What size are you?

Oh, boy. I don't even know why this ad makes me laugh so much, but it does. (caption from The Institute of Cheer)


1939. You just don't see this anymore: blunt talk about your body size. These men don't mind, though. They're farmers. Salt of the earth. Honest as sod. Hi there! I'm short and fat! Really? Well, I'm tall and fat. How about that.

Graffiti

In a much earlier post I had linked a great site called, Pictures of Walls, which has pictures of, well, yes, walls, but of what remnants people have left behind on said walls. I thought I'd share some of my favorite pictures:

Convenient Art

On a recent road trip I found these gems in a convenient store. Who wouldn't want a statue of a punk rocker on their laptop?

Pictures

I've realized I should make my blog more personal, so I'm going to try to add more pictures from my life. I'm going to put some pictures from Christmas up and a couple pictures from Thanksgiving of the fam.

My Mom with her Mother, Grandma Trinny and her sister, Aunt Elaine, at Thanksgiving:

A nice picture of my sister Alexandra with her husband Jerad and their son, Dylan.

I love this picture of Whit and my Dad, trying Guitar Hero for the first time:

Me with my favorite little guy (besides Whit), my Nephew, Dylan, age 6.

Dylan at the mercy of Whit's new Light Saber:



Is this totally lame to just post a bunch of pictures? Oh, well.

Three Sisters:

My Christmas Tat:

Whit made this shirt for me for Christmas, with Nash right above my heart:

This was our little ATP friends get together at where else? The Other Place.

2007 favorites amended

Since I posted my favorites I have seen a few of the movies I hadn't at that point. I saw Sweeney Todd and loved it, great casting all around, great blood. I saw I'm Not There and really disliked it - way too confusing, too heady, too boring. Cate Blanchet was, of course, great, but it wasn't enough to keep my eyes open for the duration. I saw Gone Baby Gone finally, and enjoyed it, nice performances, interesting script. I saw Atonement - slow, British, good - but Keira Knightley is not very good and sitting next to my parents during a crazy sex scene was gweird. And last night I saw There Will Be Blood - love love loved it. Just go ahead and hand Daniel Day-Lewis the Oscar. He is absolutely fantastic. It was such an interesting world explored in the movie. And I wanted to scoop up the little boy that played Day-Lewis' son and keep him for my own.

Who ya gonna call?

Holy crap.
So, I'm at work, quietly sitting at my desk, it's just my co-worker Maria and I in the front office here and we hear a loud raspy whisper saying, "Hey!" "Hey!". We both looked up and looked at eachother wondering what the heck was happening. There was no one around. I got such crazy chills. I've never experienced anything like that before. I've tried to think of all possibilities of what we could have heard, but there really is no explanation. I would maybe think I was crazy if we hadn't both heard the exact same thing. It's funny, in describing what happened we both thought of Gollum from Lord of the Rings, it was that type of voice. Weird. Creepy. Goose bumps all over.

Christmas in Utah

I thought I'd give you a run down of my Christmas Break. This is my first day back to work and boy was it hard to get up this morning. Whit and I went to Utah for 10 days over Christmas and had a lovely time. Before heading up to Salt Lake City I was scared of the cold and snow, but it was actually great to have a white Christmas and nice to experience Winter again (good in small doses). It was really just great to have no responsibilities, to sleep in, read, see movies, spend time with family and friends - all the things I wanted from my Christmas break. We got way too many gifts, including a ton of dvd's (super excited about A Bit of Fry and Laurie dvd's). I saw Scrooged for the first time and loved it, Bill Murray is genius. We went to Sweeney Todd, which was bloodily wonderful. We went to two Jazz games, against the Mavericks and the Celtics (Dirk is a huge German and K.G. is sleek). I got to spend time with friends from the U of U who I hadn't seen for some time (Cassie, JC, Ashley, Kelsie, Sean, Cory) - they are so much fun and I miss them terribly. I got to visit one of my friends and my first real crush from Bryant Junior High, Jared Wright, who now has the three cutest kids ever. I got to see my hero, Carter Williams; visits with him always mean I will laugh and be humbled. I went through storage at my parents' house and got to travel down memory lane as I sifted through boxes full of toys and weevils. I was in a throwing away mood and gave away most of the toys, which I feel good about, but also a strange sense of guilt. I played Rock Band at my sisters house - and felt really cool. I ate delicious raspberry thumbprint cookies and candy cane cookies. It was a fantastic vacation. It was weird coming back to L.A. and realizing it was still t-shirt weather here, although I feel my blood adjusting again to feeling cold when it drops into the 60's. Now it's 2008 and I am ready to find a new job (well, that is an ongoing goal) and get fit (good-bye sugar, hello working out at 5:30a.m.- we'll see). So, Happy New Year to all and to all a good night.

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.