2007 Favorites

Inspired by my brohim-in-law, I'm going to do a best of 2007 list, tis the season, I suppose.
Movies:
1.Once
2.The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
3.Darjeeling Limited
4.No Country for Old Men
5.Hot Fuzz
6.Lars and the Real Girl
7.Savages
8.Zodiac
9.Ratatouille
10. like I can just list 10 movies, so the rest are: Juno, The Simpson's Movie, Rescue Dawn, Order of the Phoenix, Michael Clayton, 3:10 to Yuma, Eagle vs Shark
11. All the movies of 2007 I still need to see, which I suspect will be good: There Will Be Blood, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Sweeney Todd, Gone Baby Gone, Kite Runner, Atonement.

TV:
House (although Dr. #13 blows)
Pushing Daisies
Kid Nation
Extras
Flight of the Conchords
30 Rock
Human Giant
Ace of Cakes

Books: (from the ones I actually remember reading in 2007)
Moab is My Washpot - Stephen Fry
Twilight - Stephanie Meyer
The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling
Between the Bridge and the River - Craig Ferguson
I Am America (And So Can You) - Stephen Colbert

A KFC Christmas

Merry Christmas everybody! We'll be heading up to Salt Lake City again for the holidays. Our high has been in the upper 60's here and I have been freezing so the twenty degree highs scare me, but I must admit the cold and snow are still synonymous with Christmas for me, so it will be good. We're going to go to some Jazz games, see some movies, play some games, hang out with fam, and eat lots of Christmas goodies. Whit and I will also be celebrating our 5th Anniversary while up there. We made it. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Are you havin' a laugh?

Last night we watched the Extra's Special and it was amazing. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant have done it again, it was masterfully written, so funny, uncomfortable, sad, sweet. Ashley Jensen is wonderful. Stephen Merchant is crazy funny and Ricky proves, again, that he's got a lot going on underneath that absurd laugh. Another fantastic series and lovely special.

Come on.

Watching this I had more goosebumps than a 12 year old girl with the complete works of R.L. Stine (that's the best I could come up with right now).
Watch

Each Sold Separately

It seems fun to be a child again, playing with Star Wars figures, doing mock British accents. The Chewbacca impersonation, however, leaves something to be desired:
WATCH HERE

Fortune Crookie

Today I received this fortune - so I guess I will be inexplicably compelled to go into my parents basement only to have a huge monster jump on me when I reach the bottom of the stairs. That or I'll have to try to make a bed that is like a hundred feet tall. Sucks.

Takes a licking . . .

Come on, Steve Nash is just so tough.

Lego Les Miserables Trailer

Vader in Love

Amazing. . .

Bali Ha'i

Southern California is on fire as you well know, unless you really have never left your house and you don't own a television. It is much further South than where I am, but the skies over the Burb are pretty gross. I feel like I am in South Pacific, as in the movie, not the place. If you've ever seen that movie, you'll remember that they used many different bold color filters. I think it created interesting moods in the movie, but it does feel odd to be living behind an amber filter. It's like perpetual sunset or maybe perpetual sunset in Vietnam or the old west, take your pick. I don't know why I'm writing this blog, it doesn't have much of a point, I guess it's just a note on how the fire is creating a weird mood here. I feel really awful for the millions of people being truly impacted by the fires, but up here it is just definitely a strange, hazy, apocalyptic sky.

Reunited and it feel so good . . .

We went to the Getty

Eva C Revisited

Oi.

This week I had a pap test, which all the ladies out there will know is not even slightly comfortable, a surprisingly painful tetanus shot from which I am still sore two days later, I was at the dentist's for three hours where it was discovered I had a cavity - my first cavity ever - and I am still completely depressed about this, I try to take such good care of my teeth, and today my car died on me and I had to try to coast out of an intersection, using the emergency brake to stop - a problem which we just had "fixed" for $700 a week and a half ago. So that's a pretty rad week.

