Fun with Felines

I don't remember where I found this, but it makes me giggle.

He's a doll. He's a dreamboat. He's a delinquent.

I’ll be the first to admit that my knowledge of John Water’s films is limited. I’m not exactly sure why. Every interview I’ve seen of him on TV or in documentaries has always engaged me, the episode of ‘The Simpsons’ he guest-starred on is brilliant, and the fact that he still takes the subway around New York earns him extra points in my book. Plus his demented and kitschy sense of humor is right up my ally. So it’s a bit strange that the only work of his that I’ve seen to date is ‘Cry-Baby’ and his interviews in ‘This Film is Not Yet Rated’, plus the musical ‘Hairspray’ (which I’m sure, compared to the original movie, is a bastardization cleaned up for audiences comprised of the overweight soccer moms and their spawn that plague the streets of my fair city. And my grandma). Of these selected films, ‘Cry Baby’ is my favorite. In fact, I would go so far as to include it on my list of ‘Favorite Musicals (Stage and Screen)’ alongside ‘South Park: The Movie’, ‘Moulin Rouge’, ‘West Side Story’, and ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’. I know it’s a short list. Sue me.
If you haven’t seen the movie already, (and I highly recommend you do) here are some reasons why it’s awesome:
1. It’s set in the 50’s. (My favorite!) Cheesy poodle skirts and leather jackets abound. Plus, I’m pretty sure several characters walk around wearing coonskin caps. When I was little, my sister and I were each given a coonskin cap by some relative for some holiday. I thought it was badass then and still do.
2. Not only does the cast include porn star Tracy Lords, Iggy Pop, Ricki Lake AND Troy Donahue, it stars Johnny Depp as the title character. I would argue that, while Mr. Depp is certainly attractive as a pirate or a gypsy or getting eaten by a demonic bed or just standing around, ‘Cry Baby’ is a little visual time capsule to when he was the most striking. I mean, look at him:


Or maybe I just have a thing for emo boys in leather jackets. Who knows?

3. It’s funny. With lines like:
“Wanda's Father: Hi, Wanda honey.
Wanda's mother: You were on the radio.
Wanda: Would you just get me the fuck out of here?
Wanda's mother: What's "fuck" mean, Hector?
Wanda's Father: Oh, Maggie, it's just a teen nonsense word Wanda uses to make herself feel all grown-up.
Wanda's mother: Your Honor, could we take Wanda the fuck home?"
there’s no denying it.
4. It’s making fun of “Grease”, which yeah I know it’s a classic and blah blah blah but whenever that movie comes on I can’t help but get really offended by the ending. I mean, does Sandy REALLY have to become a slut for the relationship with Mr. Scientology to work? She’s kind of a horrible person already, and some skanky leather pants and a smoking habit aren’t going to change that. Danny would be much better off with Kenickie, who he’s clearly gay for the entire movie anyway. EMBRACE WHO YOU ARE, PEOPLE!! Don’t let some hot guy with a cleft in his chin change you just so you can get laid once or twice in the backseat of his car.
5. The white trash house where Cry Baby and his extended family live is all shades of awesome.
6. I own the soundtrack on vinyl. That alone should clue you in to how great (or awesomely bad, you choose) the music is.
If those reasons don’t convince you to add this to your Netflix cue, I’m not sure what will. And speaking of Netflix, I’m off to add more John Waters movies to my ever-lengthening list of movies I should watch but never have time for.

Attention Future Suitors:

This is the only form of marriage proposal I will consider/accept:



Please plan accordingly.

Hodgman

As a continuation of yesterday's post, I offer this video which features John Hodgman's White House Correspondent's Dinner speech:


I'm not one of those who think that Obama is Jesus and is going to solve all our problems, but damn....I sure as hell am proud that he's a nerd.

