Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Notes for Kyle, the Arrested D Trivia Jock:

I know you heard a lot from me last night about your “performance” but I would like to restate some of my concerns about the outcome of last night’s festivities for you now in the light of a new day, and since you’ve probably sobered up by now. (And, I promise to be a gracious loser just as soon as I get this rant out!)

1. When you steal Shanrock’s line about accepting bribes and sexual favors, you aren’t as funny as she is. In fact, when you say it, it's not at all funny, but mostly creepy and pathetic. And if you really want to be offered sexual favors, perhaps you shouldn’t be such a HORRIBLE trivia jock.

2. When you ask trivia questions, you should know the answers to them.

a. When you say “Which character was portrayed by two actresses” know that the answer is Ann, and not Marta (who was portrayed by 3 women.) And when the team, “Dr. Funke’s 100% Natural Good-Time Family Band Solution” and my team, “Neuterfest” (as an afterthought, we wanted to change our name to Girls With Low Self-Esteem…next time Adrianna, next time!) bring this up, don’t throw out the question because you’re a dummy even after you look it up on your iphone.

b. When you say fill in the 9 blanks below, and have 10 words missing out of the opening credits narration, stop drinking and focus on your counting!

c. When the answer is “…you old horny slut,” don’t drunkenly announce it as “…you horny old slut” multiple times, even after you told us we needed to be exact in the phrasing.

3. The fact that so many of us had really close scores is a sign that your questions were way too easy. (The people who left midway through the game were not true fans -- they were there for giggles, not for the competition.) It is not a sign that the last round should be something truly and completely unrelated to Arrested D, like filling in missing lyrics to Europe’s Final Countdown. You might just as well asked us about the band Arrested Development, or one of the songs by Motherboy. If you want to do Arrested Development trivia, perhaps you should have asked us the lyrics to “Teamocil,” “Big Yellow Joint,” “All You Need are Smiles,” “Get Along Little Sheep,” “Hot Cops” or even “Afternoon Delight,” whose lyrics were ACTUALLY USED IN AN EPISODE.

4. Julia Louis-Dreyfus' name is not Julia Louise Dreyfus.

5. Don’t take 3 minutes between each question. You copied Shanrock’s line, please also copy her timing, charisma and natural grace as a trivia jock.

6. Put down your drink, and focus on the task at hand.

7. Oh, and lose the hat with that shirt. They are competing patterns.

(So, we did not win. We tied with two other teams for third place. We missed one question that was arrested related, -the answer was underwear-- and that was the same question the winners Dr. Funke’s 100% Natural Good Time Family Band Solution missed too-- all of the other points we missed, and I suspect the people who tied with us, and came in second, missed the lyrics to the Final Countdown. [angry face]. I am so angry with Kyle’s questions, there is no way I’m going to skip my hip hop class again for the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia one he’s concocting.)

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Do it for the kids!

This morning, Adrianna and I went to Portland Saturday Market, among various other Portland locales. While we were leaving the market a girl stops us, introduces herself as April and shakes our hands.

"Are you guys from around here?"

Thinking that it would get us out of whatever she wanted to talk to us about, answered negatively and then straight up lied about both of us. "She's from Detroit, and I'm from Louisiana."

April then told us about her sponsorship program, while we were trying to edge away without being too rude, and when she showed us the list of countries the kids live in, I said, "I'm going to Zambia in April!"

"What are you doing there?" As she high fived me.

"You know, saving some kids."

At which point Adrianna says, "the same thing you're doing."

April then gets out a form for us to put our credit card information in. She says, "if you guys donate and put my sales number right there, a child can be in school in 48 hours! Isn't that crazy?"

I, being the jerk I am, replied, "what else is crazy is thinking we're going to give out our credit card information on the street."

"Well, we're the oldest sponsorship program in the world, we're reputable."

Adrianna, very tactfully says, "do you have a website? We'll go there."

Oh April, good luck finding a job that doesn't suck that much.


Adrianna, this is why not to go to the Clinton Street Theater for the Midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Here bunny, bunny, bunny.

Yesterday as I was driving down a road, I saw a bunny leaving a school's parking lot. Not like a wild rabbit, but somebody's white fluffy bunny pet. I turned the suburban around, left two confused three year olds in the car and went to catch the rabbit. The next few minutes went something like this:



I finally caught the bunny and went to the teacher who was on recess with his class, and I said, "does this bunny belong to you?" "No." "oh..." "One of these neighbors raises rabbits and lets them roam around. We had four in our playground this morning."