Achy breaky heart

Ah, hell. In previous blogs I wrote about my disdain towards the Disney Channel. Well, here's yet another example of the sad state of tweens today. Apparently the Hannah Montana (fictional character played by Miley Cyrus, aka Billy Ray's daughter) concerts are selling like hot cakes - tickets are in such high demand that they are selling for thousands of dollars. The story on the news said that these tickets are selling for more than The Police or Bruce Springsteen . . . what?!?! The Police reunion tour, the tour that would never happen, one of the greatest bands of all time, is cheaper and easier to see than a fictional 14 year old country/pop star. Wow.
Along with the concerts theme, I am realizing that it's tough to be a fan of, well, of a lot of bands that I am a fan of. My parents are a little older than a lot of my peer's parents (my dad was 50 when I was born), so musical rebellion for me was listening to music of the '60's and '70's. But the members of those bands that haven't died are getting really old. Yesterday I watched a concert on hdtv of the Moody Blues. I love the Moody Blues. I've seen them in concert a few times. I sneaked (sneaked? snuck?) backstage once and got to meet them. But this was probably about eight years ago. They were getting old then, but still had their gusto. This new concert was sad. Justin Hayward actually still looked and sounded pretty good, but that's where the hope stopped. There were two drummers on stage because the original drummer, Graeme Edge seemed like he was pushing it to even keep a simple beat, so the new, young drummer was picking up the slack. Ray Thomas wasn't on stage, so I wikipedia'd him and it said he left the band because of health problems with gout. Gout? Outside of Alzheimer's I don't know of a disease that screams elderly more than gout.
hmmm. To match my musical melancholy, Led Zeppelin's Going to California just came on. I have no right to feel sentimental over music of days past, I'm only 27, but I guess the music a person listens to in their youth always holds a special place in their heart. And that's why parents shouldn't let their kids listen to Hannah Montana, because those kids will grow up and look back on the music of their youth like I am now, and no one should ever be sentimental over Hannah Montana.

Colbert

This just makes me smile every time . . .

Fun

A fun site to peruse if you've got some web time to kill here , the Story of Bread is great.
and another here, which is super rad. It's called Pictures of Walls and it made me feel connected to the other humans in this world and all our goofy, stupid, thoughtful, sad, joyful, mean, funny and vulnerable moments.

Kitchen of Dreams

Okay. I've got to post one more picture from the Swedish site - it's just too weird.

Now you can feed your family and your horse at the same time!

Swedish band pics . . . Wowsers

I love these pictures too much, I want to post all of them, but you'll just have to look for yourself.
To see more Swedish band photos go here, it's pretty amazing:
http://www.omodern.com/

He's back

Season Four has started. Hoorah!

Just Like Jesse James

Oh, who can forget Cher's song Just Like Jesse James? Well, mostly everybody other than my sister and I and possibly a handful of gay men who still love Cher. However, this is not a blog about Cher but rather it's about one of the greatest movies I've seen in a long time, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. It's not released quite yet, I went to a screening last night, and I just want to tell all three of you who may be reading this blog to go see this movie when it opens. I don't want to go into a lengthy review of the film, but I just want to state that it is a beautiful, fascinating film. This is the writer/director's first film which is crazy! The cinematography by one of the greats, Roger Deakins, is amazing. There are wonderful acting performances: Casey Affleck is awesome, who knew? Sam Rockwell, also great. I was about to list the actors but the list would be too long, they are all really top notch in this film. My husband and I walked out of it absolutely inspired, but as we're leaving we heard people in the lobby complaining about how long it was. We live in an increasingly dumbed down society of people with short attention spans. People want watered-down, safe entertainment. I understand sometimes wanting a fun night of being entertained at the movies, but that doesn't mean it needs to be brainless fun. Too many movie companies now feed the masses mindless fluff, we should be thrilled when a film is released that has thought, complexity, sensitivity and passion; people have forgotten that film is an art form.

Emmy's

The greatest moment of the 2007 Emmy's - why are these guys the coolest? Sitting through the seemingly endless tribute to the Sopranos and having to watch James Spader win best actor over Hugh Laurie didn't matter any more as soon as Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell ran into each other's arms.

