Rota

Half-Assed Review 1: Chicken Little

I had to take a Peter Pan bus this weekend, from Hartford to Boston. It's been a while since I took a non-Fung Wah bus, and it turns out the ride from Hartford is just long enough for them to show a movie. As I was pretty tired, and the TV that was easiest for me to look at was on the fritz, I mostly looked out the window and listened to my iPod. However, on a bus they just play the movie over the speakers, so you can't help but listen a little, and I found myself sort of paying attention. Sometimes.

[Spoilers after the cut]

Five Signs of the Apocalypse

1. Americans are idiots. Via Conversational Reading. (This is a chart, so go and come back, I don't know how to make it show up here). The most depressing thing I've seen in ages. The only possible explanation I can think of is that evolution is not well understood. I bet a lot of people (maybe even a majority) think evolution claims we evolved from apes. And sure, that does sound crazy. You know what sounds crazier? God used the rib of the first man to create womankind. A rib. If given the choice of descending from apes or some dude's rib cage? Banana me.
2. $1,200 baby chandelier. Britney bought a twelve hundred dollar baby chandelier. A baby what?
3. It costs $.0123 to manufacture a penny. Um... (source GOOD Issue 001).
4. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star has additional verses! Like, "When the glorious sun is set,/ When the grass with dew is wet,/ Then you show your little light,/ Twinkle, twinkle all the night." Am I the only one who didn't know about this?
5. Bush read 60 books this year. I laughed when I heard about his summer vacation reading list - particularly the Camus part. But this figure worries me. Let's see - I work 35 hours per week, and manage to read about 50 books a year. Now, I do have a punishing TV schedule, but I'm not, say, running a war. I guess there are two options here: (1) he actually read 60 books this year, which explains a lot about the state of the country and foreign affairs; or (2) he didn't, because as a C student and very busy man, he's just not interested. Either way, I wonder why the press secretary would think this was Bush-boosting information. First of all, it makes him seem intellectual, which no one outside his base believes, and which anyone inside his base would likely feel alienated by (after all, he did pound Kerry for being a smarty-pants, and likes to go on and on about the value of being plainspoken). Second, does it not give the impression that he has too much time to read? His press office doesn't seem to pick up on this free time thing - they happily inform us of his extensive vacation time and that he sleeps like 11 hours a night. Me? I'd like a president who was so busy thinking about the country, and how to do the best he could for the most people that he never has time to read or nap. Obviously, I think readers are great. But I also think it's okay, and even desirable, to take a 4-8 year break if you are, say, in charge of AMERICA. Jesus.

Ways in which I am a GIRL

(Sorry for the lateness. I had to work, or something. SIGH.)

I don't consider myself a particularly girly girl in some respects. I actually really like makeup, but I often leave the house without it. I think I threw my hairdryer out in my last move because I never used it. It takes me less than half an hour to get ready in the morning, and I own fewer than 10 pairs of shoes (though just barely, I think). I can't really shop for more than 2 hours, tops. However, sometimes I do something, and I find myself thinking: GIRL.

1. At one point in my life I owned 42 different colors of nail polish. I still do, it's just that most of them are old and need to be tossed. Granted, this can be attributed to my love of small, shiny, colorful things, which really makes me more a creature of the forest than a girl. Still though.

2. Sometimes I use the word "mani-pedi." And then I hate myself.

3. I cried during The Notebook, A Walk to Remember, Finding Neverland, Love Actually. Even though I have seen Love Actually approximately 45 times and I know what happens and also, none of it is particularly sad. It's not CRYING, so much as it is always tearing up during certain select scenes. (If Battlestar Galactica makes me cry, is that more or less girly?)

4. I cry when I am mad or frustrated. I hate this one. I often find it hard to contain tears of frustration. Which is bad, because you know what can be frustrating? WORK. And that is not a place you want to be crying, believe you me. Also, when something breaks, someone yells at me, or someone is mad at me. Yeah. I'm working on that.

