The Truth About Twilight: Part II.

I'm up to Chapter 3 or 4 in Twilight, and I'm peeved. One of the earliest encounters between Bella and Edward is a rip-off of the pilot episode of Roswell, a show for which I have a special place in my heart (excluding season 3, of course, because Tess is a bore).

Plus, Max is way cooler than Edward. Fo' shizz.

I'm a Grown-Up, But Not an Adult.

I have a 401(k) now, although I don't really know how it works. I keep getting these prospectuses in the mail that are wrapped in dark plastic. I get that my finances need to be kept confidential, but I swear my neighbors think I subscribe to multiple nudie magazines.

I don't know what's more embarrassing: that, or the possibility that they might think I'm too stupid to know that I can get nudie pix for free on the internet.

Chabon Ranking.

Of what I have thus far read of Michael Chabon, my favorite author, here is my ranking from best to worst:

1. Wonder Boys.
2. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
3. The Yiddish Policemans Union.
4. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.
5. The Final Solution.

I just finished YPU (for which one of my freshman college roommates wrote a laudatory blurb that appears inside the front cover). The ending has problems, and doesn't quite transcend the hard-boiled drama in the way that Chabon achieves in the first 2/3rds of the novel. Oh well, still awesome. Of these 5, I really only actively disliked The Final Solution.

The Truth About Twilight: Part 1.

I give up. I do have limits. For example, even though I know that there are three Jonas Brothers, I don't know their names. Even though I know that Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana are the same person, I couldn't tell you what season they're on. And even though I've seen High School Musical (please, who hasn't? losers, you're missing out), I have not seen 2 or 3.

But for this, I caved: I bought the trade paperback version of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight. You might have heard of it. Even if you're a snob, or more likely, a grown-up with taste. Scratch that, you don't even need taste. But this has become such a huge phenomenon, that I'm dying to know what all the fuss is about. So I picked it up. And I started reading last night.

It's awful. But there's something about it that makes me want to keep reading. So here are My Reactions, Part 1, because the internet wouldn't be complete without anonymous surfers being able to find the Truth About Twilight.

• I've finished Chapter 1, and so far I've learned that Bella is from Phoenix, Arizona, and that somehow counts as a city of irony. Sorry if I scoff from over here on the, you know, entire eastern seaboard if I think of kittens and poodles frolicing when I consider Arizonian-sarcasm. West coasters are so cute when they think they're disaffected.
• Also, I can't help but picture Robert Pattinson whenever I read about Edward Cullen. Granted, Meyer only describes him as devastatingly beautiful (sort of like me, but actually beautiful), so I don't have much clay with which to imagine my own Adonis, but it's the fate of reading the book after the movie.
• The trade paperback copy happens to have Robert and Kristen Stewart on the cover, instead of the red apple. That blows. I kinda liked the cover themes.
  

Happy Christmas, and All That Jazz.

I have a new crush. It's Grammar Girl.

I downloaded her podcast to keep me company on my drive home for the holidays, and I fell head over heels in love.

Something about the 40 year-olds. My law school friends know what I mean. Then throw in impeccable grammar, and I never had a chance. For sure.

Nerd.

My brother introduced me to this game called The Settlers of Catan. It's been around forever, but I'm just now getting into it. It's nerdtastically addictive, and best played with more than 2 people.

Basically, you have this randomized board, where you have to create settlements, cities, and roads based on a combination of luck and skill. Whoever manages to establish a stable enough settlement wins. There are buckets of rules, but they're all pretty intuitive, so you get the hang of it pretty quickly.

It's geekariffic. Believe you me.

Esquire.

Check it. I'm officially a lawyer, admitted to practice in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I got sworn in today. The best part? You get a complimentary pen reading "Welcome to the Mass. Bar!"

The pen doesn't write very well. What a noble profession.

In Bruges.

I rectified the little issue I had of not having seen In Bruges, for which Colin Farrell was nominated by the Hollywood Foreign Celebrity-Stalkers Association. Here's the sweet and lowdown: it's awesome.

Sometimes these little movies don't seem very movie-ish. I don't know if it's the low budget, or the self-indulgence of the writer-director, or what, but I definitely watch these film festivalish movies with a healthy dose of patience. But In Bruges transcends its small screen trappings, skips right on past the "intertwined lives" crap that Hollywood thinks is so clever post-Pulp Fiction, and manages to mix irony and earnestness in just the right way.

Colin and Brendan need no exposition to catch us up to the moral crossroads that they, as hitmen on the down-low in Bruges (get it?), have come to. That the movie respects us the audience to be able to patch together their backstory, and that the movie has a coherent enough backstory for us the audience to patch together is just the bees-nees. This little snapshot in time is more than a snapshot -- it has a true beginning, middle, and end. With that, and letting us laugh at the most un-PC of jokes (what a relief!), this fable ends up feeling so much bigger than a little movie.

