I loved Brittany Murphy. I love her still. I don’t know what happened to give her a heart attack at 32, but I wish that whatever it was… hadn’t. I’m probably not the first person who is going to voice a concern about an eating disorder because of her dramatic change in weight between the beginning of her career and now and the effect disordered eating has on your heart, but I sincerely hope that isn’t what happened.
I realize this is about her, but I’m sort of disproportionately sad about this. I didn’t know her in any personal way, and yet… I don’t know. I’ll think about it.
I’m going to write a zombie movie. I’ve seen most of the ones made in English, and lots of other movies too, and after two glasses of Christmas-gift-from-the-bosses-boss-who-already-bought-me-like-ten-Diet-Cokes-at-the-company-party wine I’m pretty sure that’s all I need to be a screenwriter.
It will star Zooey Deschanel and Isla Fisher as the owners of The Starlight Kitty, a Nevada brothel. They (like the real Shady Lady Ranch) will decide to add male prostitues to help weather the recession. The enterprise will prove to be quite lucrative and there will be montages of my girls literally rolling in their money.
Then a new client will come along (played by Amy Adams). She will go through several men each evening and continue to return, requesting new men, every night for a week. Then she’ll disappear.
The men Amy slept with will start to get ill, in the order she slept with them. Right when the first one turns into a zombie, Christina Ricci will bust in and shoot him in the head.
It will eventually turn out that Amy was diagnosed with an incurable disease that made her not only the typhoid Mary of zombie-ism, but also permanently aroused. Christina, as the doctor who diagnosed her, has gone rogue and has tracked her all over the world, killing her conquests before the seven day incubation period ended and they were able to pass the disease on.
There will be gunfights, zombies, sex, and lots of female bonding. It will be the best zombie movie ever written.
Excellent.
Me: No, he said I’m a geek. Your ears are broken. If I was engaged I certainly would have said something.
Boss: Not with that ring you wouldn’t. (looking pointedly at my empty ring finger)
Me: I don’t believe in engagement rings.
All: (Blank stares)
Coworker: Why, because of the diamonds?
Me: Well, that and the fact that when women started wearing them early last century it was because they were expected to keep their virtue until marriage, and when they got engaged it was assumed that virtue had been lost (this was me trying to avoid saying ‘virginity’ to my coworkers). The ring was so that if the guy bailed she’d have something to get her through spinsterhood. If men wore them as well it would be different.
Boss: I bought my wife’s engagement ring at Tiffanys.
Me: I’m not sure you understood the point I just made.
Boss: I told her giving it to her was like buying options in a farm.
No, it’s true. I’m not. I’m new, and I will get better, so this is not the end of the line, but MAN am I not a good skater.
Our first practice was tonight. We did some free skating, then had actual skating lessons. I sort of thought I’d be good at this – I mean, I’m an athlete. I can run a marathon. I realize that every roller girl in the world already knew this, but turns out skating is not running. Shocking, I know. I fell. A lot.
Then we did blocking. One of my most endearing/irritating (depending on who you are and your relationship to me) habits is compulsive laughter at inconvenient moments. The first time I fell off the wall when rock climbing – hysterical laughter. When I went indoor skydiving my laughter actually unbalanced me enough that my diving guide had to give me a stern talking to about it. Turns out blocking gives me a similar reaction. We paired up, planted our feet like sumo wrestlers on skates, and banged into each other over and over again. The soundtrack was a Killers album on the sound system, the soft grunts of tough chicks hitting each other, and the very poorly suppressed giggles of yours truly.
Our last bit of newbie initiation involved NOT being on wheels. We played derby… on foot. And it was awesome. And hard. And I got knocked down by a girl who was bigger than me.
This game is fan-fucking-tastic. These women are fan-fucking-tastic. Soon enough, I will no longer be skating like I’m made of whatever that stuff Gumby is made from. At least I hope so. Alternatively, I’d like to actually be made of what Gumby is made of, because I’m pretty sure that dude doesn’t bruise.
Why, oh why, has The Office started sucking so much? No, not being sort of lame – actually physically sucking. When I watch it, I can literally feel my soul being sucked out though my eyeballs. Because The Office sucks that much now.
I used to love The Office. I may have put it in my best of 2008 post (although I’m too lazy to go check at the moment). My sweetie Shovonda made me a mixed-tape-on-CD and the first song was The Office theme song. I follow the damn show on twitter, for heaven’s sake. Do you remember before Netflix used to give you unlimited streaming, and you only got as many hours of streaming as you spent dollars on your subscription? I used an entire month on nothing but The Office.
Have I sufficiently established my cred as an Office lover? Excellent. Let’s recap, shall we?
Season 1. Ok fine, it started with layoffs, which aren’t exactly heartening. That is completely outweighed by the fact that we met everyone, it was hilarious, and we got the intro to the love of Jim and Pam. Oh, and also got to see Jim date Amy Adams. COME ON – best show ever.
