wait until dark and you'll be 17 again

yesterday was a day off and a two movie day. first off was wait until dark, which i watched during the day. it's a 1968 audrey hepburn movie and netflix picked out for me because i watched the heart is a lonely hunter with alan arkin and it thought i'd like some more alan arkin, which i did. i'm pretty in love with him and it's great to see him young. although he hasn't changed that much. men are tricky like that.

but, wait until dark wasn't that good. it was a play and it's about this crazy, beatnik drug guy who is looking a doll stuffed with heroine that ended up in this couple's apartment. arkin enlists two guys to help him and they have all these crazy characters and stuff to trick audrey, who's freshly blind, into giving them the doll. the sneaking around stuff is cool, but in the beginning she has some really cheesy lines to her husband about how much she loves him and stuff. really bad stuff. i couldn't tell if she was suppose to sound like the most pathetic, desperate pushover that ever lived or if something got lost in time. but, it was better once we got past all that lameness.

and last night it was time for 17 again. it's the one were a middle-aged guy unhappy with his life wakes up in his 17-year-old body. i haven't seen any of the high school musical movies, but sometimes it kills me not to know about all that teenage, pop culture stuff, so i got 17 again. zac efron might be too young for me to be attracted to him, which is actually pretty reassuring. the movie was not very good and matthew perry is not aging well. i'd like to think that the movie addressed some interesting social issues about pedophilia when the adult wife is kind of hot for her husband who is now her teenage husband but she doesn't know it's him. but, i don't think that's what it was all about. the best part was really that at the end when they have the credits, they have those people's high school pictures with their names and the director was a total fox. maybe the hottest guy in the movie. so, maybe i can be attracted to 18-year-olds. oh shit.

sunday night movies, friday night lights, and still yet every night with agent cooper

You've seen a few foreign languages movies that don't have English subtitles, right? I don't think I ever really had until Sunday night in New Hampshire, in Concord, with Avishay and his bookclub. We watched a Norwegian horror about Nazi zombies in ski country. It's called Dead Snow. Watching it without really knowing what the characters were saying was a-o-k. And fun because people were big on calling out with their guesses and witticisms, and also, with Nazi zombies and Norwegian skiers, do we really need to know the details? There were lots of zombie and human intestines and blood coming out of mouths and snow and references to other horror and squished eyes and other body parts. Not too much sex but some, and that in an outhouse. Some of the state parks here have these great outhouses, all wood and really tasteful but not completely enclosed, so some good pseudo-outdoor peeing. Anyway, one character, a girl with dreadlocks, was really killer, she survived on her own so hardcore, like, hanging off a cliff fight off a zombie and hanging on only to the intestines of a disemboweled zombie wedged in some tree branches at the top of the cliff-- I was pretty entralled with all the intestines work. Do special effects people major in things? If so, these ones majored in guts, for sure. So, that was fun. Concord is a good town, even if they don't have a coffeeshop that stays open past 6 and isn't in a chain bookstore. And every place I ever visit, I want to move there. I'm good at daydreaming up alternate lives in places I'm a stranger to. On the ride home, which was about two hours, I also daydreamed up another tattoo. I'm gonna get a bison on my left arm, on the inside between my elbow and wrist, for Buffalo, you know. Hometown pride.

So, on to the television. I never watch the Biggest Loser but I've heard good things. Anyway, I have four housemates: Ezra, Stephanie and Xander. Stephanie and Xander have never seen Twin Peaks before but Ezra and I have. So we're all kind of going through the series, sometimes with other people around, but at different times since we all have different schedules and there have been some rare but fun days where three or four of us altogether catch an episode and that's nice and cozy because I really like my housemates. I was bored at first with the show, especially the Log Lady intros on the DVD which are cool in theory but are mostly poorly written, but it really picks up when things start to get weird with Killer Bob and the one-armed man, so I'm into it like always before and again. And I like that it's on the TV at lots of random times in the living room.

A girl at the videostore is really into Hoarders and Intervention, two shows I would totally watch if I had cable. I should see if those shows are online. I can relate to hoarders, and I think my grandmother might have been one because she could never throw away National Geographics or newspapers. She also never left the house, so there's some historical precendent for my sometimes shut-in behavior.

