In a nutshell

What is it with movie trailers lately?  Aren’t they supposed to inform us TO A POINT? Leave us wanting more?

Take this trailer, for instance. Letters to Juliet. Girl is in a relationship with the lovely but distracted Gael Garcia Bernal. He cares way too much about pasta! I wonder if she’ll find someone who can’t live without her? Well, off to Verona where Romeo first met Juliet, two people who could not live without each other. I sense a theme! Girl finds a letter written in 1957 and answers it, bringing an elderly woman and her hot young grandson into her life. She goes on a road trip with them (because that isn’t strange at all) to find an elderly Italian man with the same name as a bunch of other elderly Italian men. Oh no, where is he? WILL HE BE FOUND? She calls her boyfriend, who, again, can’t be bothered. She does incredibly romantic things with the grandson and distracts him from driving. Grandma finds her lost love on a horse. Long looks over wine, wedding attire, AND IT KEEPS GOING. I now know exactly what’s going to happen in the entire movie, and could probably write a review about it. *BLINK*

One of my favorite things to do is to watch movie trailers. If I arrive late to a movie and miss them, I’m kind of pissed about it. That’s why I watch all of them online. Like when I saw the one for (500) Days of Summer? Instantly had to see the movie. I was counting down, it was the best feeling. Unfortunately, sometimes a trailer is so awesomesauce that the movie pales in comparison (this was apparently the case with Terminator Salvation, according to my sister). Another great one? A Single Man. Almost don’t want to ruin it by seeing the movie.

A trailer has GOT to strike right balance. Who can’t get that right?! Can I apply for the job? Because I think I could do it well.

Better than these fuckers, anyway.

All I wanted to do was go to the effing movies

Every time someone babysits my kids I kind of freak out a little. I can count the amount of times Andy and I have left the boys in the care of someone else (not counting daycare) on one hand because we’d rather miss out on date night than worry about one of them freaking out and me/us not being there to soothe him/them. Fun with pronouns! Anyway, when Zain was three months old, Andy’s parents were in town and had agreed to babysit while we went to Andy’s company party. I told my father-in-law to hold Z facing outwards if he got upset and he’d immediately calm down. That little tidbit of information, I explained, was really all he needed. Cut to two hours later when my fil calls us at the party, little Z screaming in the background.

“He’s been crying for an hour nonstop!” my fil said. “I really think something’s wrong with him.”

“TURN HIM AROUND.” Andy coached.

“Oh, hey, it’s working!” my fil yelled (he yells a lot). “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” ARGH. The evening was shot. I kept hearing Z cry in my head long after Andy hung up the phone. My baby was crying for an HOUR?! Poor little guy. We left the party. Did we overreact? Sure. But we were new parents! You know how it is.

So now every time someone babysits for us, I immediately plan for the worst. “If Zain completely flips out you can try A, B, and C…” I basically freak the babysitter the fuck out before the night’s even begun. You know, start the night off on the right foot and all that. Just trying to do my part. Of course, wouldn’t you know it, Z and Mad were perfect angels. I like to think it was the 2 mile walk that I forced us all to take beforehand that left Z tuckered out and complaisant.

So Andy and I made our way to the theatre sweaty and anxious. Our first roadblock, literally, was that the 405-S was closed that day. We kind of knew this, but we hoped that roadwork had finished the day before and decided to take a chance. Which is probably not the best course of action when you’ve only got ten minutes to spare. YEP. We doubled back the way we came and took the super annoying detour route to our destination. I checked my watch. We were going to miss the previews. Meh. I could live with that, since I watch them all on apple.com anyway. We park.  We figure that since it’s Sunday, we don’t have to pay for a parking sticker. NOPE. As of July 31st or somesuch nonsense, the city of Portland decided to bend us all over and … you get the idea. But HUH? We have to pay for parking on Sundays now? WHAT?! Way to suck Portland. So we go to the machine to buy said sticker. It is broken. We go across the street. It too is broken. We go a block over. The sad song continues, until we finally manage to track down a working machine what felt like ten minutes later. Then we book it to the theatre. THE MOVIE HAD ALREADY STARTED. This irritated me to no end. But I moved on and laughed and cringed and laughed some more.

