Just a few comments on the latest news...
1) The city is cracking down on dog owners again, and I say, "GOOD." $250 if you're caught not picking up after your dog. Cops, Parks and Sanitation workers can issue the tickets, but can we also allow regular people to make citizens' arrests, or at least knock the offending owners down into the poo they've left so discourteously behind? I don't blame the dogs, I blame the cretins who own them. Same goes for all o'y'all who insist on dragging your dog into every establishment you venture into. Note -- your dog doesn't belong in a bar, restaurant, deli, or anywhere else that they are serving food. Or any public retail establishment, for that matter. And all you business owners out there, what's it going to take? I know, you don't want to seem uncool, but what's cooler? Letting that chick bring her dog into your coffee shop, or the fine that you will get from the Health Department? Ooh, wait, I know what would be really cool: if her dog bites someone and then you get sued...
2) Of course I have to comment on Britney Spears. What a privilege -- we've now got living breathing, walking-amongst-us evidence that some people are really not meant to ever escape from the trailer park. It's kinda like the thought that crosses my mind whenever I see people getting on the PATH: "Ah, back to New Jersey, where they belong."
3) On the other hand, I picked up the latest fat issue of Vanity Fair, and couldn't help but notice that a huge number of the ads feature everyone's favorite cokehead supermodel, Kate Moss. However, I notice that, despite the fact that I couldn't care one way or another about her, my reaction is, "So much for those photos of her hoovering coke like an anteater ruining her career...hooray for Kate! The morality police didn't win!"
That's all for today... back to the job hunt....
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Media Junkie
Since Janey's been gettin her money-saving on, what with the whole unemployment situation and all, I've had ample opportunity to catch up on things like Movies on Demand, TV, and even occasionally splurging on going to a real movie. Going to the movies enables me to be in the company of people without having to actually interact with them. Perfect!
So here are my recommendations:
See Pan's Labyrinth immediately. And I mean immediately. It is dark and haunting and phantasmagorical, full of magical creatures and monsters (of both the human and non-human kind). Do not, I repeat, do NOT take children to see this movie. It's far too scary for little kids -- Disney, it ain't. And (spoiler alert!)
a child dies at the end.
I've become a die-hard Scrubs fan. It's the only show on television that can consistently make me laugh out loud. Lots and lots of guy humor (fart jokes, anyone?) but come on, scatology is frickin funny!
Hustle & Flow on demand. Terrence Howard should have won the Oscar for this one. As far as "everyone has a dream" movies go, I thought this one was far, far better than the incredibly overrated Little Miss Sunshine. And call me crazy, but I find the idea of a pimp and the whores who love him a much less creepy topic than baby beauty pageants. It's that whole JonBenet thing, ya know?
Back to Back Watching: Munich and One Day in September. In Munich, Spielberg does a surprisingly good job of portraying the ambivalence of revenge. At the end I was left with only the desolate feeling that revenge accomplishes nothing, but reduce the avenger to the level of the criminals. Almost as if, had the terrorists of Black September been caught and executed on the spot, it wouldn't have been as bad as the systematic hunting and murdering that followed. I know Spielberg took flak for "humanizing" the terrorists, but I commend him for taking the risk. One Day in September is a quite compelling documentary about the terrorist attacks themselves, narrated by Michael Douglas. It's utterly fascinating, and the most disturbing thing to me was one of the German policemen talking about being involved in the bloodbath at the airport and laughing. It had me thinking what the hell is wrong with those Germans, anyway?
(Then again, ask any German who is about 40 what his/her father did in World War II. You will, almost without fail, get a huffy response along the lines of "my father/grandfather was NOT a Nazi." To hear them tell it, you'd almost think there were no Nazis in Germany at all! Yeah, and my friend's Austrian father relocated to South America after the war for income tax purposes. Mmmm hm. Right.)
Secret TV Shame: Charmed. I can't help myself, goddammit! I managed to go all those years without seeing a single episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer (you Buffy people are as bad as the folks going to Star Trek conventions) and unemployment caused me to get mildly hooked on this show. Not heroin-junkie hooked. More like caffeine-hooked. But I've even bypassed Law & Order repeats to watch it, and if you know me, that's saying something. On the older episodes, there's something repellently fascinating about studying Shannen Doherty's face -- didja ever notice that one of her eyes is, like, a quarter inch higher on her face than the other one? She's a living Picasso, really.
Well, that's all I've got for today, other than it's gorgeous outside and I'm going to go out and walk around.
So here are my recommendations:
See Pan's Labyrinth immediately. And I mean immediately. It is dark and haunting and phantasmagorical, full of magical creatures and monsters (of both the human and non-human kind). Do not, I repeat, do NOT take children to see this movie. It's far too scary for little kids -- Disney, it ain't. And (spoiler alert!)
a child dies at the end.
I've become a die-hard Scrubs fan. It's the only show on television that can consistently make me laugh out loud. Lots and lots of guy humor (fart jokes, anyone?) but come on, scatology is frickin funny!
Hustle & Flow on demand. Terrence Howard should have won the Oscar for this one. As far as "everyone has a dream" movies go, I thought this one was far, far better than the incredibly overrated Little Miss Sunshine. And call me crazy, but I find the idea of a pimp and the whores who love him a much less creepy topic than baby beauty pageants. It's that whole JonBenet thing, ya know?
