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• photos •
• little loves • Eddie Cibrian's Dimples
Because c'mon! Shame on Invasion's slowburn peril for not providing them a more frequent showcase. Wentworth Miller
He's my boyfriend. He is. No, he just is. He's all green-eyed, widow's-peaked, melting-pot hotness and oiled-massage voice. He's it. • past loves • |
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Dudes. Zombies. Machetes. Poked-out eyes. Blood spewing absolutely everywhere. British and Irish and Scottish accents. 28 Days Later. Go see it now. jlb | 23:25 A few summer fashion suggestions for my fellow women:
jlb | 21:56 You know how when you saw The Ring and it completely sucked -- except for that harrowing scene with the horse on the ferry -- you wondered how people could get apoplectic over the original Japanese film Ringu? Well, because Ringu is great. Go rent it. It actually makes sense! Compare it to the mind-numbing, convoluted bullshit of the Hollywood version. Really. You'll thank yourself later ... and perhaps buy yourself some cheesecake. On a completely unrelated note, I saw Down with Love last night. It's a movie that tries way too hard, but provides us with much Ewan. That man has chemistry with everything, including potted plants and the very air we breathe. Even in the midst of the most hysterical faux Texan accent in recent history, he's all kinds of doable. I think it's because he always has a wicked glint in his eye -- like he's up to something, like he knows something you don't, something fun and dirty. jlb | 16:14 La la la, my Cowboy Bebop DVDs arrived today! Guess I won't be going to the theatre afterall! When I get home tonight should I watch "Sympathy for the Devil" or "Toys in the Attic" first? La la la la la la la ... I love Bebop. jlb | 16:43 Went to Ravinia yesterday with a bunch of my "TV friends from the Internet," as said friend, Amy, put it. She hastened to add, "But we do go outside sometimes!" As Girl-Bart so astutely guessed on Saturday, it was a "Firefly thing." However, before you begin to mock me, it was, at its core, a group of really funny people hanging out in unseasonable cold with jazz music, too much food and swarms of non-biting mosquitoes. Good thing they were shy bugs because I had my hardcore, take-it-to-Cambodia Ben's bug repellent along, but upon reading the label, we chose not to test it out. A few excerpts: • Causes substantial but temporary eye injury. • Wash skin and/or clothing thoroughly with soap and water after use. • If swallowed: Drink promptly a large quantity of milk, egg whites, gelatin solution, or if these are not available, drink large quantities of water. The bugs sound like more fun. Am I supposed to drink a concoction of milk, egg whites and gelatin solution? Or just large quantities of one of those ingredients? Because, for real, what poisoned person is going to whip up a little milk-egg-gelatin cocktail? And how did the makers of Ben's find out those particular ingredients would help cure you? Did they deliberately poison people with their repellent and then feed them various things? Perhaps Girl-Bart could be involved in such exciting experiments once she's Lab Queen. I feel like I had something else to say but now I can't remember. jlb | 11:34 On Tuesday, during a two-hour early morning meeting, I completely stopped paying attention and wrote an essay on why I didn't like The Matrix Reloaded. Mark Ramsey at MovieJuice! has compiled most of my thoughts into a much funnier, shorter version but I'll add a few notes below. First of all, explication much, Wachowskis? A little less talk and a little more ass kicking, please. And while you're at it, knock it off with the "Oh, look! Neo's computer generated now! Now he's not!" CG effects. What was wrong with real live humans doing cool shit while suspended from wires? And the three-minute long rave/orgy thing? Perhaps we could have skipped all the nipples and bad techno and moved the plot along or something. Just a thought. The vampire things could have been cool except I was distracted by the fact that they looked like paler, skinnier Christian Bales with dreads. Speaking of vampires, just how many mythologies were we supposed to swallow? Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, oracles, Christ figures, even tragic Persephone -- though I have no idea who her husband was supposed to represent. Somehow I never pictured Hades as Eurotrash, but maybe that's just me. That said, kudos to more Smiths Unplugged than Neo can shake a stick at. Smith rules! Hooray for Zoe on the big screen, even for all of thirty seconds. Mal's in that screencap but he's not in the movie, he's just pretty. Overall, the sequel just reminded me how fantastic the original film was -- so I exited the theatre, crossed the street, entered the Virgin Megastore and purchased myself a shiny DVD. Scurried home and loved it more than ever. I think I can finally even come to terms with the Love Conquers All ending. I still don't like it, but I understand that they needed something uniquely human and intangible that didn't have a machine equivalent to save Neo's life. They chose love. Blech, but okay. In other news, my VCR did not tape TAR4 last night while I was out. It will meet a gory end. jlb | 11:24 NOOOO!!!!!! Gregory Peck died! MENDOZAAAAAA!!!!!! What a bummer. I'll have to watch Roman Holiday tonight and reminisce about the time I got to shake his hand at CIFF. jlb | 15:11 That's right, Girl-Bart. Come into the light. It's warm and happy here. There are no Psych 101 brainwashing techniques. There are no poverty wages. There is no ribbon. There is only shiny truth. Welcome. jlb | 10:30 From Miss Alli's latest TAR4 TWoP recap: "The fact that Hugh Jackman is both Broadway Guy and Wolverine is, I think, proof positive that we are meant to live out a long and happy life together. He sings show tunes and he is emotionally unavailable and misunderstood? Where has he been all my life?" Isn't that just the truth? I think she nailed everything necessary for a Perfect Guy in one sentence -- even though she neglected to mention the Aussie-accent upgrade to Jackman's particular model of Perfect Guy. jlb | 11:27 Last night, I finished the Cowboy Bebop series. Wow. The last three episodes kicked my ass more than the movie did. I was so wiped out afterwards. I was crying when Ed and Ein left the Bebop. I was crying when Jet pretended not to care about Spike going off to certain death. I was crying when Faye held the gun on Spike, and I was crying when he bent down, looked into her eyes and finally revealed something about himself to her. Cartoons made me cry! Worst of all, Faye is my least favorite main character and she's the one I was most worried about at the end. Spike's story couldn't have ended any other way. Jet will be fine. Ed and Ein will someday rule the universe. But Faye just found somewhere to belong and it all fell apart. Dude. Poor Faye! So, SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY ... I'll be in the Loser Bar. jlb | 11:33 My morning at the Lakeview USPS was like living a Seinfeld episode. Read on and enjoy. The saga has its roots in last week's "we tried to deliver" slip left in my mailbox. With these slips, one has the option of signing the back so that the mail carrier redelivers the package in question, or you can get off your ass and pick it up yourself. I signed the back and left it for the mail carrier. That was Wednesday. On Thursday, the slip was gone and on Saturday it magically returned. My package, needless to say, was not redelivered. It's a mystery. Fine. So this morning, wearing my new hella cool sandals that were so not made for half-mile treks to the post office, I trek half a mile to the post office. I have my rejected redeliver slip and another package to mail. I arrive at 8:30 a.m., drop a Netflix return into the metered mail slot and get in line. There are four people ahead of me. The woman who has just stepped up to The Only Open Window is mailing twelve Priority Mail boxes -- all with insurance and tracking. You know, just to speed up the process. I fill out a tracking slip for my box in advance and continue waiting. Suddenly there's a commotion at The Only Open Window. The postal employee -- whose name I don't know, but she has flippy hair so I'll call her Flippy -- has attempted to replace the receipt paper at her workstation and it's all gone to hell. Miss Diane is called for. Repeatedly. She never appears. It's a mystery. A male employee, whom I'll call Sweater because he's not wearing the usual USPS blue button-down, appears and asks if anyone needs to pick up a package. A tall girl (Tall Girl) up the line needs to pick up "all [her] mail" and I need to pick up my inexplicably redelivery-rejected package. Sweater takes Tall Girl's slip but not mine. It's a mystery. Fine. Flippy and her workstation still are not on speaking terms. The woman waiting to mail the twelve Priority boxes is wearing a Lollapalooza concert T-shirt from 1991 and I amuse myself by reading the tour dates. She's now known as Lollapalooza. She has orange hair. She's gotta be fifty if she's a day. There are four more people behind me in line now. The girl in front of me gets pissed and leaves without completing her morning's mail-related business. Several people come in, see the line and opt to use the automatic stamp machine. They are rebuffed because that machine has never worked -- it might not even be real but just painted on the wall for effect! -- and leave, irritated. Flippy, having lost the battle but not the war, is in the process of moving her belongings, her stampbook, her cash drawer, Lollapalooza and her twelve Priority boxes to another