Girl Crush! July 22, 2008

I cannot. stop. listening to One of the Boys by Katy Perry. Living in LA has sort of skewed my perspective on what’s popular, but “I Kissed A Girl” was all over the radio a few weeks ago, so I assume everyone everywhere knows it. It’s pretty much everything I look for in a pop album: catchy melodies and a little bit of guilt. I can’t guarantee this isn’t an album I’ll listen to a hundred times and then banish the way of the All-American Rejects, but for now I love it. Besides, anybody who cites Queen, the Beach Boys, Heart, and your mom as musical influences gets high marks in my book. “Waking Up in Vegas” is maybe my favorite song. “Ur So Gay” I thought was stupid until I saw the video, but now it’s growing on me.

Also, Katy Perry is my new style icon. I love the whole 40s and 50s pinup look, with the halter top and retro glasses. I might have to find myself some red lipstick. And my hair is definitely going to be going dark again soon. I think she looks like Zooey Deschanel. (Which is a good thing.) Anyway, if you haven’t seen the video for “I Kissed A Girl”, watch it and maybe drool a little bit:

Bonus video for “Thinking of You”:

I think it’s German for “Whale’s Vagina” July 11, 2008

I’m leaving tomorrow to head down Mexico way via Hell’s Mouth, so I thought I should at least mention last weekend’s trip before it slips away from me.

I drove down to San Diego for the 4th and met up with Chocolate Thunder and Jenn and Co. I don’t know how, but Chocolate Thunder’s friend has a pretty sweet setup right along the beach.  It was good times, despite the thick fog (that came straight out of The Mist) covering the city for most of the day. Six of us split a room at La Quinta Inn, which was quite a deal at $20 per person. I even got to stay for free, since I gave my beach chair to Jenn, who promptly lost it.

The one thing about traveling in large groups is that it is sometimes hard for everyone to decide on what to do. Especially when you don’t know or aren’t friends with everybody.  I remember all the marching band trips we took as the most fun I ever had in high school, but I think those memories are probably seen through rose-colored glasses. At the time we were tired and cranky, spent a lot of time on buses, were always on time deadlines, and never had any time alone. I’m glad I’ve reached the point in my life where I can say, you know, I think I’ll just hang by myself for awhile. Which I did, and it was awesome. It makes for a much better vacation to not have to compromise or wait on strangers.

Saturday night we hung out in downtown San Diego and walked around the Gaslamp Quarter.  As far as downtowns go, San Diego’s is up there. Far better than the non-existent nightlife in Phoenix, and I’d have to even give it the edge over Denver. LoDo has a lot of bars and restaurants, but San Diego just seemed to have way more selection.  We ended up eating at Bondi, an Australian restaurant (which may have been a first for me, since I don’t think they count Outback Steak House). They had big weird tree sculptures made out of boomerangs. I had fish and chips, which, while good, I thought was British?

*Update: I’m not heading down Mexico way as previous planned. Lame-dash-o. Maybe I’ll hit up the outlet mall instead. Cause yeah, that’s about the same.

Listless July 9, 2008

The Big Read 100, stolen from Gretchen, because I like books and I’m OCD about lists.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - Ms. Hendry made us read it over Christmas break and I hated it. The Keira Knightley movie didn’t help. But it’s maybe growing on me.
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte – Sitting on my bookshelf, unread. I’ll get to it someday.
4. The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell – Dislike it greatly.
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens – Gets my vote for first book to go at a book burning.
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien – I don’t get the appeal, really.
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens – But I would rather just watch the movie then read anymore Dickens.
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy – I’d like to read it just to say I have…the other Tolstoy I read made me want to cry.
25. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll – My favorite book written while on LSD.
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis – They do know this is part of the Chronicles of Narnia, right?
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell –Like most things Orwell did, this made me uncomfortable and angry.
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery – I’ve got to start rereading all my young adult books. I loved Anne of Green Gables.
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding –Best Simpsons episode ever.
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry .
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Read: 40. To-read: 25

Well I guess that was entertaining. I’m not sure who came up with this list, and decided to put The Da Vinci Code and Bridget Jones’ Diary up there with the likes of Austen and Shakespeare. I haven’t even heard of a bunch of these.

