Death by fashion.

The WSJ opines on how fashion could kill you.  (Okay, they/we're being a little dramatic - this is more about how fashion may harm you).

Movie Monday: Lightning round!

Apparently my recent putdown of The Fast and the Furious franchise touched a nerve.  A friend and secret reader gchatted me to discuss his strong disagreement. A general discussion about movies we'd seen followed and then he suggested that I do 1 sentence (or otherwise brief) movie reviews.  Let me know if you like them!

1. The Fast and the Furious: Paul Walker and Vin Diesel are both good and bad guys ...sigh... Paul Walker and Vin Diesel ...oh, right, and there may have been some cars and stolen electronics. Also, there was a Hispanic-y lady who could definitely beat me up just by looking at me.

2. There Will Be Blood: First, it should've been called "There Will Be Oil." Second, bloodiest movie about milkshakes ever (okay, so maybe the title is pretty apt). Third, the mute-by-choice brother from Little Miss Sunshine is the creepiest and then the most desperate preacher I've ever seen. Lessons learned? Oil makes people:

• Deaf
• Greedy
• Crazy
• Use bowling pins as murder weapons
• Lie

3. Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole: Kidnapped owlet resists brainwashing and ... maybe this one would do better as its own list.
Things I never knew about owls that I learned from this movie:

• Owls have gizzards that are like human "guts" and they react weirdly to metal so that you can make it their kryptonite
• Owls don't know how to fly for kindof a long time
• Owl battles are terrifying and awesome (especially when they have armor and talon-swords)
• A Tyto is not a type of owl, just where he lives
• And this last one is not specific to owls, but PLEASE PLEASE try to love your kids in equal measures - favoritism or even relating more to one than another leads to CRAZY sibling hatred and future sociopaths.

4. Fantastic Mr. Fox: (I have no idea what this movie was about even after watching it). Movie shot in sepia-tones (seriously EVERYTHING was in shades of brown) about fox having midlife crisis and putting his whole community in danger to feel like a hero.

5. Iron Man: BEST. MOVIE. EVARRR. Everything about my memory of watching this movie makes me SO SO happy. =D

Linsanity.

Oops, it's been quite a bit since I've posted.

Let's play a little catch up - I heard back from that interview and now the crazy nightmares have stopped.

A certain Harvard grad has been reigniting New Yorkers' love for basketball.  Ooh, yea let's just stay on that because that's fun and relevant and also, there are sweet pun-ny t-shirts involved.

This is my official favorite t-shirt:

Buy here!

If you prefer something with somehow both a little less and a little more emphasis:

Here

But THEN, there's this awesome one.  It's not the most original or clever but the tone is so obnoxious.  How can I not love it?

Here

And the last of my favorites.  Because I can't NOT sing/say "Everyday I'm husss-sell-lin" in my head as I read it.

Here

Comic sans fights back.

I very much agreed with the many different articles and posts out there about how Comic Sans is inappropriate for resumes and cover letters and the like.

Here, is the response.

Lawyer humor, even on Vday.

Sent to me by my friend over at . b0103 . who I assume got it via Abovethelaw (and WHY a non-lawyer reads it, I have no idea).

Personalize it and send it over here.

A new regular post idea in the works.

This sums up the LOVING relationship between my sister and me.  My sister is Dexter and I am Dee Dee.

Another dream ghost.

Role reversal, though.

But this time I was the ghost.

As I've been mentioning, I've been having a larger than usual occurrence of rather negative and terrifying dreams.  About a week ago, I dreamt that one of my goddaughters had died.  This was tragic for so many reasons.  But as her mother told me how my goddaughter had felt about me I just felt this empty wrenching hole in my stomach.  It was this intense tightening of the stomach - I'm not sure I'm explaining this well but that's how it felt.  Like a black hole of ridiculous gravity-power was in the middle of my torso and wrenching everything I could feel into it.

