Diary of Inanity

So, apparently it's been like forever and a day since I posted here. I have a semi-announcement to make. For those of you lamentin the loss of my many inane rants, I have a new blog where I am writing about the classic films I know and sometimes the one I love. It's called Classically Obsessed located at classicallyobsessed.blogspot.com. I'm hoping that it can somehow transition from my rants into a more professional dialogue. I would really appreciate any follows since now it's like writing into the wilderness, which I am obviously used to, but I don't have to be. I don't know if I'll come back to writing here, but seeing as how it's been forever and a day, I'd love to see you over there.

To Whom It May Concern:

I have officially decided to give up on nip/tuck. I will no longer care what is going on on that show at all. I will not be lured back by the promise of stunt guest stars or the fact that Julian McMahon is hot and you know what, Julian McMahon needs a better agent because I keep watching him in crap. I realize that I should have quit earlier. I know that now. I should have quit during season 3 when there was that random English detective in Miami, I should have quit when it turned out that other plastic surgeon didn't have a penis, I should have quit when Larry Hagman was making Christian and his wife have sex in front of him. I should have totally quit any of these times. And when Kimber became a Scientologist. I should have quit at the end of Season 4 when all the characters were singing in a montage. And I can't believe I gave them a chance when they moved to California. Why did I do that? I'm a smart person. (Although, I did enjoy when they were on the fake medical drama- even though it was completely improbable- because I couldn't decide if the show within a show or Grey's Anatomy had worse writing) Then Julia was a lesbian, then she wasn't then like who even cares? I guess the final straw was when Christian had sex with Liz. Done. I am done. I do not care about nip/tuck anymore. I will continue to watch my DVDs of non-crappy seasons and pretend that the rest of this crap didn't even happen. They should have just let their creator guy go after the second season like he wanted, it might have saved the show from the craptastic fate that awaited it.

And apparently Clooney's going back on ER. Wow. Weak. There's a show I at least knew to stop watching. Yes, still mad.

Why is there no picture on my TV? Let's hit next chapter.

Frank Sinatra is French? Huh?

Frank plays Francois, a French lawyer. Oh, my God.

Montmarte of the 1890s with Frank Sinatra looks much different than with Ewan McGregor. Also, I don't seem to know any of the lyrics.

Frank brought diamonds. Some things are the same...

Here comes the can-can. Wait, what the hell is this? It's so slow and there's no beat... Wait, the cops never busted in the Moulin Rouge.

Court with Can Can dancers. They're being prosecuted for screwing with morality.

1. Alvin and the Chipmunks New Album "Undeniable" in which the Chipmunks sing "Livin' On A Prayer" and "Don't Stop Believin'." Oh, my God.

http://foxshop.seenon.com/detail.php?p=77753

2. Your choice of Jack Bauer or CTU iPod at the Fox Shop. Oh my God, are you kidding me?

http://foxshop.seenon.com/detail.php?p=72166&v=foxshop-24

3. This will be a longer story. I watched a movie called "Sayonara" with Marlon Brando and Ricardo Montalban pretending to be Japanese. Hold on. It gets better. The plot of this film is that it's set during the Korean War and Marlon Brando is an American pilot who falls in love with a Takarazuka actress. It's sort of a melodrama and Marlon's friend is also married to a Japanese woman and let's just say I knew we were in trouble when his buddy got orders to leave Japan (and his wife) and then we went to the show with the suicidal puppets. (Also, why is it that every time I see something set in Japan and somebody just mentions suicide, I know there will be corpses?) Anyway, Takarazuka as I can gather and I will tag Japanese expert friends to shed light on this is a form of musical theater performed entirely by women that seems to be the most insane Gene Kelly movie musical sequence you can think of times a thousand. They do adaptations of well known works and some of them I followed, like Gone With The Wind, I could see how the Japanese could make a musical of that. Then, I found out they did an adaptation of JFK. That's right, the film JFK by Oliver Stone. The Japanese musical version of Oliver Stone's JFK. All I can think about now is a line of dancers tap dancing to a chorus of "Back and to the left, back and to the left, magic bullet, magic bullet." Is that just me who wishes I had seen that?

Also interesting to watch in this movie was the difference between Marlon Brando's Method Acting and Shirley Yamaguchi's Japanese theatrical training method, I guess. Not to say she wasn't very good, but the difference between the two styles was just too huge to ignore.

