the ocean

Born to Run

So I ran a 10K this morning. This was a first for me. I run all the time, but I avoid doing it in any organized fashion. I like to be able to stop randomly and look out at the water or at some person I think might be Jennifer Aniston (but isn't). Also, I tend to prefer to be alone with my thoughts (which are generally about Jennifer Aniston) when I run. But I have to admit, this was kind of fun. Being in the crowd motivated me to run faster, since I didn't want to do worse than anyone I thought looked to be in worse shape than me. The course was kind of cool and went through some areas that I don't normally run in (like the other side of the soccer field -- crazy!). And I got to go to breakfast with friends afterwards; I find that massive quantities of bacon are a major plus in any exercise situation.

Things I didn't like? Porta potties. The woman who stopped short directly in front of me, forcing me to do a weird hop/dance to avoid knocking her over. It being like fifty degrees out. Oh, and the t-shirt. Lime green. There are very few occasions that call for lime green.

Strange Days

In case you didn't know, the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup on Monday. I'm not really a hockey fan (it kind of just looks like people skating around in circles really fast to me), but I was happy due to my enormous civic pride (which somehow fades whenever I have to deal with anyone at city hall). The victory had the interesting effect of turning my neighborhood into a police state, however, with mobs thronging the streets and helicopters circling overhead. I had visions of people overturning my car or setting fire to my trash bins, but fortunately it just got loud and not particularly destructive. So I just cranked up the volume on my Nick at Nite and went to bed.

Tuesday, then, we were supposed to check out my sister's newly-remodeled pool, but it rained, so we had to settle for checking out the new soda fountain that they've for some reason installed in the building's gym. Along with tiny, tiny cups. Which I somehow managed to spill all over the floor, resulting in what I'm pretty sure is my banishment for life. I guess if you have to be banished from something, the gym of a building you don't live in is a pretty good choice.

My Life, My Time

Well something surely must be said about Lifetime's Jodi Arias movie. I did watch it, natch, although I don't actually know much about the real life case. I guess I spend so much time dealing with true crimes at work that I don't really feel like reading up on them in my free time. But judging from the Lifetime version, Jodi Arias was a good time gal whose man done her wrong and she ended up having to stab/shoot him repeatedly to get him to respect her. At first they had a fun, sexy romance that seemed to involve a lot of selfies/converting to Mormonism, but ultimately it ended in a pool of blood, as these things so often do. Also she decided to become a brunette, which really didn't suit her quite as well.

There were of course some classic scenes. Jodi appearing to orgasm while getting baptized comes to mind, as does Jodi's jailhouse rendition of "O, Holy Night." There were also a number of unintentionally comic fights, some of which involved rapid, angry texting. I could have done without the roughly twenty-minute murder scene, but it was fairly easy to fast forward until the stabbing stopped. Oh, and let me give a well-deserved shout-out to the genius who decided that the title should be half print ("Jodi Arias") and half cursive ("Dirty Little Secret"). It told us right off the bat that this was going to be a brutal murder, sure, but with a feminine touch.

Anyway, I guess overall I'd place it well above "Prosecuting Casey Anthony" (too talky), but well below "Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial In Italy" (the title alone is a thrilling exercise in prepositions) and "Drew Peterson: Untouchable" (moustache rides ten cents), still the gold standard for ripped-from-the headlines Lifetime. And regardless, I'm sure the families of the victims of all of these crimes take great solace in the fact that at least their losses helped provide work for B-list actors with Mercedes leases to pay.  

Tales of the Great White North

So yes, Lake Geneva was awesome, thanks for asking. I was there for less than eighteen hours and it managed to be raining most of the time I was there. I stayed at the Comfort Inn & Suites, where the "suite" means that there is a little half wall between your bed and a pull-out couch. Also an empty microfridge. So it could basically be your college dorm room, but with a slightly worse cable package. MTV has a lot of educational value.

There was a free breakfast, which was nice, although I lacked the fortitude to brave the line for the waffle maker. And free wireless internet, so you don't have to worry about slow game play on Words With Friends.

The meeting itself was fine. They cap them at two hours, which is a fantastic idea, although it does little to diminish my righteous indignation towards people who have an irrelevant anecdote for every item on the agenda. For a minute I thought I saw Hilary Swank in the lobby, but upon closer inspection I discovered it was just some dude.

I had to pee so badly on the way back that I had a bit of road rage on Addison, where people were idling down the road at five miles per hour in the absurd hope of finding a parking spot on major traffic artery a game day. Perhaps the third Diet Mountain Dew was taking it too far.

