What an ordeal for poor JLo. I don't know how she could handle it (she's a better broad than I, I suppose) Working day in and day out for months with---

---and then going home to the pallid little wraith that is her husband.
OK, OK...totally shallow of me, I realize that. Maybe J-Lo didn't come away from "The Back-up Plan" shoot totally let down by reality. Maybe. (Oh, but come on...LOOK at that guy!)

Wishing all my freaky-wild amigos the happiest of Bicycle Days….

Reunited--and it feels so good

I am not really a Tom Hanks fan. His DaVinci Code hair grossed me out and, speaking of grody Tom Hanks (and going back even further) the whole premise of Big grossed me out. I guess that was more on account of Elizabeth Perkins’s character though. This broad schtupps a 12 yr old and— well, to her credit, she didn’t know that at the time—but I don’t think she was adequately mortified when she did find out. I think she’s sort of a pre LaTourneau LaTournea figure, si? That, in a nutshell, is my whole problem with that flick. Minor detail, perhaps, but it sorta sours the whole thing for me. Though it does have Robert Loggia in it, so it’s not a total waste o’ film.

Anyways, back to Tom Hanks. My DaVinci hair aversion aside, (and I’ve decided not to count the ickiness of Big against him) I just don’t get the appeal of Tom Hanks …especially not as a romantic comedy lead. Although I did really like Sleepless in Seattle, but I think that’s a testament to how very likable pre-Crowe Meg Ryan was. I totally love When Harry Met Sally and you’ve got to have a special kind of heroine to make you go along with Billy Crystal for a romantic lead. (“There is too much pepper on my paprikash. But I would be proud to partake of your pecan piiiiiiie.” Haa.) Oh, and a couple other Meg Ryan rom-com musts –a smidge obscure but waaay watchable-- Addicted to Love (w/ Matthew Broderick—I own this DVD) French Kiss (w/ Kevin Kline—I want to get that one; I don’t have it, but I’ve seen it like a thousand times somehow) Meg Ryan was so adorable…but then in the late nineties, a lethal combination of Botox and Russell Crowe sapped all the spark, & joi de vivre out of her. So sad. But I keep veering off topic. The topic is Tom Hanks.
I’m not anti-Tom Hanks. He doesn’t impress me, but he doesn’t impress me negatively either. I’m just kind of apathetic toward him. However, I read THIS today, and I do believe it moved my approval-meter a notch or two toward “Like” in regards to Hanks. Granted, it’s not stop-the-presses news, and it’s sure as hell not going to compel me to watch the TV Land Awards, but still it’s nice. It seems like, more often than not, big stars will shun their humble beginnings. For instance, I think we will see blizzards in Hell before we see Clooney make an appearance on a Facts of Life reunion.
So I find this news pleasing. Good on ya, Hanksie!!

Today was my first day back to work after taking Monday & Tuesday off. So that was pretty distasteful, but I was wise enough to go in there with utterly abyssmal expectations.. . .expectations so low that even a shitty day would seem a surprisingly good outcome. That more or less worked. I Jedi mind tricked meself.

Lemme give you a Reader's Digest rundown of my uneventful days off before I move along to other mundane non-events. ...

• Saturday I met my sister for lunch at noon...it felt wrong to go to lunch so goldang early. What's next-- dinner at 4pm? I'm programmed for 1pm lunch, but even so, I can be flexible on the weekends. But noon is too too much...most egregious of all, I feel like it ate up precious sleeping-in hours. Later on Saturday I made the world's finest omelet. I'm putting it on my resume, I was so effing impressed with myself.


• Sunday...did absolutely nada.