Ode to Summer July 3, 2008

In honor of the best holiday ever (bbq, hot dogs, potato salad, apple pie, vanilla ice cream, sparklers, fireworks, carnivals, action movies, light out until 9 o’clock, baseball, watermelon, live music, *marching bands*…I rest my case), an ode:

Summer

The swing creaks gently,
the world moves slowly left to right.
earth covered toes drape over the armrest
at the end. a hand trails
in the cool grass. a page turns,
time passes, not in hours-but in chapters
the sun sinks below the mountains
darkness peeks around the corner
makes sure it is safe, and swiftly
tiptoes its way into the open.
the heat outlasts the light
blanketing everything in a thick
mosquito-filled haze. the sprinkler
makes its slow precise arc, clattering
and clicking, the water showers
the pavement, moves on, making shallow
puddles in the tomato patch
before whooshing back to begin again.
the crickets begin their night-long
symphony as soft light begins to glow
from the Chinese lanterns
a few yards down. children
race their bikes in the street,
the clicking of the cards in the spokes
is barely audible over the sound
of their laughter.
the screen door slams
and knowing hands light the candles
on the table, then the tiny barbecue.
the coals glow, sparks flutter into the
sky, joining the fireflies in their dance.
the night is lazy, filled with heat,
broken only by a soft breeze,
too light
to lift the arms of the
leaf-leaden trees. it provides
little relief; a book becomes a fan,
the power lines overhead begin to hum
as air conditioners are set on high
and summer is infinite

Summer Rewind: Roswell June 28, 2008

I read somewhere in an interview with Joss Whedon that the basic idea behind Buffy was the idea that high school is hell- literally. Another show that aired on the WB at about the same time - Roswell - is based on the premise that everyone feels a bit like they’re from another planet in high school, except some people really are. While Roswell never experienced the critical success or longevity that Buffy did, it did gain a bit of a cult following. I lost track of the show somewhere between the second and third season, so I’m finally getting around to rewatching it and trying to figure out what happened.

The show is centered around 3 aliens- Max (Jason Behr), Isabel (a pre-Grey’s Anatomy Katherine Heigl) and Michael (Brendan Fehr), who were aliens from the ship that crashed in Roswell in 1947, though they were incubating in pods for forty years until they emerged in human form. Max and Isabel were adopted by a loving family and have grown up as brother and sister, while Michael got stuck in a not-so-great foster situation. They all know that they’re different- they have certain alien powers-like the ability to “manipulate simple molecular structures”, but they don’t know who they are or where they come from. The pilot episode introduces us to Liz Parker (Shiri Appleby) and Maria DeLuca (Majandra Delfino), two normal high school girls and waitresses at the Crash Down Café, which Liz’s parents own. Liz just happens to be the life-long crush of Max, and when she is shot during an altercation at the restaurant, he uses his alien powers to save her life- effectively blowing his cover. A couple is sure they’ve seen Liz get shot, and raise their concerns to the sheriff (William Sadler), who becomes suspicious after finding a bullet hole in Liz’s dress, but no bullet and no injury. After Max fesses up to Liz about where he’s from and swears her to secrecy, emphasizing how important it is that she not tell anyone about their secret because it may put their lives in danger- she immediately tells her best friend Maria. Eventually, guy friend Alex (Colin Hanks) finds out about the aliens too- and the rest of the first season is spent running from the FBI- who have begun investigating the three after the sheriff asks them to analyze Liz’s dress for traces of blood.

The first season stands out as the best to me, aside from Majandra Delfino’s haircut, which probably qualifies as some type of crime. Sheriff Valenti starts off as the bad guy- asking questions, vowing to find out the truth about Max no matter what it takes. Over the course of the season, as the FBI pushes him aside, he starts to realize which side of the battle he’d rather be on. I think ultimately, he just wanted to believe. His father was pushed out of the Sheriff’s office for crazy talk about aliens, and in a way he’s searching for vindication. One of the more interesting characters is the Sheriff’s son, Kyle (Nick Wechsel). He starts the show off as Liz’s boyfriend, but is pushed aside once Liz goes all googly eyed for Max. Nobody will tell him what’s going on- his friends, his father, his girlfriend. He’s the one character who’s essentially left in the dark (for awhile).