5. I love flowers. I don't care. I love them. I love getting flowers. Give 'em. Honestly, if I get flowers for no reason, I totally tear up.

6. See number 5.

7. I like things that are pink. I want a pink iPod. I wish I could customize my background at work so it had pretty colors in it. I own pink, sparkly eyeshadow.

8. I circumvent the standard ordering form at work to buy multicolored pens.

9. And file folders.

10. And tape flags.

11. I like love LOVE to talk about my feelings.

12. I put these things in a list.

Ro Reads GOOD

Well, the cover at least.

Good Magazine (GOOD) is Al Gore's baby - he's listed on the masthead as Associate Publisher (Advertising), but I think he's also been involved in the creation and direction, and the vibe is definitely Gore-esque (politics, environmentalism, caring). The tagline is "GOOD is for people who give a damn. It's an entertaining magazine about things that matter." Which is great, as I do give a damn and also enjoy being entertained. Sold!

A few meta points: it was $4.95, which is a lot, but it's apparently an every-two-months deal. The premier issue is September/October.

Cover: Excellent design. First of all, I think the font is Lord St. Etzen, or a close friend thereof. That is an awesome font, and Ta loves it. The cover design is good (heh - that's going to happen a lot, I bet) - it looks exactly right for what it wants to be. Design is something I find difficult to talk about, mostly because I don't know anything about it. But here's what I liked: white as the background color, the size and placement of the GOOD logo, that the cover is mainly text (rather than being built around an image or person), the icons along the bottom telling me that (a) the magazine is environmentally friendly, (b) it's on recycled paper, (c) the issue's theme is I Heart America, and (d) that there are free stickers inside. I like the top right, which lists the feature articles (with page numbers, THANK YOU), then other contributors all together.

    I'm not so sure about the cover idea - a "Do-It-Yourself Personal Manifesto" - consisting of _______ LIKE YOU GIVE A DAMN. You are supposed to write in your verb of choice. The little pen in hand icon is cute, and I get what they are driving at, but it's a little general. It doesn't say much about the magazine's point of view. It makes it seem that the magazine is just about doing things earnestly, not about the things you actually do. An adverb rather than a verb. Does that make sense? This is a very minor quibble. 

    On the other hand, the articles and contributer's list gets me where I live: "America's Place in the World," "Migrants vs. Minutemen," "Buy A Senator" (guide to the Midterm Elections), Joel Stein, Neal Pollack, Kurt Vonnegut. Excellent!

Spine: Clean, neat. I like the use of a quote along the spine, following the title of the issue. I like the purple at the very top to set off the issue number. They clearly thought about everything - how it would looked stacked up with following issues, making it easy to read, giving a lot of information very simply, and having a modern look.

Back Cover: An ad, but it's an ad for Timberland, announcing that their shoeboxes will now have "ingredient labels" - how much energy was used to make the shoes, where they were made, how much child labor (0%, hee), how many hours Timberland does of community service, etc. I really quite like this idea. None of it is actually meaningful - I wouldn't know how many is too many kilowatts of energy to use making a pair of boots. Still, I love the transparency, and the move toward conscientious manufacturing.

Subscription Card: While I was juggling this and my lunch, two subscription cards fell out. At first I was angry, as everyone hates subscription cards and I'm no exception. (I particularly hate the ones that come to me in the magazines TO WHICH I ALREADY SUBSCRIBE.) Anyway, I was mad, but then I looked at it, and my heart grew three sizes. $20 for 6 issues (one year) - 100% of which goes to your choice of 12 listed non-profits. Donors Choose, WWF, Unicef, Teach for America, City Year. 100%. Dear Lord, that's wonderful. 

In conclusion, this magazine is awesome.

Shiny!

I really like electronic gadgetry. I don't own as much of it as you would think a person who can list all the differences between LCDs and plasmas would.  I find that my regular 27-inch TV is ok, and I hate the thought of spending a lot of money on something that continues to decrease in price. I also want a new iPod, since I am carting around a (lovely) original green mini. I love it, but it only holds 1000 songs. But they keep making NEW ones. And I want Mac laptop, they come in black now.