• Monday, I had a scrap of a plan to scope out the Vermont Country Store in Weston VT. I'm kinda a big VT Country Store fan, which is totally bizarro when you are actually from Vermont, but go figger. I've been to the Rockingham store a dozen or so times (it's really not far from me) but I've never been to the original VT Country Store in Weston. So I was going to abscond with the Tom-Tom and make my way there. Buuuuuuut...I made up for Saturday (and then some) and slept in majorly and I didn't get primed, preened & ready for take-off until 2:30, at which point Tom-Tom informed me that the VT Country Store (which I still adore, even if I am tiring of typing its name)in Weston was 1hour and 42 minutes away from me, and since said merchantile closes at 5:30 pm I decided to hastily cobble together a plan B. So I cruised to a mall and indulged in a smallish spree and then went to the movies. Now this was not my first stab at solo movie going, but I felt like I was taking it to a whole 'nutha level by seeing a movie called "Date Night" "Date Night" was really good by the way, I'd definitely see it again. The plot was pretty unsurprising, formulaic material, but Carrell & Fey very capably made up for it. Both were hellah funny, and together they made an amusingly believable couple. Oh, and I now really wanna see "Get Him to the Greek" which was one of the previews (the bestest one) before Date Night . The trailer was SO funny that it does make me wonder if they saved any good bits for the movie. Also there was a trailer for "The A-Team" which almost looked good (y'know, for what it is...) but then Jessica Biel flashed onscreen and I wrote the flick off entirely. I can't explicate why exactly, but I have a fierce Jessica Biel aversion. And it's not that I want JT all to myself (I don't think that's it) I mean, he was with Cameron Diaz for quite a long time and I only have a mild aversion to her. So it' s probably not the JT factor. I don't know what it is. But she's ruined the ATeam movie for me without my ever having seen it and I do think it would have been kinda rad if, when working on the movie Valentine's Day, if she'd really annoyed Jessica Alba and that annoyance did a slow roiling boil into rage and Alba had gone into a berserker THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE (Jessica) Outlander-style break with reality and taken Biel out. ANYWHOOO...Date Night...good movie. If you can bear shilling out for something in shabby, old timey 2D, then I highly recommend it.


• Tuesday I took a friend out to lunch for her birthday. That was lovely. Then, in a last ditch effort for mini-holiday adventure, I bought gelato and a kind of wine that I'd never had before. That worked out well in the past with Gewurztraminer...which I bought one day just because I was enchanted by its big long kooky name on the label, but now it's one of my go- to wines. I bought Malbec yesterday and it's not half bad (it just so happens I polished off the bottle tonight) but beaujolais is still my favorite red (at this juncture anyways--I'm still quite the noob when it comes to vino) (Typing these last few lines called to my mind this skit...which I so love)

So I'm back to work, and I've begun a stint housesitting for my sister while she is driving the fam down to Florida. Suuuure, I didn't have to stay here, I coulda just popped in on the cats daily, but she has this big nice house , which looks so much bigger and nicer when contrasted with my wee putrid studio apartment. So, natch, I'm going to play at nesting for a week and a half. Oh, and her cable is 100 x better than mine. I mean, she has THE GAME SHOW NETWORK. Me wonders if they're still playing old Love Connections in the afternoons....if so, I may DVR those.

Tonight I was in the bathroom (don't fret...I am not going to get all TMI here. It wouldn't be waaay uncharacteristic of me, but truly, I'm NOT gonna) at the grocery store..in the handicapped stall and I spotted , mounted low on the wall right next to the TP dispenser---

it looked just like that. Would seem to be a doorbell, I 'spose but por que ? I was compelled to push the button and see what happened, but I was also running through the myriad disastrous possible outcomes of giving in to that curiosity. My first thought was that it was a "help-I've-fallen-AND-I-CAN'T-GET-UP!!"button and I wasn't really keen on the Shaw's bag boy kicking in my stall door like fecking Starsky, to ply my sorry ass off the scuzzy tiles.

Or--zoinks!--it coulda triggered an ejector seat.

Obviously, I refrained from pushing the mystery button.

I used to be a frequent viewer of Craig Ferguson’s Late Show, but once Jimmy Fallon got his show on NBC (in that same time slot) I switched over to that. I still like Ferguson quite a lot (he’s Scottish, ain’t he?) but I just felt like, in the interests of keeping my MUST-see-TV roster pared down, there COULD ONLY BE ONE in that 12:35 slot.

Since I stopped watching, it seems like Ferguson is coming a bit unhinged, which of course, intrigues me. He’s doing like, monologues via puppet and one recent show he eschewed the regular talk show format and had one guest for the whole hour (and a good pick too—the very cool Stephen Fry). But this clip I stumbled on to online finally convinces me that I MUST start DVRing Ferguson in addition to Fallon--

EPILOGUE TO MY LAST POST OF LAST NIGHT---embedding those vids (which, very annoyingly are slightly cut off on their right sides for some strange reason) has resulted in me having the song “Think About the Epilleptic Dogs” stuck in my head. And ya know how sometimes, when a song gets stuck in your head there will be one bit that will, arbitrarily stick harder than the rest of the song? Like in this instance, I keep hearing Brett belt out “Send a check and a letter to make a setter feel better!!!”

loooove...