The second season starts to delve deeper into science fiction. A fourth alien has appeared in Roswell, Tess (Emilie de Raven), who claims to be Max’s wife in a former life. It sort of throws a kink in Max and Liz’s relationship, and Tess ultimately ends up being the main villain of season 2. I think Roswell suffered from the constant threat of being canceled, as evidenced by the meandering plot in season 2. It’s as if the writers had a bunch of ideas for future plot lines- and in a panic that they wouldn’t be able to use them all, tried to work them all in. Perhaps the most contrived moment is when future Max comes back in time to tell Liz that she has to get present Max to fall out of love with her - or the Earth will be destroyed. After seeing Liz “in bed” with the Kyle, her one-time boyfriend, Max grows closer to Tess, ultimately sleeping with her, seemingly fulfilling the destiny Tess has always spoken of. Lest we forget this was a teen drama on the WB, Tess realizes that she’s pregnant the very next morning, in a great lesson for young viewers - if you have sex, you will immediately get pregnant, and it may even ruin your life so much that you have to leave the planet because your alien offspring can’t survive in the atmosphere.

During the second season, Colin Hanks wanted to shoot Orange County, but apparently didn’t have time to do both the movie and the show, and opted for the former. Rather than come up for some plausible reason why Alex leaves the show, the writers decide to kill him off in a tragic car accident. While it didn’t quite reek of the Sarah’s-head-in-a-box plot development on Prison Break, it was probably the moment the show jumped the shark for me. Aside from watching all his friends cry for an entire episode (which was incredibly depressing), the ultimate explanation about what really happened - and I won’t give it away - doesn’t really do it for me.

The third season of Roswell actually aired on SciFi, after being dumped by the WB. It was evident to me that the writers said “F*@$ it!” at this point, because the plot takes some interesting (read: stupid) turns. Isabel’s marriage to the unsuspecting Jesse was the biggest WTF. The only real reason I kept watching was that I was invested by this point, I had all the episodes available, and I was on vacation, so I didn’t really care about staying up until 4 am. If you’re absolutely bored out of your mind, and in the mood for some teen angst, I’d recommend it. Oh and it has my favorite Dido song as the theme, so there’s that.

Photo Mosaic June 25, 2008

1. liad&megan , 2. The Last Supper… at Chipotle, 3. Atardecer en el Chaparral (Bolonia), 4. The Chesil Beach at Portland, 5. Emile Hirsch & James McAvoy, 6. A postcard for the Margarita island, 7. Toledo bajo el sol, 8. carrot cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting, 9. Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport , 10. I want to be where the Sun warms the sky, 11. Tome Reader, 12. Untitled

The rules:
a. type your answer to each of the questions below into flickr search
b. using only the first page, pick an image
c. copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker

The questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food? (Chipotle)
3. What high school did you go to? (Chaparral)
4. What is your favorite color? (blue)
5. Who is your celebrity crush? (James McAvoy)
6. Favorite drink? (Margaritas)
7. Dream vacation? (Spain)
8. Favorite dessert? (Carrot Cake)
9. What you want to be when you grow up? (Traveler)
10. What do you love most in life? (Summer)
11. One Word to describe you. (Bookworm)
12. Your flickr name

The Want Game June 1, 2008

Friday I finally got around to watching one of the DVDs I’ve been holding hostage from Netflix, The Good German. I’m not sure why I had this in my queue to begin with. When you actually change the TV display to count down how many minutes are left in the movie, I think it’s safe to say the movie blows. Finally, it was over and I got up to hit the eject button and nothing happened. I hit the button again on the remote. Nothing. I turned it off and back on again- still nothing. It was 2 o’clock in the morning, I had just sat through a terrible George Clooney movie - which in itself is truly upsetting- and I was already in a weird funk that day. I almost broke down in tears because my stupid DVD player wasn’t working. I decided maybe it was time to get some sleep.

The next morning it still didn’t work. I found a pair of scissors and tried to pry the thing open, which only succeeded in snapping off the edge of the tray. About fifteen minutes later I had the movie out, but the player was in pieces. I may or may not have stabbed the LED clockface with a screwdriver. It was always ahead anyway. For awhile I debated throwing myself a pity party and having to suffer through watching movies on my laptop forever and ever, sad and alone. Instead I decided to play my favorite self-defeating game: I Want That! It goes like this:

If I’m going to get a new DVD player, I should just look into getting a new TV that comes with a DVD player, right? I mean my TV is about to crap out anyway, I’m going to have to upgrade at some point. Maybe a 32″ flat screen. I mean we did get those stimulus checks. And I just paid off my American Express. I could just charge it. I have a job, right?