Baby Daddy

I have my lunch break at noon and I often eat my lunch and watch t.v. in the break room at my job. We have a limited amount of channels so I go back and forth from All My Children (the soap of my youth), the news and Maury and I just have to say that I am so tickled by The Maury Show, it is so wonderfully absurd. Almost every time I tune in the topic is Who is the Father? It really is mind boggling how many ladies out there don't know who the father of their child is - one of the girls on today was making her 13th appearance on Maury to have another guy tested for paternity - 13!!! We're talking about 13 dudes within, what, a week or so when she got pregnant. I truly can't conceive of that (no pun intended).

As with daytime talk shows there is a plethora of swear words beeped out - mostly from the guests, but I did notice today that sometimes during moments in the show when really nothing too dramatic is happening there are still beeps happening from people in the audience, who are just randomly swearing.

What has amused me most with watching these paternity shows, however, is when the woman comes on and she is so confident that the guy is the father, she swears up and down, saying her baby looks exactly like the guy, there is no doubt in her mind and then the tests come back and he is not the father. I've seen this a few times now and my favorite moment is when the girl apologizes to the guy. It is so weird. I saw a lady the other day, where there was such a huge, dramatic build up, she was goin' crazy about how the low-life guy needs to accept responsibility, how she's 110% sure, blah blah blah and he was fighting back, all sorts of yelling, beeps galore and then he wasn't the father and she just went up to him and said "Sorry about that", shook his hand, he said "no hard feelings", gave her a little hug and they walked away. What?!? It's so strange. I love it. Just a little "my bad" and it's on to the next paternity test. Brilliant.

Softening

So, I feel a little bad about my last post. Not a lot bad, but a little bad. It was possibly too harsh. I still agree with what I said, but I think back to my early youth and I did go through a couple phases of liking crap and it wasn't the downfall of my existence. For the most part, I actually still like movies and music that I liked as a kid - I think I had great taste for a little sprite. But, and this is a big but, there was a year, 6th grade, when I was trying to fit in, where I liked some serious crappola, for example, Color Me Badd. Yeah, and I would be lying if I didn't say that once in a while I'll listen to a Color Me Badd song and have a certain amount of enjoyment from it, in a reminiscent kind of way. I watched Newsies plenty of times and people could argue it is cheesy like High School Musical is cheesy, but I loved it. I would, however, be willing to put money on the fact that none of the High School Musical "actors" are going to turn out to be one of our great actors as Christian Bale of Newsies did. Whatever the case, I do think that the Disney channel blows, but hopefully, at least a good percentage of the kids that like High School Musical now, will grow out of it and one day look back on it as just a bad phase in their taste history.

Back in my day

The Disney Channel is the downfall of our civilization. Yesterday I turned it on to see some of High School Musical - not because I thought there was a possibility of it being good, I was prepared for it to suck, but I didn't realize just how badly it would suck - I turned it on because I heard that they had filmed the movie at my old high school - East High in Salt Lake City and I thought it would be amusing to see the old hallways of my alma mater. Well, I did get to see my high school but it was at a high, mind numbing cost. That movie is so utterly awful and yet it is the biggest hit with tweens right now. My womb shudders at the thought of bringing a child into a world where this is the popular entertainment. One could argue that it is good clean fun for the young set, but these kinds of movies are contributing to the dumbening of America. Kids are growing up thinking that it is acceptable for companies to churn out huge turds for movies, not only that it is acceptable but that it is desirable. Kids that watch this also think that they are watching actors, actors that they very often aspire to be like. Let me tell you the teens in this movie and really any other show you will see when you turn on the Disney channel at any given time are an embarassment and a disgrace to actors everywhere. I realize there are a lot of evils within entertainment right now, but the wound that is Disney channel entertainment is still festering in my brain. Walt must be turning in his grave. I'll continue to add to my dvd collection for my future little kiddies - I don't care if they are hip or not, they will be watching Warner Brothers cartoons, the Muppet show, Fairy Tale Theatre, hell they can watch Raging Bull and Silence of the Lambs if they're up for it, just no Disney channel!