Adult Swim's /Cartoon Network's new "Brit Block" programming is fabu, though I'm not really into the old eps of the original Office (even though I do like Ricky Gervais). Anywhooo, it was through the Brit Block that I've recently discovered The Mighty Boosh. I am very, very smitten. Their shit is f-ing hilarious, and I get the feeling that their great accents make it all 10x more hilarious. Well when I reimagine it with an American accent, it's still funny I suppose..just significantly less delightful. I dunno why that is. I shouldn't overthink it. I just love these guys...

I can't help but compare them to another terrif duo, Flight of the Conchords...

Both are a couple of comedic buddies, rockin' the delightful accents, both have that trying-to-make-it-in-the-music-biz premise in common. There are differences, of course. The major difference being the strong fantasy element in Boosh (shamen, the singing Moon, and tranny sea creatures, for a start) Also, the pals in Boosh really seem to adhere to the Ernie-Bert paradigm of friendship, whereas FOTC guys seem to be a pair of Berts.

I just love both shows/teams. And yet...I feel strangely compelled to pick a favorite.

Rationally, I know that I could just adore them both and there's no real need to designate a fave. I suppose there is just an intrinsic human proclivity to impose competition on like commodities. A hard-wired questioning of "Yes....but which one is BETTER??" This, you see, explains the existence of "Deadliest Warrior" on Spike TV and "Animal Face-off" on Animal Planet. BTW, that show on Animal Planet claimed that in a tiger-lion fight , the lion would win. Bollocks! I still say a tiger would triumph in that match-up (my sister and I have actually debated this several times, her arguing for a Lion-victory)

Well, back to the match at hand---I call that it's waaaay too tough to call. I shan't ever decide (it's like Sophie's choice!). I suppose I can leave it up to you all to pick my favorite. I will provide brief clips of each show --a wee taste of each brand of comedic brilliance--to give you some basis for your judgement.

The Mighty Boosh-- Vince is trying to talk Howard into a party for his birthday. He proposes a bouncy house at this possible bash....



Flight of the Conchords-- trying to impress a girl, Brett & Jemaine throw a benefit concert to raise awareness/funds to ease the plight of epileptic dogs...

losin' it

Today, I picked up a bus schedule and was perusing it with great interest. I've never taken the bus around here but the-ever-more-decrepit sloppy jalopy is giving me signs that make me feel like...well, like it would behoove me to familiarize myself with the bus schedule.

Lemme tell you about the symptom du jour. It started on April 1 actually, and I harbored a funny, irrational expectation that it would just miraculously vanish on the 2nd because--haaa!--the jalopy was April foolin' me!! Anyways, sometimes when I hit rough road now, or ride over a divet where a manhole cover is, my car makes a noise like kicking a toolbox. Kicking a toolbox full of heavy old tools, not the made-in-China Sally tools they sell in the poor excuse of an automotive section at Walgreens. But I digress... The noise seems to dwell in the front right corner of the car (shocks shit the bed, I'm thinkin'??) but it doesn't happen *every* time I hit a bump. Well, obviously...because it's more apt to drive me bat guano loco the more confoundingly inconsistent it is! Everytime it does happen, I look quickly into my rearview to see if I have a trail of clangy bits bouncing down the road in my wake.

So while driving from Point A to Point B nowadays, I have this impatient urgency to reach Point B. If the sloppy jalopy is going to die, I want for it to die in its sleep. I just will go to it, at Point A some morning, go to start it up and...."meeh. Nothin' doin', fucker" ...it won't go. But what I dread is that it will crap out, en route to somewhere... and it feels more apt to do this while I'm idling somewhere--at a stop sign, or waiting for the dude in front of me to turn. So I am wanting to be in motion as much as possible, and it causes me to be very irritable with my fellow drivers. So irritable, actually, that I'm losing all ability to cuss out other drivers with any style or creativity.

