Sunday, February 28, 2016
Oscar Predictions 2016
It's that time of year again! The time when we distract ourselves from all of the terrible things going on in the world by obsessing over which ultra-wealthy celebrities will be awarded tiny little statutes. And also make fun of what Gwyneth Paltrow is wearing. So here, while I still have the chance, are my Oscar predictions for this year:
-- There will be jokes about how white the Oscars are, as though that somehow makes up for how white the Oscars are.
-- Sylvester Stallone will win best supporting actor, despite the fact that he thought it was a good idea to make three Expendables movies.
-- Everyone will get up to freshen the chili cheese dip during the awards for costumes and makeup.
-- Kate Winslet will win best supporting actress for Steve Jobs, despite the fact that I do not know a single person who has actually seen that movie.
-- There will be at least three montages of clips from old movies for no reason at all.
-- Leonardo DiCaprio will win best actor, while the horse he slept inside will remain shockingly snubbed.
-- Sharon Stone will be in attendance despite the lack of any logical motive for that to be so.
-- Brie Larson will win best actress, which will never remove the sting of having been passed over for a Teen Choice Award.
-- The ceremony will go on for so long that it will genuinely start to feel like they are just making up new awards to hand out now.
-- For the first time in like ten years, the winner of best picture will actually be somewhat surprising.
Enjoy the show! Or don't, if you prefer -- it's really no skin off my back either way.
It's that time of year again! The time when we distract ourselves from all of the terrible things going on in the world by obsessing over which ultra-wealthy celebrities will be awarded tiny little statutes. And also make fun of what Gwyneth Paltrow is wearing. So here, while I still have the chance, are my Oscar predictions for this year:
-- There will be jokes about how white the Oscars are, as though that somehow makes up for how white the Oscars are.
-- Sylvester Stallone will win best supporting actor, despite the fact that he thought it was a good idea to make three Expendables movies.
-- Everyone will get up to freshen the chili cheese dip during the awards for costumes and makeup.
-- Kate Winslet will win best supporting actress for Steve Jobs, despite the fact that I do not know a single person who has actually seen that movie.
-- There will be at least three montages of clips from old movies for no reason at all.
-- Leonardo DiCaprio will win best actor, while the horse he slept inside will remain shockingly snubbed.
-- Sharon Stone will be in attendance despite the lack of any logical motive for that to be so.
-- Brie Larson will win best actress, which will never remove the sting of having been passed over for a Teen Choice Award.
-- The ceremony will go on for so long that it will genuinely start to feel like they are just making up new awards to hand out now.
-- For the first time in like ten years, the winner of best picture will actually be somewhat surprising.
Enjoy the show! Or don't, if you prefer -- it's really no skin off my back either way.
Thursday, February 25, 2016
We Need to Talk About Tarek & Christina
I don't know if I've ever written about HTV's Flip or Flop on here before, but I'm too lazy to search my archives and find out, and regardless I feel sort of a desperate need to address the topic. Come to think of it, I don't even know if I've written about Love It or List It on here before, and I could easily see myself filling loose leaf notebooks with love poetry about Hilary. God, I may have really fallen down on the job here. My apologies to America.
Anyway, Flip or Flop follows a mismatched married couple as they buy crappy houses, renovate them, and almost always sell at an absurd profit. Tarek is the real estate agent, as he constantly reminds us, and is pale, kind of generally pointy, and wears lots of bad shorts. Christina is the designer, and always wears enough makeup to star in a revival of Sweet Charity. Primarily they watch other people do renovation work and repeatedly act surprised when houses that were openly vandalized and missing fixtures when they bought them turn out to have other problems like, say, bad wiring. "This could turn out to be a total flop," they say, before selling the place for twice what they paid.
They also make some truly horrific design choices, like artificially distressed flooring that looks like it came from the waiting area at the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and, well, faux everything. I have to feel that these houses disintegrate in a cloud of plywood and laminate the minute they drive away.
Also, why are they married? (That could actually be the title for a lot of HGTV shows.) They often seem like strangers who are vaguely annoyed to encounter one another in the tile aisle at the Home Depot.
I don't know if I've ever written about HTV's Flip or Flop on here before, but I'm too lazy to search my archives and find out, and regardless I feel sort of a desperate need to address the topic. Come to think of it, I don't even know if I've written about Love It or List It on here before, and I could easily see myself filling loose leaf notebooks with love poetry about Hilary. God, I may have really fallen down on the job here. My apologies to America.