But if I do that, then I’d want to get a new TV stand. My current set sits on the metal shelves I had in my dorm room. But then where would I put all my books? I need another bookcase. (At this point I get out a tape measure.) But maybe I should try to rearrange things and put my bed against the other wall. Oh I need a new mattress too. And since I have to buy a new mattress I might as well get a Queen size. Of course then I need a new frame. And then I’d need a new bedspread. Of course, then I could change the whole color scheme around. I was planning on putting up different artwork on the walls anyway….

And so it goes. I’ve redecorated this place dozens of times in my head. And that’s just my bedroom. I won’t even start on the living room. I think my mind would explode if we were allowed to paint or remodel. But as it turns out, I don’t have money for any of this. So all this stuff goes on a list of “Things to Save Up To Buy” except the only money I can save goes to buy electricity. Incidentally, this is just one of the many reasons I had to quit working at Bed Bath and Beyond. I was always redecorating in my head. I nearly had a nervous breakdown trying to pick out a bed set.

In the end I wound up spending $35 on a cheap DVD player that’ll likely break in the coming months. But I was able to watch a movie tonight- and I even got the movie back from the electronic device when it was over. It was so pleasant in fact, that I completely spaced on my work shift. So much for that list.

Indiana Jones and other things May 25, 2008

Warning! Spoilers for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull follow!

I have to say this has been a fairly disappointing Memorial Day weekend. It’s been cloudy and rainy since Friday, I have tons of school work to do, and I haven’t hardly done anything worth mentioning. Well except for yesterday, I went with some friends to see the new Indiana Jones movie. I knew it was going to be crazy busy, but I didn’t expect it would be that busy. We wanted to see the 2 o’clock show but didn’t get in until the 4 o’clock show. And we were in line for an hour before the doors opened. They’ve been showing marathons of the first three movies on cable for the past couple weeks, so I’d like to think I’m fairly caught up on the back story. Obviously, nearly twenty years have passed since The Last Crusade, and apparently since that time Indiana has been a decorated war hero, dear old Dad has passed (or Sean Connery passed on the movie?), and the government has become suspicious of Indy’s communist connections. (My apologies if some of this is incorrect. It was sort of glossed over rather quickly). Obviously, the Nazis have been defeated and have been replaced by the equally villainous KGB. As Indy is about to flee the country after nearly being killed by an atomic blast (did he somehow gain invincibility? I know he drank from the Holy Grail…) and interrogated by FBI agents, Shia Lebeouf in full-on Greaser gear shows up with a plea from his mother to come to South America and help an old friend who has been captured in a search for a crystal skull. After a 50s diner brawl that gave me serious Back to the Future deja vú, they jet set south to the tune of John Williams’ infamous overture.

The thing that I liked best about the first three movies, and maybe less so for Temple of Doom, is that they were questing after actual well-known historical artifacts. The cursory googling I did about crystal skulls reveals there are some crystal skulls that have been discovered in South America, but their origins are hotly disputed and none of the known crystal skulls have been shown to come from an actual excavation. So while maybe the crystal skulls aren’t as well known as the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail, at least there is some historical basis for their inclusion in the movie. Where Spielberg, or I guess, the writers decided to take it-alien origins- is where I start to doubt things. This film definitely starting delving into science fiction towards the end, which in a way, makes some sense to me. The first few films are ultimately about the search for truth and the test of Indy’s own faith as they are about crashing boulders, cracking whips and melting Nazis. So to throw aliens into the mix doesn’t shake things up too much; if you’ve seen spirits flying out of the Ark and a centuries old Knight guarding the Holy Grail, then seeing an alien space ship appear in the middle of the Amazonian jungle and disappear into “the space in between spaces” probably wouldn’t be all that shocking. So I understand how they justified the plot, but I don’t know if I like it. It was weird, to say the least. There was one other point with Shia LeBeouf pulling a Tarzan with some monkeys that really stretched the limits of believability, but I think the way to approach the movie is to just let go of any notions of reality and have fun. I really did enjoy it, and I’ll probably watch it again when it comes out on DVD.