Which brings us to Friday Night Lights, which is my fall-asleep-to show. I thought I was done after the first season. No dice. I like that the coach's wife is a strong and good character, but in the second season she kind of loses it because she has a teenage daughter and a new baby and her husband moves away to be a college football coach. The second season also features a murder (!) and a weird love story between a slut and a nerd. I like the show overall because the teenagers are all really strong but also confused and they go into their complicated lives in good ways. It's unrealistic maybe, I guess I don't really know, or wait, I was going to say, these kids get away with a lot of drinking and stuff that doesn't seem realistic but oh I must be too old to imagine how they do it. When I really think about it, which I just did, it's not so hard to pull ones over on adults. So I guess it's helping me get in touch with the teens. But maybe only the melodramatic, murdering, football-obsessed or -hating, murdering ones.

i'm the biggest loser

liz's adorable coworker tom said that he heard people who watch the biggest loser are the biggest loser, so that's me. this episode wasn't as emotional, which means i lonely cried a couple times.

we got all new netflix movies today, so i'm going to have better things to tell you about. like 17 again.

tv for dinner

so liz's friend karen (your mix exchangee) had a seven person dinner party last night and i talked about tv a lot. afterward, i was a little embarrassed but liz said it's fine. i talked a little about our blog and how it's sweet.

i talked about psych, which i also watched yesterday. psych is on usa and it's my show. liz and i started watching it because when she was in the hospital last december, we watched a lot of usa and although psych wasn't on at the time, we kept seeing the same preview and i was sold. i downloaded the first two seasons and it wasn't that funny at first, but it worked its way in. now, i just love it. and, this summer, i fell asleep to an episode a night so i pretty much have them all memorized.

one of the guests, the only guy, husband paul, has watched it once or twice and didn't like it. i don't think i sold him, but he likes shows like rescue me, sons of anarchy and the shield. i haven't seen any of those but have heard a lot about all of them and they're different than the formula i love.

today i watched white collar, which is the new show on usa. it got talked about last night and has the really beautiful man from chuck. it was pretty good. it's a man/man team, which is a nice change.

holy three day movie robin

Finally finished DiG! last night. Took me about three or four days to get through it. I kept falling asleep or getting bored but by the time I finished it, I had to start it again with the commentary cos I got so into it and ultimately really like it. I love when they get busted in Georgia and David LaChapelle and watching a bunch of people in Oregon or wherever fight like little children. All in all, everyone in the film comes off as ridiculous and sometimes mean or egotistical but all total characters, so good film fodder. In a way, I started to miss Boston and being around a bunch of music snobs and drugs and stuff. That might be odd because I wasn't always a fan at the time, but odd is what things are sometimes. Anyway, I never thought much about either band before but I think I like the Brian Jonestown Massacre better. It's good to know I can still pick favorites, although that's something I'm trying to change. Bittersweet to know, I guess.

When I came out on the porch this morning, there was a cat crawled up on one of the camping chairs. I tried to explain to it that it could stay, but it couldn't understand. I was harboring big dreams of getting a foster dog because we have a big huge dogless yard and it would be nice to keep the strays away and dogs are so great but now I worry it would keep the cats away and what if they don't have another nice big dogless yard to hang out in?

siamese lazy boy

This is the new-to-me couch I bought at a thrift store a few weeks ago and what I sit on usually when I watch tv/movies not on my laptop. Although it's not necessarily comfortable or uncomfortable to lie on, it is very very comfortable recline with. See photo of recliner lever below or to the left or right, not sure where it's gonna be.



Pretty nice. I fell asleep on this watching Twin Peaks last night. Is it rude to fall asleep watching tv with a group of people? Remember when someone shoots a bird at the police station? Anyway, that's the disc we watched.

holy three movie day batman

i don't know what came over me. part of it was that i've had tulpan for almost a month and need to get it out of the house. it's a kazakh movie by a kazakhstani russian. david and i had to look for pictures of him on the internet to find out if he's white or brown. the movies in russian and kazakh, which i think is really cool. the men are silent pigs, the women are silent but strong willed, the dudes are idiots, the wind is strong and the steppe is vast. all about right.

i guess that i liked that he wanted the life of a shepard on the steppe. it's possible that was cheezy and nationalistic, but it's kind of nice that the simple life was his dream.

i also watched disturbia (2007) with shea lebeouf. i'm not sure why i picked this movie. i have loved shea since the days of even stevens and rear window is my favorite hitchcock, so that's probably why. it was alright. it got kind of scary at the end.

in the beginning when the rating is posted and there is an explanation for why the film received that rating, it said for sensuality. not sexuality. i never paid attention to those, but aaron would notice and comment when nudity and sexuality was promised. sensuality?? seriously?

why oh why

so, i'm continuing to just watch stupid tv, so i'm not going to name it. i did watch daria: is it college yet? it was pretty good. i might be over daria, but i was nice to go back to that time a little.