A specific example--I was behind a slow right-turner the other day, the type of driver that has been vexing me the most. I mean, even with my propensity for continual vehicular motion, I still don't fancy turning into oncoming traffic whilest executing a left turn. For that reason, I have a modicum of patience for left turners. They have damned good reason for their pausing. But you don't have to come to a complete stop and wait a full one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi before commencing your sllloooooowwwwww motion right turn..GAWWWW! So yeah, while waiting behind one of these agonizingly pokey right turners the other day, I hollered out, "MOVE ALREADY, YOU FUCK-FUCK!!"

I ....called somebody... a "Fuck-Fuck". "Fuck-Fuck"?? Undoubtedly, some of your finest quality epithets contain the F-bomb but... fuck-fuck? That's like elemental caveman profanity. I'm so disappointed in myself!!!

tunes

My iPod spit out some stellar 80s songs during my commute-home shuffle.

First off was "Vienna Calling" by Falco. I don't think this one was ever as popular as "Rock Me Amadeus". I love it though. "..Amadeus" probably is the better song, but I don't think it right that "Vienna Calling"is overshadowed. I think I just love pop songs in German. Further proving this theory-- I am markedly less into "99 Red Balloons " vs "99 Luftballons".

Speaking of ethnic 80s rock, I also listened to one of my more obscure gems- "Live is Life" by Opus. OK, so that particular tune is in English. But I always got the strong sense , when I heard it back in the day, that Opus was...uhhh, not of this country. In fact, I got the idea into my head that they were Greek, definitely Greek. I had never actually heard or read that about them...it's like they just struck me as Greek, and at some point I converted that impression into a cold-fact.

So tonight I look up the "Live is Life" video on YouTube and watching it, I think: "I thought these guys were Greek but now I see that they are actually SUPER DUPER GREEK" I mean, c'mon-- that crazy-ass gymnast lead singer guy, and that one guitarist (the one leading the audience in the up-high clap-along at 50 sec. in) How can those dudes not be Greek??



They're AUSTRIAN!! How could I have been so off base? But, Austrian? Really???? They don't look even slightly Cap'n VonTrappish !! But I read this on Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is super DUPER smart.

Last 80s tune I heard this evening was Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough". That is *such* a quintessential 80s song. I think it's the beginning, especially. There's a lot of 80s flava synth out there in the world, but I don't know that any tops the opening riff of "Just Can't Get Enough" for y'know...sheer eightiesness.

It's just as well that I'm enjoying my current cache of tuneage, since I am at an impasse with iTunes. 3310 songs should be sufficient, but now that I am unable to buy any new tracks, there's all these songs I want. For instance, I have been loving everything I've heard off of Vampire Weekend's new album Contra. And I've loved the song 1901 (by Phoenix)for ages now, but just recently figured out its title & artist .

Here's the deal with my iTunes-- I had my whole library on my sister's computer--kept there because of the speediness of her internet. But then they had some internet connectivity issues a while back, and there was twiddling around with their computer innards, connectivity probs were solved, but iTunes had to be reinstalled and the whole library..GONZO...well maybe the tunes are in there somewhere, but I'll be damned if I could find 'em.

My niece plugged her iPod touch in and transferred her purchases, so now there is a bit of a library on there--580 songs approx. But when I plugged mine in, the only option I'm given is "Erase & Synch" so I just hit "Cancel" and disconnected.

I did a bit of snooping about on the web and I think if I get a new computer ( I'm hoping to scrape together some moolah and buy a laptop) and download iTunes on that, I can use the tips in THIS article to get all my songs in the new library. (Just noticed, when creating that link, that the article I'm pinning all my hopes on dates back to 2006...that unnerves me a smidge) Until then, though--musical-spending freeze.

In the meantime, I'm going low tech... I was putting silverware away tonight and felt compelled to try and play the spoons. I got some kind of sound out of them, but I can't figure how anyone can manage any sort of tune on the spoons. (haa! Rhyming!!) Perhaps I just haven't watched that Soundgarden video enough.