Pet Peeve

Audience reaction shots. Fo' real. Any time I'm watching a show and they cut to people in the audience, I get so annoyed. If during an interview there is a great, touching moment and then they show some sweet young girl in the audience looking inspired, or teary-eyed, I instantly dry up. If there is something funny happening and they show some dude in the audience laughin' it up, I want to stop. If during a concert a favorite song comes on and they cut to a yuppy couple singing along, it drives me crazy. I just don't care what the audience is doing - let me enjoy the show I turned on to watch. Is that cold of me? Should I enjoy sharing the viewing experience with the studio audience? Well, I don't.

Home is where the weird is

Last week I went to Salt Lake City to visit my family and friends for a few days. I stayed in my parents home for the first time since getting married five years ago. May I just say it was uber strange. I lived in this same house from the time I was born and have been back there plenty for dinners, visits, etc, but this was the first time that I slept in my old bedroom, in my old bed. Some things have changed, but my glow in the dark stars are still on the ceiling where I placed them and my large stuffed toy Robert the Rabbit was still at my side as I got into bed. The first night there I went out with a friend, so I got home late, after my parents had already gone to bed and let me tell you creeping up the stairs to my bedroom, trying to avoid the creeky spots on the floor brought a flood of memories back to me, all the late night dates I would come home from. I felt like I was an amnesiac. I believe I lived there, if nothing else because this nice man and woman are telling me I did, but I can't quite comprehend that I really lived there for 23 years, however as I maneuvered around the house things came back to me by instinct - oh, yeah, this is where I hang my washcloth, this is the way I lay in this bed, this is the view from the window. Freaked me out, but by the end of the couple of days staying there, I was just a little bit sad to leave good ol' 331 H street.

makin' it go, makin' it grow

I've had a few strange, sentimental blasts from the past lately. Last week Whit(my husband) and I found a web site where you can listen to old sitcom theme songs(http://www.sitcomsonline.com/). It was pretty fun to listen to all these old theme songs that we hadn't heard in years: Perfect Strangers, Silver Spoons (from which the title of this blog entry comes), Growing Pains - the theme songs of the '80's are fantastic - everything is so positive, each little theme is like a session with Stuart Smalley or Mr. Rogers. After listening to a few, we started feeling oddly sentimental. Something about hearing these songs after all this time, that we had heard so often as children made childhood seem so long ago. These songs were so familiar, yet so distant. I don't feel like I watched that much t.v. as a kid, but never the less there was some trigger in me that was set off when I heard these songs again. Punky Brewster sent me over the edge. Oh, Punky, what happened to the simple times of our youth when we didn't have to worry about jobs or bills or breast reduction surgeries? Those were the days.

My band

This is the publicity shot for the band, Gorged by Buffalo . . .
aka me and my mother and sisters in law

Agreed.

You scored as Hermione Granger, You're one intelligent witch, but you have a hard time believing it and require constant reassurance. You are a very supportive friend who would do anything and everything to help her friends out. Hermione Granger 90% Remus Lupin 85% Albus Dumbledore 60% Severus Snape 60% Ron Weasley 60% Ginny Weasley 55% Draco Malfoy 50% Sirius Black 45% Harry Potter 40% Lord Voldemort 40% Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is...? created with QuizFarm.com

It's Over

I just finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. First may I say, nicely done, Ms. Rowling, that was a fantastic journey. J.K. managed to infuse a lot of people with a uniting sense of creativity, fantasy, imagination and love, yes love. It felt really weird to close the book and know that it's all over. Sure there will still be the anticipation of the next two movies coming out, but the story has ended. I am glad I finished reading book seven as I can now watch t.v., surf the web, walk down the street without living in fear of "hearing something". My boss hadn't read any of the books but read the last couple of pages of book seven when it came out and she loved to toy with me, well let's put in in correct terms, to threaten me saying that she was going to tell me what happened. She asked what I would do if she told me and I looked her straight in the eye and told her I would quit. And I don't think I was kidding. That might sound ridiculous, but I really don't know what other solution there would have been, if my boss didn't care enough about me or have enough self-control to keep quiet I can't imagine how I could continue to work for her. But, luckily, she resisted spilling anything and I am now back in control of my life. There is so much I could say right now to summarize my feelings on this book, but I don't want anyone reading this to catch any slight whiff of the outcome, so let's see I'll just say something cheesy like, it's been magical.