Awesome

Famous

Celebrities I have seen while I have been living in New York:


Woody Allen


Claire Danes


The emo tool behind Dashboard Confessional


James Cromwell


Joan Allen


Dylan Baker


Scary Spice


Joey Fatone
(Scary Spice and Joey Fatone were on the same day within 15 minutes of each other. I felt like I had slipped into some weird 90's pop vortex)


Tony Soprano


Ferris Bueller


Nick Jonas (not really. This is for Sarah. I'M SOOOOOOO FUNNY!!)

This post was prompted by the fact that this man:

Gerard Butler

lives near where I work, and so I've seen him a total of three times. In New York, seeing someone three times, famous or not, is kind of a big deal. I took the same subway every day at around the same time all summer and never saw anyone more than once. When I lived in my old apartment, I never saw 2/3 of the people that lived there, and it was only a 5 story building. So, like a friend suggested, perhaps if I see Mr. Butler 10 times a genie will pop out of the sidewalk and grant me a wish. Or maybe under some obscure law he'll be obligated to marry me. You never know.

Catch Up

So I'm finally back home after visiting my family in Colorado and America's dairy-land, aka Wisconsin. I goofed around with my sister, learned some interesting tidbits about my mother's past, went to Sonic, watched a lot of TV, slept, and appreciated the absence of humidity. Obviously I did not have a single second to devote to this blog. But now I'm back. Back on the East Coast, back in my new apartment/house, back in the humidity, and back to being a real person. (Ha!) Since I a) have yet to hear if I'm going to become employed in the near future and b) I don't feel like organizing all of my crap that's currently sitting in boxes piled around my new room, it's list time again!


-I saw (500) Days of Summer and loved it. Loved the clothes, loved the music, and only had slight issues with the plot. Seeing as how this movie could categorized as a romantic comedy, a genre of movies that I typically despise, the fact that I really, really liked it speaks volumes. My thoughts about the title character can be summed up in this little comic that has been floating around the web recently:

Brilliant.

-Because of said movie, I have also been forced to add this man

to my "Celebrities that I would willingly get naked with 5 seconds after meeting them" list. Ahem. Moving on!

-This rumor (oh god oh god oh god I hope it's just a rumor) makes me absurdly angry.

-I've become obsessed with 'No Reservations', Anthony Bourdain's travel/food show, and with cake decorating shows. The first because the host is funny, I'm a travel nerd and I love food...the second I have no idea why. Because they're pretty?

-I tried to watch this movie with my friend Maggie

(aka Kirk Cameron's ode to boats, porn, firefighters and Jesus) but it was so awful we only got through half and had to turn it off.

-Did I mention I went to SONIC????

I swear, Sonic cherry limeaid is like the elixir of the gods. If someone took me on a date (cough I'm looking at you JGL cough cough) to Sonic and bought me a cherry limeaid and an order of tater tots, I would marry them on the spot. (Or at least give them a really good bj)

-I just finished this book after seeing the movie

and was fascinated with just how much the FBI sucked when it first was organized.

-I have an absurdly long list of TV shows that I want to add to my Netflix, including but not limited to: The Wire, Sons of Anarchy, Mad Men, Twin Peaks, Weeds, and Deadwood.

And now a quick story to sum up the post: Anyone who has spent more than a week's worth of time with me will inevitably be made aware of my not-so-secret obsession with Lord of the Rings. I love the books, love the movies, love the awful cartoon, loved the memorabilia you could buy in the SkyMall magazine found in the pockets of airplane seats. I would buy the movie soundtracks and listen to them over and over and over, until I had the themes to each movie pretty much memorised. Two days ago, I was sitting on a plane back to New York, watching the buildings and lights below from my tiny porthole window, and fiddling with the crappy music stations on my armrest. Just as the Manhattan skyline came into view, I paused on the classical music station and was surprised to hear the opening notes of one of the songs from "Return of the King". It was the song played at the very end, when Aragorn is crowned king and sucks Liv Tyler's face off and everyone bows to the hobbits. So I listened to the flutes and horns and strings as Manhattan glistened below me, and just as my plane touched down, the song ended. I think that was a good sign.

So I know...

...that Hollywood might possibly totally bastardize the story and make it have explosions and possible robots BUT



is it so wrong that I'm a little excited about this?