Girl crush, right here.
Season 2. More Jim and Pam (my personal favorite of all the story lines, in case you haven’t caught on). Pam got wasted! The whole office played ‘who would you do?’! Michael continues his unrequited love affair with Ryan in a hilarious way!
Season 3. Oh no, Jim is falling for Karen! Michael makes everyone from Stamford quit!
… as I continue this, I realize that the original seasons sound just as depressing as this one will, when summarized. I have no idea what makes this season so much more depressing. I’ll work on it and get back to you.
It’s Final Girl Film Club time again!! In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve seen the new Wicker Man and I hated it with a fiery, fiery passion. I think that Nicholas Cage should stick to Con Air sequels and leave the horror movies for… well, for anyone else, honestly. However, if Stacie Ponder says watch the old one, watch the old one I shall. If you’ve not read one of my movie reviews before, boy are you in for a treat – they don’t make any sense if you haven’t seen the movie, because I’m not going to explain the plot. Mostly because I’m lazy. What I will do is write down the things I think as I think them. Won’t that be lovely.
Scotland? Really? As long as they didn’t make the dreaded NC do a Scottish accent, the new one certainly would have benefited from this scenery as opposed to the Children of the Corn setting it ended up with.
Was that a palm tree? I clearly don’t know enough about Scottish horticulture – I would have put money on there being no palm trees.
If it turns out the missing girl actually turned into a bunny rabbit (oh excuse me, a hare) and the Sergeant was told 10 minutes in, I’m going to hate this movie as much as the new one.
The local restaurant/hotel owner makes me think of the Corky and the Juice Pigs song Eskimo. Also, he doesn’t seem to mind the lecherous drunkards dry humping his daughter. Classy.
Nudity! Nudity everywhere, even in the graveyard! What kind of island is this?? One famous for it’s fruits and vegetables, I guess….. although what that has to do with nudity is a little unclear.
Musical number. Also nude. With dancing. OH MY GOD – she’s doing the naked macarena. I’m not even kidding. And the Sergeant is finding it quite erotic, even from the other side of the wall.
Another musical number – this time with some confusing imagery about men laying on women and then seeds turning into graves turning into trees. Awesome.
Holy shit, the schoolteacher just totally spilled the beans. Not only is the missing girl real, she’s dead and buried in some sort of alternative churchyard. And in fact is now a hare or a tree or possibly both. And her umbilical cord is marking her grave. I bet there is a waiting list a mile long to move to this island.
Toad sucking. That’s hot.
There is far too much singing in this town. It’s like one big episode of Glee, except with more alternative religions and less high school.
The lord (of … something – the island? the town? who knows) just explained that the singing teenage girls are naked because jumping through fire with your clothes on is just too darn dangerous. That seems reasonable to me and I’m starting to wonder why the Sergeant is being such a party pooper.
I’m now desperately trying to decide whether I would prefer to carry the child of a god or the child of an acne scarred artisan. The former seems to come with a lot of responsibility… yeah, no jumping over bonfires for me. Since that’s apparently how gods get a girl pregnant. You know, the dangerous, non-pleasurable way.
A hare in the missing-now-presumed-dead girl’s coffin in place of her body? Really? See thought #3.
The Sergeant is consistently the sweatiest person in the room. Does being a fuddy duddy make you sweat? Possibly it’s related to the fact that he looks about 40 and he’s apparently saving himself for marriage. A virgin on this island would be seriously uncomfortable, and a 40 year old virgin is probably uncomfortable anywhere.
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH THE PEOPLE IN THE ANIMAL MASKS. AHHHHH.
Oh, the missing girl is going to be sacrificed. You know, to help the fruit grow. Obviously. I tried sacrificing a beer once, to help my strawberries grow, but they just turned brown. Possibly I shouldn’t have poured it directly onto them – I assume they’re not going to have that problem with the girl.
I guess it figures that if you bust into every room in every house in town, you’ll come across one woman in a very small bathtub who touches herself while staring at you. The poor virgin Sergeant should have expected it.
Apparently the masturbating woman and the searching were just too much for the poor old Sergeant. After all, the girl is just going to be killed sometime in the afternoon – plenty of time for a nap! That hand of glory should help with any kidnapping-sex-cult induced insomnia.
The animal masks have stopped scaring me and are now just making me think of Furries. Probably not what the film maker was going for.
See? Behind the men with the swords - furries!
Oh snap – taken in by a little girl, awkwardly washed with the hair of two blond women, marked with yellow paint, and forced to keep an appointment with the wicker man. An unfortunate end to what otherwise would have been a nice day – what with the lady in the bathtub and all.
Why on earth did someone find it necessary to remake this movie? It has its clumsy moments and quite a bit too much singing, sure, but all in all it’s beautiful and managed to make my heart beat faster at the end, even though I knew exactly what was coming. Wicker Man 1973 version, I love you and I’m just going to pretend I never even saw that silly silly 2006 version.