4. Wine gums. Anyone had them? Are they good?

So, has anybody found themselves watching TLC lately? It's the giant family channel. There's Jon & Kate Plus 8 and then these other people 17 Kids and Counting, which last year was 16 Kids, but yes the woman had another kid. My mom and I are having an ongoing debate: she thinks Kate is a bitch, which I will stipulate, but likes the 17 Kids mom, Michelle, because she has such a detailed organizational system, which I will stipulate because with 17 kids you had damn well better, right? Also, I am fully aware that I have no children of my own, so my opinion may be taken with a grain of salt here. Anyway, I feel like at least Kate knows she is in a crazy world, whereas Michelle does not. Did I mention she's pregnant wth number 18? Now I don't dislike Michelle, I just feel as if she's lost her mind at some point. Also, they cook this thing called tater tot casserole, which frightens me. There appears to be tater tots, beef, cream of mushroom soup and creamed corn, and I wonder what they were just doing with that ketchup. Did I mention Michelle home schools the children? There are 17, I just can't get over this and she had them one at a time. Kate got in this thing by accident, in vitro, people. By the way, this has been enough to keep me from seeking any fertility assistance, should it ever be needed. No way in hell, not getting six embryos stuck in me at once to save money and then have them all go off at once. I will go to China, people. When you leave China, you know how many kids you have. The Chinese do not try to sneak another kid in your suitcase. Michelle confouds me because apparently they have some deal against birth control, which is fine, but I just can't believe that she continues to have sex with her husband. Seriously. That she hasn't killed him also amazes me, but I do feel like someone should hold an intervention. "Michelle, you have 17 children, another coming, what are you waiting for?" I'm in pain just thinking about it.

My favorite new part of this season on 17 Kids and Counting is Cousin Amy. Cousin Amy comes over, doesn't dress like the rest of them, has cut her hair, appears to wear make-up and joins the Duggars on their adventures, like to the Christian amusement park. At one exhibit they make nails as Amy comments, "They're making nails. You can buy them fifty cents a bag at Walmart, but they're making them." Also, before the trip Amy went to her car to get her iPod, saying it would help her survive the trip, explaining that "They sing a lot of...hymns." This leads to one of the interview segments with one of the children (I can't learn their names, they all start with J and I suck at names) explaining that "Rock and roll isn't really good for you." Which is odd for me, since we all know my first movie was Pink Floyd: The Wall. I don't think they're sinister by any means, but this is odd, right? Oh, now you're going to tell me my first movie being Pink Floyd: The Wall is weird. They all dress alike, have the same hair and I am supposed to believe all independently want the same thing: to have families just like theirs. Really? I can't wait to see somebody bust out and cut their hair or something.

The other thing that continues to amaze me is TLC has no shortage of giant families. Every time I watch they have a commercial for another giant family. Let's just think about ratios here, the Duggars have 1 parent for every 9 kids. Jon & Kate have 1 for every 4 kids. And there seem to be more people on TLC with six or more children. I'm just confused.

So, I now have another regret in life, that I didn't appreciate Paul Newman when he was alive. Sure, I liked his salad dressing and his pasta sauce, but not those organic peanut butter cups... And also, I regret not having been around in the 1950s for both the fabulous wardrobe and to try to steal that man out from under Joanne Woodward. Lucky, lucky woman. And also, when I read this guy's bio, I started to think I am not doing enough in my life.

Anyway, to keep you up to date, the list of Paul Newman movies that I have watched since the TCM marathon on October 12th. Get ready.

Exodus (Which totally made me want to go to Israel, then you know, the movie ended...)
Hud (Where he was pretty much repulsive, you know, morally. Not physically.)
Sweet Bird of Youth (Where the hell is that movie supposed to take place? Wikipedia says St. Cloud, Florida but in the opening credits they are clearly leaving Florida and St. Cloud is in central Florida, but they're heading to Hollywood so it must be I-10 or Hwy 90, and the we know the state has offshore drilling, so it must be Louisiana? Try to get your damn facts straight movie people and you Tennessee Williams! And also, the girl's name is Heavenly and we're all surprised when it turned out she had gotten knocked up. I think we from the real South can put that one together. By a guy named Chance nonetheless. Not that we can blame her.)
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (Hot.)
Cool Hand Luke (Which somehow made Floridian roadside chain gangs appealing for the first time ever...)
Nobody's Fool (Which was good.)
Winning (Where his wife ditches him for Robert Wagner. Seriously?)
Somebody Up There Likes Me
Harper (Where his wife kicks him out... For real... Do you see where I fixate?)
A New Kind of Love
The Sting
The Hustler
The Verdict
Absence of Malice
Torn Curtain (Where Mary Poppins almost gets Paul killed...)
What A Way To Go
From The Terrace
The Young Philadelphians
The Long Hot Summer
Rally Round The Flag Boys (Where his wife would rather go to the town meeting than to a hotel with him. Serious need to re-examine priorities in that movie...)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (where Paul and Pam from Dallas give a bear a bath and go on a picnic, with the bear... Why? )
And I'd already seen Road To Perdition