A few nights ago I had another dream.  This time I was the one who died.  Not only did I die, but I was a ghost, and able to interact with the world I'd left behind.  I have no idea how I died or how much time had passed (but not too much) between my death and my realizing I was a ghost in my dream-world.  But I had a significant other (SO).  I've heard/read that the human brain can NOT create faces, so clearly the face was someone I'd encountered somewhere, but I didn't recognize him then, and I don't recollect it now.  I was an invisible ghost trying to tell this significant other that I was still here, that I could still see him, that I could still hear him. 

This sounds creepy now, but since I started, I might as well finish.  So, in my dream world (in which, nothing else was different from our real world), if a ghost concentrated super hard and focused super intensely, we could take some physical form and affect things in the real world.  So for me, I had to focus really hard on holding a pen and writing (really, it was scrawling because it was so difficult) "I'm here" on a piece of paper in the same room as the SO.

I had been trying to reach out to him already, and maybe this is something I picked up from Casper (the movie with Devon Sawa) or perhaps Harry Potter, but if I came into "contact" with a human they felt a chill.  Not everywhere, but just where the contact was.  So I had been trying to touch him, hold his hand, his shoulder, and he just kept looking for an open window or other source of the chill.  After he saw the "I'm here" he froze.  And somehow he knew.  He knew that the chills had been me trying to touch him and let him know I was here.

And I knew he was waiting for me now.  So I took both his hands - and by "took" I mean somehow my hands were going THROUGH his but in the same space so he felt a chill there.  And then we kissed.  And by "kissed" I mean his lips felt a chill from mine being there. 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  This is so embarrassing to share.  It's like a ridiculous Nicholas Sparks novel but usually/slash/ALWAYS the girl is the SO (because let's face it, this is a story/movie that only works and that we could only enjoy if the girl were left behind and grieving and the GUY were a ghost who was staying behind to comfort her) and Gerard Butler or some other B-list actor with soulful eyes were the ghost-lover.

Anyway, the POINT is that I felt that same feeling again.  That same black hole of gravity in my stomach feeling.  Like missing and wanting something so badly that I've missed out on and can never have again.

I have had a rather stress-inducing past 3 weeks, in a very passive sense, waiting to hear on something.  And perhaps these dreams have only occurred in that span of time.  I wasn't paying close enough attention to be sure.  But hopefully this is just a symptom of that feeling, of being powerless and just waiting for an outcome that is, at this point, wholly out of my control.

I sure hope so.

Men in caps: A post-Super Bowl observation.

Super fitting image, no? (I'm so proud of myself!)

So, post the Giants' Super Bowl win, I've seen a number of men and boys my age-ish looking (and older) wearing their normal work gear of full business suit and dress shoes with a Giants baseball cap. 

There's something I can't quite put my finger on about it that is super appealing to me.  Maybe the combination of a serious business side plus the boyish affinity for a sports team?  Perhaps the reminder of the athletes all dressed up on draft day and wearing their new team's hat with the eagerness of a girl who got asked to dance at prom?  Not sure what it is exactly but it sure is cute. 

And makes me think I need a GTHC cap. =D  And yes, almost every "sports" post on here does always come back to that.

A win. And my 2nd meme.

Duke beats UNC at the buzzer!!!



And this momentous occasion deserves my second stab EVAR at creating a meme:

To be honest, it wasn't our best gameplay ever, and based on Zellar's last 5 minutes or so of the game, my dad is convinced Duke paid him off (MOLE!!!).  Buuuuuuuuuut a win is a win!!!

GOOOOOO, Austin Rivers!!! Rest of the team, STEP IT UP!!!

Gerry Broome/AP Images

People who probably don't deserve to live.

I had originally titled this post "People who need to die" but that seemed unduly harsh and perhaps a bit extreme. So I changed it to reflect a slightly gentler estimation of the dregs/scourge(s?) of society.

