of a scary movie.

You need to go out and rent this now. Made in 2007, this winner stars David Duchovny, Lili Taylor (from The Haunting), Olivia Thirlby, a.k.a Juno's bff, and the kid who played Warren from Empire Records. Basically, it's like Freaky Friday...except the mom's body is dead. The mom's spirit is in the daughter...but so is the daughter's spirit. Okay, I don't really think this movie makes sense now that I think about it, but it's def worth a watch for the incestuous sexual tension alone. It's like Jamie Lee Curtis learns to understand Lindsay Lohan the hard way but then dies in the end.

CHECK IT OUT.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

president bartlet would approve this message.

ALLISON JANNEY?  In a new musical?  Hells to the yes, please.  
            
So okay, perhaps I do get a little too excited whenever the worlds of The West Wing and Broadway collide.  And I will unashamedly support any and all things starring the former CJ Cregg.  But the musical version of 9 to 5, which opens on Broadway next month, boasts Dolly Parton as both composer AND lyricist, in which case, all signs point to a little bedazzled bit of heaven.
              
As I'm assuming the poorly received Lorelei Gilmore-studded Guys & Dolls revival will have closed by the time I make it to New York, this newbie might just make its way toward the top of my wish list.  Right behind the bilingual West Side Story.
                    
On a side note, Roommate might recognize the cheetah-clad woman seated to Janney's right as Stephanie J. Block, star of the short-lived but much-loved (by me ... there was acrobatic sword-fighting AND Irish dancing) The Pirate Queen.  My poster from that show used to scare the bejeesus out of her in the middle of the night.  In all fairness, there was a very tight close-up of an eye involved.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

WHAT?!?

So, remember when I ranted about the facebook ads?  I swear to God (pun absolutely intended), this just showed up on my facebook wall...

Missing: Jesus
Last seen 3 days after death.  Carpenter by trade; wears beard.  Known aliases: Lord, Son of God,  Almighty, JC, Emmanuel.  Reward if found.

I have taken religion classes for 15 years of my life, and I don't have a clue as to what this is all about.  Am I having a vision?  Cause if God knew me (like he's supposed to), he would know that this is probably the best way to contact me...

Monday, March 16, 2009

Dear Roommate, I'm Sorry

I recently read an article on wired.com entitled, "10 Annoying Habits of a Geeky Spouse," and realized that I am not the girl that lives with my roommate like I once thought, but rather, I am my roommate's dorky husband. Not dorky in the Babylon 5, Trekkie kind of way, but in a pop culture-obsessed art majory way. Dear Roomie, I'm sorry for the following trangressions...

1. Punning. I'm actually not as bad as making puns as I am at explaining jokes. And adding the little drum roll and cymbal crash afterward. Hey, I'll stop when said roommate buys a drum set and does the buh-dum-chhh for me. Best recently heard pun: Get thee to a punnery! Get it? Cause it's like nunnery...you know, from Hamlet, but with the word pun! This has become counterproductive. Moving on...

2. Using "frak" or Klingon, or both, instead of regular swear words. Well, I'm not into Star Trek, but damn, I'm into Liz Lemon, and as a consequence, I say "blerg." A lot. I also once had brief contact with a raving abbreviator and haven't been able to stop since. TNABD, SCUBA. (Totally not a big deal, self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. Thanks, Cory.) My latest is SML- for those of you who are biblically-inclined, that's smite my life.

3. Weird or over-the-top ways of celebrating mainstream holidays. We usually only do this for birthdays, and Roommate totally topped me this year, so...doesn't count. Well, yeah we do have a sparkly Christmas tree that's still in our living room and yes, we made dozens of paper snowflakes, but that doesn't prove anything...except maybe that Al Gore hates us for using so much paper.

4. Dissecting movies. See post on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight.

5. Wearing obscurely geeky T-shirts to "normal" places. NASCAR is the second most popular professional sport in terms of television ratings in the U.S., so I will wear my NASCAR shirts wherever I want. Plus, I got my Uncle Jessie t-shirt from Roommate, so I am off the hook (unless Stacy and Clinton decide to track me down).

6. Requiring extra room in the house for geeky things. I'm essentially an art major, and unfortunately, this does not mean our apartment walls are peppered with my great art. However, it does mean that 10% of the square footage of our place is filled with things bought at Blick's Art Supply.

7. Geeky toys and decorations can be hard to explain to kids. Well, neither of us have children that I'm aware of. However, I have never had an easy time explaining our Sting poster to visitors (he's dressed up like Shakespeare and it says "READ" at the bottom)...ooh, or the obscenely large Titanic poster.

8. Looking up information while a discussion/argument is still in process. We're more pop culture nerds than we are sci-fi nerds, and as far as I'm concerned, the only purpose Roommate's laptop serves is to imdb characters from Lifetime movies. Steve Zahn + Brink's older brother in So Weird + lady from Big + Kristen Stewart + Dr. Greene's daughter from ER = masterpiece.

9. Needing to watch certain TV shows ASAP to avoid spoilers. We've both gotten so much better at this. Mostly because everything's online now. And also because we've both adopted the notion that television was much better when we were thirteen (in a roundabout way to avoid change and thinking about the future). Result: Netflixing every season of Felicity.

10. Geeky projects that take over the house and whole weekends. I'm pretty sure that if the 7 deadly sins had been named with me in mind, this one would have been stuck in there. (If you're wondering, it would have taken the place of pride, because of the many gifts and talents I've been blessed with, humility is the greatest). Roommate, I'd like to apologize for the fact that our floor is now covered in the remnants of shells and cheese and tampon boxes for my latest class project. I'd also like to apologize for that time when I was working with all the little squares that were everywhere for days and days, OH, and the colored paper. Dear Lord, the colored paper. Do you ever consider setting our place on fire?

Roommate, I sure hope you can accept my apology. I mean, I've accepted that you like to dress up your dog, take pictures of him, and put them up by your desk. And you've grown accustomed to how I make a dirty joke out of everything, including the birthday card you received from your parents. Oh my god, you're going to kill me in my sleep, aren't you? Or at least chop off my hair like in The Brady Bunch Movie? I think I'm going to take the fire extinguisher and my X-Acto knife with me to bed tonight.

http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2009/03/10-annoying-hab.html

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Dear Duggar Family, Part 2

Question. Where do you get your energy? Your OB/GYN even looks tired. Is it from the tater tot casserole? It must be.
Question. Why was the suggestion of "Juanita" not taken seriously for your 18th child? You picked Jordyn-Grace Makiya, and you won't consider "Juanita" or "Juicyfruit?"
Question. Why don't I have a light-up wall in my home like in that hospital?
Question. Why is lap-sitting acceptable, but kissing is not? Where is the line, people?
Question. How do you keep track of all of them? Every episode I see a child I've never seen before because there simply isn't time to get all of them on camera in 45 minutes. And there are like 8 boys that look exactly the same. PLUS, they all have similar names and dress in the same outfits. I don't get it- Mrs. Weasley can't even tell her kids apart...and she's MAGIC.

Whenever you get a chance to answer them is fine.

P.S. Don't think I didn't notice those matching shirts AGAIN, Josh and Anna.

because she is a goddess.


Because she is a goddess.  Because she is blissfully unaware of Romeo and Juliet's true fate.  And because when you said the way her blue eyes shined put the Georgia skies to shame that night, she said, "That's a lie."