I did recently buy the world's most unnecessary computer: a custom-built desktop with dual processor that can play all the games I don't have time to play.

Some things have been on my list forever. I want a receiver so I can hook up all the various boxes into one thing, and I can get speakers. But there doesn't seem to be a reason to do that until I get a large, flat, HD TV. (Right now, my TV keeps breaking, as if to encourage me. Back OFF, TV, I am waiting for the next price drop.)  I want one of the new video iPods that Steve Jobs unveiled today.

I really want an HD dual tuner TiVo. I had put off buying a regular dual tuner TiVo to hold out for the HD. They announced it this week. It costs $799. The regular dual tuner box starts at $30. So, yeah. I'll be getting the $30 box. FOR NOW.

I WIN

Peter Fucking Jackson optioned the dragon books. In your FACE!

Blog Entries I Am Not Writing

(tm Dan)

1. Combative Product Reviews. 

Sample: What the hell are you washing your face with? Oh my God, that Neutrogena stuff, of course. I hate you. Use Cetaphil.

2. Ro Fixes Celebrities. 

Sample: Lindsay Lohan, get a steady boyfriend and learn to focus your eyes.

3. Things I Hate About Nature.

Sample: Trees. Flowers. Grass. Dirt. Bugs. Birds.

4. Reviews Of Movies I Haven't Seen.

Sample: Rush Hour? Yeah, it was great - lots of action, and pretty funny. Chris Tucker is annoying, though watching Jackie Chan's obvious contempt for him bleed through was entertaining.

5. Ode to Target.

Sample: These washcloths were $.30 each. Thirty cents! That throw rug? Designed by an actual designer? $19.99! It's Design Actually Within Reach. I love you, Target!

6. Sports Update.

Sample: Something's happening with tennis? and I think football started.

7. Why I Don't Like Rolling Stone, Even Though I Feel I Should.

Sample: Well, mainly I don't care about music news, but I also rarely read the political feature article, even though I believe they have stellar reporting. It's like once you put something in the pages of RS I stop caring - I didn't even read their Kurt Vonnegut article. Part of my dislike might be because I have been receiving Rolling Stone for at least 10 years, and I can't seem to make it stop. It just finds me. I haven't paid for it since college.

8. What The Hell, SciFi Channel?

Sample: Wrestling? WRESTLING? Law & Order: SVU? I hate you, SciFi.

9. Interesting Historical Facts That I Just Made Up, But Which Could Be True.

Sample: Abraham Lincoln's vice-president, a notorious womanizer, often entertained ladies of ill repute in what would later be known as the Lincoln Bedroom.

10. Seriously, Are You Reading Dinosaur Comics? If Not, You Are Lame!

Sample: The use of exclamation points alone! And how God speaks in all caps bold? And the devil in all caps bold RED? Oh, and the guest writers? It's so awesome.

Shuffle Up OR ELSE

I promised a Sunday post, and though it is 7 minutes into Monday, here it is!

Back in the day (the day being a year or so ago), Ro and I played poker. Kind of a lot. I, for example, visited the fair city of Las Vegas like 4 times in one year. We were part of a weekly poker game, usually cash, sometimes tournament. It consisted of maybe 10 or so regulars, 7 or 8 of which would show up on any given week.

It was a really fun way to spend a solid 5 or so hours hanging out with people. By the hour, it was cheaper than a movie (unless you were having a terrible night), the host usually made us cookies, and sometimes you got to make some money.  We all played fairly conservatively, but with different styles and with enough quirks and random plays to keep it interesting. Sometimes, on a really great night, chairs were thrown. Everyone had an awesome nickname (ask Ro what hers was).