Got back to the car and guess what? A lovely yellow envelope lay beneath our windshield wipers. Every car on the car sported one, their owners having decided that a broken machine meant they got a free pass. NOPE. And when we pulled the ticket from the envelope? We noticed that we weren’t even ticketed for going over our time limit. One of our tags had fallen off. So basically, Mr/s Douchebag  had to have a full set. Can’t have one car without a ticket!

So many shades of lame!

Vampires kind of suck

New Moon.

So many things bother me about the trailer for New Moon. KRISTEN STEWART being the main thing. Blinkety blink blink. BLINK. Not feeling the love. And why is her mouth always open? Didn’t anyone ever tell her that a closed mouth catches no flies? No? What I don’t get is that her mouth is closed like a steel trap while “passionately” kissing Edward/Robert (this is also true in Twilight)?! I’m so confused. Ya’ll are supposed to be really into each other right? Like star crossed lovers? You open your mouth when he kisses you young lady!

So I’ve watched Twilight, and while I think the movie is pretty overwhelmingly bad I can’t help but love Robert Pattinson. I feel bad for him, in a way, having to do so many things that are so completely laughable with a straight face-that must be hard! But then he’s probably laughing all the way to the bank, so there’s that.

And then there’s True Blood (Andy and I finished the first season a couple of weeks ago). Don’t get me wrong: the show is right entertaining.  But REALLY?? Sookie Stackhouse can’t beat the men off of her fast enough?  Um, no. Anna Paquin is cute, okay?  But she makes me laugh with her unnecessary intense facial expressions (complete with labored breathing, deep swallows, and if we’re really lucky: a curled lip!) and stilted walk. Not sexy. I especially love how Sookie’s BBFF Tara (Rutina Wesley) has to desperately grab at her sloppy seconds to even get some(!).

My main issue with Paquin is that she can’t really act to save her life (I don’t care that she won an Oscar… when she was ELEVEN).  I mostly kept watching because of Lafayette and Tara, who kept me laughing even when the storyline made me want to scream (Arlene and Terry aren’t so bad either). Andy has already said all of the following before – but there was little to no continuity. Sookie reads minds! Except for now, when it would really come in handy. Right!  That makes total sense. And vampire blood affects everyone differently: Jason drinks a vial and has to have blood drained from his penis, while Sookie drinks that much or more and is just peachy. Kay. I do love that theme song though… I wanna do bad things to you. Hopefully the second season is better.

When I grow up

I want to be a mechanic like Megan Fox in Transformers.

That's totes how you look under the hood of a car

No one will really care that I don’t actually know how to fix anything as long as I do stuff like this:

I love getting my hands dirty

Yeeeeeeeeeeeah.

In “Revenge,” you flee evil Decepticons for just about the entire movie. At least your male co-stars hauled butt in comfy sneakers — you were in heels!
Megan: Stilettos — and for the last part of the film, motorcycle boots. I had major shinsplints and threw out my back a couple times. Beyond that, Michael likes everyone freakishly tan, so we were painted maroon, like in the old Westerns when they hired Caucasians to play Native Americans. I had on fake eyelashes, running through the desert with sand stuck in them, and I’m sweating off all the makeup. It looked like we were making a tragedy.

For serious???!!! Is that supposed to be a funny anecdote? Because it sounds like a nightmare. But this is just accepted as part of the “Michael Bay experience”. Haha, you know how Bay is! Good times… Argh! I thought she looked dirty in the first film. WTF? So many, many shades of lame.

Here’s an interview with Gabrielle Union re: Bad Boys 2:

UGO:: In that one scene with your wire on that tiny dress – how did that work?