Mad Woman

A show that I desperately need to catch up with is 'Mad Men'. It would always be on right when I had to study for finals, or when I actually had some semblance of a social life, so I would only catch snippets of it and be all, "Damn, Don Draper is sexy. I wish I could wear every dress featured on this show. I also wish I could smoke and drink with such abandon. I wish actual things like hamburgers still cost a nickle. Damn, Don Draper is SEXY"......and so on. From what I have seen, the art direction, makeup and costume design are stunning, plus it's set in an era I'm extremely interested in, PLUS did I mention Don Draper is sexy? Hopefully this fall I'll have more time to sit around and watch my ever-growing Netflix cue, which now includes all the disks of 'Mad Men' I can get my hands on (as well as Fargo, Donnie Darko, The Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys, The Queen, and The Girl Next Door. Ha!) Until then, I'll have to satisfy my Mad Men cravings with this very neat promotion/game thing that the people at AMC's website came up with called Mad Men Yourself, which enables you to create an awesome looking 'Mad Men' alter ego. Here's mine:



Why can't I look like this ALL THE TIME??? Look at my cute little watch and glasses and cigarette and dead animal around my neck!!!!!! I've said it once and I'll say it a billion more times: I love 1950's clothing. I covet it. If I could have one wish, well... it would be for world peace. But, if I had TWO wishes, I would ask for world peace and then for '50's style to become all the rage so I could walk down the street in gloves and a pillbox hat and not get deranged looks from passersby. (Then I would fly to all the places in the world that are now conflict-free in my pillbox hat and perhaps have a Mai-Tai on my way there) And in this beautiful universe where everyone holds hands and wears red lipstick and pearls, I would of course need a traveling "companion":



What?

Literary Failures

I stumbled upon a fantastic and hilarious blog the other day entitled Awful Library Books. It features weird, outdated and hilarious books found by the two librarians that run the site. Two of my favorites:




The rest of the blog is equally as great and I highly recommend it. And speaking of things literary that I recommend, I recently started reading this:



My friend Maggie told me about the book and I'm really enjoying it. Normally historical books are a little dry for my taste, but this one is very well written and exciting to read. I'm only about a third of the way through, but SPOILER ALERT Lincoln just died and it was sad and moving and Mary Lincoln is kind of a nut job huh? Anywhoo I'm looking forward to getting back on the subway so I can read more about what a bastard Booth was.

I wish...

that this was my summer.

Concerning Aquariums

Aquariums are some of my favorite places in the world, ever. If I am visiting a city for the first time, I judge whether I like it or not based on two main things: the food I eat and if it has a good aquarium. (Note: New York City is damned lucky I did not visit the aquarium before deciding to live here. Just saying.) I can literally stay for hours in these places, and that's saying something. My ADD usually kicks in after about 45 minutes even at places I love, like the MOMA or the Met. But there's something about aquariums that facinates me and soothes me. Maybe it's the soft music they play, maybe it's the blues and greens of the water, or maybe it's the slow movements of sea fans and anenomes swishing back and forth in the simulated surf. Anyway, you can probably guess my reaction when I saw this video:



To quote the inspirational Liz Lemon: I WANT TO GO TO THERE. Seriously. They have WHALE SHARKS!!!!! I'm seriously considering having my friend from Japan translate my resume so I can be one of those tiny scuba people floating around in the tank picking up whale shark crap in case the whole "Find a job in New York" doesn't pan out. Because I'd love it.

On a related note, it's also not a surprise that this is currently one of my favorite commercials on TV right now:



Any commercial with sea turtles and clown fish gets my approval, add manta rays and I'm yours. Good job VISA!

Summer Jam

Love the lyrics and the video. Whenever guy stuff has been getting me down this summer, I just play this song and crank up the volume.

Holy Crap

It's mid-July. This blog has been abandoned, and I feel bad, but the explosion in the post below still remains a good visual description of the chaos that is my life this summer. The only reason I have time to write this now is because I mapped out an evening to clean my room and start packing, and of course I'm procrastinating. I figured that I would devote this post to catching up a bit...a quick little summery of the pop culture tidbits that have occupied my brain this summer so far. Let's begin!

