Accomplishing Escapism

- People who looked unequivocally fabulous: Anna Kendrick, Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren
- I am 100% ok with Chris March becoming Meryl Streep's pet designer
- If I look half as fabulous as Helen Mirren does when I am her age, I will have lived a good life.
- Ditto for Sigourney Weaver, although I wish the top of her dress had been a bit less boxy.
- Cameron Diaz usually has at least one element of her look that is off/horrible in some way, but last night she NAILED it.  She looked awesome, head to toe.
- Kathryn Bigelow won my unofficial Most Smokin' Director award last night.  Although I felt bad for her when she looked like she was about to faint onstage at the very end there - couldn't someone have given her a hand? 
- Gabourey Sidibe, please, don't ever change.
- Ditto Neil Patrick Harris.  Can he please have random musical numbers at ALL awards shows?
- Carey Mulligan FINALLY hits it out of the park, after a run of near-hits.  Lovely.
- Dear Kristen Stewart: if you, like I've been urging, finally fired your stylist/actually got a stylist/punched your stylist in the face so that he'd LEARN, congrats.  You looked great.  Also, a large portion of that was the fact that you SMILED and looked like you were ENJOYING yourself.  Keep it up!  I'd rather see you look fun, fresh and lovely than dour and sulky (which, honestly, is usually your MO).
- Jennifer Lopez's dress was wearing its own sidecar.
- I wish Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin had gotten more face time.  When they were on, they were quite funny; I just felt like we never SAW them.

On Kathryn Bigelow and the "OMG she's a FEMALE DIRECTOR" thing: yes, I'm glad that Bigelow was the first lady director to win the Oscar.  But I think the important thing is that I honestly believe she would have won even if she'd been male.  She won her Oscar on artistic merit and skill, and she absolutely deserved it; she did NOT win SOLELY BECAUSE she is a woman.  Personally, I think it says more about how sexist our society is that we think it's a bigger deal that Bigelow is a woman than that a director made such a raw, powerful, gritty, great film.

ALSO:

I just found a page of tweets courtesy of Entertainment Weekly about the celebs heading to the bar during the ceremony.  GAZE UPON THEIR BOOZING (I will definitely be camping out at the bar if someone ever lets me into the Oscars):

“Jeremy Renner is at the bar drinking water. ‘I’ll alternate it with scotch,’ he says. ‘It’s only 6 pm. I’ve got to pace myself.’”

“After losing best original screenplay to Mark Boal, Tarantino and producer Lawrence Bender head to the bar for tequila shots.”

“Clean up in aisle three: Woody Harrelson broke his wine glass at the bar. He started cleaning it up himself, until a bartender took over.”

“Sam Worthington ordered a beer at the bar — then realized he didn’t have money to pay for it. Bartender gave it to him free.”
(Note: I would buy Sam Worthington a beer.  I would buy him SEVERAL.)

I will most likely be posting thoughts on the actual winners on my movie blog later.  Summary: while I did not agree with some of the Academy's choices, I was surprised by none of them.  I don't know which is a bigger disappointment, although it wasn't a bad thing in some cases.

I really like my book blog Alternative Read, but I ALSO really like talking about movies, so here's the companion blog to AR:

Boycott BluRay

At the moment it's mainly Oscar discussion, since they're right around the corner.  But stay tuned for pretty much anything that pops into my head relating to film.

I liked it, I really did.  I just...didn't love it.  After a whole lot of thought, I've decided that stunning visuals (and it really was stunning - I was blown away by how the film looked) can't make up for poor direction and bad acting.

( Massive spoilers, and also they're blue )

In summary, it's worth seeing on the big screen, but I don't think this is going to revolutionize science fiction film.  I thought Star Trek and District 9 were both better films by far, and frankly I'm a little annoyed that the general consensus is that Avatar's existence is going to knock both of those films out of the Oscar race, and lord knows I'm a big proponent of summer films getting recognition.  But I guess we'll see.

 On Friday I skipped work to have a mole removed from my foot.  The mole was not cancerous, but my dermatologist said it was definitely a "high risk" blemish - words that made me nervous enough to have the whole thing cut out.  So now I have four stitches in the really thin skin right about my heel on the inside of my right foot.  It hurts to walk, so I've been moving in this kind of twisted club foot-esque fashion.  When strangers ask me why I'm limping, I've been telling them mysteriously that I have a congenital birth defect.

But seriously, if I don't know you, why would you care about my foot?  Or expect me to share?

Before I got my parrot, I did a lot of reading on them - what they eat, what their habits are, that kind of thing.  Because I am a responsible pet owner.  Almost everything I read said that conures like to have hidey holes, things to poke their heads in, and things to sleep in.  So when I set up Dizzy's sleeping cage I included a fuzzy sleeping tent.  I had no idea if he was actually using it or not, because he always wakes up before I do; but Monday morning, I slept all the way through to my alarm and realized Dizzy wasn't making noise in his cage, waiting to be let out.  I pulled the sheet off and had a split second panic attack because I couldn't see him in the cage at all - until I noticed the long red tail feathers poking out the end of the fuzzy tent.  He didn't move or make a sound until I tugged on his tail feathers, wherein he immediately poked his head out the other end all "What?  A guy can't get five more minutes?"

And it was pretty much the cutest thing ever.

There are three firms that work on the floor that my dad's firm is on.  One is a two-man team that just broke off of my dad's firm.  They're very used to using the assistants in the office to do their filing and such, but one of them is such an asshole that as soon as they formed their own firm all of us were like "Oh good, we don't have to deal with them anymore."  But since they do still need administrative help, I've been hired to do part time work for them (about 5-7 hours a week) at an additional income of $20 an hour (which is slightly more than my normal hourly rate).  As a consequence, I will end up staying later or coming in earlier more often so as not to affect my salary, but hey, extra cash is extra cash.  I will gladly come in an hour early to the tune of an extra $100 a week.

