Mar
24
March 24, 2007
Thanks in part to some of your suggestions, we went with 300 on Friday, and I’m glad we did. I enjoyed it for what it was: a heavily stylized badass war-porn movie starring some fantastic-looking abdomens, the Toxic Avenger, and some dude with too much eyeliner.
I think 300 is one for theater-viewing vs. DVD-viewing, if only to wallow in the visual smorgasbord of rippling muscles, graphic blood spatters, and macho—yet so obviously cosmetically whitened!—bared teeth. Plus, there’s all the stabbing to consider—don’t you want to see someone’s midsection gorily punctured with spears on the BIG screen? I know I do! FOR SPARTA!
The rest of our weekend isn’t shaping up to be nearly as exciting as watching dueling manbeef. It’s raining, and not in a tolerable let’s-all-don-our-North-Face-jackets-and-forge-onward kind of way. It’s gray and soaking wet and generally icky outside and as either a unhappy coincidence or direct result Riley seems to have had a giant stick surgically implanted up his ass. Even with JB’s presence as a buffer, being trapped inside with a pissy toddler can suck every last molecule of fun out of your Saturday, let me tell you.
In other annoyances, I am battling a lingering sense of guilt over the box of Junior Mints I decided to allow myself last night—I told myself that I was going to eat them, enjoy them, and continue on my merry dieting path, so why am I still thinking about them and feeling bad, as though I had done something far more adulterous and illegal with the contents of that green-and-white box than licking, sucking, and generally orgasmically reveling in each and every creamy, smooth, chocolatey, minty morsel of—
ANYWAY. Fuck you, Junior Mints. You weren’t even that great.
(Oh my god you were unbelievable. I wanted to shake you out onto the sticky, popcorn-matted floor and roll on you naked.)
So other than watching JB high pressure-spray the patio (THRILLING), holding a screaming child while he sobs “Da Da! Da Da! Da DAAAAAAA!” (REWARDING), and entertaining lustful thoughts of boxed candy, I’ve got a whole lot of nothing going on between now and Monday. Therefore, you must help distract me by playing a comments-box game. If you could be anywhere in the world this weekend, where would it be, who would it be with, and why?
I’ll go first: I’d be in Phuket, Thailand, on the same beaches we visited on our trip in 2004. The weather would be perfect and the Andaman Sea would be like bathwater. I’d be there with JB and Riley and our families would be there too, because that would be so cool, and plus of course we would need someone to take care of the boy while JB and I have amazing, three-hour dinners late into the night. The air would smell like flowers and transsexuals, and I would take a million amazing photos.
Your turn!
Mar
22
March 22, 2007
MUSIC
Andrew Bird’s new album is out, and it’s wonderful. I could listen to “Fiery Crash” over and over and over. Oh wait I am listening to “Fiery Crash” over and over and over. Sorry, officemates!
The other song I can’t take off repeat is Regina Spektor’s “Fidelity”. Here, have a listen:
Lovely, isn’t it? It’s hard as hell to sing along to, though. It breaks my hear-ar-ar-ar-ar-ar-ar-ar-ar-ar-ar-arrrt . . . ow. I think I just pulled something.
WEB IRRITATIONS
1) I can’t properly express how grateful I am that the obnoxious Comcast ad—the one with the severed ear that scurried around enticing you to, in my case, drop Comcast immediately and sign up with Qwest—on the blogs partnered with Federated Media seems to have completed its run. No fault of the bloggers, but jesus I hated that animated ear. Did you notice how it chased your cursor, without even providing a weapon with which to stab it repeatedly? Gah. Congratulations, Comcast, on coming up with a web advertisement even more annoying than those blinking WINNER! banners from 2003.
2) People need to stop setting their links to open in new windows. SERIOUSLY. Yes, I can tell my browser to open them in tabs so it’s marginally less sucktacular, but for the love of god, knock it off.
3) While I’m being all curmudgeonly and nitpicky and like Andy Fucking Rooney over here, can someone explain the purpose of the “jump” in a blog post, where you must clickety the little “continue reading” link to get to the remainder of the post? Why must I make with the clickety? My mousing hand, it is tired.
BABY TALK
Lately Riley is obsessed with trying to jump. He gives it the old college try by heaving upward and flinging his hands in the air, but his feet don’t actually leave the ground. Then he comes over to one of us and holds up his hands in the classic Pick Me Up Now Goddammit position and makes little whiny “eh, eh, eh” noises until we grab his arms and help him pogo up and down. This is fun until we decide we’d like to do something else, at which time Riley has a giant flaming meltdown complete with choking sobs and dramatic wall-poundings.
This five-minute cycle of pure joy to abject misery is the perfect little microcosm of parenting. Everything is unbelievably wonderful! Everything is kind of boring. Everything sucks, sucks, sucks, all to hell! Repeat.
THE UNDEAD ARE EVERYWHERE
I’m sorry to be bringing up zombies yet again, but there is something weird going on. The other day I was talking about zombies with JB, then we started watching American Idol and the chubby guy was singing a song by . . . The Zombies. Then? Then? A Diet Coke commercial came on, and it featured, wait for it . . . zombies. And then I found out about this musical (thanks, Christine) and I stumbled onto this t-shirt and at lunch today I bit into a piece of deli roast beef and for just a moment it dangled from my mouth, all fleshy-like, and I don’t know, man, I think the universe is trying to tell me something.
AND NOW AN IMPORTANT QUESTION
Tomorrow is “Parent’s Night” at Riley’s daycare so JB and I are going to try and see a movie. Both 300 and Zodiac look good to me—can you weigh in on this? Whichever one we don’t see will have to wait until it comes out on DVD, so I feel we must choose wisely.
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