short pants romance

Aside from Rainman and a few others, Barry Levinson has directed some pretty horrible movies (most of which star Robin Williams, if that's any indicator) - e.g. Toys, Man of the Year, Envy (sorry, JB, but that was pretty terrible). He really should've just stuck with acting, because he definitely plays the greatest bellhop ever:

Excerpt from the IMDB mini bio of Owen Wilson:

"Owen found himself acting in a series of big budget films that scraped the bottom of the critical barrel, such as the dreadful The Cable Guy (1996)"

Why is it that most reviewers cannot talk about The Cable Guy without using the same tone of utter distaste that they use to describe movies like Ishtar and Water World? The Cable Guy is honestly one of my favorite movies of all time, by far the best comedic work of the otherwise loathesome Jim Carrey (although he was amazing in Eternal Sunshine). I firmly believe that anyone who speaks ill of it has clearly never sat down to watch it in its entirety. I mean, come on, that Medieval Times scene? Brilliant. Come to think of it, Ben Stiller has directed some of my absolute favorite movies - Reality Bites, The Cable Guy, Zoolander...Kurasawa, Trouffeau, Merchant/Ivory...you can collectively kiss my movie-going ass.

P.S. If, at my wedding, the pastor says, "If anyone thinks this couple should not be wed yada yada yada..." and everyone turns to hear Owen Wilson shout his disapproval from the back of the crowd, I make no guarantees towards Greg.

The Mac guy in our IT department just came to connect my computer to this new Macs-only shared drive that has like a quintillion megs of space. Since I work with enormous Photoshop files all day, this means I no longer have to burn everything to DVDs in order to clear space on my computer. This brightened my day slightly more than I feel comfortable with. Either my life is really that dull or I have become the ultimate nerd.

This week i've been conducting experiments to answer the question of how much Simon & Garfunkel is too much? I don't know what's wrong with me, but I brought the "Old Friends" boxed set to work last Thursday and have listened to it almost every day since. I don't even think I like them that much, it's more that I've had various songs of theirs swimming around in my head for the past five days and can't seem to knock them out. As soon as "Keep the Customer Satisfied" jumps out, "Cecelia" crams its way in. When "Cecelia" gets tired of playing, "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright" takes over her shift. And so I keep listening over and over, hoping to scratch my Garfunkel-infected itch, but nothing seems to work. It's to the point where I turned off my last.fm stats because it's too embarrassing. Do they make a salve or a cream for this, I wonder?

The irony is that according to my much outdated "recently" stats over on the right there, the last time I was in the posting mood I was also afflicted with this disease. Perhaps I should also conduct an experiment on the correlation of Simon & Garfunkel to my posting patterns.

One month from today, Greg and I will be homeowners. Here are five things I'm looking forward to:

1. Not being able to look around the room and see almost everything we own in my direct line of sight.


2. NON-WHITE WALLS!


3. Big parties, dinner parties, holiday parties, craft parties, patio parties, etc.


4. Having a place to put overnight guests where they won't be sandwiched between the couch and the TV while Franny climbs all over them.


5. Finally feeling settled (hopefully).

Here are five things I'm not looking forward to and/or am nervous about:

1. Figuring out whether or not we are up to the challenge of a borderline fixer-upper.


2. Greg and I being outside of conversation range from one another.


3. Not having a landlord to call when things go awry.


4. The idea that this pretty much means we will be tethered to the Philadelphia area forever.


5. Blowing through 90% of our savings this year.

This being said, all in all I'm ecstatic. The thought of sitting down with my piles and piles of home decorator magazines and putting together "idea boards" thrills me to no end (yes I am a geek). I love that we will have room to stretch our legs, and room for me to actually work on projects, and room for a dog, and room to have guests and parties. When I think about our excitement over having more space to put things, the minimalist environmentalist in me wrenches with guilt. Plenty of people live in studio apartments and are completely happy. It's not that I'm so materialistic that I need to be surrounded by *stuff*. I'd probably be perfectly content to live in an 800 square foot apartment in San Francisco. Philadelphia, however, is most definitely NOT San Francisco. Or Portland, or Seattle, or Paris, or Glasgow. For those places, I might drop down below the thousand square foot mark. Instead I'm living in Philadelphia, so my consolation prize is a three-story 1700 square foot house.