I'm not a particularly good poker player. I'm not bad at the lying part of bluffing, but I am bad at the putting in enough money to make it work part. So generally, I play fairly conservatively. I've improved - I've learned to slow play better, and to project things I don't have better, and to play in position better. But if you saw me play, I think we would all agree I'm not in the hobby for the money.

After graduation, we stopped playing, largely because our venerable host moved to Dorchester, and perhaps topping my list of things I don't want to do at 7pm on a Sunday is go to Dorchester. Actually, no, that's second. The first is returning from Dorchester at 11pm.  We really enjoy playing, I even have a full chip set, but good lord, we are lazy.

But last weekend was Labor Day weekend, so we made the trek for a three-table, $20-buy-in tournament. I was out incredibly early but we quickly started up a nice cash game where I more than made back my lost entry.  Ro came in third (!), losing second place only because the other two players in at that point were a girl playing her first cash game and her BOYFRIEND. I'm just saying.

While there, we promised we'd come to the next regular Sunday cash game, as it was being held at a different apartment somewhat closer to us (though not much, it turns out, hence the lateness of this post).  At the tournament we had discovered that the regulars from our old cash game who had moved out of state (or stopped coming out of utter laziness) had been replaced by 7 or so underaged college kids. Their play style is notably different than ours, and involves things like $14 pre-flop raises (during a $20 cash game), repeatedly playing 5-6 off suit and WINNING until finally someone with a real hand calls him and takes him down while everyone slow claps because they are so glad that he got his comeuppance, and trash-talking each other as well as girls (just generally) to the point of slowing the game to a crawl. One side of the table held five people over the age of 20, and considerably fewer hands were played on that side.

Apart from the frustrating (for us old folks) style of play, Ro and I were discussing on the way home that we wanted to sit each of this kids down and have a chat with them. Tell them to maybe stop spending money they don't have and crapping around playing poker and drinking beer in an apartment on Sunday night. Warn them that college actually can matter, and that we ourselves wish someone had warned us about having at least the rudimentary outlines of a plan before we stumbled our way through four rather meandering years at college and shortsightedly struggled through three MORE years of school we maybe didn't need to go through. It was a night of mixed feelings - we laughed at the immature insults they tossed at each other, because in its way its endearing (though not admirable or "good"), but we felt bad that they seemed to just be screwing around in a way that they may come to regret later.

Kind of like repeatedly betting on that stupid 5-6. Asshat.

Making an Effort

From now on, I am going to post every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. Swear.

These are things I hate

1. The load time on Adobe Acrobat.  Look, Adobe. I don't need to see that stupid screen every time I want to open a PDF. I certainly don't want to wait a full minute while you do whatever it is you need to do to load yourself, then open a second window to load the file I double-clicked on a century ago. Come ON. Portable document format my ass.

2. Vincent Libretti from Project Runway.  Ro put it best when she described Vincent as insufferable. That is the perfect description. Not only is he always wrong about whatever he is saying about other people's designs, he is also crazy, so makes no sense. But he thinks he is both right and making sense, and he's just so damn sure of the wisdom of his totally unsolicited advice.  He probably thinks is just the most kind and thoughtful colleague when he makes his sympathetic concerned noises about Michael's ruching on his couture gown, but Michael doesn't want to hear your crazy nonsense.  And your noises of concerns are obnoxious, and also, we already have lovely Tim Gunn to advise people as to potential pitfalls, so shut up. If you tell the viewing audience that one more think turns you on, I am going to beat you over the head with an industrial sewing machine, such will be the Hulkian strength of my rage. Also go away. Also your clothes were so boring and not very good and I have not idea how you made it through so many episodes. I hate you, I hate your 401k, and I hate your propensity to work in your undershirt.

3. Wheat pasta.  I have tried to like wheat pasta. I really like regular pasta. And I eat kind of a lot of it. Everyone once in a while, I think, "If I am going to be eating so much pasta, I should try to eat this wheat pasta sometimes, because it is better for me." So I will pick up a bag from Trader Joe's, thinking this time it will be different. This time, the pasta won't taste just like cardboard, but drier. It won't scrape across the top of my tongue and crumble as I try to chew it, despite the fact that I cooked it so long it should be more waterlogged than a lemming.  But it WILL be like that.  Wheat pasta is gross.