Just the Way You Look Tonight

What a group, including my alter ego, Emma Thompson and my #1 crush, Hugh Laurie. Call me nerdy, but I love this . . .

A Bowl of Hollywood

Friday night I had my first Hollywood Bowl experience. I've lived in L.A. about a year and a half now and finally made it to the bowl. It was John Williams night and it was wonderful. I probably cried or at least welled up about five times throughout the night. People who know me won't be too surprised to hear that, it doesn't take much for the water works to start. The first half of the concert was music from various films and the second half was music from John Williams' scores.

My first source of emotional surging was when I heard the oh so familiar first few notes of Tara's Theme from Gone with the Wind. I grew up seeing this movie many times and it along with the book are favorites of mine - so hearing the sweeping melody while sitting in the town where so many of the great early movies were made, staring at the Hollywood sign on the hill just got to me.

The second puddle of tears came from a medley of Doctor Zhivago music. They showed clips from the movie on screens and a mixture of seeing Omar Sharif collapsing at the end of the film and remembering playing the music on the piano at my parents house hit me.

Now this one I'm a little embarassed about - I got a little choked up at the music from Superman. Actually, you know what? Screw it, I'm not embarassed - it's great music and Christopher Reeve's story is sad. When they played Can You Read My Mind? I looked up into the starry sky and yes, it was emotional. I know that's almost as cheesy as Margot Kidder's recitation of "can you read my mind? do you know what it is you do to me?" But probably if I watched that movie again, I'd cry at that also.

Of course, Johnny Williams whipped out Harry Potter, Star Wars, E.T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark as well. People freaked out when the horns started blaring the Throne Room music from Star Wars, the light sabers were a' waivin'.

Good job, John.

Me as a Simpsons Character

Pic Picks

Everyone in our country should go see Sicko. Now, I know some people may have issues with Michael Moore, but whether or not you are a fan of his personal opinions, you need to see Sicko. It is funny, sad, informative and inspiring. I feel like people often want to hide behind the growing political divide in this country and claim that movies like Sicko or Inconvenient Truth are just "liberal mumbo-jumbo", but issues like health care and the environment are for all of us and Sicko is not only a very important film, but also highly entertaining. I laughed, I cried, well, you know. And one of the Cuban doctors is hubba, hubba.

My second recommendation is Ratatouille. It's pretty perfect - funny, heartfelt, smart. I went and saw it at the El Capitan theatre in Hollywood which is usually rad because they deck out the theatre and have some huge spectacle on stage before the movie. For example, before The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe there were set and costume pieces all over, a light show and then snow fell on the audience, it was magical. The show before Ratatouille consisted of za-za musical theatre rejects performing tween hip-hop of Disney songs while beloved Disney characters like Micky, Winnie the Pooh, and that Rosie O'Donnell Gorilla from Tarzan(?) danced, banged on pots and pans and chanted "cookin' in the kitchen, cookin' in the kitchen". I think my jaw was stuck open for the entire, excruciating Disney On Ice, minus the Ice performance. Good thing the movie was so rad, thanks, Pixar.

Over it

My vote for "get a cheap laugh" joke . . . Jazz Hands. Seems people still think either saying or doing jazz hands is their original observational comedy. Calling out "jazz hands!" at opportune times may have been funny once, but now everyone and their dog whips out the ol' shakey hands. Bored.

We are the Littles

Bill Hader to star as Tom Little in the much anticipated big screen adaptation, The Littles: Dinky's Revenge.

Cakesicles!

What's better on a hot Summer day than a nice Cakesicle?
I like me some cake and all but cake on a stick seems way too obese.

Workin' 9 to 5, well 8 to 5 actually

What is good about my job?
I get to walk to work
I've read more books than I can count since I started here
Fun co-workers
Every day is Solitair-o-rama

What is bad?
Having to hear my boss deucin' it in the bathroom. I want to tell him he needs to change his diet, because it shouldn't be that difficult, but that might be weird.

Why I almost became a vegan yesterday . . .

