Sorry, Melissa, But Movies Are the Thing

I’m finding that I actually like the television writer’s strike. I should clarify that. I don’t like that it’s made for (probably, I don’t know for sure) hard times in my friend, Melissa’s, life. I don’t like that big business is so greedy that they can’t reach a fair compromise with their employees. I don’t like that it’s probably going to cancel the Oscars, the only awards show I ever watch. Other than that? Yeah, I like it.

It’s been very freeing to my life. I’m a person that gets sucked into shows easily. I used to watch TV all the time. I was a slave to the, “I can’t come see you, Mom! My favorite show of Tuesday night is on!” Now, though, network television is full of reality shows. Those are not to my liking. The concepts of them are, but the fake drama and buildup is not. If I never hear another game show host say, “…but not yet! After this commercial we’ll reveal…” I’ll die in a state of bliss.

I still watch television, but it’s of a different sort. Jason’s got me watching Modern Marvels and How WhositWhatsit’s Made. Just yesterday, I learned how books, Zippo lighters, and compact discs are made. All in a HALF HOUR! Amazing stuff! In addition, I’ve started wanting more baby animals. I used to just want a baby tiger. Since I got him the Planet Earth DVDs (the BBC version, apparently, Sigourney Weaver is not to his liking), I want a baby polar bear and a baby musk ox to complete the menagerie that is my home. I still try to fit in regular watching of Jeopardy, so I can show off and SportsCenter, but it’s not the regular routine it used to be.

Most nights, though, you can find us watching a movie. My Netflix account is on FIRE! It’s back in business with a never-before-seen fervor. Jason is continuously finding out that I didn’t see some highly important film of long ago. He is on an all-out mission to fill the gaps in my movie-watching career (and also to make me watch that piece of crap called Grandma’s Boy). He will never succeed at any Nicolas Cage film. I admit to doing the same thing to him (and trying to make him watch Jane Austen movies). Here they are:

• I made him watch all the Bourne movies because I love them and he’d only seen the first.
• I’m making him watch all the Ocean’s movies for the same reasons.
• We watched Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men, too, because we both love Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.
• We just finished Dances With Wolves on Wednesday night. He (and everyone else in the world, it seems) can’t believe I never saw it in the first place. I was 10! I can’t help it that I wanted to watch Home Alone rather than Dances With Wolves. We got the Director’s Cut which I liked and he didn’t.
• All the Indiana Jones movies are almost complete, too. One more to go. We’re watching those again just because we like them.
• We watched The Outlaw Josey Wales because I needed to see the greatest Western ever made. (It was good, too.)

I think those are most of the rewatches we’ve done. There hasn’t been a purely new-to-both-of-us movie since December 20th, when we watched Once. I can’t recommend that highly enough. We bought the soundtrack while watching it!

On tap for tonight/tomorrow is Good Will Hunting. We’ve both seen it and want to rewatch it. Nothing like dual yelling, “How you like them apples?” in our horrible Boston accents to really showcase the true love that exists between us.  hee!

Thank You, Mama

…for not letting your baby grow up to be a cowboy. I learned the lesson, yesterday, that farm animal care may not be in my skill set. To give you a visual, if I were a skinny, hotel-fortune heiress with stilettos and more oversized Gucci sunglasses than brains, my Saturday could easily be confused for an episode of The Simple Life. On second thought, maybe it could be an episode of Made, with the subtitle, I Wanna Be A Petting Zoo Carnie.

The episode wouldn’t involve any sort of training but would have a montage flashback consisting of a childhood horse-hoof-meets-toe injury, a teenaged romp through the fields ending in one dead cow and truckbed full of traumatized girls, and the taunting of an adult by preteens for her irrational fear of cows and emus. Instead, my making would cut straight to the day of truth. The commercial break announcer guy would say, “After the break, can Lydia really handle working in horse shit, sweating, and dealing with sugar-hyped children eager for a ride on the ponies?”

