Awesome Movie Night

I had a really nice night on Friday. I got together with a couple of my WineBookClub friends, caught up over apps and wine, and watched some Glee. My WBC ladies are awesome for realz. Then I celebrated Suji's birthday at the XV, which I hadn't been to in many years. This old lady stayed out after midnight! So today I've had a much chiller day at home. Thought about going out for another friend's bday but decided to just take it easy. And boy am I glad I stayed in! If not, I probably would've never found out that Debbie "electric youth" Gibson has a very accomplished acting career, as evidenced in the groundbreaking "Mega Shark vs. Giant Octupus."



That, my friends, is a picture of a shark attacking an airplane. The acting is atrocious, the effects are laughable, and with lines like "Don't love the ocean too much. It doesn't love you back!" you know this film was totally robbed of an Oscar nomination last year. Those elitist bastards.

Before that, I got to watch one of my favorite movies when measuring by quotability. I'm talking about The Heathers of course.


"Dear Diary, my teen-angst bullshit now has a body count." "She's my best friend. God I hate her." Such a classic.

Moneez!

This has been quite the week for winning at bar games! As I mentioned earlier this week, we hit up the bingo on Monday night instead of the regular Bachelor + dinner evening since there was some boring reunion where one of the ladies tried to malign Chris Harrison's reputation (doesn't she know that every time someone hurts Chris Harrison's feelings, a puppy dies?) The grand finale is next week. Will it be Tenley or Vienna? (or will Ali come back in a not-shocking SHOCKING twist?!) The gossip mags never even talk about Tenley so my money is on Vienna, though sadly she is not in my bracket anymore, so I guess I can't put my money on it.

Anyway, to get back to bar winnings - Kathryn totally kicked ass at Bingo and won the 1st round. It cost $1 per board and all the money was put in a jar, so when Kathryn won, the bingo announcer poured all the money on her head! It was raining dollar billz!

To be fair, the picture doesn't quite capture the moment. Kathryn's reaction was a bit more like this:

It was an exciting night and though no one at our table won the 2nd round, we did get a round of margaritas and a delicious biscuit.

Last night we went to Thirsty Lion for a young lawyers schmoozy networking event that was followed by their pub trivia. We were #1 the entire way through until the very last round where we underestimated ourselves and didn't bid enough in the "final jeopardy" type bidding round. We still got 2nd though and won $60 and a bottle of champagne.



It wasn't enough to rain money but it was just enough to make a cash fan. I'm taking those $1s and hitting the strip club*!




*Not really. Drag show? Maybe.

Yummies

I've had a crazy whirlwind day today, including a visit to the Kinko's to fax a form to my loan peeps so I don't have to pay my student loans for awhile and a couple games of knock-off Settlers of Catan (called Xplorers) which a FB friend introduced me to. Now I'm at the Extracto coffeehouse on Killingsworth finishing up a pro bono project I started on Friday (yes, Agrado has a heart of gold y'all). But I had to stop and tell my 3 readers that they must get here to try the marionberry cheesecake bar post haste! That + an IZZE drink (which I've never had before but now I'm a convert) has been the perfect mid-day snack.



After I'm done with this, I think I'll get back to my hectic schedule of


and maybe a little of



Oh! And I'm going to play Bingo with Kathryn and Kerry and a bunch of other people tonight! I'm hoping there will be plenty of hipster old ladies there. I never win at games of chance but at least it requires leaving the house.

Glambert & Weir

My two new favorite things (and also a good name for a law firm - Glambert & Weir LLP?)

I didn't watch the season of American Idol that Glambert was on but his new album is amazing. It's such a wonderful dancey pop sensation. It's been an inspiration every time I put it in my CD player (yea I know...way to be a luddite about technology. As soon as I get another job, I'll get another ipod!).

Isn't this the most glamazing (glamorous + amazing!) album cover ever?! The hot new dance song of 2010 will totally be "If I Had You." You heard it here first.

And my other favorite glamazing person is Johnny Weir. If you follow my buzz or twitters or facebooks, you probs already know about how our house has basically turned into Casa Weir. Can't get enough.

His show on Sundance, Be Good Johnny Weir, follows him and his cadre of Russian trainers and fabulous outfits. It's worth getting the super special cable for (that, and Logo for RuPaul's Drag Race).

