Don't Hate, Love (Or Just Let It Go)

After days of serious anger issues, I'm slowly calming myself and trying to enjoy what life has to offer. That being said, during my angry time, I managed to catch the trailer for Adam Sandler's new movie Jack and Jill. My instinct is to blame Katie Holmes for this, but there is no way she is responsible, she just wants to work. Then again, she shouldn't just get a pass because there is Adam Sandler and Al Pacino to direct so much blame.

After reading a few very angry and borderline sadistic comments, I realized why spew so much hate at this? I'm just going to not see this movie and move on with my life. The anger might come back when this makes fifty million dollars in it's first week, but once again, I'll harness my meditation practices.

However, this movie does look horrible and in order to reach my middle ground, I am sharing this video. Thank you to it's creator. Don't stop flexing your idea muscles.

(Stolen lovingly from Nerdist)

Put A Little Love in Your Step

Once again, I find myself in the Adam Carolla camp and finding myself becoming severely pissed and obsessed with something that probably doesn't matter. He refers to it as hyper vigilance and he is correct.

Have you been in an intersection or a parking lot somewhere and you have pedestrians sauntering across your path and not picking up the pace? Okay, it doesn’t seem to be much, but what the hell ever happened to the courtesy jog? You see a car waiting for you as you cross the street, you move a little faster and then they can move onto their merry way. I do this all the time and I get the thank you smiles from the drivers.

I was in the car with my mom and this happened and I asked her why people look directly at you and don't move faster. She told me because we're in the air conditioned car and they're in the heat, they can move how they want. My response was then if it's so damn hot, move your ass! Let’s bring back the courtesy jog people! Or just move a little faster.

You may be asking why the thoughts on non-entertainment issues and the answer is it's freaking hot and entertainment sucks. Also, I'm working on the Steig Larsson novels. Slowly, but surely, I will get through these. It's not as funny as his brother Gary's work, but still good so far.

Ode to My Father

I'm staring to get very irritated that You Tube is not letting embed the videos that I want to share. But in any case, this is a small clip from one of the classic movies from my childhood to honor my papa in honor of Father's Day (Click here). Which by the way is a fake holiday, but a celebration for my Dad is not a fake cause.

Babies R Everywhere

I've always been sort of a late bloomer. This on top of being the youngest added sort of a stunted childhood and early adulthood. In fact of the ones that went, my siblings finished college before I finished high school. Eventually it became easy to swallow that they, with their five or more year head start on life, would be difficult to compete with so I tried to catch up by being the "good" kid. They would never say it out loud, but I'm my parent's favorite. (If you take into consideration how much grief I gave them on average, I think I win.) But when the rest had grown out of the angst ridden teenage years and started to bring the babies to visit, I knew I no perfect report cards could compare. Ask my oldest niece (or more appropriately, anyone else around with a decent memory) and you'll find out that I wasn't particularly nice to her. I hated not being the youngest and cutest. (Confession: I don't think I was never the cutest, but still.) I told my mom that she's have to wait about thirteen years, then we'd have something in common. 

Strangely it took about ten and after years of therapy I discovered that in addition to losing attention, I didn't like that she brought back the yelling version of discipline in our house. When you're the good kid, you just internalize your dissatisfaction and do what it takes to make your parents proud of you. The older ones didn't and I was having flashbacks of that horrible look from my parents that someone was in trouble. Now that I've shared a brief history of what seems like irrelevant information, allow me to continue.

Little children running around made sense with my by many years older siblings. But now I'm at the age where little ones running around by my peers is the norm. Five years earlier, I would cast it off as whatever, I have college to finish. Then college was over and my friends ventured off into a new world. When one of my greatest friends got married, came back from her honeymoon and told me she was pregnant, that was a happy moment filled with a huge slap upside my head of discovery. It isn't just the, for lack of nicer way of putting it, skanks from high school getting knocked up. This is my wonderful girlfriend adding a new generation of nerds to the world. She wanted kids and after finishing school, getting married and building a home, went for it. 

I still had some goals to get to her level of readiness, so that was just happy times for her adventure. I got to meet her son, saw him get baptized and it was so great to see the first of my adult friends take this step. Then she called me up and told me she was pregnant again. I heard the news and was incredibly excited for her. This was amazing. She told me the details and I was mesmerized by what she was doing. Again, she was pinpointing what she wanted and was making it her reality.