workstation. At 9:05 a.m., postal employee Barbara begins to set up her window. It's apparently quite a complicated process that needs to be done rather slowly. A woman (Line Jumper) from the back of the line -- now ten persons strong -- walks up and begins conversing with Barbara. Sweater comes out and hands Tall Girl a very small stack of mail. "Is this it?" she asks, incredulous. "This is six weeks worth of mail?" They go back and forth about how that's all that was in the back, it can take up to seven weeks for the rest to start forwarding, etc. -- or should I say "yadda yadda yadda"? Sweater leaves. He still does not take my slip. Tall Girl is pissed now and looking for someone to take it out on. Line Jumper is directly in the line of fire. "Is she for real?" Tall Girl says to the rest of us in line. "Are you for real?" she snits loudly at Line Jumper's back. "You're seriously just going to walk up there ahead of us?" Line Jumper turns around and says, "Please, I'm very sick. This is an emergency." Tall Girl isn't having it. She's probably wondering, like the rest of us, why one would come to mail something in the middle of a medical emergency. Tall Girl verbally abuses her and Line Jumper begins to cry. Barbara tries to calm Tall Girl by explaining that she's not waiting on Line Jumper, Line Jumper is "just dropping something off." Again, hunh? It's a mystery. Line Jumper shuffles off, weeping. Lollapalooza goes to make sure she's all right instead of paying for the shipping of her twelve Priority boxes. Eventually, she returns. Eventually, Barbara's window opens. Now we're in business. The two people at the front of the line fly through Barbara's station. Then Tall Girl's up and I'm on deck. (Yeah, I watched baseball this weekend. Shut up.) Maybe I can make it to work before 10:30! Then the fateful call: "Next in line please step down to the far window!" A new window opens. It's for me. Deborah will be my postal employee today. She has just returned from vacation. She is very pleasant and thanks me for waiting patiently. She retrieves my package from the back. Fuck you, Sweater. She puts my box to mail on the scale, touches a few on-screen buttons and an error message pops up. The machine that prints out the postage is not set up. Deborah apologizes and resets everything. All the same on-screen buttons are touched. A different error message pops up. The scale isn't working. "Who took my scale?" she shouts. "This is the bad scale! Who didn't return my scale?" It's a mystery. Deborah calls for Sharonda. Sharonda welcomes Deborah back from vacation and Deborah compliments Sharonda on her new weave and chestnut haircolor. Sharonda unplugs the cable from the scale, plugs it back in and the on-screen buttons are again touched. Error message. "You've got the bad scale," Sharonda says, helpfully. She goes in the back to get a different scale. Meanwhile, Flippy tells Deborah that she used her scale, but she returned it. The replacement scale is brought and plugged in. Error message. "It might be your cable," Sharonda says. She unplugs the scale from the next station over and tries it at Deborah's station. Error message. "It's your cable," Sharonda says, definitively, then proceeds to plug in two of the same scales she's already tried -- to no effect. "You've got a bad cable." Thanks, Sharonda! "Do you want to move to that station?" Sharonda asks, indicating the next station which has never been open for as long as I've been using the Lakeview USPS. It's window has never even been raised! There's dust on the countertop in front of the window! This station does not see a lot of action. "That station's filthy!" Deborah complains. "I'm not using that station." Sharonda plugs in the initial -- I think. Who can tell at this point? -- scale but, no, it still doesn't work. Deborah must move to The Filthy Station. "Someone's going to have to come up here and help me raise this window!" she calls out, then politely says to me, "You can step over to the next window." So there I am, standing like a moron in front of a closed window. I wait. Deborah is moving her stampbook, cash drawer and whatnot from her station to The Filthy Station. Minutes tick by. Finally, she starts to raise the window. She gets it up about an inch and I hear her call out, "Reach under there and push that up until it clicks." She wants me to raise the window. I'll give you a moment to let that sink in. Are you back? Good. So, I aid the USPS in its incompetence by raising the window until it clicks into place. Deborah congratulates me on a job well done. Thanks, Deborah! She proceeds to log in to The Filthy Station's computer. I memorize the faces and fingerprints of every person wanted by the F.B.I. in the last twenty years. Deborah is logged in, but, "This screen is so filthy you can't even see it." She disappears. I memorize the