Obsession #1
The new pictures that were released from Tim Burton's upcoming 'Alice in Wonderland'





When I saw these my mind almost exploded. Movie makeup is something I'm looking at as a potential career choice, so I'm always hunting for examples of what I would eventually be able to produce myself. A++++++ and a billion gold stars to Leslie Devlin, Susan Stepanian, Patty York and all the other talented artists involved with this project.

Obsession #2
The movie 'Adventureland' (and the soundtrack)


I saw Adventureland after it had been in theatres for a pretty long time, but I was glad I caught it. I went in expecting a standard teen summer comedy, with dick jokes and boobs and maybe a message about how nerds win in the end. All those elements were there, but didn't overshadow what was a sweet, subtle, and thoughtful ode to growing up. Plus, it has a KILLER soundtrack. I've been rocking out to it for about a month now, and I have to say, "Don't Change" by INXS has earned a place on my list of near perfect pop-songs.

Obsession #3
Dior's newest Couture collection
Fashion and I have an interesting relationship. I like following it, can't afford to dress how I would like to, and wish I had the ability/talent to style myself better. I am also larger than a size 2, so couture lines and I never really cross paths. But when I saw these pictures :





all I could think was, "WANT". Despite the face that I will probably never have the need for a corset/ballgown, I would willingly amputate one of my toes to own it (what? The dress covers my feet!) Also, ever since I returned from England I have become increasingly obsessed with hats, but again, I have no occasion/outfits to wear them with. I really should have lived during the 50's.

Excuses

Sorry sorry sorry I haven't been good about updating this lately. But seriously, my life looks a little like this:

at the moment.

What is this thing????????

And where can I buy one????? (And by one, I mean 80)

Costume

So simple, yet so brilliant. I wonder how I could convince a huge group of like 200 people to wear these and just swarm some random public area.



The mask was created by Brandon Bird, who also painted this gem:

It's called “No One Wants To Play Sega With Harrison Ford” and.....I want it. The rest of his work can be found here.

Archive

I've been thinking a lot lately about my relationship with technology/social networking sites, and I feel as though I've gotten a bit too connected....I think I've exposed just a little too much about myself. Not anything extreme, like my boobs (I'll warn you all ahead of time), but just displaying too many inane factoids about my interests or everyday life. I think it's really easy to get caught up with "events" that are taking place on this tiny screen while the real world is flying by, and I'll be the first to admit that I've done it.

Well, perhaps not to that extreme.
Also, my interests change daily, if not hourly, so most of the info I've had displayed about me on Facebook is outdated and I'm just too lazy to change it. With that being said, I'm going to do a major edit of my accounts on all of these sites: less personal info on Facebook, less Twitter updates, etc. I'll still be posting here, because while I wish I had the patience to write in a journal, my handwriting/spelling sucks and its easier to post neato pictures of ninjas and food and awful people on here than cutting and pasting them into a leather bound book (or in my case, one of those black and white composition notebooks) . In case I change my mind (or if in 54 years this thing still exists and I'm trying to tell quaint stories to young children about what I enjoyed back in the days before flying cars/time-travel/the zombie apocalypse and my memory's not so great) here's what my Facebook has to say about me:

Personal Information

Activities: Sleep

Interests: art, drama, costume design, procrastination, sushi, my twin, gummi bears, bad reality tv, my ex-roomie and her juice boxes, bashing twinks and hipsters, shirtless soccer players, pat clark's surprise visits, awkward but brilliant family dinners, my fish la familia (RIP), the will to my grace, my secret new best friend, pirates, makeup, dark red nail polish, Korean soap-operas, useless pop-culture trivia, having people visit my apartment, theme parties in the suite, the central park zoo, finding gay books at strand with armi, bess goden's senior thesis, going to borders and reading random shit, nina garcia when she HATES someone, the A train, voice recitals, Vault soda and Dr Pepper commercials, ninja-robots, Wizard People, dancing with glowsticks, endorphins, Dr. Ruth, missed connections, spying with Alex, sea turtles, A.V. Club:I Watched This on Purpose, the Awesome Foursome, gelato/french fries, London, anything that Robert Downey Jr touches, Kinder Surprise Eggs