Flame.

I totally want this:



Color me totally seduced.

Me Learn Goodly.

Last night, I went to dinner with friends to celebrate the holidays.  We totally noshed on some way de-lish sliders as appetizers.  I always thought that sliders as apps was weird.  Sure, their small, but you eat a lot of them at once.  Basically a meal's worth.

 

But way more importantly, I don't get why they are called sliders.  So I looked it up.  Sadly, not as interesting as I thought.

 

[/best blog entry ever]

I'm Not Ever Leaving My House.

For passing the bar, I celebrated by buying a new flat-screen TV. A friend of mine pointed out that buying it on Amazon would save me literally hundreds of dollars. The only downside is the risk of a 3rd party deliver service possibly messing things up. Meh, I went with it, and because I saved money, I threw in a Blu-ray player, and still came out "saving money." (It makes logical sense to me.)

The Blu-ray player I got is BD-Live enabled, which means a lot of things that I don't understand, but most importantly for me, it means that I can watch anything labeled "instant" on Netflix on my TV at any time.

It. Rocks. Bunnies. Lots. Of. Bunnies.

Golden Globes: The Nominations.

So first of all, you all realize that the Golden Globes traces its roots back to completely bogus beginnings, and that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association sounds fancy because it named itself such without being really legitimate. That said, they are some of the smartest sycophants ever by creating an award that attracts celebs from all over to party with them. Come on, that's genius.

So in the past few years, I've gotten more and more "into" the movie awards season... and it sort of culminated in an anti-climactic way last year. I watched the Oscar Awards--which is usually my favorite TV special of the year--and was completely bored. It has nothing to do with the terribleness of the show--it's ALWAYS been terrible. It was more that there was absolutely no surprise. I had read so many prognostications about the chances of various people winning that there was no longer an element of wonder about it. And yeah, I get that it's all one big publicity stunt, but I'm a nut, so there.

Anyway, this year, due in no small part to me having an actual, you know, job, but also because I am consciously trying to do so, I'm going to try and ignore all the pre-Oscar "chatter" that goes on, and just go for the ride. That means no daily awardsdaily.com for me. That means I didn't even realize that the New York Film Critics nor the Los Angeles Film Critics gave out their awards. And you know what? It's sort of nice. Like, I looked at the GG noms this morning and was actually surprised.

• I have no desire to see Happy-Go-Lucky. It seems like Topsy-Turvy reborn. For some reason, that movie won a bunch of crap, when it was just a bunch of crap.
• I love Colin Farrell. I have yet to see In Bruges, but this was a huge surprise. I love that he got recognized for one of his littler films, because that's actually where he got his start.
• I still don't understand why Musicals and Comedies get bunched together.
• What the hell is Last Chance Harvey?
• I think it's great that Marisa Tomei keeps getting nominated for stuff everyone so often. She was such a joke after winning for My Cousin Vinny, and I heard she's intolerable in person, but there's something sweetly poetic about the fact that she can actually, you know, act. (Compare Mira Sorvino.)
• I want Kate Winslet to win an Oscar so badly. I think she is everything right about a movie star.
• I don't understand the whole "Foreign Language Film" category. Why doesn't Slumdog Millionaire qualify?
• I can't wait for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

And for TV stuff, because I heart TV more than my toes:

• Fox... FOX... is the only network to get a drama nominated. Fox. Really? Really?
• I remember when I would fill blank VHS tapes with nothing but Thursday night Must-See TV NBC shows. While I love 30 Rock and The Office, the sad state of NBC these days breaks my heart.
• I don't get it... what happened to the Cable Ace Awards? Aren't they supposed to "honor" what is essentially being honored here?
• I swear. It's like each of the 100 or so members of the HFPA has Monk, and nothing but Monk, on their TiVo.
• I don't get why the GG puts supporting actors in both drama and comedy series together with supporting actors in movies and miniseries. That's just nuts.
  

Off My Chest.

I just finished watching the Top Chef episode of Gail's bridal shower.

First of all, long ass tables like that suck for mixing and mingling. I mean, forget it, if you arrive separately from the one other person you know, there's no way you're going to end up sitting near them.

Second, do you think Gail and Padma are actually close enough friends in real life that Gail would normally invite her to her shower?

Third, I get that it gets its name from an island, but I still think that the name of Jeff's restaurant in Florida is just, just terrible.

Fourth, I love the Bravo voiceover echo-y voice. So classy.