That is 22 movies. But I'm not watching Quintet. I won't. I count 16 to go and that's a career.

Spoiler, Spoiler, but really you probably already know, even if you just saw half a commercial for the movie...

So, the Sex and the City movie came out on DVD. I saw it in theaters and still love it, but I am sadly at the point where I just want to see the happy ending. Oh, crap.

SPOILER ALERT

The Sex and the City movie has a happy ending. You just have to sit through two and a half hours of angst to get to it. And that's what distresses me. I spent six damn years watching this show dealing with the same why won't Carrie get together with Detective Logan angst? I let them screw with me for those years and then I got the finale and it was perfect and the world was good. Although, to be fair, I was so untrusting of the finale's happy ending when Carrie's cell phone rings and the display says "John", I did immediately scream "And who the hell is John?!" Then you know we found out Big's name was John. I had that whole Detective Logan assumption. So, then I get a movie and what do they immediately do? They screw with me AGAIN. After I had already been throught that crap with Aidan and the Russian guy whose ex-wife is played by the Bond girl I go around quoting in For Your Eyes Only. (And apparently, she's French not even a little Greek in real life, so there's that disillusionment.)The point is the writers of Sex and teh City have created an emotional cripple that can't bear to watch whole movie. Which is just great.

Also interesting, when I went to buy the movie, I was looking for the Extended Edition with the Special Features (Not that I really believe in Extended Editions anyway, it's like the theatrical version died with the DVD release, but the one for Bladerunner explained EVERYTHING.) Anyway, I couldn't find it and this was the first day, so I stood around waiting to be asked if I needed help because usually when I'm in Best Buy there's like ten guys asking if I need anything. (Do I look like a shoplifter? Maybe it's just the giant purses I so often carry and the hour I spend trolling the shelves.) And finally, there's an employee who is looking for a customer's online order of the special edition and there are like five employees looking for it, so I just followed them around until they found one of the last three on the bottom shelf of the new releases under the Blu Ray discs. The guy got one, some other girl got one and I took the last one. Whew! And this was like at 2 in the afternoon, meaning the store had only been open four hours. Who would have thought it would be so hard to buy the damn Sex and the City DVD?

I would like you to think back to a simpler time last spring when our nation became captivated by the NCAA Women's Final Four and the leader of the winning Tennessee, Candace Parker. She was hailed as the player who would advance the WNBA tenfold. In the NCAA finals, she looked amazing and even dare I say, Duncanesque. (I mean Tim Duncan.)

In June, I went to see my San Antonio Silver Stars play the Los Angeles Sparks and there was great anticipation, not just for my team, but to see what Candace Parker could do. It seemed as if many had come to the game just to see her and lined up to high five her as she left the court. I learned two things that game:

1. Lisa Leslie is a damn flopper.

2. Candace Parker is no female Tim Duncan.

You may recall in July a scuffle on a basketball court in Detroit. Sparks versus Shock. Candace Parker versus Plenette Pearson. Those two were the instigators. Pearson got a four game suspension and Candace Parker got a one game suspension, because, well, she's Candace Parker.

So, at tonight's game, I saw Candace Parker again. It also happened to be Breast Health Awareness Night and a portion of half time was used to recignize women who had fought Breast Cancer as they stood on center court to be applauded.

And then here come the L.A. Sparks while the women are still being introduced, their stories are being told and... the Sparks start halftime shootaround.

What?! I mean, a little respect? I know they were down and all, but they couldn't wait sixty seconds? They're professional players, a minute of shooting is going to make that big a difference over the time they've been practicing their whole lives?

I would also add that Candace Parker had argued with every call made against her tonight, ad nauseum, even as the other team shot its free throws. Every call. Even the ones when people fell over. Okay? There's no point in arguing this long. It results in nothing except pissing off the refs. She gets a call against her, San Antonio ball, the crowd goes wild and she... sticks her tongue out at them?