One last point- yes, Harrison Ford is old. Karen Allen is old. But it’s been twenty years! People age, and I have to say Harrison Ford looked damn good. Aside from the fact that he obviously looks older than he did in the last installments, I don’t think I would’ve noticed the difference. He kicked the shit out of quite a few people. Oh and the ants- the ants were freaky.

On to the other things:

While I was waiting for the movie to start I stopped by the bookstore and picked up “Love is a Mix Tape” by Rob Sheffield. I’ve had it on my list of books to read for awhile now, and I read nearly half of it last night. It’s by Rob Sheffield, who is an editor for Rolling Stone. “Love is a Mix Tape” is part memoir and part love letter to his wife, who died suddenly at a young age. I love High Fidelity, so it’s no surprise I love this book. If you’ve ever made a mix tape I’d recommend it. I should probably stop reading right before I fall asleep because I woke up at 5 am with playlists running through my head. Sort of a last-thing-you-thought-of type thing, I guess.

I woke up again at 8am in the middle of a terrible nightmare. We had discovered a ghost in the house, who looked suspiciously like that girl from The Ring, and like SMART people, we decided to pack everything up and get the hell out. As we were running to throw things in the truck parked in the street, I was starting to think we were going to make it, when I remembered a terrible scene that I had seen in the commercial for what was going to happen. I knew that it hadn’t actually happened yet, but it was going to, because I saw it on the commercial. I think it must’ve turned midnight because right as my sister was about to come down the steps, she was stopped by some invisible barrier. I had a box of stuff in my hands and I looked around for help but everyone else had turned into snakes. I tried to help, but the ghost took my sis and threw her into some type of washing machine/CT scanner thing and locked her in. Sorry, Kenzie. I couldn’t get you out. Clearly the ghost-girl did not want us to leave. That’s when I woke up. I can only speculate that this is a result of a conversation about the movie The Strangers that I had yesterday. Clearly the snakes are from the Indiana Jones movie and the CT Scanner - well I suppose that’s self explanatory. This is why I don’t see scary movies-I have crazy nightmares just from thinking about them.

Summer Movie Preview May 16, 2008

I’ve traded the ice cream for popsicles, final exams are being taken, and I’ve been dreaming of Mexico, which can only mean one thing: summer is upon us. It was over 90 degrees today in Los Angeles, and I’ve been hiding in the dark cave of air conditioning that is my bedroom. Unfortunately, I can only entertain myself in here for so long. Eventually I’ll have to trade in my apartment for the cineplex. A preview of the coming blockbusters, thrillers, and summer comedies:

The Heros

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (May 22)

Easily the most anticipated movie of the summer. I’ve been staring at the billboard from my window for nearly a month now. The big question obviously is whether Harrison Ford is going to kick ass or make us cringe in anticipation of a broken hip. I know they waited this long to make another movie because they wanted the story to be good, but part of me wonders if Spielberg just said “F&$@ it. Let’s just do it. I got nothing else.” Part of me wonders too about casting Shia LeBoeuf in the movie. The kid can be awesome, but it just seems…off to me.

Dark Knight (July 18 )

I’ve been looking forward to this movie since the moment I walked out of Batman Begins. Based on the trailer, I’d say this is going to be the best movie of the summer. Heath Ledger as the Joker looks to be legendary, and my only complaint about the first movie, Katie Holmes, has been taken care of, with Maggie Gyllenhaal taking over the character.

Hancock (July 2)

Hancock plays on the idea I think they were trying to get across with Venom in Spiderman 3, that of the superhero who just doesn’t care. Spiderman 3 ultimately failed with that, I think (see emo Peter Parker) but Hancock seems to have the potential to be interesting. Toss in Jason Bateman and 4th of July weekend, some explosions and special effects, and it’s a pretty good bet I’ll be there.

The Incredible Hulk (June 13)

Aside from perpetuating radiation-induced superhuman power myths, I’m not sure what this film is trying to accomplish. Wasn’t the last Hulk movie an abysmal disappointment? I do enjoy watching Edward Norton, so I suppose I’ll wait for the reviews before I make up my mind. Based on the trailer, I say meh. Like Iron Man without the fancy gadgets.