So, I let the bunny go, and went back to the suburban where two three year olds kept asking, "why'd you let the bunny go?" and "can we take it home?" Having to explain that the bunny belonged to someone else proved to be almost as difficult as trying to explain the concept of an "actor". To this day, they think that after Mary Poppins left, Dick Van Dyke moved north, had two blonde children, and then tinkered around with chitty chitty bang bang, and that Brendan Fraser moved from Africa, to Canada to be a Mounty, and then to Los Angeles where he was aided by Bugs Bunny to save his spy father, Timothy Dalton, from the evil Steve Martin.

Friday, September 18, 2009

make up the break up.

why yes, i was sent this with a list of numbers. good luck getting the list...



ok, maybe there was a 17 in the list. haha.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Beatles update:

I chose a "favorite" arbitrarily, because I wanted to cross it off my list. That favorite is: Ob La Di Ob La Da. Stupid reason: because the name "Molly" is in it.

Also, if anyone knows anyone named Desmond I could marry, please send them my way!

Monday, September 14, 2009

fabric painting.

One of my favorite things to do for gifts is paint some fabric and put it in a frame. Here are some poorly photographed examples:

For my old roommate Whitney's soon to be born son, who has a space theme for his room complete with little alien stuffed animals Whitney made that are so, so cute! (I love this theme, by the way! Perfection.)


For the new Mr. & Mrs. B.


For my cousin's kid whose mother was really taken with the one I made for my little brother Isaac last Christmas.


And, I'm announcing it to the world, that I owe Joe & Britt a big one!!! I made them one but the red paint bled all over it. Soon friends, SOON!

Music Videos!

I love music videos. I think a lot of times they are just great. Sometimes, they are not.

Today, instead of going to Sunday School some friends and I were talking about really horrible music videos, similar to the conversation I had many, many moons ago with Jooj & Nephi, but this time we didn't have the benefit of the internet. I thought I would compile some absolutely horrible music videos for you to watch when you need a giggle or would like to be gobsmacked!

Exhibit A:
David Hasselhoff - Hooked on a Feeling* **



Exhibit B:
Fine Young Cannibals - Suspicious Minds*



Exhibit C:
Chris Danes Owens - Shine



Exhibit D:
Carl Lewis - Break it Up



Need more awesomely bad music videos? Search for Omer Pasha. He's hard core awesomely bad.

Need more of the Hoff's awesome tunes? Listen to Night Rocker!

What's your idea of the worst music video ever?***



*Not only are these horrible videos, they get points for being the worst cover songs ever, along with Hilary Duff's version of My Generation.
** Somehow it's only when David Hasselhoff is singing this song do I think that the "bug" he has caught is an STD...

***I will not accept this or this because these are AWESOME!

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Some Funnies:

At the Silversun Pickups show a couple of weeks ago, I saw Sex's doppelganger. He kind of made my day.



At the same show was a guy doing tai chi to Cage The Elephant's set and, a couple I tried to get a picture of to prove their weirdness, but this was the best I could do without being very obvious...


Why yes, they were at the show together, that old man and the young hipster girl, they were sharing a blanket and talking to each other. So awkward.


This might be the most terrifying image I've ever seen. I handle it every now and again and it ALWAYS freaks me out. Something about clowns asking how I'm doing just screams slasher movie about to happen.



One of my mother's old students turned this in on a poster board. Wow. I had no idea. The theory of Pangea has been completely reworked.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Because when don't I blog about television?

I was hanging out with my delightful cousin Julia today and we got to talking about television and she said something like, "you should write a funny tv show." Julia, who is infinitely hip, excessively nice and a kick-ass esthetician to boot, is not the first person to tell me this. But here's the truth, writing for television is a format that intimidates the heck out of me. I am completely uncertain as to how someone can create characters that people want to watch and let into their homes every week. Especially when all of my favorite shows get canceled. But it is something I'm knocking around when I'm not working on this super amazing screenplay I'm presently getting ready to pimp out after cranking out 20 pages one day last week! (Do you want to inspired to write a screenplay, or just watch a super terrific movie? Watch Brick. Holy cow, it is amazing. That Rian Johnson is absolutely terrific - The Brothers Bloom, and Brick...jeepers. I love that he's making movies! I now have a total girl crush on Nora Zehetner, and an even bigger movie star crush on JGL -- how am I still the only person who calls Joseph Gordon-Levitt "JGL"? How about a still from the movie to inspire you to add it to your queue? It is UH-MAZE-ZING!