What the hell? This is the new face of the WNBA. Candace Parker: she acts just like Kobe Bryant does except with more smugness. Even I have got to say that I haven't seen Kobe Bryant start shooting basketballs while Cancer survivors are two feet away. And I have very little to say about Kobe Bryant that is positive. That was the only semi-positive thing I've ever said. But, let me just reinforce that Candace Parker is no Tim Duncan, no Becky Hammon, no Helen Darling, no Erin Buescher, no Sophia Young and in short, no San Antonio basketball player and certainly no savior of the WNBA.

By the way, Sparks lost, 76-58.

So, it's been a long time since I posted here. Like since the end of the Western Conference Finals which I am still not over, but I did get one of my wishes: Kobe Bryant did cry when he lost and one of my greatest joys was not just that I noticed it, but I was at Kerbey Lane and heard people talking about it. Oh, yeah, Kobe don't mess with me. To paraphrase Eric Cartman, "Mmm. Sweet Kobe Bryant's tears... Tears of unfathomable sadness... Mmm..." I've really got to stop taking so much from that show.

Yeah, I'm not going to do that.

So, I've been rewatching Moulin Rouge, which is every bit as romantic and depressing as I remember it. Maybe even more depressing. But that could just be my quarterlife crisis at work.

On a tangential note, try to remember where this quote came from:

"I just have certain beliefs and those beliefs are inconsistent with having sex with a prostitute that I just met."

Anyway, I am having some lingering issues with this film, clearly influened by snark.

1. Why does Zidler want to make the Moulin Rouge a theater? Surely, it's much more profitable as a brotherl/nightclub? I mean, obviously there's a lot of overhead with the costumes and the giant elephant and the mermaid girl, but there are a lot of prostitutes who must certainly be bringing in non-taxable cash earnings. And you can probably overcharge for drinks too. And if they're drinking absinthe, they aren't going to remember what they paid for it the next morning. They're just going to remember a green fairy.

2. Shouldn't somebody have died of absinthe poisoning during the course of the film?

3. Is anyone as worried about Christian's exposure to tuberculosis as I am?

4. Shank. Duke. Seems simple to me.

5. What dumbass signs over the deed to the brothel? And who wants to buy a brothel, that apparently is seeing no profit? And who's going to go see a play at a place that was a brothel last week? Although in Fort Walton Beach, there's a church that used to be a strip club, so maybe it's that sort of thing...

Anybody want to see this Australia movie that's coming out? I'm tempted. I wonder how designed for ADD viewing it will be, because you know that's a consideration with me. And has anybody seen Lond Way Down on Fox Reality? Ewan McGregor, riding a motorcycle from Scotland to Capetown, with you know, his friend. And apparently at some point his wife, which pisses me off. You know, women of the world, we don't want our significant others crashing our chick time, let's just stay out of their motorcycle trips. And is anybody else sick of Woody Allen's London phase in which he tries to pretend he's a subtle director and also seems to utilize the same film stock made available to ITV in the early 1990s?

And with that impossibly obscure reference, I will conclude.

As you may have gathered, my beloved Spurs lost to the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals. And it was wrong. Wrong!

Today, I got an email from NBA Commissioner David Stern telling me about this historic Finals with the Lakers and the Celtics. Right, this wasn't rigged. Anyway, at this special time, I would like to put forth some of my Finals wishes seeing as how the Spurs can't be in the Finals... this year.

1. The Celtics sweep. Humiliating, crushing defeats for the Lakers in which commentators question their manhood.

2. The Lakers starting five players all get ankle, knee, or tendon related injuries that will keep them off the court until the week after next year's Western Conference Finals.

3. That during one of these injuries NBA Ref Joey Crawford be injured as well, allowing him to have some much needed time off to get LASIK surgery that will allow him to see fouls when they are committed and also, for him to find religion. ANy religion that values fair refereeing in professional basketball.

4. That at the end of this Celtics sweep, Kobe Bryant be crying on the floor of the Staples Center as "We Are The Champions" plays, Kevin Garnett's Gatorade infused sweat dripping down on him as Garnett accepts the trophy and I have occasion to say, "Mmm... Kobe's tears. Tears of UNFATHOMABLE SADNESS! Mmm!" *

Have I gone too far? I think not.

*Please see classic South Park episode, "Scott Tenorman Must Die"