The Chick Flicks

Sex and the City (May 30)

I have to say, I thought the series finale was pretty good. Carrie ended up with Mr. Big, Charlotte got to adopt a baby, Miranda…what happened to Miranda?, and Samantha got to keep hooking up with Smith. So happy endings all around. I can’t help thinking though that the producers felt a little guilty for giving the fans the fairy tale ending. Hence, the movie, where we find out that maybe Carrie and Mr. Big don’t really end up together after all. Life’s not a fairy tale, kids! And yet somehow, I think it will be.

Mamma Mia! ( July 18 )

Colin Firth dancing and singing ABBA? Done. I’m there.

The Comedies

Get Smart (June 20)

Whether this is 40 Year Old Virgin or Dan in Real Life caliber Steve Carell work I can’t tell. The poster certainly seems to be a rip off of 40 YOV.

The Rocker (August 1)

Superbad meets School of Rock. It even has the same love interest as Superbad. All I know is, it’s a good long 4 months until the premiere of the Office, and this will have to do.

It looks like Hollywood has found a winning movie poster.

Pineapple Express (August 8 )

Plot ideas for Seth Rogen’s next movie: Seth plays a pothead who is also a superhero. Seth plays a pothead in a musical set to the music of David Bowie. Seth plays a pothead who gets into Harvard Law. Seth plays a pothead who….well you get the idea.

The House Bunny (August 22)

Despite the obvious things stacked (pun intended) against this movie (yes! she’s going to make over the ugly girls in glasses!), I think I’ll probably see it. Anna Faris is usually pretty funny. And last time I saw Colin Hanks in anything, it was Orange County (which reminds me, I’ve got to start my summer Roswell marathon).

Wild cards: Step Brothers (July 25), Tropic Thunder (August 15)

Horror (or just Horrible)

The Strangers (May 30)

Supposedly this is based on true events, but no one seems to able to identify which true events. A comment by someone who had seen a screening mentioned that the entire audience was screaming at parts. So, I will not be seeing this, but it looks damn scary. I couldn’t even watch the trailer again.

The Happening ( June 13)

I can’t wait to see what it is. I hope it’s the rapture.

Don’t Mess with the Zohan (June 6)

I watched the trailer for this with a mixture of horror and disbelief. Who greenlighted this script? Who wrote this script? I can’t imagine this being anything less than abysmal. I saw a poster for the movie on a bus the other day, of Adam Sandler doing the splits and holding hair dryers as weapons. I stared into his eyes, and saw sadness.

The Love Guru (June 20)

Are you serious?

That about wraps it up. I know I left a few off the list, including Iron Man, which I’ve already seen, and Speed Racer, which I can’t look at without seizing, and Prince Caspian, about which I am so ambivalent I can’t even think of anything to say.

Happy movie watching! Don’t forget the Junior Mints

M is for Maniac May 8, 2008

Mariah Carey

I can’t be sure but I think Mariah Carey may have been the first CD I ever owned. Of course up until then I had plenty of cassette tapes, including a single from The Rembrandts and an Amy Grant single. I think my Mom won them from a radio station and gave them to me. I can’t imagine why she wouldn’t want them for herself. I played them on a pink boom box that I would later put to good use recording radio shows with friends. We didn’t have a microphone either, we spoke directly into the tiny microphone next to the eject button. We didn’t have many songs in our respective collections, so I think the majority of our playlist consisted of Temptations and Diana Ross tracks. I seem to recall that the dialogue consisted mainly of prank calls. I would really, really like to know what happened to those tapes.

Anyway, I must’ve listened to Daydream about 200 times and memorized all the lyrics.

The liner notes actually fell apart because I looked at them so many times. If you want to be really, really depressed, I suggest you put “One Sweet Day” on repeat and listen to it 34 times. That can’t have been good for my adolescent mind. “Always Be My Baby” probably still ranks as one of my favorite Mariah songs, though.

She lost me a bit with Rainbow, and Glitter and Charmbracelet were dark times, but ironically, the crazier she’s gotten the better her music has gotten. The Emancipation of Mimi is one of the best CDs I’ve listened to in the last few years. The verdict is still out on E=MC^2, though judging from the fact that she just married Nick Cannon, I’d say the crazy is through the roof. This may be the best album yet.