Like all of my favorite Made episodes (and maybe just all that make it to air), the Made coach (played, in this case, by the new guy I’m seeing that some of you may have heard about) would emerge in triumph, transforming the polished, sophisticated (ha!) city girl into one that scoffs at a smudge of horseshit on her bare skin, pets all makes and models of barnyard animals and even strikes up the courage to get close enough to her least favorite, the scary-ready-to-stampede-at-any-moment cow, in order to take away the water bucket.

The final thoughts (do you think they stole that from Springer?) would feature me, sweaty, dusty and sleepy telling how it wasn’t all bad. Not really. The 4am wake-up, the still-dark loading of large animals, the anxiety over looking like an idiot who doesn’t know how to open a gate or tie a bungie cord in front of the Made Coach (a.k.a. guy I’m still trying to impress), the grubby children constantly wanting to “go ’round just one more time!,” the sun, the knowledge that hats serve a vital purpose but make me look horrible — none of that was really so bad. I promise!

Off camera, post-Made accomplishment, who’s to say that the girl who got Made got a little tired and, resultingly, snippy with her Made coach? Who’s to say there were a couple of choice words that were a little too harsh for the situation to warrant? Who’s to say she didn’t need a nap like a five-year old post-amusement park? Did the Made coach really think she got that cute by working 15 hours a day in horse shit? No one is to say that, since I believe those tape canisters were destroyed.

Here’s one remaining deleted scene. I give you – mini pony, a la Rob & Big:

55 Fiction Friday – Sadness Television

The extremely talented Ms. Ima Wurdibitsch has turned me on to 55 Fiction. It’s a story, 55 words, no more, no less.

Sadness Television

The too-long hiatus ended. She had her television back, new and improved. It’s the Digital Age! Gaily, she plopped in front of the tube, tuning to her favorite re-runs. 7:00 PM, time for her Friends to appear. What’s this? Cartoons? Blue-haired, yellow-skinned people? Oh, sadness television. What will she do? Wail of Fortune.

_______________________________

Here’s a great first submission from Guiness at Conspiracy of Happiness.

PSA: Good TV, Tonight

I’m giving a quick shout-out to the new NBC drama that premieres, tonight, Life. This show airs in the 10 PM slot, reserved for only the best dramas. I’ll be DVRing it (or, my parents will) because I have to get up early tomorrow morning.

From Rand Ravich (“The Astronaut’s Wife”), Far Shariat (“Confessions of a Dangerous Mind”), and David Semel, who directed the pilot of NBC’s “Heroes,” “Life” is a new drama about a detective who is given a second chance. Damian Lewis (“Band of Brothers”) stars as complex, offbeat Detective Charlie Crews, who, thanks to close friend and attorney Constance Griffiths (Brook Langton), returns to the force after serving time in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”

The cast also includes Sarah Shahi (“Rush Hour 3″) as Charlie’s skeptical, demanding partner, Robin Weigert (HBO’s “Deadwood”) as their hard-hitting lieutenant, and Adam Arkin (“Chicago Hope”) as Crews’ former cellmate Ted Earley.

The reason I’m a supporter of Life, besides being a loyal viewer of NBC shows, is that the most talented woman I know is involved in its production. She’s amazing and awesome and extremely, extremely on the ball in terms of kicking Hollywood’s collective rear (even if she did get beat out for some writing award in high school).

So, please watch. Tune in your Nielson boxes (I’ll buy you a drink or twenty if you actually do tune in a Nielson box).

Wins, Losses and Embarrassing Moments

The weekend that was started out with a win. Good hair! Miraculously, my in-that-stage-where-it-needs-to-be-cut hair cooperated with my wishes and those of my blow dryer on Friday and decided to look good for the local football game.

It was the annual big matchup of my alma mater and our cross-town rival. Yes, I do realize that I’m 27 years old. For a lot of people, that means that they would have gotten over attending their high school football games about, oh, ten years ago. I don’t care. My school has spirit, yes, we do. We also have pride, city-wide. Anyway, we support our team, no matter how old we are.

So, yeah. Friday night was that football game, which ended in a loss for my team. It was fun to watch, though, and always good to see folks I haven’t seen in a long time and catch up on how many kids they have and how I have none and, no, in fact, I’m not even married, but thanks for asking!

