Did You Have a Merry Christmas? Well? Did Ya, Punk?

My holiday break had a Clint Eastwood theme. I didn’t plan for it to be that way, that’s just how it turned out. I watched Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino, Dirty Harry, Unforgiven, In the Line of Fire, and Invictus.

It worked out well, because I’m taking a class about westerns this semester. Even though only one of those movies is a western, the inherent Clint Eastwood badassery in the others still helped to stoke my previously non-existent interest in westerns.

Other movies that I remember seeing over break (with my ratings out of 5 because I know that your hopes and dreams are hinging on what I think of specific movies):

Julie and Julia (2.5/5)
Up In the Air (4/5)
It’s Complicated (3.5/5)
Man on Wire (4/5)
Ordinary People [new favorite] (5/5)
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian [new worst. movie. ever.] (1/5, and that's being generous because I like Ben Stiller and Hank Azaria)

I also saw about 30% of Bladerunner. During the other 70% I was in a stupor. You know the one, the barely-coherent-after-spending-all-night-vomiting stupor. I’d like to revisit the movie on a non-stupor day.

What I saw of Bladerunner: 3.5/5
Vomit-induced stupor: -873/5


What else is going on…well, it’s been raining here. A lot. And I’m starting to believe that I’m responsible for the weather. Two days after I landed back east, we got 20” of snow. It proceeded to be ridiculously cold (for me at least) while I was home. Even my dad, whose favorite comment is that a cold winter day in Maryland is like a pleasant spring day in Minnesota, thought it was cold. When I left the east coast, the temperature went up about 20 degrees. I got to L.A. just in time for some of the worst weather SoCal has had in years (decades? hard to tell what’s exaggeration around here when it comes to rain).

My Californian roommates are not familiar with rain terminology. But then again, why should they be? One of my roommates came in today and I asked if it was raining. She said that it wasn’t “raining raining” but it was…*insert that look people get when looking for the right word.* She struggled in vain to describe the water falling from the sky. I asked: is it misting? Drizzling? Sprinkling? Spritzing? Spitting? She could only respond by making a noise demonstrating the rhythm of the rain on her car. Based on that, I think it was sprinkling.

On a completely unrelated note: seeing as I’m sort of [<--understatement] in love with Conan O’Brien, let it be known that I am heartbroken over the recent late-night nonsense. That is all.

Rain, Sizzler, Sex Shops, Butter, etc.

An amazing thing happened yesterday and today. Water started falling from the sky. The locals are astounded and generally confused.

It's nice to have a little rain. Yesterday it was on-and-off, today it's been raining pretty steadily all morning. I say that I like it right now, but let's wait and see what I think once I get my lazy ass up and leave the apartment. I'm glad I brought my umbrella, which will now have been rained on in Maryland, London, and Los Angeles. What a little traveler.

In unrelated news, who knew that Sizzler's still existed? The only reason I know is because there's one right next to the sex shop I went to last week.

We had to do a project for our production class that involved making a 2 minute film about an embarrassing moment. It had to be a moment we had actually experienced. We had to share these moments with the class, then spend weeks coming up with ways to make them more embarrassing, or "up the stakes." In my case, the stakes were greatly upped by the addition of furry handcuffs. And where else are you going to find furry (animal print, no less) handcuffs, but at a sex shop by a Sizzler? Nowhere I tell you.

In other news, Butter Watch 2009 has ended. I had intended to see just how long that stick of opened butter would sit on the counter and just when it was beginning to look like it might be there forever, a situation arose in which I genuinely feared for my health. I had to end the insanity.

The suspected butter-leaver-outer told me that she was planning to make cookies. I was excited at first, but I quickly became anxious at the thought of eating cookies made with butter that had been sitting out for close to two weeks. I asked if it was her opened stick of butter on the counter. Oh...did I leave that out? Oh my gosh. Yes, it's been there for almost two weeks now. It sucks that you can't just leave butter out here. ...Do you normally leave butter out where you're from? Well you know, like in a butter dish. Oh. Well those generally have lids. Yeah...I guess that's different. And we have flies. So maybe don't use that butter.