Miscellany

Right off the bat I should probably admit that I don't have any news about M. Night Shyamalan (or M, as I call him, since we're basically brothers) today, since I know that's why a lot of you come here. I can tell you that whatever M is doing right now, it's really awesome, because he's M, but that's about it.

I do have some amazing personal news, though: I finally have a tooth again! After a total of four (4) surgeries over the course of about six (6) years, several thousand (xk) dollars, and innumerable painkillers, I have regained my second upper left molar. It feels weird, to be honest. I constantly feel like I'm going to bite myself. Maybe I'm just not cut out to have adult teeth.

Also, can I tell you that level 65 of Candy Crush is killing me? I've seriously been trying to beat it for three days now. Yes, I realize this is a game for 12-year-old girls, but I'm finding it very difficult. It seems like every day my iPhone brings me to new levels of shame.

I'm headed out to Lake Geneva, WI (not the good Geneva) for a bar association meeting tomorrow. Can you handle the glitz and the glamour? I mean, we're talking complimentary breakfast buffet at the Comfort Inn and Suites, here.

Important Update

So apparently another writer is disputing M. Night Shyamalan's claim that he wrote late '90s glasses-removal classic She's All That. Let's just take a moment for that: the man who was on top of the Hollywood heap after penning and directing The Sixth Sense (perhaps Mischa Barton's finest work) is now engaged in a slap battle over authorship of the teen movie perhaps best known for not being Varsity Blues or Cruel Intentions. What's next, a scuttlebutt over whether he was director of photography for Melissa Joan Hart lazy-eye showcase Drive Me Crazy? A kerfuffle over costume designer rights for She's The Man? A lot has changed in just over a decade.

But anyway, I don't claim to have any insider knowledge of the actual writer of She's All That, so my apologies to the other guy. For what it's worth, Entertainment Weekly is quoting the Miramax producer of She's All That (yes, there was a producer) as saying that both M (I call him M, since we were briefly married in the 1970s) and the other guy did drafts with important elements of the finished product (yes, they considered it to be finished). Which is sort of like when your mother says that she loves all of her children equally but in different ways.

So let's just say congratulations to everyone involved in the production of this moderately successful teen romantic comedy from more than a decade ago, shall we?

And A Bag of Chips

So M. Night Shyamalan announced in an interview this week that he "ghost wrote" She's All That before he made it big with The Sixth Sense.

As an initial matter, I'm inclined to doubt him, as I had always believed She's All That to have been the work of the angels. Plus, where is his signature twist ending? Actually, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turned out that Freddie Prinze, Jr. was dead the whole time.

But it is sort of wonderful to imagine M. (for that is what I call him, as we are best friends) sitting down at a giant 1998 desktop computer and carefully crafting gems like "What is this, some sort of dork outreach program?" and "There was major wiggage." Did M. work from improvisation, first putting himself into the mindset of glasses-wearing, art-show-having Laney Boggs and then letting the diatribes about child labor and the rain forests just flow from within? Did he write the classic role of Dean Sampson with Paul Walker's unique comedic voice in mind? Did he have the TV on in the background at the time and was he maybe kind of caught up in an episode of Moesha? Had there been any recent changes in his prescriptions that could account for the third act choreographed dance sequence to the music of uncredited prom DJ Usher? This really does raise more questions than answers.

The best news, of course, is that it has given me an excuse to re-watch this modern classic, which was coincidentally airing on cable this morning. Did you know that Lil' Kim is in it? She plays a girl who has absolutely no function and needs her eyebrows tweezed. And Academy Award winning actress Anna Paquin? She plays a horrible misshapen girl who is somehow going to defy all common sense and continue to work in the industry for another decade and a half. God, I bet Rachel Leigh Cook is crying into the frying pan she once so memorably used to illustrate the effects of heroin right now.

Storm of the Century

So all day, everyone was hyping this big storm that was supposed to hit Chicago tonight. It was the top story on the local news, I heard it on the radio while I was driving to the gym, and it was all over the internet. Heavy rain! Dangerous winds! Flash flood warning! People left work early because of it; my core instructor was late to class because of it. (She actually was not late, but she thought she was late and apologized for it like a billion times, and also told a semi-racist story about how her cab driver didn't "get" why she was in a hurry.) It was the talk of the town!

Unless I missed it while I was at the gym, nothing came of it. The sidewalks do seem a bit damp, but there are no tree limbs down. We have miraculously retained our power. I have not actually even seen or heard any rain. Is it maybe still coming? I would consult weather.com, but they have a bad habit of telling me there's a 0% chance of rain when it is actually currently raining out.

Anyway, that's Chicago weather. Lots of talk and no action. Not that I'm complaining, in this case.

Tony! Toni! Tone!

So I only watched about a third of the Tonys and I was doing other things pretty much the whole time, but I have some thoughts.