When I got off the phone, I started to cry. And what made it worse is that I could see it played out in an episode of Friends. (Let's go to the clip. Ignore the pettiness of "Thunder" and being the center of attention and you have my life at that moment. But she was having her second child and I was still not married yet. Also, I would never ruin another person's special night. It has come up before recently, but for crap's sake, I'm not seventeen anymore.)

This was about two years ago. Since then I've married my long time boyfriend and bought a home and I still have days where I feel empty. I've been lucky that I haven't been hounded by family as to when I'm having kids. My parents already have five grand kids and my mother-in-law said she's in no hurry. (Whether or not that's true has yet to be seen.) I'm not ready and honestly, I don't know if I am capable of dealing with the pain. There. I said it.

Well, this would be easy to deal with, but my best friend is pregnant. I always assumed she's have kids before me. She's more nurturing and likes kids more than I do. (I know I like kids that I have a connection to. Family and friends have great kids most of the time. Other kids need to stay away from me.) I'm helping her other best friend throw a baby shower for her and I'm excited and happy for her. But again, the lingering sadness for me is not far behind.

It's natural that when we get together, the conversation would be about pregnancy and little ones. I'm not part of this club, so I have little to contribute. I need to find others who are childless, quick. Then I started down the list of good childless friends. They will understand my life, right? 

Door Number One: Married seven years no kids yet.

"No, I want kids, but I'm waiting until my husband figures out a few career choices. I can't wait to have kids."

Door Number Two: Together twelve years getting married in June.

"Oh yeah, once we're married, we'll have kids really soon."

Door Number Three: Married three years & pursuing Master's Degree

"Yeah, we'll probably get started after I finish up this degree."

That's it. And Facebook is cursing me with the ones that aren't married and happily announcing the news of their bundles of joy. I was in Babies R Us yesterday and nearly had a  panic attack. My brain went into dark places and started to curse the white trash looking people who weren't smart enough to find the giant sign that said "Registry" who will soon be having little morons running around.

Calm Happy Place. And who would have though a self described "Entertainment Junkie" would have a movie moment from When Harry Met Sally that can help describe this pain?

Sally: And Joe and I used to talk about it, and we'd say we were so lucky we have this wonderful relationship, we can have sex on the kitchen floor and not worry about the kids walking in. We can fly off to Rome on a moment's notice. And then one day I was taking Alice's little girl for the afternoon because I'd promised to take her to the circus, and we were in the cab playing "I Spy" - I spy a mailbox, I spy a lamp-post - and she looked out the window and she saw this man and this woman with these two little kids. And the man had one of the little kids on his shoulders, and she said, "I spy a family." And I started to cry. You know, I just started crying. And I went home, and I said, "The thing is, Joe, we never do fly off to Rome on a moment's notice."
Harry: And the kitchen floor?
Sally: [sadly] Not once. It's this very cold, hard Mexican ceramic tile.

It isn't that I want kids now. It isn't our time. Sadly, biology is designed that my time is running out. But I'm not sad because I want kids. In my moments of pettiness, I want to be living this fly off to Rome, sex on the kitchen floor life. And don't even drink so can't abuse my body like there isn't a life inside depending on it. No, this sadness is familiar to the one I had watching my siblings getting degrees while I still had to pass third year Spanish. It's compounded by the fact that those around me didn't have a five year head start. I'm being left behind and I hate it.

Now that I'm coming up on my ten year high school reunion, I don't even get the pleasure of seeing how the nasty bitches of my youth have gain fifty pounds and are miserable with their place in life. I can just look in the mirror for that. I guess I can make some Romy and Michelle happy to tell me "They don't give a flying fuck what I think." Man, I shouldn't have to pay sixty bucks for that. Fortunately, I'll have back up with my wonderful mother of two friend. And I know I won't be excited/devastated by the news of a third pregnancy. She says two is enough. Whew.

Swans and Dancers and Lesbians, oh my!

It is very rare that I save a movie and don't blow the whole story by reading the whole thing on the internet. I decided that Black Swan, a psychological thriller with a geeod pedigree of people attached was worth seeing on my own. I knew enough to tell my very Catholic mother to not see it, but I went in as clean as one can just seeing the trailers and knowing it won awards.