Anyway, Flip or Flop follows a mismatched married couple as they buy crappy houses, renovate them, and almost always sell at an absurd profit. Tarek is the real estate agent, as he constantly reminds us, and is pale, kind of generally pointy, and wears lots of bad shorts. Christina is the designer, and always wears enough makeup to star in a revival of Sweet Charity. Primarily they watch other people do renovation work and repeatedly act surprised when houses that were openly vandalized and missing fixtures when they bought them turn out to have other problems like, say, bad wiring. "This could turn out to be a total flop," they say, before selling the place for twice what they paid.
They also make some truly horrific design choices, like artificially distressed flooring that looks like it came from the waiting area at the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and, well, faux everything. I have to feel that these houses disintegrate in a cloud of plywood and laminate the minute they drive away.
Also, why are they married? (That could actually be the title for a lot of HGTV shows.) They often seem like strangers who are vaguely annoyed to encounter one another in the tile aisle at the Home Depot.
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Home Alone
Aubrey has what our vet has kindly termed "separation anxiety." The practical meaning of this is that she freaks out and destroys a bunch of our stuff pretty much every time we leave the house. And while it may seem like we should just dog proof to avoid, say, finding the tattered remains of our copy of "Ragtime" all over the bedroom floor, that has in practice proved difficult. Because each time I empty out a shelf or seal a drawer shut, she seems to find some new location to invade. A few weeks ago I found she had figured out how to open the cabinet I keep my actual hard copy music in; there were copies of Michael Jackson and Paula Abdul on audiocassette strewn all over the place. And once I effectively shut that down with a contraption I devised out of rubber bands and paper clips, she figured out how to get up some file folders off the top of my desk and throw their contents everywhere. All this while ignoring the dozens of dog toys sitting at various easily accessible points around the room. I just pray she never discovers the joys of arson.
The best part is that she has us convinced this is all some sort of mental disorder caused by missing us too much. So we feel sorry for her instead of, say, selling her to a cosmetics company for testing. Of course, I've had work colleagues who've managed the same thing. No one better dare ask brittle Angela from accounting about those TPS reports or there is going to be hell to pay.
Aubrey has what our vet has kindly termed "separation anxiety." The practical meaning of this is that she freaks out and destroys a bunch of our stuff pretty much every time we leave the house. And while it may seem like we should just dog proof to avoid, say, finding the tattered remains of our copy of "Ragtime" all over the bedroom floor, that has in practice proved difficult. Because each time I empty out a shelf or seal a drawer shut, she seems to find some new location to invade. A few weeks ago I found she had figured out how to open the cabinet I keep my actual hard copy music in; there were copies of Michael Jackson and Paula Abdul on audiocassette strewn all over the place. And once I effectively shut that down with a contraption I devised out of rubber bands and paper clips, she figured out how to get up some file folders off the top of my desk and throw their contents everywhere. All this while ignoring the dozens of dog toys sitting at various easily accessible points around the room. I just pray she never discovers the joys of arson.
The best part is that she has us convinced this is all some sort of mental disorder caused by missing us too much. So we feel sorry for her instead of, say, selling her to a cosmetics company for testing. Of course, I've had work colleagues who've managed the same thing. No one better dare ask brittle Angela from accounting about those TPS reports or there is going to be hell to pay.
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Signs of the 'tines
It's Valentine's Day! I know because heart shaped candy boxes and stuffed animals are on deep, deep discount at Jewel. Also because VH1 is showing marathons of your favorite '00s dating shows all weekend; we were blessed with I Love New York yesterday and now Rock of Love is on. I had forgotten the sheer psychological terror of these shows. Not to mention the number of wigs involved. I mean, Bret Michaels' hair can't possibly look like that, right? The bandanas are holding a piece in place?
Anyway, we had our Valentine's yesterday because Ian flew out to El Paso (Spanish for "the Paso") for work today. And of course we went to Chili's. We were going to watch "Trainwreck," too, but the DVD wouldn't play in the Blu-Ray in the living room for some reason, so instead we watched Beyoncé videos on demand for an hour. In essence we went from the whitest activity imaginable to something that, while still white, doesn't scream "Let's grab some hummus from Whole Foods and watch a few TED talks" quite so much. Oh, and we mainlined chocolate. Never a bad touch.
Now I've got a week on my own with the devil beagle. Chances are it will be fine, though you should not be overly surprised if it ends with me dead by her hands. (Paws.)
It's Valentine's Day! I know because heart shaped candy boxes and stuffed animals are on deep, deep discount at Jewel. Also because VH1 is showing marathons of your favorite '00s dating shows all weekend; we were blessed with I Love New York yesterday and now Rock of Love is on. I had forgotten the sheer psychological terror of these shows. Not to mention the number of wigs involved. I mean, Bret Michaels' hair can't possibly look like that, right? The bandanas are holding a piece in place?