i've attached a picture of my viewing set up lately. i moved my computer from a table next to my bed to the floor in the tv room because i spend most of my time lying on the floor. although it's a laptop, the power cord port is messed up so that it has to be in a very specific position to work, so i can't move my laptop very often. someday it'll stop working all together and i'll die of saddness.

so fresh and so clean clean

I've only watched the lastest gray's anatomy. it was a good one but nothing special. i'm busy this week with pumpkin carving yesterday, michael chabon talking at the main library today and sherman alexie tomorrow. but that's ok because my thursday fox shows are on vacation for two weeks.

i did watch some of the latin music USA on pbs maybe monday night. it was kind of interesting. i've seen some juanes videos on french and russian music tv and he always sings in spanish so i thought that he didn't speak english. but he totally does. and he's hot. i'm not a big latin music girl, but i do love music.

eastbound and down (2009, hbo)

Have you seen eastbound and down ? It's a newish half hour comedy on HBO. Before I go on, have you seen the other one with Max Fisher? One of my favorite comedians Zack ReallyLongGreekName is in it, and it's about a writer in NYC who becomes a private detective. I've only seen a few minutes but it seems alright. Anyway, I don't have cable so I watched Eastbound and Down on DVD. If you've seen Pineapple Express, then you'd recognize some of the people in it. It's kind of like, whoa aren't rednecks ridiculous? With lots of that Sarah Silverman racism/sexism/homophobic type comedy. Shocking, I guess. Like, laughing a lot but also saying "Oh, man" or "Oh my god" a lot too. I can't remember if you like this type of comedy so I'm not 100% recommending it, but lord, did it make the crowd laugh. Then more Friday Night Lights which I'm not as into anymore, but TV habits die hard. Tonight I'm going to see Where The Wild Things Are. At work today I listened to all the little snippets and interviews and reviews about it on NPR. You know you can stream NPR and make your own playlist with just the segments you want to listen to? I can't decide if this is a blessing or a curse? But I did it. I mean, I do it.

me painted tired

We finished off the first season of wire in the blood with justice painted blind yesterday. i like the show. i like to guess who did it, but that's not as important on this show. sometimes we don't even get to know who did it.

i'm excited for the lead female change, although i do like her.

sleeping on the blog

so, i haven't posted in a few days, but not for lack of watching anything. once again, i have some movies and some tv to report on.

yesterday i had my third training at the videostore. it went pretty well, i think, and i can tell it's going to remind me of being a librarian, which is totally positive. i was feeling like spending some time with curmudgeons on the box so i brought home these: crumb and american splendor. crumb is a documentary about r. crumb, and american splendor is the harvey pekar one, in which crumb is a character. you must have seen american splendor but have you seen crumb? what i liked about it was how it's sort of a portrait of middle america nutso. crumb's family is pretty out there, lotsa cultural snobbery and recluses and anxiety medication and even some sitting on a bed of nails. of course, this behavior by himself and brothers (the sisters wouldn't have anything to do with the movie) is all because their dad was superabusive and their mom was a 50s amphetamine addict. not in the way of the warhol superstars, more like in the way of a todd haynes character. there's oodles of sex weirdness and crumb might be hostile towards women which works out well because his wife is a self-proclaimed self-loather. it made me want to revisit ghost world and read more comics. the only comic i'm into right now is sweet tooth. the gothgirl comic phase is over. this one's about a half-boy half-deer. it's great. and then american splendor, which i love the misery of and i love how the people who are characters played by actors show up as themselves. i also like how they adopt an illustrator's daughter. love the forming of an unconventional family story.

after that, i watched empire records with my roommate. i haven't seen it in years but it was a high school favorite. i had the same experience watching this as i did watching reality bites recently and realizing how much of these movies informed what i thought my 20s would be like. outside of using toilet paper as a coffee filter and knowing a prescription drug addict, none of it panned out.

then today i watched some friday night lights on instant after my friend matt, a very trusted source, recommended it. i love war movies even though they're always about men. or because of? anyway, i feel the same way about this one. it's all football, but high school texas football. i'm learning things about football that i wouldn't get anywhere else or really care to, but i like knowing more about it since sports are suddenly appealing to me.

because i couldn't watch anything any more, i went to the community radio station where i practiced switching between songs and also banter, and then target where i got cheap jeans and some bras, and now i have to go watch a 1980s customer service training video for the videostore job. the star of the CSTV is southern and wears colorful scarves pinned in ways you'd expect. it's so cold in maine, snow and rain type cold. that means allergy season is over, right?

also, buying bras at target made me miss the bra wizard. i hope he lives forever.

this blog is working

so, on your advice, i downloaded the first season of Wire in the Blood and liz, stacie and i watched the first two episodes tonight, The Mermaid Singing and Shadows Rising. the title of the show and the titles of the episodes don't make sense, by the way.