GU: You know, that wire also functioned as my mic for the scene, so it had to work, and we had to make that work. It was very tricky, I will say. Where the pack was…was not the most comfortable of places. You can use your imagination on that one.

UGO:: How are you able to wear those heels?

GU: The Jimmy Choos? They had to go. They cut out this scene where once they save me at the mansion, I have to sprint down the steps, sprint outside, we are running through the thing, jumping into the lagoon, and I am dipping in the grass. They are like, “OK, you look ridiculous.” We had to add this little shot where you see me throwing off my shoes to make it a little more believable, because I was falling down the steps. I was just watching behind-the-scenes footage of the day that we blew up the house, and I’m running down the steps, and you see me falling the whole way down. I don’t know how they cut that together but I was falling the whole way down the steps. It was terrible. Jimmy Choos are made to prance in, not do action movies.

YA THINK???!!!

I hate you Michael Bay.

Jog. On.

“Still pregnant, eh?”

“When are you going to have that baby already?”

“You look so tired!”

“I feel your pain, I really do…”

Ahhhhh…the perfect comeback.

Circus Circus

Step right up ladies and gents! Prepare to feast your eyes on the WALKING UTERUS!

Merf!

Walking Uterus exists solely to spice up your boring ass lives! You can ask it questions, but only if they are annoying and repetitive! Here are some examples: Getting Close huh? You look ready to pop! How ARE you? But really how ARE you?

*lightbulb* Hmmm…this pregnancy thing could prove quite lucrative!

Give me one reason to stay here.

*raises hand* New house, good jobs, stability?? Right. Portland it is. At least for the next 4-5 years.

A word of assvice: whatever you do, do NOT move to Portland and then complain about…anything having to do with Portland. People will act like you just ran over their dog. I don’t get it. It’s pretty, yes. There’s a lot of green…stuff and there’s…bridges! There’s a cool music scene, too. I think, though, that I would be way more jazzed about Portland if I loved any of the above: rain, snow, biking, hiking, jogging, beer, dogs (they’re okay, depending on the breed), paying to put said dog in “daycare”, eating extremely expensive organic foods, wearing tevas/clogs, etc.

So, Portlanders, contrary to popular belief you are NOT Joseph Stalin and this is not Elizabethan England, I demand my right to complain! Heh. I kid, but not really. I mean, you can’t whine about the rain without a dozen people telling you how much they looove it, and they can’t get enough of it! Bully for you, okay? And a lot of these people hate California but have never really been there. Like, they drove through it. ONCE. But they hate it, because…why? It’s sunny and clear and there are excessive amounts of attractive people? I’m confused (I think Portlanders equate L.A. with California, btw), but I can honestly say I don’t care one way or another!

What really chaps my hide is the way that Portlanders pat themselves on the back so frequently for doing things that either I REALLY DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT or that should already be done in the first place, like recycling and eating healthy. Or staying in your own lane if you’re a cyclist. And they fancy themselves as being so liberal but the ignorance I’ve encountered here is staggering. I can’t begin to count the amount of people that I’ve met here who don’t know how to simply speak to someone of a different race or background without falling all over themselves in stupidity. People who call the Lloyd Center “ghetto” but can’t explain why exactly when pressed. Maybe it’s because that’s the mall where all the black people congregate? And they’re afraid to go see a movie there because they don’t want to get shot. PLEASE. I’ve mentioned that people have confused me with the one other black woman that worked in my office, right? A woman who looked NOTHING LIKE ME. Or how I worked for a man who couldn’t wait to tell me about the black girl that he had sex with in high school? Or the black girl that he walked in on his son having sex with? Or how if my opinions differed from the only other black employee’s, he would say, “Steve doesn’t feel that way…” Or the girl who asked me if it was okay that she listened to rap music since she wasn’t a “gang-banger”? And these are the same people who act shocked to hear me say that this city is too white bread and that I cannot see myself settling down here for good. YA THINK?