F.B.I. Wanted posters in Spanish. Deborah returns with paper towels and some display cleaner. She cleans the display. No rush, Deborah. It's only 9:30. I've got plenty of time. My box is finally successfully weighed, tracked and stickered with postage. Do I need any stamps today? Yes, thanks, Deborah, I do. No, I don't need to see the stampbook. Just give me whatever. Thanks. I leave the post office at 9:37 a.m. with Purple Heart stamps. jlb | 11:47 This morning, while I was brushing my teeth, this thought came unbidden into my head: I wonder how East Timor's independence is going? See, I'm a good global citizen. I randomly worry after the health of foreign countries' fledgling governments when, instead, that space in my brain could be taken up by ... oh, I don't know ... Coldplay song lyrics or something. jlb | 17:12 Chicago is a city that looks best beneath an overcast sky and no one can tell me otherwise. I was reminded of this while climbing onto the Sheridan Red Line el stop this morning. The sky was gray and drizzly. The graceful little northward curve of the platform was wet, turning the wood from its usual, weatherbeaten, grayish-brown to a rich mix of blue, black and slate. It was really beautiful. Overall, it is a muted city made up primarily of grays and blues, silvers and blacks, dingy whites and washed-out buffs. Our downtown skyline looks imposing rather than dreary on overcast days. Our red brick buildings are even more brown than red, which is probably why I cringe at all the new condo construction. The "red" bricks being used are glaringly orange. Chicago doesn't do orange. Our sole brightly-colored skyscraper, the CNA building, is a murderer. I wonder if its unusual color turned it evil, or if the architects made it stand out as a warning to unsuspecting pedestrians. I was thinking about greetings and farewells last night as I passed St. Mary of the Lake (Zombie Jesus, why hast Thou forsaken us?) on my way home. In English, you can never ever use "goodnight" as a greeting. I wonder how this unspoken rule came about. You can use "good afternoon" for both purposes. Saying "good morning" as a farewell is uncommon, but can be done. There's no flexibility in "goodnight." Maybe that's why we've come to spell it as a compound word, to differentiate. In contrast, you can use the Spanish equivalents -- buenos días, buenas tardes, buenas noches -- as greetings and farewells all around. Ah, if it weren't for Professor Flynn I could have been a linguist and perhaps I would already know the answer. Sigh. Do you think it's possible St. Mary of the Lake's cross on the front lawn doesn't belong to Zombie Jesus? Did they perhaps erect an empty cross in anticipation of the day non-Zombie Jesus returns to Earth? You know, to make him feel at home and stuff? No? Too sacrilegious, you say? You're probably right ... but did you ever notice that "sacrilegious" is spelled exactly the opposite, vowel-wise, of how you think it would be spelled? This concludes a tour through my stream of consciousness. jlb | 12:03 A little Good/Bad entry today because I'm in a writing mood, of all things, so I've gotta put my pajamas on and get to it. Good: The Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan's performance of Cursive which I saw at the Auditorium Theatre on Friday night, especially the final piece. It was this martial arts-tai chi-dance thing inspired by Chinese calligraphy. Totally cool. I want to come back in my next life as a limber little Asian girl. Good: The Amazing Race is truly the best thing on television. Can't get enough of it and the fourth season started last Thursday. I dare you to not completely fall in love with Phil. So far, I hate all the teams but that's not unusual. My hate will lessen for some and deepen for others as the summer goes on. Right now I think I hate the Floridian models the most because they're whiny and their names are Tian and Jaree. Bad: The Italian Job. Okay, not completely bad, but I couldn't think of anything else bad from this weekend. It was pretty and slick and chock-a-block with Minis (EEEEE!!!!!), but it was soulless. I couldn't give a crap about any of the characters, nor if they won or lost. Donald Sutherland was awesome, natch, but that didn't last long. I'm not completely sold on Charlize Theron, nor am I ever likely to be since she can't seem to decide how she wants people to pronounce her name, but it's refreshing to see a superhot actress who obviously chows down on a regular basis. And, of course, Jason Statham was distractingly hot. I guess since I sat through the Most Homoerotic Action Movie of All Time just to watch him drive cars really fast, I'll have to say that Jason Statham driving a Mini really fast was ultimately the reason that I didn't completely dislike this film. jlb | 17:58 |
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