Without further ado:

1. Linecutters.
2. People who clog up the escalator passing aisle.
3. People who don't flush the toilet in public restrooms.
4. Linecutters.
5. People who don't wipe down gym machines.
6. People who smoke cigarettes upwind from me.
7. Linecutters. (Seriously, this can NOT be on the list too many times.)
8. People who act like super-douches to service industry workers.
9. People who get on the subway car before everyone gets off.
10. Linecutters.

Oh, right. And rapists, murderers, child abusers, women-hitters (people who hit women, not women who hit others), aaaaaaaaannnnnnnd last but not least, Carolina fans.

GTHCGTH!!!

 

9 PM. ESPN GAMEDAY.

The Hunger Games. And my cultural education.

Source

So, I previously wrote about how tempted I was to just continue reading The Hunger Games (rather than go to bed).

I don't think I mentioned this the first time around, but I cried OPENLY, on the bus, on my morning commute, within the first 25 pages.  It's. That. Good.  (Sister love, it'll get me every time.  BUT NOT My Sister's Keeper - UGH.  Stupid girls who told me this was a must-read, I will get you back someday!)

Not only that, but I've been watching the movie trailer on repeat for a few weeks now.  I cry EVERY. TIME. I watch the trailer.  (Despite the fact that there are several GLARING incongruities from the book apparent in it... SIGH).

Just now I watched it, and through wiping away my tears I clicked on one of those "Related" links on the side.  It said the FIRST *10* minutes of the movie was leaked!!!  I WAS SO EXCITED!!!  Then this weird 80s looking dude starts dancing, and I go, "Is this an ad???"

My sister stared at me and then started laughing.  She goes, "You've been Rickrolled!"  I had NO IDEA what rickrolling was.  That made her laugh more.  ""Is this an ad???"" she mimicked me!!!  As we have come to discuss time and again, I have NO cultural IQ.  This is old news.  And yet it amuses her to no end whenever a display of my pathetic lack of pop culture knowledge rears its silly self.

Nonetheless, I can't WAIT to see this movie.  I'm also terrified of how they're going to depict certain scenes.  (In the end, I didn't go see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, mostly because I didn't think I could handle the uber-messed up s*x scenes.) 

The Hunger Games is supposed to be "young adult" fiction - but seriously the things that happen in there are MESSED. UP.  Especially freaking out about the "last" kill portion of the Games. 

Anyways, added a new little countdown widget - because I. CANNOT. WAAAAAAIT.  It's Gonna Be FAAAAAAABULOUS!!!!  (Read the last two sentences in an Oprah voice!!!)

Real Steel: Not really a movie review.

Source

Actually, I don't think the first "movie review" I did a few days ago was a true review either.  Nonetheless/slash/moving on...

I thought the trailer for Real Steel looked super cheesy.  The premise of the movie (based on a trailer I saw before another movie) was that Hugh Jackson and a little boy were somehow involved in huge robot boxing in the future.  I imagined the intellectual level necessary to to enjoy this movie would've been around the level necessary to enjoy any of "The Fast and The Furious" sequels.  (I did really enjoy the first one, but the quality of the movies just went laughably downhill from there).

Anyhow, I unwittingly and completely unexpectedly stumbled into watching Real Steel (probably about 30 or so minutes in) this past Sunday.  And I found it to be surprisingly heart-warming with a better than expected (good) story line.  I laughed (because it was funny not because I was laughing AT it).  I cried a bit, too.  I found bits that were so adorable and likable.  All not feelings I expected to get from this movie.  Maybe I should give Hugh Jackman a little more credit in choosing his roles.

I guess it just goes to show, sometimes you can't judge a movie by its trailer. =T

Dreams and ghosts.

Tried finding the ghost from the Mickey Mouse version but this is the best runner-up

My dreams lately have all involved lengthy cameos by the ghosts of boyfriends past. Starting in high school and this latest one is from college. Leave me alone, boys. Pretty please :)