First of all, I'd be pissed if I were one of the winners who didn't get to receive the Tony during the actual broadcast then I was sitting there watching Neil Patrick Harris and that dude from Girls (to be fair, just a rage trigger in general) sing about how they are on television shows for five minutes. I mean, no big deal, these people just designed all of the sets and costumes people like NPH use to lavish themselves with love and attention.

Second, it kind of sucks that so many of the shows do medleys now instead of just performing a substantial portion of a single number from the show. I mean, it's not like Annie has such a difficult concept that we need a couple of songs to help us figure it out.

Third, it takes some pretty big balls to threaten to cut Christopher Durang's acceptance speech off. Especially when he's talking about his dead mother. If he'd done a tribute to the Boston victims, would they have literally pulled him off the stage with a hook?

Fourth, Pippin kind of killed it. Congratulations to everyone who somehow managed to rescue it from the '70s. I wouldn't slate that The Magic Show revival just yet, though.

Fifth, was Patti Lupone wearing the sheet set from her bedroom? I swear to God if there'd been a strong breeze she would have been airborne.

That's it, that's all. Off to bed with you now.

On The Aisle

I saw the new Star Trek movie last night. It was pretty good. I did end up checking my phone a little bit during it, because I have a number of apps that are really heating up right now, but it was no reflection on the quality of the movie. Okay, I also ended up sending a few texts. But I'm very busy and important. That's certainly not J.J. Abrams' fault. He doesn't even return my calls.

Anyway, I thought it was fine. There were some good action sequences and the actors were all okay. It's kind of weird that some of them seem to just be doing impersonations of the original actors. Not that I'm all that familiar with the original actors, but my parents did used to check the VHS tapes out of the library and force us to watch when I was a kid, so I think it's imprinted on me a bit. The guy who plays "Bones" (ha ha) is the one who really strikes me with this. Chris Pine doesn't seem to be imitating William Shatner, but maybe I just can't remember what William Shatner was like before he devolved into self parody. And I really like Zoe Saldana, mainly just because she was in Center Stage. She might just have been the Best God Damn Dancer in the American Ballet Academy, had that role already not been spoken for.

Some of the dialogue was a bit terrible/expository. And what's with everybody in movies these days being a good guy and then a bad guy and then a good guy? Or some combination thereof? I like my villain to be obvious, thank you very much.

Coke Is It!

I'm pretty sure I had an encounter with a cokehead this weekend. Not my first, undoubtedly, but certainly a memorable one. We were standing in the bar of a restaurant when he came up to us, apparently in the midst of "psyching himself up" to go join his group. He actually came back and forth five or six times, deciding he had to "take the plunge" and then immediately thinking better of it. You see, he was concerned that they had already "formed a group" and that he would "feel weird" interrupting them. But he apparently had no concerns about interrupting us, a group of complete strangers, as he kept entertaining us by barking delightful witticisms in our general direction and then being unable to focus on our responses. He threw a ten minute fit about the bar's failure to stock his alcohol of choice. ("I couldn't believe it. I honestly couldn't believe it when she said they didn't have it. I had to ask her to go check.") He asked us if we were "smart or stupid" without any sort of preamble at all. And he was heavily fixated on if we were drinking enough. (We were, duh.) I seriously wish I'd had a tape recorded, because I cannot even remember all of the rapid-fire stream of consciousness monologues to which we were treated. But I think it's safe to say we made a new friend, who we did not like and whose name we do not remember. The very best kind!

Mad Money

Yes, I chose my title just to reference the classic Katie Holmes/Latifah film of the same name. The one that Tom convinced Katie to pass on The Dark Knight to make. As it turned out, it would have been a better idea for her to pass on Tom.

Anyway, after roughly six years of successfully avoiding my "personal banker," I finally had to go in and have a meeting with him this morning. I always hate talking to these guys because they make me feel bad about having my money so heavily invested in food and shelter and want me to instead buy Brazilian bonds or something. But there had been a series of voicemails of escalating intensity, some of which referenced my accounts "becoming inactive," so I figured it was time.

And I actually got double teamed at the bank this morning -- though not in any sexy way --- because they brought in a manager to talk to me as well. They really don't like me only earning .5% on my savings account, which seems weird, since I feel like they could just give me a higher interest rate if it bothers them that much. But they had all kinds of fantastic ideas for where I could put it instead, eventually leading to me having ideas about where they could "put it" as well. Also they wanted to help me avoid foreign transaction fees, which is awesome, since I do so much business in the Caymans. These guys really get me, you know?

Fortunately, I managed to get out of there in less than an hour and with most of my money still intact. But just shoving under my mattress is starting to seem like a better and better option.