Anyway, we had our Valentine's yesterday because Ian flew out to El Paso (Spanish for "the Paso") for work today. And of course we went to Chili's. We were going to watch "Trainwreck," too, but the DVD wouldn't play in the Blu-Ray in the living room for some reason, so instead we watched Beyoncé videos on demand for an hour. In essence we went from the whitest activity imaginable to something that, while still white, doesn't scream "Let's grab some hummus from Whole Foods and watch a few TED talks" quite so much. Oh, and we mainlined chocolate. Never a bad touch.
Now I've got a week on my own with the devil beagle. Chances are it will be fine, though you should not be overly surprised if it ends with me dead by her hands. (Paws.)
Monday, February 08, 2016
The Incredible Journey
I've now been to Guadalajara and back. And honestly, that was mostly it -- there and back. I didn't really see much of the city, other than the hotel, the university, and the nice shopping district we went to for dinner on Saturday. Most of my time was spent teaching and learning about international sales law, as one does. And though I had thought I might use my lunch breaks to sightsee a bit, it turned out that the university was inside a walled, gated compound, and I was genuinely concerned that trying to leave might get me shot. Which hardly seemed worth it to see the Jose Cuervo Express, even if TripAdvisor user cfry1937 did call it "loud and proud."
It was still a pretty good experience, though. It was in the 70s and 80s the whole time, which left me feeling very smug about the misery everyone was experiencing in Chicago, and very green and hilly. Everyone was super nice to the point that it was almost irritating; I've never been kissed hello so many times in my life. And my students were like 99% not needy for the weekend. They even handled some of the small talk duties so I could rush off to the bathroom and discretely remove the taste of the disgusting congealed chia lemonade I unwisely tried from my mouth.
The one big downside was the sleep deprivation. We got in pretty late on Thursday, they had us heavily scheduled both days, and the cab to the airport picked us up at 4:30 AM yesterday. Oh, and for good measure, I couldn't sleep at all Saturday night and had to just lie there in the dark watching Tropic Thunder in Spanish. So I celebrated the Super Bowl by sleeping. Which, come to think of it, is the most I've enjoyed it in years.
Monday, February 01, 2016
The Mexican, Starring Brad Pitt & Julia Roberts
So I am going to Gaudalajara this weekend. This has happened sort of suddenly and in a ridiculous way. You see, I am accompanying a group of my students on the trip. (No, I will not be confiscating alcohol and taping doors shut to deter sexual experimentation.) The school realized a week ago that it had funding to send me, and I am not one to say no to a free trip to Mexico in February. Even if I do somewhat fear getting the Zika virus. That was a google gone awry, let me tell you.
I have been to Mexico before, but not to Guadalajara. Frankly, my experience of Mexico has primarily been swim-up bars and bus trips to picturesque but somewhat vertiginous ruins. And of course the major motion picture The Three Amigos. I'm sure that's a pretty accurate depiction, right?
One thing I can tell you right now is that Mexico is cheap as hell. The hotel is costing me $150. For three nights. And it's not like some motor court inn where the murder happened. Breakfast and free wifi are included. I mean, I don't think there will be mints on the pillows or anything, but I can always bring some Tic Tacs and make do.
The real pity in this is that Sean Penn already got that El Chapo interview. I would have gotten him a spread in Us Weekly, or at least a 25 Things You Don't Know About Me.
So I am going to Gaudalajara this weekend. This has happened sort of suddenly and in a ridiculous way. You see, I am accompanying a group of my students on the trip. (No, I will not be confiscating alcohol and taping doors shut to deter sexual experimentation.) The school realized a week ago that it had funding to send me, and I am not one to say no to a free trip to Mexico in February. Even if I do somewhat fear getting the Zika virus. That was a google gone awry, let me tell you.
I have been to Mexico before, but not to Guadalajara. Frankly, my experience of Mexico has primarily been swim-up bars and bus trips to picturesque but somewhat vertiginous ruins. And of course the major motion picture The Three Amigos. I'm sure that's a pretty accurate depiction, right?
One thing I can tell you right now is that Mexico is cheap as hell. The hotel is costing me $150. For three nights. And it's not like some motor court inn where the murder happened. Breakfast and free wifi are included. I mean, I don't think there will be mints on the pillows or anything, but I can always bring some Tic Tacs and make do.
The real pity in this is that Sean Penn already got that El Chapo interview. I would have gotten him a spread in Us Weekly, or at least a 25 Things You Don't Know About Me.