I had a few eggs in the fridge which weren't getting used so I decided to boil them for egg salad or whatever. I had put the eggs in the water and started to heat it up and I heard a weird, high pitched, what I can only describe as a chirping sound. I know it was just the water, heat, air, bubbles, making the sound, but it freaked me out. I actually took one of the eggs out and held it up to my ear to make sure I didn't somehow have freakish eggs which had wee chicks in them. They had been in my fridge for awhile so I, for a second, wondered if they had gone bad - and when I say "gone bad" I mean come alive.

Guitar Hero Update

It is great.
My band's name is Neo-Nasti.
I'm a pretty rad fake guitarist, but it's starting to get crazy hard.
The cooler one feels at Guitar Hero the nerdier they actually are.

Got a rocket in my pocket

I walked past a little old 80 something year old man today who was wearing a cap that said "Sharks" on it. Obviously this is some sports team, but when I first saw him all I could think was that he was a former member of the gang from West Side Story and that it was sad to see that his dancing/knife-fighting days were over.

Enormous Hominids

If you missed the first season of Human Giant, I'm sorry. It was rad. The second season should be happening in the Fall on MTV. This is one of my favorite clips.

Human Giant - Blood Oath

Even Stephen Steven

Waiters who are nauseated by food

dj Darryl Von Rokk | MySpace Video

Once

Two thoughts on the subject of "once":

1. The movie Once is fantastic - simple, sweet, sad and I, like probably everyone who sees this movie, went directly to the music store to get the soundtrack after the movie was over (it's sold out everywhere, took a little treasure hunt to get my hands on it).

2. It only takes once to fall in love with Guitar Hero. I tried it at the store and was immediately hooked. I know I'm late on this band wagon, but better late than never. I've never been a video gamer, but after a little taste of Guitar Hero awesomeness I now own a video game system and the game is in the mail. Next month they are coming out with Guitar Hero Rocks the '80's game - can't wait.

Wave of the future, wave of the future, wave of the future...

The Long Beach airport is weird. It makes me think this is what flying probably used to feel like in the early days of commercial flying: tiny airport, weird cafe, walk on the runway, go up stairs to plane. I feel I might see Howard Hughes any minute, well, if not, maybe Leonardo. A fascination with flying is sort of in my blood - my parents both flew and growing up my dad would run outside when he heard a low-flying plane. We used to go to the airport and lay on the ground underneath the flight path right before the landing strip to experience the power of planes flying directly over our heads a la the Baberaham Lincoln/Dream Weaver scene in Wayne's World. I'm eating the B-66 Destroyer burger - apparently veggie burgers like a good fight.

In the beginning . . .

This is my blog. The following entries were written in a word document over the last few weeks as I was too non commital to start a real blog. But I am now taking the leap and getting this puppy started. Hope it doesn't bore. Thanks for stopping by.

5/1/07
To blog or not to blog. I already had the to myspace or not to myspace argument and myspace lost . . . or won? Anyway, I never did create a myspace. Which I guess was just trying to be anti-establishment, although myspace isn’t really an establishment, is it? I guess I just felt cool not having a myspace and if I got a myspace I can’t imagine I would have that much communicating going on, I don’t have that many friends and people from high school wouldn’t find me because I have a different last name, actually different last name or not, I wasn’t popular in high school, wouldn’t have swarms looking for me. I was only tempted to get a myspace in order to fill out the little getting to know me space – favorite books, movies, etc. That seemed fun, but then what? I’d probably just end up looking up weird guys I liked in Junior High, well, okay, I’ve done that, but I’ve never actually contacted any of them, which is best. So no myspace, but what about a blog? I thought that sounded cooler, but then what is so interesting about my life that I should post it online for others to read? Nothing. I guess that only speaks of my having a low self-esteem. Well, so be it. But I do want to write. I do want to have a source to ramble, so at this point it is starting as a journal, but a journal that could potentially be read by others, which I guess is a blog, but I’m just not ready for that commitment yet, so this starts as a little word document and if at some point I get up the courage I will transfer the contents to a blog. I guess if I do a blog and don’t tell anyone about it, no one will really read it anyway (If a tree falls in the woods…). There are millions of blogs, so why would anyone stumble across mine? So, welcome to my fake blog. It will contain random thoughts and experiences of my life, well, duh, that’s what most blogs are. Wow. Struggling. Welcome.