Favorite Music: The Beatles, Ben Folds, Damien Rice, Dido, Elliott Smith, Elton John, No Doubt, Oasis, Remy Zero, Foo Fighters, Led Zeppelin, Smashing Pumpkins, U2, Se7en, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Fleetwood Mac, James Taylor, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Amy Winehouse, Joshua Radin, The Shins, Sia, Incubus, Duncan Sheik, Estelle, Cary Brothers, Ray LaMontagne, Kate Nash, Band of Horses, MGMT, Kings of Leon, The Kooks, Ingrid Michaelson, The Police and of course the Spice Girls

Favorite TV Shows: Lost, the Office, Project Runway, South Park, The Daily Show, Conan, Grey's Anatomy, Justice League, Arrested Development, Daria, The Critic, The Simpsons, Scrubs, Friday Night Lights, Six Feet Under, Clone High, 30 Rock, Planet Earth, Undeclared, The Joy of Painting

Favorite Movies: The Departed, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Volver, The Big Lebowski, The Emperor's New Groove, Elf, LOTR, Pirates of the Caribbean 1 and 3, Dogma, Office Space, Love Actually, Amores Perros, 300, Amelie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Cinema Paradiso, Braveheart, Shrek, American Beauty, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Die Hard, The Bad News Bears, Blow, Almost Famous, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Not Another Teen Movie, Harold and Kumar, Can't Hardly Wait, Cry-Baby, Empire Records, In Bruges, Shawn of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Imaginary Heroes, Moonlight Mile, Into the Wild, Atonement, Iron Man

Favorite Books: America: The Book, Harry Potter, How Are You Peeling?: Foods With Moods, Good Omens, In the Lake of the Woods, Lord of the Rings, Kafka by the Shore, Catch 22, The Sex Lives of Cannibals, The Kite Runner, Shantaram, The Raw Shark Texts, The Golden Compass, A Dirty Job, Me Talk Pretty One Day, To Kill a Mockingbird, Water for Elephants, The Glass Castle, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, Under the Banner of Heaven, The Poisonwood Bible, The Eight, The Historian, Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump

Favorite Quotations: I'm deeply flattered, lad, but my first and only love is the sea.

College was more than a $30,000 sleepover for me. it was a $30,000 trip into the crackdens of gay hell.
-Ana Culver

wow.....i feel like this is one of those tv shows you watch for a really long time, and then stop watching for a while, and then when you come back to it you're just like, "wait, when the fuck did that happen"
-Pat Clark

I'll keep you posted on the quidditch world cup of my heart.
-Dave Whitman

There are cliques and everything and all I can think is... this is fucking mime school.
-Maggie Robinson

I pass out with my adventure pack on.
-Alex King, roommate extraordinaire

Lord, beer me strength-Jim

"I’m like, ‘Is she a Kennedy Kennedy, or is this one of the cousins?’ She’s the one with the brother who died in the plane?" - Bess Goden

I believe our adventures in time have taken a most serious turn- Ted

"You see what a dull place the world would be without color?' he said, bowing until his chin almost touched the ground. "But what pleasure to lead my violins in a serenade of spring green or hear my trumpets blare out the blue sea and then watch the oboes tint it all in warm yellow sunshine. And rainbows are best of all-and blazing neon signs, and taxicabs with stripes, and the soft, muted tones of a foggy day. We play them all"-The Phantom Tollbooth

"The whole idea of moving to a place that has a big car culture has me apoplectic" -Tim Gunn (Finally, someone who understands!)

Me: Yeah, there's a very thin line between gay and hipster.
Matt Alvo: Yeah, there's also a very thin line between gay and retarded.