After the football game, I went to one of my dearest friend’s birthday celebrations. After eating too many buffalo chicken bites, TP’s chocolate chip cookies and deciding that I’m not longer able to happily drink Bud Light (but it will do, in a pinch) I went home with a Trivial Pursuit victory under my belt along with the heart-warming knowledge that my friends will never change. Will and I bitched at each other, we all laughed at Nickie’s silliness, Tara and I rolled our eyes at some of the outlier’s antics, the boys got drunk, etc. etc… I love those kids.

I woke up super-early on Saturday morning, looked at the clock and said, “Screw this! I don’t even wake up this early on weekdays.” I promptly rolled right back over and slept to a pretty obscenely late hour. I hauled my lazy ass out of bed and got ready for Long Motorcycle Ride Day #2. It was only about a 120 mile ride, round trip, but this was a chilly day and a new sort of experience for me. It felt ridiculous to wear gloves (red ones, at that!, that I donned only after dire warnings that my hands would indeed be cold and no one would mistake their color for team allegiance) and a toboggan in 60 degree weather. I must admit, though, I’m happy I did.

We went to the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, a festival celebrating one of the top five things for which my state is most famous (if pressed to name the others, I’d say horses, basketball, rednecks and maybe coal-mining) and one of the things I won’t admit to die-hards that I’m not a fan of. I can’t drink bourbon. If you know me very well, you know this. I don’t likey the fire water. Surprisingly, that wasn’t a hindrance to my having a fun day at the festival. There were lots of artisans and opportunities to feed my face and buy stuff I don’t really need. There was a Spirit Garden, situated on the baseball field that I played a high school softball game on, back in the day, where I spent too much money on cheap beer. There was a car show where I decided that I’d look really good in a 1950-something convertible Corvette (something else that my state might be famous for, depending on who you talk to). I mark the Bourbon Festival as a win for the weekend.

After the Festival, we headed to My Favorite Bar (not knowing that 90% of the folks I label as Friend were two blocks away at The Shitty But Okay In A Pinch Bar). I chalked up two ass-kicking wins in pool, that I’m not entirely sure weren’t handed to me to stroke my ego.

Saturday night saw another win of epic proportions, but a personal embarrassing moment. The biggest game in all the Commonwealth was going on. UK vs UL. Cats vs Cards. Houses divided all over the state. The best of the best when it comes to talk of rivalry. I’d missed the first quarter but was able to get to a TV in time for most of the second. As I was watching the game, I started yawning. Not because the game was boring. It was anything but. Instead, I was yawning because I’ve become a pansy-assed little girl who goes to bed really early. So, I decided that I had two options. I could finish watching what could be the biggest game of the season, suffering potential heartbreak at it’s outcome and subjecting a non-fan to the craziness that is me when watching a game like this. Alternatively, I could save myself heartbreak, solidify the game in my memory as an exciting contest and miss the (what I thought) was inevitable comeback by the higher ranked team and save the non-fan the boredom of having to watch the rest. I chose the latter. I was (and still am) fine with this choice because I really was tired and ready to snuggly up in my comfy pillows and sheets and down comforter after a very chilly ride home on the parkway.

Yeah. If you watched the end of the game and you know me, you’re really surprised that I chose to go home instead of watching the first time Kentucky defeats a Top Ten football team during my lifetime. But, rest assured, I saw all the replays and was just as excited when I found out the result as I would have been had I been parked in front of a big screen television. It’s okay. It was worth it to get to sleep with the windows open and get in all my beauty rest. It’s something that will probably be an embarrassing moment when I tell people I honestly chose to sleep rather than watch the end of that game.

Sunday was one of those days that is absolutely perfect, outside. I forgot to switch up my Fantasy Football team, but it was alright, because I got to watch an entire day of football, old-fashioned style – parked on the couch at Mrs. P’s with my closest friends all hung over and eating tons of great food. It was a birthday party! I lost at cornhole but consider it a winning day when Mrs. P karaokes to Britney Spears. End the weekend with the final disc of The Office’s Season Three and, all in all, I’d say it was a pretty damned good weekend.

Now, to get through the next four days. Then, I’m off to Boston!!!