Fifth, I think that Drew Barrymore looks like she has gobs of makeup splotched onto her face in that new CoverGirl commercial. I doubt that's what they were going for.

Today? Really?

I'll blog about the Golden Globe nominations later tonight, but first reaction...

 

This morning as the Today show was congratulating Danny Boyle for the nominations of Slumdog Millionaire, they showed a montage of the ending of the movie.

 

I was dumbfounded, just DUMBFOUNDED that they would do that.  I mean, sure, *I* guessed the ending while I was watching the movie (because I'm awesome), but when it occurred, the audience I watched it with gasped audibly together.  It's one of the most emotional parts of the movie.  Why, WHY would you give that away on national TV?

The Really Important Thing.

The man is both insane and pond scum. Is it terrible that I think saying his name is fun?

"Blagojavich."

Hee.

Many Internet Personae.

One of the problems with being old in internet years is that some of my current email addresses and AIM screennames are based off of words that I thought were, you know, cute and cuddly in middle school. It's a little embarrassing to have to tell customer service reps my email address to verify my identity. (HYPO: Them: And can I have your email address that we have on file for verification? Me: My email? Um, it's mrcuddlywuddlykins123@hotmail.com. Yes, that's w - u - d, right, d as in doggie, another d...)

See, for random arms length business stuff, I give out my crap email address so that the huge amounts of spam that I will inevitably get from their "privately" providing my addy to various solicitation mailing lists won't ruin my everyday emailing. I have a separate email for friends, family, and other important people relationships -- like my employer. And then I have my work email which is for strictly professional communication.

Finally, I've had enough. I created a new email account hosted by yahoo. I can't use gmail because I want it to be a relatively straightforward variation on my name so that service reps won't have a hard time understanding me, and my friends/family email is already, you guessed, a straightforward variation of my name on gmail. The problem is, yahoo has been around for such a long time that any variations I tried were taken. (Meh... it comes with having a fairly simple Asian name. I'm used to it. Makes searching for me on facebook an endeavor worthy of only the noblest of hearts.)

But, yahoo offers other addresses. First, I could do @ymail.com. I think that's a terrible idea. I think that gmail is go common, that lots of idiots, I mean, nice customer reps will assume that a "y" is really supposed to be a "g" and then you won't get that one email that says that your credit card bill is ready to be paid. The other choice -- which I went with -- is... @rocketmail.com.

Unsurprisingly, virtually all my variations were available. I can't tell yet whether this is any better than snufflesmcpickapocket@yahoo. Sigh.

Apartment Watch: Part II.

Previously, on apartment watch.

-It's winter, and my central A/C is keeping me warm just fine. +2.

-The gym is done and it's actually not too shabby... +2.

-...but it looks nothing like what was advertised. -1.

-The roof and the patio still aren't done. -3.

-I guess it's not such a big deal because it's winter, and I'm busy with work. +1.

-While I like my apartment's location vis-a-vis the hallway, my neighbors are, um, loud... several times a week... at random hours of the day. -2.

-The washer/dryer actually does dry, but it spins so fast that everything comes out the shape of the inner tube. Still, I figured out how to make it automatically go from wash to dry (it's one of those space-saver all-in-one doodads from Bulgaria). We'll call it a draw. +0.

-The dishwasher is half the size of a normal dishwasher, so I can actually run a full load fairly frequently. This is amazing for the environmentally-conscience single person, of which I am one. +1.

It Hurts My World.

When I was little, the brand of jeans I wore came in two sizes: slim and husky. It seems like the good clothiers at Dockers(?), or at least an ersatz Dockers of the 80s, figured that kids are so disproportionate that they shouldn't bother trying. Well, I'll just say that the day I had to go husky was a bittersweet day of feeling like I was growing up and like I was a lardo.

So growing up, it was pretty common for my parents to buy me clothes that were too big because I'd "grow into them." Makes sense. Until, oh you know, puberty, and you stop growing. But I had it so ingrained in me to save money that I continued long after the spurt to buy clothes that were too big.

Sometime after college, I finally broke that habit and learned that, no, I'm not a 17" necksize no matter how awesome it is for a necktie not to choke me to death on that size collar, I'm actually somewhere between a 15" and a 15.5" (depends on how much salt I've had that day). No, all my vast stores of "L" t-shirts that I scammed for free from every website I could find are not good for going out (I'm either an S or an M depending, and I can actually wear a kids "L" quite comfortably). And now, apparently, no I'm not a size 10 shoe.

This past weekend I was freaking out because I thought I was starting to shrink, aka getting old. But my friends talked me off the ledge and told me that you can lose fat in your feet (they might have just made this up to calm me down). You see, this was all prompted by the fact that I bought some shoes recently and they seemed HUGE on me. We're talking Sideshow Bob here.