5/1/07
I am a receptionist at a company that sells photo copiers. Yup. Just couldn’t get more boring. The only way I can romanticize this job is by thinking that I am like Dawn from the Office – only without Tim, Gareth, David Brent or anything else interesting about the job. sigh. But it’s just a stepping stone, it’s just a stepping stone, a year and a half long stepping stone, but never the less. I am fervently looking for a new job, something’s gotta hit. In the mean time, however, it’s great experience at what working in a typical office is like. I studied acting and I am starting to write, so the more life experience I can get to inform my art, the better . . . that’s what I keep telling myself, anyway. . . . so what becomes of you my love? when they have finally stripped you of . . .


5/3/07
We have a rat in our office – it got into a girl’s protein shake and vitamins, I bet that thing is ripped. The exterminator left stickie traps for it and the next day there was a huge rat footprint on the stickie pad. It probably thought it was soooo funny leaving a footprint on the stickie trap – yeah, rat, we get it, you’re too strong for us. I bet the rat sits at our desks on the weekends and pretends to be us, it mocks our menial work, it answers phones in a chipper voice and plays spider solitaire. Screw you rat, the old school snap traps are on their way . . .

5/4/07
They found the rats hood. It made a home in the desk of a girl on maternity leave. One of the drawers was filled with empty ketchup packets and a pool of urine. Possibly the grossest thing ever. I work in the front office and the rat was in the cubicles in the back office. We feel superior up here in front. We don’t have rats and filth. Oh, you dirty dirty cubicle workers. They’re not really, but still we swear we could never again return to a desk that we knew a rat had been in. Remember lice checks in elementary school? Thinking, “You have to be pretty filthy to get lice, I could never get lice” but never the less you got just a little nervous when they would start to pull back your hair with that wooden tongue depressor. “Welcome back from maternity leave, by the way a rat was renting your desk drawers while you were gone.”

5/7/07
Over the weekend our rat friend died. And when I say died I mean a snap trap decapitated it and sprayed blood all over the carpet. I didn’t see the actual carnage, I only saw the drops of blood and the little chalk outline left behind. R.I.P. little buddy R.I.P.

5/22/07
Last night at the Dodgers game I experienced the most awesome, random little moment. Beach balls get knocked around all game throughout the stadium. The ball, inevitably, made it to my section and the rebellion of playing keep away from the ushers revved up the spectators. A few rows ahead of me a 50ish, curly haired, balding, Jewish guy stopped the flow of the ball and with a care free smile tossed it with little gusto away. The excitement of the crowd waned a little and in the quiet lull, the obese Mexican dude in front of me yelled, “Homo!” I know this doesn’t sound that funny, but I was crying, I was laughing so hard. The timing, the casting, the use of the word “Homo” was so perfect, you really could not recreate the amazing comedic moment, it was such a perfect thing to happen at a baseball game. It was just so stupid for the Mexican dude to call this little Jewish guy a homo for not bouncing the beach ball up in a manly enough way.

The obese dude in front of me also was cheering along one of the Dodgers, Russell Martin, and he said, “I love Martin, he’s from Canada but it’s all right . . . Come on, Martin, ai!” He was trying to make the age old joke that Canadians say “eh” at the end of all their sentences, but instead he said “ai”, like a pirate. Awesome.

Last thought on the Dodgers game, I think the little races on the jumbo tron are so weird. You know, the animated races, when they have a red, white and blue car racing around a track or something along those lines. It is definitely the most excited the crowd gets, they cheer more when their stupid little cartoon Sprite bottle wins the race against the Coke bottle than when there’s a base hit. Now I refuse to participate, I don’t even try to follow the ball hidden underneath the shell. I am that cool.

5/24/07
So, I happened to glance at the list of top ten searches for the day on yahoo and Bubonic Plague was on there. What? Apparently a monkey in a Denver zoo just died of the plague. The plague!? Black death!? Ring around the rosie!? What the Elizabethan disease? So, the experts are warning us to stay away from rabbits and squirrels. And if you do catch the plague just get some leeches to bleed you healthy again!