Before you get your panties in a bunch: Look, idiots are everywhere. I’m not claiming Portland has any more or any less. This is a big city and I have hardly met everyone in it…blah blah blah. What I am saying is that Portland needs a healthy sprinkling of color all up and through this place. ALL UP AND THROUGH.

Going Mad

Two of my coworkers/friends, Kerrie and Jen, threw me a baby sprinkle this last Friday. They reserved a conference room after hours and set up a lovely arrangement of food and drink and even a diapercake! The diapercake was delicious.

Yum

We played games, I opened gifts, and Z and Andy made an appearance towards the end. It was a lot of fun. 🙂

Everyone put in a bid for Madrox’s (yes, that’s his name! :P) birthdate, most of them within this month. I have a feeling I’ll give birth in February, but who knows? I might be late this time (*screams*). I’m really ready to meet Mad and to get my old body back. Lugging around this extra 35-40 pounds is really wearing on me. And I’m tired all of the time because I can’t get any sleep at night: I have to pee every 2 seconds, which means I get up several times a night to carefully walk down the stairs to the bathroom. It’s a wonder I haven’t broken my neck.

Hello stranger

These last weeks are going to be an eternity!

I’m trying to put them to good use by looking for suitable childcare for the boys and organizing the house a bit. I never had this nesting instinct kick in with Zain, but I’m making up for it now! 🙂 The annoying thing is that I can’t buy everything that I want to for the house, so I’ll just have to be patient, which is…impossible right now. I am ANXIOUS.

TRULY?

When I started watching the first episode of the second half of the new season I knew something was up. It was simply, too good to be true. There was Dualla! On the screen! Speaking words! I thought someone had actually listened to me. But then she blew her brains out. So. I’m pretty sure that means no more Dualla?? Yeeeeah.  And although it was shocking, it kind of wasn’t. Of course she would die. At her own hand, no less (EXCLAMATION POINT). And of course all of the annoying assholes would live another day. President Roslin? I’m looking at you. You too Gaius. Let’s just get this season over with, shall we? TEDIOUS.

This? Not a good movie. Looking at this poster you’d think Angelina was the main character or something seeing as she’s about 3 times the size of James McAvoy. No, she’s just what brought the boys to the yard. And I…am…confused. Like Andy said, she looks like a Lollipop girl with that big ole head stuck on her negative pound frame. Not sexy. NO.

I had a huge issue with the storyline even though I’ve never read the comic. It was, as I said when the credits started rolling, “kinda lame”.  Who decided this garbage was fit for human consumption? Why are assassins running textile mills? Oh, there’s names hidden in the weaving? Names of people who need killing? That’s…stupid. Then there’s the usual wimp/loser/ball-less wonder becomes major super badass montage. And although it’s completely unnecessary, a kiss between Angelina and James. *yawn*

It’s snowing here. Again. I am…enraged.

We love to see you grimace

There’s a McDonalds commercial that comes on the radio every morning when I’m driving to work (one of the many reasons I hate the radio):

Woman (thinking): Oh I know she did not just cut ahead of me in line…(speaks aloud) Excuse me, I know you saw me standing here. You better be glad I already had my <disgusting McDonalds meal of some name or another> or it would be on! Whoooo! *cackling laughter*

Hey drivers/pedestrians? Don’t mind me and my violently swerving vehicle. I’m not actually trying to kill you, my mind just melted. Are there really people out there who listen to that and think, “I’ve been in her shoes! Where’s the nearest McDonalds?”

And speaking of fast food, all free food is not created equal. I’ll get rid of 10 Facebook friends for something delicious, but a Whopper? SICK. My dad used to take advantage of the “whopper for a dollar” thing when I was in grade school/junior high and when picking me and my siblings up, would toss one to each of us with gusto. We’d get excited because we never got to eat out that much. But I’d always eat about a quarter of it and then chuck it. Nevermind the fact that mayo was slathered over every inch of the thing, it just tasted like ass. It’s been well over a decade since I ate a whopper and who knows? They might’ve improved it. But it’s Burger King so I doubt it.