In other random happenings, I've been getting a lot of books out of the library since I have free time and no money and love to read. Those in Portland know how awesome the Multnomah County system is. Last week I found someone's old "to do" list in my copy of "The Left Hand of Darkness." Someone had to pick Bill up from the airport at 4:30. Today I found a temporary tattoo in my copy of "Cycler" and another "to do" list. On the back of this to do list (which included turning on the straightner and doing makeup) was a convo between 2 girls about how one of them 'did it' with Brent last night at the CYO dance! OMG No Way!



I've seen on Oprah et. al. all about how kids these days are into rainbow parties and sexting and stuff. OMG!1!!TehChildrunz! I'm glad that they're still actually just hooking up and writing notes to each other about it.

Never Gonna Get It

Lately, I've had many discussions with Kerry about that horrible David Guetta/Akon song "Sexy Bitch," (He's TRYING to not be disrespectful. But these bitches! It's just too hard sometimes!) and the New Boyz/Ray J song "Tie Me Down" about how he likes having sex with this girl but: "There's too much girls and I ain't lettin go, Cause my life is great, And you ain't nothing but a hoe"
And his excuse is: "Ay yea you know I'm a man, And I have no feelings"

There's some other song about a guy who asks this woman he was interested in if he could "visit her at work" so he could see her "slide up the pole with no panties and no shirt.



That's exactly how I feel baby meerkat! Sheesh! It makes this pop music-fan wonder what the eff these guys are thinking? Don't these men have any women in their lives at all? It makes me grateful for all the Lady Gagas and the Beyonces in the world to counter all the terrible misogynist bullshit. It's not all horribly offensive out there! When the mainstream pop-hip hop world has you down, I like to throw on one of these never-fail classics:


This song has my favorite back up vocals ever. "I'm a survivor (what!)/I'm not gonna give up (what!)/I'm not gonna stop (what!)/I'm gonna work harder (what!)." Here I must shout-out to Kim, one of my high school bffs. We used to car-sing the shit out of this song back in the day.
See also: Independent Woman




Also recommended: Shoop


Can't Hold Us Down - Christina feat. Lil' Kim

What am I forgetting? Now I'm off to Katherine's for some steak, potatoes, and Jake the Bachelor. It's the fantasy suites episode!

Things I'm Obsessed With.

More accurately, videos i've watched a trillion times in the last few weeks.

First up, this guy brought narwals in existence. Without his photography skillz, we'd never know such magical animals existed. In a way, he's like a god to the narwals. He has this super neato story about an elephant seal who felt bad for him being a completely useless predator.


These next 2 are like communion (wafer + wine!) at the Church of Sagan. And it includes Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is the shit.




Finally, you know me and how I gots to include the cute animal videos.

WANT! Like seriously. A domesticated otter would be a perfect playmate for Maude.

Also non-video things to add: Glee, the upcoming New Moon premiere, my book club with a wine problem, Bea Arthur, animals in costumes, Barney Frank, and playing Farmville on FB (ugh, i know...lame!).

Irresponsible Branding?

I think I'm gonna start cutting myself just so I can use these band-aids.

You Better Work

Last night I decided against going out to a bar and stayed in with my bestie to watch "It's Me or the Dog" and my 2 new favorite reality TV shows (well, just 1 new favorite, the other is just ok). Yea it's totally lame but we're kind of homebodies and I really have to be in the mood to make it out to the Pearl (for the non-Portlanders, it's the snotty yuppie part of town). Don't judge me because I picked TV and my bestie over popped collars and $10 cocktails!

Anyway, so besides a sweet episode of IMotD where a guy breaks down because his 2 pit bulls keep destroying his house but he can't give them up because they'll be put to sleep (they weren't aggressive or anything, they just got bored and ate stuff like his couch and blinds), we saw 2 new VH1 reality wonders, "For the Love of Ray J" and "Drag Race." (For the record, I just searched for a clip of the IMotD ep. and instead found all these sad videos about pit bulls and laws that want to outlaw the breed and then I cried for 10 minutes and now I'm pulling myself back together. For your future reference, don't youtube pit bulls. It'll just make you sad :(

I didn't think Ray J had anything going for him besides that sex tape and being Brandy's bro but supposedly he's also come out with a record or something. The Ray J show is the typical dating show a la I love New York, Flavor of Love, Rock of Love, Real Chance of Love. Not even any real twists. Reality tv looking for 'love' shows have become so ubiquitous and formulaic that every new show is uninspiringly the same. Just get the contestants together, edit the tape to find the characters you know will stay through till the 2nd to last episode (like the one everyone else hates but she's not here to make friends!), and then give the appropriate token of winning each round (insert rose/key/clock necklace/glass of champagne), followed by many episodes of fighting, drinking, jacuzzing, and no substantive conversation.