So in putting in this effort, here is my offical anylsis: Why does Natalie Portman win an Oscar and Elizabeth Berkeley gets to start her career from scratch? Is it because it's artistic and plays with your mind? Or is it ballet is much classier? Let me point this much out. The mind games that the hallucinations create in Black Swan are about on par with the mind games the terrible acting and story does in Showgirls. Lesbian sex and a not so great payoff make these movies about even on my mind. Okay to be fair, I have not seen Showgirls in its entirety because I thought that perhaps that wasn't worth my time. However, I got fooled by Black Swan's accolades. Shame on you movie critics. I trusted you and you betrayed me. And if I wanted to watch a creepy masturbation scene, I have Mullholand Drive, thank you very much.

One of these movie is not like the other. But pretty close.  

(And just a note to the LGBT community, I know there are no lesbians in this movie so much as sexually confused ladies that just go for whatever is striking their fancy, but much like these movies, I'm using "lesbian" as a buzzword to get the male attention. Did it work?)

Trying to Winning

A few days ago I was reading the headlines of the reviews of Charlie Sheen's one man show and was not even a little bit shocked that they were very bad. I'm slowly moving away from my caring about this whole thing, but I'm trying to imagine the type of people who would buy tickets to this show. I'm guessing the archetype of frat boy (and I say archetype because I've lived with and am related to some wonderful frat boys who know better than to waste their money on this crap). Does anyone think beyond trashing others and saying his catchphrase of sorts that this would be any good?

Many people can individually craft all aspects of a good piece of entertainment, but I get the feeling Charlie Sheen didn't anticipate that it takes some serious thought and creativity to punch out a quality show. Or at least some work. The fact that he says he need to retool shows me he does have some sanity left, because if he was running on pure egotism, he would just say "screw the haters, I'm awesome". Instead he's at least saying, if I'm going to avoid being a flash in the pan, I need to get better. I know fifteen minutes of fame lasts a lot longer than it used to, but I think he knows that Goddesses don't come free. (Personally, I think he's not a fifteen minutes of fame type. Tiger's blood has fifteen minutes. Charlie Sheen needs to have a Robert Downey, Jr. brand of reinvention. Someone get him to a Burger King.)

Good luck to you. I'm glad you're out of the well paying TV crap hole of Two and a Half Men, but don't milk Major League. Find yourself a new area to be funny. We know you're capable. Just do it.

Media Heartburn

Okay, I got married. That resulted in one week away from work. One week of podcasts that accumulated. That shouldn't be so bad. Just off the top of my head, a week of Adam Carolla, maybe two of Fitzdog and Nerdist, a This American Life, Doug Loves Movies, Parent Xperiment, Savage Love, and The Film Vault. So two months later, I'm looking at almost fifty things to listen to. And this stuff is averaging over an hour a piece. How can I complain about so much free content? To be honest, it isn't exactly complaining, but now it's like TV and movies and books and magazines. A stack is waiting for me and I must consume it all.

There is so much at my disposal and so much is quality entertainment. I need to jump on it because it's time sensitive, but of course now I'm using this opportunity to start a book club. Calm down, it's just a basic way of telling my self, you will start reading. But should I have this problem of what should be fun is now a task in order to better myself? You will relax and enjoy yourself, damn it!

So what is the proper way to consume entertainment? This junkie has been on a diet for so long since I cut out cable, but I'm still caught up on my favorite TV shows. Granted, I hear about so many cable shows that I'm missing, I just have to tune it out. I'm loving the summer since it's a chance to get some movies I missed in the theater (Actually, it's all about the pause button. That keeps me out of the theater). Magazine subscriptions have expired (except Entertainment Weekly, of course) so no accumulation here. I keep telling myself if I just had the time, I could so a great sweep and get everything done in a weekend. Sadly, I say that about cleaning the house and you don't want to see the dog hair that's stuck to the couch. 

I'll figure it out. I'll find a balance of enjoying my stuff and spring cleaning. While I just have a tiny 4G Nano, I suppose I can go against my better judgment, fill it with podcasts and listen while I clean the upstairs. I know, using my iPod to listen to podcasts? (I fill mine with music and listen to podcasts on my work computer.) I think I can make this crazy idea work. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to listen to This Week with Larry Miller. Or in my case, Two Months Ago With Larry Miller.