Yes, you will find true love. It will be a little more difficult than it was in Pretty Woman, but not nearly as hard as it was in Return Of The Jedi.-Eugene Mirman

Carmine: I respect the stegosaurus...herbivore , but nobody fucks with it

About Me: My current goal in life is to become a cliff-diver at Casa Bonita.

And according to Maggie, I'm a big geek.


There you have it. Now I'm off to delete it.

Reasons I Love NY Vol. 3

Because there is a store that sells raccoon penis bones:

for only $10. Now I know what to get all my friends for Christmas!

I've walked by this store

(it's called Evolution, located in SoHo) a billion times but never went in. It's one of those places that I always make a mental note to myself to go back and then when I have free time I always forget where it is or what it's called. But a couple of days ago I had an actual need to go in: my friend Alex wants a mounted deer head (she's awesome) for her new apartment, so we went on an adventure after brunch to see if we could find one for a reasonable price. Evolution's offerings were a bit over her budget, but we had an awesome time poking around. The place has everything: need a stuffed porcupine? Got it. Freeze-dried rats and mice? Check. A snarling lion, a penguin, a fetal skeleton, a rattlesnake and a piglet? Please proceed to the register, because they have ALL of those. My two favorites that I would buy in a second? A beautiful white peacock:

and a chipmunk:

which I would dress in a tiny top hat and monocle. I can't wait to get an apartment of my own.

Direction

Along with many other lovely summer dresses, skirts and shirts that will soon comprise my summer work wardrobe (Thanks Mom!) I bought this for myself:

Yes, the compass works. I justified this purchase because: not only is it extremely cute but when I get off the subway and I'm extremely disorientated and perhaps a bit tipsy and need to go south, I can reference my handy-dandy sailor necklace. My father's Boy Scout days are influencing me in ways I never could have imagined.

Expensive

I may be alone in thinking this, but paying $10 to ride one of these:

is absurd. Therefore, I did not do it today with my sister and grandmother. Screw you, Territory Days!

Horoscope

CANCER
June 22-July 22

Something you really need to do is still on your radar, but that doesn't mean that you have to finish it up right away. It's a good time to follow up on whatever needs to be kept up with, though.


Yeah. Tell me about it.

Want Vol. 2

I have a limited time frame where I can hang up posters in my living spaces and have it not look juvinille, and I want this poster. Very bad. Concerning the whole debate on whether Shepard Fairey is a plagiarist, I could really give a flying f***. The whole debate about recycling images is an old one, and something that is going to continue as technology continues to make the manipulation process easier. Is it so wrong that I just want to buy the damn poster?

Much needed update

So the reason I haven't updated this for a while is because I did a little thing called GRADUATING COLLEGE.

Whatever. I was over it the second it started- I wasn't really graduating anyway because I have to take summer school, my parents almost missed the ceremony, it rained, I got seated in the wrong spot and almost fucked up getting my "diploma", and to top it all off I got under two hours of sleep/ate nothing but a muffin and the ceremony lasted until 3:30. I'm pretty sure the universe was concocting a giant FUCK YOU to send me on my way, and boy did it deliver. I was so tired and over it that I didn't even stay to take the requisite billion pictures with people I'll probably never see again (and if I do see them again, I can just put on my cap and gown and re-create that hellish day. You better believe I kept that shit). And now fucking facebook is plastered with everyone and their mom screaming with joy about how they're done forever while at the same time sobbing about not being able to find jobs. Seriously, if I see one more picture on my newsfeed of someone's random relatives or a miniature Tom Brokaw delivering his speech from a billion miles away, I'll throw my laptop at a small child and then push them off a cliff. And now, a list.