Remember when I never closed my parenthetical? Well, here...)

So, until I can come up with something that I can pitch, I'll just watch Mad Men and Glee** whilst pretend that my high school existence was one more like those kids, and less like the reality of the bitchy diva with a little bit of talent and very few friends.

**A P.S. for Jooj: Tonight's episode featured the kids doing a very special version of "Push It". I thought of you!

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

I get by with a little help from my friends.

Years ago I made a list (inspired by Bex) of things I wanted to accomplish by age 30. I've been pretty good about checking things off since I made it, but that horrifying mile marker seems to be rapidly approaching, so I'm trying to tick off as many as possible.

One seemingly very easy item on my list is "Pick a favorite Beatles song." I've never been able to narrow it down to just one, for a long time I would say one of these three, Julia, Hey Jude, or Eleanor Rigby. But now I've decided to narrow it down to one. One favorite Beatles song. I made a playlist of all of my Beatles tracks and then narrowed it down one by one to seven of my MOST FAVORITE, and I'm hoping for your input, dear readers, to help me in my quest to be decisive.

Here are my top 7 (obviously not in any particular order):

Because
She Came in Through the Bathroom Window
Here, There and Everywhere
Norwegian Wood
Dear Prudence*
While My Guitar Gently Weeps*
Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da*

Ok friends, what are your thoughts and opinions? And aren't you so excited for the Beatles version of Rockband? Too much fun -- it's almost like playing actual music.

*Remember how three of these are from the White Album? And so is "Julia." And "Blackbird." And "Honey Pie." And "Don't Pass Me By." And "Mother Nature's Son." Shoot. I am pretty sure I should have phrased my list item as "Pick a favorite Beatles album."

Next easy item I'll do (once it starts raining): "Watch all three Godfathers in one day." Anyone want to join in on the fun?

The Portland Experience.

I've not posted anything on here forever because I haven't uploaded the necessary photographic evidence to support the post ideas I have planned. (I promised Analee I'd do it like a week ago and have been so busy and not near my computer at all. Very soon I'll show you what I've been up to...but I digress.) Here is an anecdote that doesn't need any photos from my camera, so we're good.

Last Friday I had the opportunity to hang out with my dear friend Rachel, her fantastic beau Brian, who were in town from NYC, and my brother at Doug Fir. I'd only been to Doug Fir once before, and that was for a concert, but the restaurant/bar area upstairs is one of the most calculatedly trendy places I know of in PTown. The venue itself is very well designed and in a great location, but the patrons of the bar were some of the most diverse people I've ever seen in one place. There were middle-aged people to early twenties, there were dorks, hipsters, hippies, tattooed and earplugged people, guys wearing those embroidered dress shirts that really shouldn't leave the closet (or goodwill) in a post-LFO* world, people in business-professional dress, and straight up bar skanks. Oh, and Art Alexakis of Everclear fame. The four of us were pretty curious where we fit in the spectrum. That is the thing I love the most about Portland, crazies and slightly less crazies co-existing peaceably.

I consider myself someone who fits in to Portland pretty well. I recycle everything, I ride my bike a lot, and I try to support local businesses. But something happened yesterday that really surprised me. A week ago I started doing a little reno on my guest bath. I went to Hippo Hardware to find some cup pulls and knobs for our vanity. I found some I liked, and then when I went to pay for them the cashier said, "wow, she's charging a lot more for these than I thought she would." (After you dig through drawers trying to find matches of things you want, you then go talk to people in the specific department and they fill out a little slip of paper telling you what things cost.) Yesterday I went to Restoration Hardware to get a couple of other things and noticed that their brand new cup pulls were cheaper than the used ones from Hippo. WHAT?! I'm sorry, Restoration Hardware is cheaper than something? So, I took back the pulls I got at Hippo and went with the more fabulous and cheaper pulls from Restoration Hardware.

It felt a little bit weird returning something to the eclectic-crazy-dig-for-what-you-want-Portland-institution to buy something from the over-priced chain store on NW 23rd, (which has lost a lot of its cool quirkiness in the past 10 years to chain stores like Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware.) but it also felt weird when the cashier said, "she's charging you more than I thought she would." Maybe next time I should go in looking like a pauper, then I might get a deal or two?**


*Yes, I did reference LFO.


**The fellas in the lighting department were the most helpful people I've ever encountered at a store of any kind. And they only charged me $3 for what I needed.