Above all, probably the thing that scares me most is this: for my entire adult life, every aspect of my life has been tinged with "well, if only I had this, THEN I would be content." As soon as I move out of this dorm into an apartment, THEN I'll feel settled. As soon as I have my own apartment, THEN I'll feel settled. As soon as I move in with Greg, THEN I'll feel settled. As soon as we buy a house with more space, THEN I'll feel settled. The next few months will decide whether the pattern continues, although I'm pretty sure I can at least add "As soon as we get the house fixed up the way we want, THEN I'll feel settled." It just scares me that perhaps I'm ultimately a "grass is always greener" girl who will never feel content with where I am in life. I'm 28 years old, at what point will I be ready to start living?

I think I am simultaneously frightened by and in awe of Martha Stewart. On the one hand, she's this freakish Howard Hughes-esque perfectionist who would most certainly commit hari-kari (which should actually be hara-kiri, according to the all-knowing Wikipedia) if someone spilled a glass of red wine on her carpet at Thanksgiving dinner. Except that her reasoning would be more likely due to the fact that clearly turkey should be accompanied by white wine. On the other hand, she is what I secretly aspire to be one day, once I develop a more heightened sense of hygiene.

I own stacks of her magazines - MS Living, Blueprint, Weddings, etc. I almost bought Outdoor Living one time but decided that it wouldn't be a sound investment, given the fact that our "patio" is about 30 square feet. They are all photographed so beautifully, it's like eye candy to me. As a whole, Martha Stewart Omnimedia has created a perfect fairytale world for the modern middle-class woman, and I would like to be a princess in this fairytale. Except instead of a castle in an enchanted forest, I would live a rustic farmhouse on Long Island, and instead of singing skunks and rabbits, I would surround myself with two of every kind of purebreed dog.

The thing about Martha that I admire most is that she is so unabashed in her total ignorance of the way 95% of the population actually lives. I remember the issue last September when they did a big spread of Martha's new kitchen. It was full of helpful ideas for kitchen organization, such as having a second room next to the kitchen for storing dishes, silverware, etc, having a separate vegetable sink, and a cappucino counter. Oh, and having two dishwashers really eases clean-up after a big meal.

My other favorite spread was her Thanksgiving dinner in the horse stables. There's a photo of her and 20 of her "closest friends" at a big long table, dressed in winter coats sitting on hay bales or some shit, while the horses stand in their stalls watching. Now I don't know about you, but after a big turkey dinner, nothing helps my digestion better than the smell of horse shit. And you know they're all sitting there like, "Ummm...Martha, remind us again why we aren't doing this in your mansion across the way? You know, the one with actual chairs and heat, and oh yeah, no horse shit?" However, to be fair, Martha's horse stables are about seven times better than any house I could ever hope to own, and even taking into consideration the feces, I'd still much sooner eat a fallen hunk of food off her stable floor than that of my own kitchen.

The one thing I cannot abide is her talk show. I've only seen it once or twice, but I've decided that Martha is entirely too serious about her craft to chit chat with guests and make witty banter with the audience. It's like asking Noam Chomsky to fill in for Jay Leno - some people just can't mix genius with entertainment. Although once in a while she comes out with something a bit outrageous and completely unexpected, and it makes me love her even more.

Basically I love Martha because she makes me want to pay more attention to little details and put more effort into making my life and surroundings more beautiful. So what if she's got a little bit of Nazi in her?

Here are a few videos for your enjoyment...






Even though she's in on the joke, Martha still can't take it when people fuck with her hospital corners...