I like the show. it follows a formula i enjoy, cop and crazy person solve crimes together. After the first half of The Mermaid Singing, I declared that if Carol Jordan and Tony Hill don't do it soon, i'm not watching the show anymore. But, after watching and them not doing it, i decided it was ok because it's normal to have some sexual tension between adults but not act on them, right?

and, i like the show because there is no super computer that gives amazing answers and the killers are not regular people pushed too far, but crazy people with deep problems. the mentalist has a lot of regular people pushed to murder once and after watching some episodes, it makes me feel like anyone could murder anyone else at any time.

flat on my back

it really helped to lay on my back. or maybe it was the codine. anyway, 3 hours of awesome tv. thursdays are hard because i want to watch gray's anatomy, but my sister wants to watch fringe and i want to watch that too. but abc puts their shows online the next day and fox waits a week, for fringe wins. the line up tonight, bones, fringe and the mentalist.

bones was not a favorite, but now i've watched all three seasons and i kind of love it. it's stupid.

fringe is creepy and joshua jackson makes me wet.

the mentalist is funnyish and today all i could think about was how hot on of the guys would be naked.

my sister's watching the proposal now and i might have to join her. man, i'm full of shit viewing today, sorry.

but, in other news, i went out to the cvs to buy my sister refried beans tonight at 10 and as i was walking, i saw my hat which i guess i dropped down the street in the rain at 4:30 on my walk home from school. and, cvs doesn't have refried beans, but there's a mexican place across the street and everything worked out great.

the double feature and a trio of tv shows

First, I watched The 'Burbs (1989) and ate onion soup and biscuits. Then I watched the first half of The Rules of the Game (1939) and ate some Soy Delicious. Then I watched the new episodes of Glee, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on hulu while drinking as much water as I could handle. The only thing I really paid attention to was the first movie. Remember how I was talking about a female director kick? I think first I'd like to become a bizarre 80s movie expert. I wish I had two paths I could follow... Anyway, I'm so glad I rented The 'Burbs. I'm pretty sure I hadn't seen it since the era of slumber parties. Tom Hanks is young, and it's all about a cul de sac full of neighbors that can only communicate by yelling at each other. They're yelling at each other mostly about a new neighbor family that is creepy, messy and nocturnal. It all ends in disaster, of course. Plus, one of the Coreys-- and he's wearing a leather jacket with a tie dye shirt. The Rules of the Game is so snarky and mean to middle class slash rich people, and I like that sending up of the bourgeoisie business, and pre-WWII France, but I couldn't get all the way through it. More yelling. Why is everyone yelling? At least with Glee there's some singing, but even that seems like yelling. I'm old and it's too loud, I guess. But I love Jane Lynch. It seemed like she was getting beaten at her own game by the teacher, who I hate because he's so dumb. I just want her to always have great lines like:“Here I am about to turn 30 and I’ve sacrificed everything, only to be shanghaied by the bi-curious machinations of a cabal of doughy misshapen teens."The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are the same show every night, but dependable is nice. So that's a little of both and a lot of watching.

full body tattoos?

i really watched some bad tv today. my sister's spending the night in the hospital and my mom went back to ohio today, so i went to the hospital this evening and laid in moving hospital bed with my sister and watched the worst tv. they have basic cable, but it seemed to be all NCIS, which isn't good. We watched some so you think you can dance and america's next top model and some new sitcoms.

oh, and the second half of a show on national geographic channel about tattoos. we saw the parts about the Japanese mobster tattoos.

the best thing to watch is the chapel channel. liz is in a catholic hospital and there's a channel that just shows the chapel. nothing happened while i was there, but spooky.