Emmanation rating: Pumpkin pie with homemade crust and Cool Whip.
Did you catch that I got into the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls yet? I mean, I was subtle about it – I told Facebook and Twitter and my readers here and everyone on my speed dial and everyone at work, but that’s totally all. Well, and most of the people in my email address book. Oh, and my neighbors. And the guy at the liquor store. But that’s it, I’m pretty sure. So it’s totally understandable if you missed it.
At the end of the tryout, I told Dangerous Leigh A’Zon how much her comment on my earlier post meant, and she told me that other RMRGs had read it too. Yeah, it was a mind blower. Then one of the other newbies asked me what I blogged about, and I got all stammery and pink and that was pretty much the end of that moment. My derby name will not be Eloquent Under Pressure (and not just because that would be a stupid name).
So here’s the situation as I understand it. I’ll know more after my first practice, but that’s not until Thursday and really, what are the chances that I could possibly wait that long to blog about it?
Right now, I’m not actually on a team or anything. I’m ‘fresh meat’. No, seriously, that’s what one of the girls told me we’re called. I’m going to practice twice a week and watch scrimmages on some Sundays until I’m good enough to become a Kill Scout. I was told it was a takes about three months, but I don’t know if that’s a requirement or just how long it usually takes to become good enough that you don’t die when you try to play for real. The season is technically over, so I won’t be playing until the spring even if I turn out to be some sort of freaking prodigy (which I totally expect to be, because of the pure awesomeness that oozes from my pores. Oozing awesomeness – bet that’s a mental picture you were really hoping to have today.)
It’s a big time commitment, and I love my nights with my girlfriends and my boy and my chicas. But this will lead to new girlfriends and a happier (if slightly more bruised) me, and I’m good with that.
I don’t want to leap onto the gigantic pile of people who are judging Tiger Woods. I have no idea what happened. It does sound like he committed some pretty serious breaches of fidelity, and if that’s true and if fidelity is something that he and his wife expected from each other then I think he did wrong, but there are quite a few ‘ifs’ involved there.
The other if, which has either been disproved or just sort of forgotten about, is if Elin did in fact hit Tiger the night he crashed his car. He apparently told someone who was not related to law enforcement that the scratches on his face were from her because she ‘thought’ he was cheating on her, and that he crashed the car because she was hitting it with a golf club and that distracted him. Again, I have no idea if this is true, but I certainly would believe it possible, because a revelation like that would drive a lot of people to rage.
The fact that she may have hit him was widely publicized, and as I mentioned, has just sort of fallen from the headlines. Is it because we don’t believe she did it? Because after all we’ve allegedly learned we think that if she did she was justified? Because women hitting men just isn’t a big deal? I’m not the first to point this out, but consider if the situation had been reversed. A man chasing a woman down the driveway wielding a golf club – he would be in some serious shit right now. If the woman in that scenario were having affairs, we might be more inclined to excuse it because of her clearly damaged and frightening husband. If she’s abusive overall and not just because of what she found out, does that excuse Tiger’s behavior?
Elizabeth Lambert, the hair pulling soccer player.
Then consider this. The woman pictured above, Elizabeth Lambert, was called a harridan and a girl gone wild and Radar Online said that she displayed “some of the most violent behavior we’ve ever seen on any level of sports”.
Watch even the first thirty seconds of this video and tell me that Elizabeth Lambert is even in the top ten most violent soccer players ever.
I’m not really going anywhere with this, I’m just trying to understand. What is it that makes Elin Woods’ supposed violence something to be swept under the rug and Elizabeth Lambert’s something to be publicly derided? We like our women to be violent only in self defense, whereas men can be violent for the sake of sports? I don’t know. Ideas?
Also, I got into roller derby!!! I could not be more excited – but how does the violence question apply to derby? We get a pass… why?
Mildly related: Slate and Jezebel talk about calling Tiger’s hookups ‘mistresses’.
It’s cold. My nose is an icky mess, even with the tissues that have the lotion that get rid of the little cartoon peoples red noses. I haven’t heard about the derby yet.
Ellen von Unwerth has taken these hundreds of simply amazing photographs of women and put them together into a book called Fraulein, and the entire thing is available to flip through at the link above. I haven’t gone through all the pictures yet (it is 500 pages) but every one I’ve seen reminds me of being at the bar with my girlfriends. These are not pictures taken for the purposes of arousal, despite the scantily clad or sometimes unclothed models. They feel like pictures taken for the models themselves, maybe, or for just people in general. I can’t put my finger on it – Jezebel posited that maybe it’s just the vibe of pictures taken of women by a woman.
Got me, but I love it. If the book weren’t $700 (seriously) I’d put it on my Christmas list.