I got my shipping notice for my copy of Star Trek.  While I'm slightly annoyed that I don't have it NOW THIS INSTANT, I'm willing to wait for the sake of the discounted price I paid for it.

My mom has decided she wants to see more movies in theaters, a result of which is that I get to see more movies in theaters.  We saw Coco Before Chanel on Sunday, which was pretty much brilliant, and tonight we're going to see An Education.  I've also been holding weekly movie nights, the goal of which is to bring films most people haven't seen before, and so far it's a resounding success.  Our roster so far:
Sunshine
The Slipper and the Rose
A Boy and His Dog
Frailty
Night of the Hunter (which I'd seen!  Did Seth show me this?  I don't remember!)
I've got Saving Face on the backburner, and my mom gave me a pamphlet with cult films on it from the library, so undoubtedly movie nights will only get more interesting.

Since I moved back from Iowa, the mattress I was sleeping on has occupied the garage.  It is a lovely, serviceable double that I've slept on for most of the past eight years or so, and I was thrilled when my mother said I could take it to school with me.  Of course, when I did, my parents promptly bought a queen sized bedframe and mattress to put in my room, so that people could continue to use it as a guest room.  This is the bed I've been sleeping on since I got home, since I obviously can't have two mattresses in one room.

I am in love with this bed.

It's squishy but not uncomfortably so, it's big, it's wonderful, I sleep soundly on it.  Now that I'm moving out in a couple of weeks, I'd started resigning myself to transferring back to the double and readjusting my sleep habits accordingly, and frankly it was making me sad to know I wouldn't get to sleep on this mattress anymore.

But yesterday I received wonderful news: my parents sold the beach house they owned part of!  And we get to bring back all the furniture we had there!  And by the way, Martha, do you want the queen mattress up there?  No?  Well, how about the one in your room now, and we'll just replace that one with the beach house mattress?

So I'm incredibly pleased, even though the room I'm moving into is not big and the mattress will likely take up 90% of my floor space.  I love this bed and I get to keep it.

Continuing to enjoy Netflix.  I watched Cthulhu the other day (made recently, not the old black and white one or the one from the eighties) and I have mixed feelings about it.  It is very Lovecraftian, and it has a decidedly amateurish feel to the camerawork, which I think might actually be beneficial to the effect.  I dunno.  It's short, so at least if you don't like it, it doesn't last very long.

Priceless, on the other hand, is lovely and charming and satisfying.  A very solid French romance with Audrey Tautou, who I think is gorgeous.

IKEA tomorrow, for to buy shelving.  I love buying housewares.

New blogpost, discussing my favorite book-to-movie adaptations:

literacynotoptional.blogspot.com/

I sent in my down payment on Dizzy, so he is officially the bird I will be receiving.  I bought a birdcage and bedding today, and will be getting some toys this weekend (I'm going to wait to get food until RIGHT before he arrives, just so I know it won't spoil or anything).  So now Keith the breeder just needs to arrange the flight, and Dizzy and I can begin our birdie friendship.  :D

I also started my job at Borders FINALLY.  I went in on Thursday and filled out all of the paperwork, and did some training stuff.  It's funny, it took me like four weeks at the Java House to get to learn how to use the espresso machine, and Borders got me on it the very first day - my supervisor had me make a latte, a cappuchino, and three different kinds of mocha before my "shift" was over.  I'm working next week Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, and hopefully after my training is done I'll be getting more hours as I can work more by myself.  It'll be nice to have something to DO, although I'll be sad to see my free time go out the window.

I'm almost done painting a unit of Dryads for my wood elf army, which is significant to me because they will be my very first completed unit of any models.  I had to take a break from my elf guard because their cloaks ended up the wrong color, it's a much more teal shade of blue than I wanted (I'm doing a winter themed army, so I'm trying for a more gray color).  I think I'll be ready to rethink them following my success flush after the Dryads.  /nerd moment

I watched Dead Snow tonight with Billy and my dad, and EVERYONE SHOULD SEE THIS MOVIE.  It's NAZI ZOMBIES.  NO REALLY.  ZOMBIE THAT ARE ALSO NAZIS.  And it's Norwegian, too, so it features a whole lot of Scandinavian rock music. :D

AAAHHHHH

( Transformers 2 spoiler alert )

Today will probably be my last day at my dad's office, which means I get a couple days of downtime before starting at Borders.  Which I'm really glad about; it'll be nice to just enjoy the summer for a couple of days.

I've been reading mass quantities of John Connolly, and he makes me think of Neil Gaiman, and for some reason this ALSO makes me think of comics, the end result of which is that I want to write loads and loads of gothic fantasy.  Which is bad only in that I feel like right now all my writing would just be regurgitated forms of better novels I've already read.  And part of my knows that I should do it anyway, just to get all the regurgitation out of my system (as it were) so I get past it, but...

So I might start posting snippets of writing.  Because otherwise I'll end up with a stack of looseleaf paper, scribbled over with tons and tons of half-formed paragraphs.  Well, this might happen anyway....But I can also share my fractured thoughts with you!  :P 

In other news, Terminator: Salvation comes out tomorrow.  If it's half as good as Star Trek it will be awesome.  (Note: all I need for it to be awesome is for Christian Bale to be shirtless at some point and for him to kill lots of robots.  Also to see his cheekbones, because they are phenomenal.)