I guess my only hope of jugband superstardom is on the washboard. It's gotta be a cinch to play the washboard. I can play a jug, but I don't think I have the lung capacity to really excel at it. Once upon a time, I bought a jaw harp on a whim but I've not figured out how to play it. It looks so damned easy on YouTube, but I've found it to be damned difficult!! I have taken to carrying this jaw harp around in my purse. I think the oddball reasoning behind this is that if the instrument is semi-omnipresent and often on my person, I'll be reminded that I need to learn it. If my life were a movie, the camera would have panned in close on that perplexing jaw harp by now and I'd be soon to get into some scrape where I need to beguile people via music to save my life. You know, the type o' scenario. It'd be like PeeWee staving off a biker beating with his brilliant big shoe shuffle (Tequila!) except, if it's my jawharp saving me, I'd prob'ly be in Arkansas and the menace would come from dirty fellers wearing no shirts under their overalls (ack!! phantom nipple chafe at the thought!!)

kind of a shocker, really.

..I mean it sincerely this time...no smartassery intended. McCarthy & Carey have split. They truly did strike me as a viable couple...

chicks 'n' tix

I was driving home tonight and spotted a yard full of chickens, sans coop, totally uncontained by any fencing...uber-free range, eh? Which is just delightful for these chickens, until they figure out that they are on a major class 1 road in the center of town, and they are going to find that out THE HARD WAY, brutha!! If one of those chickens toddled across the sidewalk and into the path of my vehicle, not only would I NOT swerve to miss it, I would take that roadkill home and fricasse the baaastid.

It's not so much that I'm bothered by the notion of vehicular poultryslaughter, but I am just perplexed at these people whose house is practically rubbing up against their neighbors', they have a lot that's 1/64th of an acre and they say, " Gosh, we've got a good place for rearin' up some farm animals here, don't we?"


No. No, you don't.


In other critter news, tick season is upon us again (so BE ON GUARD!) No, I don't get any special newsletters, rather, I came to this conclusion when I plucked a ginormo tick off of Boogerbear the wonder cat. So I had this fatty tick pinched between my tweezers and I was waving it around and doing a sort of impromptu show & tell but then I didn't really know the officially sanctioned S.O.P. for tick disposal. My dad said to just throw it in the garbage, but that felt wrong to me. My What Wouldn't a Horror Movie Chick Do? behavioral code kicking in there, perhaps. One ought to consider in every sitch what a chick in a horror movie would do, and do the total opposite, because horror movie chicks invariably make the most RUHtarded decisions. So, no thank you, I will NOT throw the presumed-dead tick in the garbage so it can sneak its way out and surreptitiously muckle on to me to later exact its revenge when I am least expecting it. I didn't just fall off the rutabaga truck this morning, brutha. (in case you's wondering, I am channeling Hulk Hogan somewhat, yes)


It just so happened I was in the garage with the bastard tick, a good venue to work my resourceful adlibbin' magic. I ripped off a bit of duct tape--roughly 2"x3"--and placed this, sticky side up on top of the bench vise , and then stuck the tick on one side of the tape. I folded the duct tape over the victim, and then I SMASHED him with a ball peen hammer. The smashing was superfluous, I suppose. I was avenging my poor, darling, supped-on cat. I then threw the square of duct tape in the garbage.

My sister said it's when ticks burst that Lyme disease is spread...so it's sliiiightly possible that I'm a big plague-monger, but I think I was pretty fastidious about the whole operation, it's unlikely that I'm guilty of Lymey-D propagation..

My aunt's cat is apt to be quite tick-riddled and she said (it was a big family tick symposium-me, my aunt, my sister...pretty fascinating conversationalists, our lot) that she flushes all ticks she plucks. Now that really runs afoul of WWAHMCD? logic. I mean, if you happened to pluck that very spiteful, greatly ambitious uber-tick...well, he'd have pretty spectacular means for revenge now wouldn't he??

Release the Kraken!!

Whenever I see ads for “Clash of the Titans” my ears perk up at the bit where Liam Neeson intones: “Release the Kraken!” There’s not much else for dialogue in the trailer (possibly that’s the only dialogue, I can’t completely recall) but they made sure to cram that phrase in there. It’s almost like…”For your consideration—the Movie Catchphrase of the Year for 2010. . .” And though I was thinking it has immortal movie catchphrase potential, its major flaw is that it may struggle to be relevant to everyday conversation.
However the phrase did pop in to my head this morning (I mention, at the risk of thoroughly repulsing one and all) as I was trying to eject a singularly stubborn deuce. So there’s that …but aside from scatological jests I can’t think of any apropos applications…