Twin Peaks (1991) and about uniforms

So, it's fall and I've started watching Twin Peaks again. This must be the dozenth time. Which started me thinking about how into repeating things I can be, how I like to start a book again right after finishing it, or how I can always imagine falling in love with people I've fallen in love with before, or how I like to pick a uniform and wear it out for the season. Right now I only have a bottom uniform: grey jeans and beige furry-inside pointy-ish little boots. If I had a sweater I could love more than any other sweater, I'd really have a uniform going. Which brings me to the Andy Warhol uniform, and the Patti Smith uniform, and the 60s Don't Look Back Dylan uniform, and those are all really great uniforms. The wardrobe in Twin Peaks is equally amazing. The plaid skirts and tight sweaters and leather jackets and flannel and flat shoes and waitress dresses-- can you beat that? Anyway, I'm glad to be back to Twin Peaks and cherry pie. I do feel a little less amazed by it this time. I guess I'll get obsessed again no matter what, though, since that's what always happens.

tuesday, my cryfest and some funny haha

this started last season when i was usually home alone on tuesdays because peter had class and mom worked, but i'm totally hooked on the biggest loser. i don't think it hurts that i've also been losing and gaining weight lately. and, it's interesting to see different kinds of bodies naked or almost naked, and this show totally brings that.

it was a little annoying watching with my mom because she drives me crazy lately and she so negative. there's this crazy bitch on the show, tracey, and she did some crazy bitch things this week and my mom keep saying how they have to have someone like that because it's all about drama. but i don't really think that's true. the show's good when there aren't stupid, obvious conflicts. it's totally all about everyone winning and learning and changing their lives. the show focused more on that and less on the bitchyness, so that was nice. i cried on and off the whole time and i don't even know why. i'm just easy like that. but, at one time i sat up from the floor where i was laying because my back's trying to kill me, and i noticed liz had some eye wetness too.

after, we watched the one hour mitch hedbergh dvd that you and netflix talked me into. pretty awesome, i have to say. he has great delivery. there was an edited half hour special that we watched first and then the unedit one because we didn't realize it at first. it was funny to see the difference and some jokes are still funny even when i just saw them 15 minutes before. i really want to be in love.

Sweetie (1989)

Tonight I watched Sweetie, Jane Campion's first feature. It's a Criterion so some early short films by the director are included. I watched those yesterday. They were funny, odd and sad, which I guess is a popular combination. I think I liked them better than Sweetie. She did a movie recently with Meg Ryan, maybe. I feel like my paragraphs are full of uncertainty. Oh well. So, anyway, this movie is about a woman living with her boyfriend and her very literally crazy sister and her parents and how they all deal with each other and the crazy sister. It's funny, sad and odd, too, like the shorts. The characters are all pretty unlikable-- a plus in my book. I was distracted by finishing up my mix for the trade. It must be no surprise that I'm a little late with it too. But okay, Sweetie is short but feels long. The colors are great and it's Australia (or New Zealand?), so what people are wearing and what their houses look like score high with me. There's some tree fear and some tea leaf readings, so you've got your metaphors and whatnot. Even though I didn't love it, I still think you should watch it if you're ever in the mood for one of those sad crazy family dramas that looks really great. I'm hoping this will lead to a female directors kick.

monday tv

I've been listening to NPR all day and it's fund-raising time, so I also set a goal. I wanted to complete all 18 tie shirts that i had picked out ties for and had ready to get sewn. I had to do this before seven because that's when good tv starts and I made my goal!

I started with House. The episode was fine, the usual. Since I saw Hugh Laurie on a talk show and he looked pretty bald, I pretty much just watch his hair. I also miss the sexual tension between him and Cuddy. House needs something, but I'm not sure what it is.

Next was Lie to Me. This was also only ok. But, my back has been really hurting me lately and it was super bad today because I was sewing all day and Tim Roth walks really hunched, which made me feel like we were friends. And, there was a guy who gets turned on by blood and injury, but the lie detectors figured out pretty quickly that he didn't have anything to do with the crime and moved on. I think it's good when tv shows mention sexual strangeness but just to put it out there. Or is the exploitative?

Then on to Castle, although I forgot and we watched 15 minutes of My Name is Earl before I realized there was something better out there. The episode was not that great. I'm not sure I like Castle, but I like detectives and it fits into my tv viewing habits, so what's the harm. Both Kate Beckett and another woman had really ugly, straightened hair. That show needs some work.

the warriors (1979)

i watched the warriors for the first time last night. it was the director's cut, which may be the only version out on dvd- i'm not sure. it's about one gang with leather vests fighting its way through rival territories and gangs all the way from the bronx to coney island, all in a post-apocalyptic, or maybe during-apocalytic, future. all of the gangs have names and uniforms, so that's great even when the names and uniforms aren't that great. as i said before, the warriors wear leather vests, and they pick up a decent female lead along the way. all that, and there's a greek chorus-type dj on the radio. it takes place in one night, and mercedes ruehl has a small part. if memory of the director's intro is correct, the movie is based on a comic book, so there could be more to look into, which is always nice.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080120/