4. Everyone on the T, often including myself.  On the Green Line, I used to run through the list of kinds of riders I hated. I think the tie was between Guy Who Leans Against the Pole because he Can't Be Bothered to Hold Himself Up So Now No One Else Can Hold Onto the Pole (GWLATPBHCBBTHHUSNNOECHOTP) and Lady Who Must Get Up a Full Minute Before We Reach Her Stop and Move Toward the Door Forcing Everyone in Her Path to Let Go of What They Are Holding Onto So She Can Pass (LWMGUAFMBWRHSAMTTDFEIHPTLGOWTAHOSSCP). I promise you, Lady, the train will stop and it will let you off even if you don't hover by the door like a potential prison escapee. And Guy? Lots of people, including yours truly, are too short to reach the top pole and we really, really need to hold onto that and oops, did I stab you with my fingernail? My bad. I hate myself on the T because I become totally enraged, and by the time I get to work I am murderous. I don't like to start my day with killings.

The Red Line is better, except that the seats are small (read: regular sized) and Americans are...not. I don't like strangers in any form, and I especially do not like strangers touching me. I don't want to sit thigh-to-thigh with some businessman who can't fold his newspaper in half but must read fully opened, as though it is an eagle and it must SOAR. Right into my personal space. I don't like constricting every muscle in my body in a futile attempt to shrink myself so that I do not have come into contact with the people who take up more seat space then they have been allotted. It's not really anyone's fault that they don't fit properly on the seat, and the MBTA should know better, but it's still uncomfortable, and I wish people would endeavor to at least try and not touch me, as opposed to actually making things worse by sitting with their legs all spread out like they are on their couch instead of commuting.

5. The Government Center T station.  Why so hot? I understand that the subway of Boston was first built like 200 years ago or something, and that we didn't have air conditioning, and that even if we did, it isn't really feasible to climate control an entire underground cavern.  But I think it's possible to, you know, ventilate the hole in the ground. Not understanding anything about the "science" of thermodynamics or whatever, I already don't understand how it gets so freaking melty down there when there is a giant open stairwell to the surface. I guess trains are hot? Ok. So drill some air shafts though to the street and put in some fans. That should work, right? I mean it's hot like the surface of the sun is hot. It's a punishment to have to be in that station for even one second, let alone the ten minutes it takes to wait for a train.

6. The mystery flecks of something in the Teriyaki Sesame Simply Asia noodle box.  Look, Simply Asia noodle box. I want to like you. I purposely carefully examine the pictures alluringly placed on each box of noodles, trying to choose the flavors that do not have tiny flecks of stuff in their sauce. My aversion to flecks is long-standing. I don't like to use the packets that come with Ramen because of the little green flecks in them. I mean, what is that? Parsley? Scallion? Anyway, I want a smooth, fleckless sauce. And Teriyaki Sesame looks like it has teriyaki sauce, sesame seeds, and nothing else. But when I open packet of sauce? SWIMMING with flecks! I think they are shredded ginger or something. I don't know. I hate them.

7. That Justice and Standoff turned out to be totally watchable.  I already have too much TV to watch. My current model of TiVo only tapes one thing at a time (and I can watch something else at the same time). I'm delaying upgrading until the HD box with a dual tuner comes out. That could be MONTHS, people. And I already have several conflicts between established shows: Grey's and The O.C., Veronica Mars and House. I count on the majority of new shows totally sucking, or at least being totally uninteresting to me. Vanished lived up to its promise. But Justice, which I watched only because of Victor Garber, turned out to be kind of interesting and fun. And Standoff, which I literally had no interest in despite the delightful Ron Livingston, was maybe good. It had humor, it had drama, and the acting didn't suck. I am so screwed.