So I set to work figuring this out. I think somewhere along the line of growing up, 1 of 2 things happened: (1) I got it in my head somehow that I thought that the size of your feet in inches corresponded a bit better to the size of the shoe... it doesn't, or (2) they started making shoes really big. I'd like to think it's (2), so that I don't feel stupid again, but I don't think I'm quite so lucky.

So yeah. We're gonna see how 9.5 works. I guess.

Mind-Blowing New Facts #2 and #3.

In addition to that Arizona awesomeness in the last post, I also learned yesterday that the Lost Colony of Roanoke was in present day North Carolina, and not, as I had always thought, in present day Virginia. (Sure, there is a Roanoke, Virginia, which likely is the source of my confusion, but still, for someone as awesome as I, that's no excuse.)

Also, I rarely do this (mostly because I don't have to obviously) but I had to admit that I was wrong about something that my brother corrected me on over Thanksgiving. I completely forgot that the president pro-tempore is after the Speaker of the House and before the Secretary of State in the presidential line of succession. I think I had thought that the VP's loose association with the Senate was a sufficient enough nod to that body for presidential order. Jebus.

I am getting stupid in my old age. Either that or everything I learned when I was younger was wrong. Neither thought is sitting well with me.

Arizona and Indiana Are So Awesome. In a Messed a Way.

I had to check a time zone for a city yesterday, and I came across a map similar to this one:



I know that at some point in my life, I learned that Indiana is all messed up because different noncontiguous parts of it follow different rules for time zones and daylight savings observance. Maybe it was that West Wing episode where Josh et al get stranded there during a campaign stop? Anyway, further research confirmed that, yeah, it's messed up.

So this map of Arizona intrigued me. I found out that Arizona doesn't observe daylight savings. Ok, that's not that earthshattering, what with Indiana's red-headed stepchildness. But then I learned that the portion of the Navajo nation in Arizona does observe it. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL. The Hopi Reservation, which is completely enclosed by the Navajo nation (how very Lesotho of it), does not observe it. Hence that awesome donut shaped time observance.

I have literally not stopped telling everyone I pass about this since I learned it. I insist you do the same.

Gross.

Last night, I had food poisoning for the second time in about two months.  I've prided myself (unreasonably) for having a high tolerance for bad food.  I once ate a 3-day old Taco Bell burrito... and loved it (hey, it was properly refridgerated -- although the lettuce had melted).

 

Apparently my tolerance isn't that high.  Or I need to stop eating garbage.  One or the other.

And the Winner Is...

...Fox.

It's December. The TV season is pretty much in full swing, with some shows being considered hits (see CBS's The Mentalist) and other shows being cancelled (see, well, not anymore, CW's Sunday night line up). As for my list, you can see the current sitch on the left. The only new show that I've continued to watch is Fox's Fringe. Why? First of all, Pacey is awesome, weirdly thin legs and all. And second, it's more than aptly been able to balance stand-alone plots with an overarching thread (something I can't say for one of my other faves, Life). Even the Cate Blanchett wannabe who plays the lead has grown on me.

But that's it! And I gave a LOT of new shows a chance. I've even devoted precious blog space to some of these new shows. Oh well. So as it stands:

NBC - The Office, 30 Rock, Life (Heroes is still technically DVR'd, but I haven't seen the last, like 5 eps, and I have little desire to)
ABC - Eli Stone, Pushing Daisies
CBS - HIMYM
Fox - Fringe, The Simpsons, Family Guy
Other - Top Chef

This isn't encouraging. (Remember, I put TV above food in terms of life importance.) It's especially bad because my two ABC shows have been cancelled. Yes, yes, there are some off-cycle shows that have recently wrapped up, like ANTM and Project Runway, but I have to take stock at some point. And they'll be back soon anyway (well, ANTM at least).

So bring on the midseason replacements I say. From whence Eli Stone came, perhaps others will follow. Some shows are merely returning midseason, but others are totally new. Here's what I have my eye on right now:

ABC - Lost (I'm sticking with it for now, last season was good, but I still haven't forgiven it for the 2 before that.)
NBC - Kings (The buzz is good.)
Fox - American Idol (Duh.), Dollhouse (The buzz isn't good on this one. Oh well.)
The CW - Reaper (Why didn't it start in the fall?)
Other - Psych (I refuse to watch The Mentalist.), Battlestar Galactica (I'm a nerd.), RW/RR Challenge: The Duel II (Did I mention I'm a nerd?)

How do I have time for all this? Easy. I don't.