Other things that have happened in between then and now that got overlooked:
1. I saw Star Trek. It was good, not mind blowing or superb like all the critics are saying, but worth seeing in theatres. I'll probably devote a post to that later, so I'll move on.
2. I engaged in Senior Week activities, and discovered that a) drinking on a boat is awkward and awesome at the same time, b) running after a cab barefoot is not the smartest idea, and c) watching people run face first into trees will never not be funny.
3. My parents found out about my tattoo and didn't care. At all. Which is weird.
4. I moved into my summer housing assignment and I think I'm living with all freshman. Joy.
5. Got a new haircut.
6. Was told that my boss at my internship is scary, and now I'm terrified to start working.
7. Hung out in Central Park with my dad and sister on one of those perfect spring days when everyone else is there and laughed at the crazies playing guitar around the "Imagine" thing in Strawberry Fields.
8. Flew home on a plane that was 80% senior citizens and 19% soldiers.
9. Am home now with no car, but my mom bought me a case of Stella (ha!) so I'll be sitting up in my room drinking/watching my Six Feet Under DVDs/updating this until I fly home on the 25th.
10. I can't think of anything else, I just wanted to make it an even 10.

Time Travel

Last night's season finale of Lost was awesome. I will admit that I was a bit sceptical around the time it was revealed that some would integrate themselves with the Dharma Initiative, not because I thought it was bad writing, I just was uneasy about where the show was going. Like others who watch the show, I had assumed that the entire season would revolve around the Jack, Kate, etc trying to get back to the island. But after watching last night and reflecting on the season as a whole, I'm thoroughly satisfied. The only thing I'm pissed about is having to wait so long for the next season. It's like the seventh Harry Potter, I want want want the end to be here but I don't want it to be the end, if that makes any sense at all.
The greater issue in this season of Lost that I've been thinking about is the one of time travel-not about whether it's possible or the loopholes- no, I've been thinking about (god, I'm such a nerd) if it happened to me, how much I would suck at it. I'll allow Hurley to demonstrate:

No tests my ass, Sawyer. This was one of my favorite Hurley moments of the season (there were so many, it's hard to talk about them all) but it really got me thinking. If I was somehow transported back in time, I would suck so hard at a) convincing people that I wasn't from the future and b) at preventing catastrophic events. Ask me the date of when this happened:

or when Kennedy/MLK/Lincoln was assassinated. I dare you. Because without Wikipedia, I couldn't tell you. I have a general idea, but if it came down to me stopping something on a specific date/time, well, let's just say history would remain unchanged. I would be more than useless: if I tried to invent the light bulb or the television or vaccines or just about anything that involves more than Popsicle sticks and Elmer's glue, it would be over in two seconds. What I could do is predict what movies were going to blow up the box office. But watch that save my ass after getting transported back to medieval England. No, I would be burned as a witch, or suffer the rest of my short life blind as a bat because contacts haven't been invented yet and I'm certainly not going to get the ball rolling on that one.

Reasons I Love NY Vol. 2

Because, according to Gothamist, there's a giant sad panda that lurks around Battery Park.

Game

The people at PopCap have invented a distraction to help keep me indoors all summer:


The zombie dolphin is my favorite.

Carbonation

Sugary drinks have been a staple in my diet ever since they were forbidden by my parents (damn hippies). This year I've been trying to cut out my daily can of Coke and substitute it with water in an effort to not gain 5 billion pounds. But it's a habit I can't quite kick. My preferences have slightly changed; I'm starting to favor more old-fashioned drinks like Boylan's:

over the polar bear covered cans of my youth. This probably makes me a hipster douchebag, but I really do think that they taste better because of the glass bottles they come in. And if I'm eating Mexican food, there is nothing better than a bottle of Jarritos:

Those little bottles of bubbly Mexican perfection fill me with utter joy. All this talk of carbonated drinks reminds me of my days at summer camp. I attended one in Michigan, and you could tell where the other campers were from solely by what word they used to describe beverages- "pop" meant you were from the north/midwest, "soda" meant you were from the rest of the states. I refused to refer to it by anything except "Coke" because a) I was a child superhero and wanted my origins to remain hidden, and b) Coke was the only thing I would drink. Pepsi wasn't sweet enough, Sprite was too watery if you put it with ice, Orange soda (while the favorite of Kel) was too sweet and reminded me of liquid candy. No, Coke was and still remains my favorite out of all of them. I just wish they sold it in glass bottles here more often.