My favorite part was where Ray J gives each girl a nickname, not because he has to, but because that's how they do it on other shows. Following in the footsteps of Flava Flav, he goes around the table with a free association name game. The girl drinking wine is Chardonnay, the girl who is a cocktail waitress ::drum roll:: Cocktail. The girl with a tiger tattoo on her face is Dangerous. One girl had great skin, which made Ray J think of something soft, which made him think of a scarf, so he named her Cashmere. Yea. It's a good thing none of them were taking a bite of food and got stuck with "Roast Beef" or "Cauliflower" or sitting in front of a plant and got "Ficus." The rest of the show goes along pretty predictably. Some girls think they are classy because they just sit in his lap trying to take off his shirt, while others do the splits and hump the floor. Tomato, tomahtoe.

The real new wonder of reality tv comes from RuPaul.


If ANTM had an IVF baby with Project Runway, it would be Drag Race. Thomas Rogers in Salon recently wrote:

"The Bette Midlers and Whitney Houstons have been replaced by Katy Perry and the Pussycat Dolls. "The sad thing is, the pop stars that were popularly impersonated in my day all had personality," says [drag legend] Lady Bunny. "How are you going to impersonate Rihanna? What is her personality? You don't know, because she's just a product."

The point is a good one, and Tyra Banks is as close to a personality perfectly made for drag queens as you can get these days. RuPaul is basically doing Tyra in drag and it's a match made in heaven. Comparisons have already been made and Drag Race just really steps it up a notch. But back to the wonder of the show. It's basically an ANTM contest to find America's next top drag queen with its first contest being a Proj Run-esque 'make your own costume from pieces of crap from the dollar store,' with the added bonus of Santino being a regular judge.

There are a lot of great queens (with wonderful names like Rebecca Glasscock and Ongina) in the running but I was disappointed that they got rid of Victoria Parker right at the get go. She is classic drag (but I guess she just didn't lip-sync for her life hard enough) and just seemed like the sweetest person ever.

Apparently the judges and I don't agree on anything because they let creepy creepy creeepy Tammie Brown stay

And gave the top prize to Nina Flowers. I give Nina props for the outlandishness but the beauty and wonder of drag (at least for me) is the complete gender-bending aspect. I love how they can refer to each other in any pronoun: he, she, ladies, queens, regardless of what they're wearing. Androgynous is one thing but Nina's outfit looks like a character from The Dark Crystal or Labyrinth. There's not a hint of woman or man in there, it's just a costume. I was rooting for you Victoria!

One final thing we noticed was the interesting job the censor must have. Santino described one of the ladies' outfits as "You look like you're about to give a $20 handjob." Of course on TV he said "You look like you're about to give a $20 handbleep." This prompted a discussion about how confused the censor must be. Do you bleep out the hand or the job? Neither is censor-worthy, but together? Well there's a conundrum. And I wonder if they considered Rebecca Glasscock. Did they decide it was just too hard to keep up with always introducing her as Rebecca Glassbeep? Or is Glasscock ok because uh, cocks aren't normally glass? Aaaaand these are the important issues I think about. I'm glad RuPaul is back. We could all use some drag in our lives.

The Highlight of My Day

Besides the bacon/spinach/tomato pizza I had for lunch, was Sarah Haskins' Target Women: Super Special. It aired during the Puppy Bowl, so I understand if you missed it. It's a roundup of her previous episodes, but even if you've seen them all, you'll lolz all over again. And if you've never seen a Target: Women episode, do yourself a huge favor and check it out.



"So as a woman, you have some responsibilities you have to take care of everyday. I'm talking about your body. Your body is your responsibility. Unless the government decides it's their responsibility, in which case your off the hook!"