Back to Back Watching: Munich and One Day in September. In Munich, Spielberg does a surprisingly good job of portraying the ambivalence of revenge. At the end I was left with only the desolate feeling that revenge accomplishes nothing, but reduce the avenger to the level of the criminals. Almost as if, had the terrorists of Black September been caught and executed on the spot, it wouldn't have been as bad as the systematic hunting and murdering that followed. I know Spielberg took flak for "humanizing" the terrorists, but I commend him for taking the risk. One Day in September is a quite compelling documentary about the terrorist attacks themselves, narrated by Michael Douglas. It's utterly fascinating, and the most disturbing thing to me was one of the German policemen talking about being involved in the bloodbath at the airport and laughing. It had me thinking what the hell is wrong with those Germans, anyway?
(Then again, ask any German who is about 40 what his/her father did in World War II. You will, almost without fail, get a huffy response along the lines of "my father/grandfather was NOT a Nazi." To hear them tell it, you'd almost think there were no Nazis in Germany at all! Yeah, and my friend's Austrian father relocated to South America after the war for income tax purposes. Mmmm hm. Right.)
Secret TV Shame: Charmed. I can't help myself, goddammit! I managed to go all those years without seeing a single episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer (you Buffy people are as bad as the folks going to Star Trek conventions) and unemployment caused me to get mildly hooked on this show. Not heroin-junkie hooked. More like caffeine-hooked. But I've even bypassed Law & Order repeats to watch it, and if you know me, that's saying something. On the older episodes, there's something repellently fascinating about studying Shannen Doherty's face -- didja ever notice that one of her eyes is, like, a quarter inch higher on her face than the other one? She's a living Picasso, really.
Well, that's all I've got for today, other than it's gorgeous outside and I'm going to go out and walk around.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Principessa
Well, what a nice chance to spend some real quality time with the Principessa the past few days.
First, she let me weep all over her on Wednesday night when I was feeling glum. It was nice to be able to do that -- then she got down to brass tacks and offered to lend me a few buckeroos to get me over this disgusting financial hump. Then of course I went and had some sort of social-phobia panic attack when I saw her on Thursday night and ran away from her and her friends. Weird, right? I realized that for all of my boosterism about "you are not your job!" deep down, I really haven't believed that.
I wrestled with that one for a while -- and came to realize that I do garner some of my identity from the mere fact of having a job. The idea of sitting at a table with strangers and answering the innocuous question, "So, what do you do?" and not having a definitive answer sent me into a complete panic.
In the meantime, the crying seems to have cleansed me somewhat, and enabled me to start crawling out of the hole I fell into.
Sunday night I went to the P's hotel and we got deli sandwiches and sat and yakked for a couple of hours about everything and nothing. We're both hyper-articulate and really, really funny Oriental girls. I'm not bragging. I'm just saying.
Yes, I still call myself "Oriental." I mean, I am, right?
So, over the course of our meandering conversation, I pondered this: What must it be like to live in New York City and go to the bat mitzvah of a 13-year-old Chinese girl named Lauren Feinberg? Can an adopted Chinese girl even BE bat mitzvahed? Doesn't your mother have to be Jewish or something like that to be considered Jewish? Do the girl's adoptive parents have to get special dispensation from the rabbi?
It's a puzzlement.
We went to Pete's Tavern afterward to meet W who, frankly, acted like a complete asshole to the bartender. I guess if someone in the group is going to get a loogie in his food, I'd rather it not be me, but honestly, CrankyPants should have just gone home and not inflicted himself on us. When he acts like that, it takes every ounce of self-control I have not to call him by his father's name.
First, she let me weep all over her on Wednesday night when I was feeling glum. It was nice to be able to do that -- then she got down to brass tacks and offered to lend me a few buckeroos to get me over this disgusting financial hump. Then of course I went and had some sort of social-phobia panic attack when I saw her on Thursday night and ran away from her and her friends. Weird, right? I realized that for all of my boosterism about "you are not your job!" deep down, I really haven't believed that.
I wrestled with that one for a while -- and came to realize that I do garner some of my identity from the mere fact of having a job. The idea of sitting at a table with strangers and answering the innocuous question, "So, what do you do?" and not having a definitive answer sent me into a complete panic.
In the meantime, the crying seems to have cleansed me somewhat, and enabled me to start crawling out of the hole I fell into.
Sunday night I went to the P's hotel and we got deli sandwiches and sat and yakked for a couple of hours about everything and nothing. We're both hyper-articulate and really, really funny Oriental girls. I'm not bragging. I'm just saying.
Yes, I still call myself "Oriental." I mean, I am, right?
So, over the course of our meandering conversation, I pondered this: What must it be like to live in New York City and go to the bat mitzvah of a 13-year-old Chinese girl named Lauren Feinberg? Can an adopted Chinese girl even BE bat mitzvahed? Doesn't your mother have to be Jewish or something like that to be considered Jewish? Do the girl's adoptive parents have to get special dispensation from the rabbi?
It's a puzzlement.
We went to Pete's Tavern afterward to meet W who, frankly, acted like a complete asshole to the bartender. I guess if someone in the group is going to get a loogie in his food, I'd rather it not be me, but honestly, CrankyPants should have just gone home and not inflicted himself on us. When he acts like that, it takes every ounce of self-control I have not to call him by his father's name.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Jane Today
Janey blue.
Janey unemployed.
Janey broke.
Janey scared.
No.
Janey terrified.
Janey defective.
Janey broken.
That's all I got today, folks.
Fuck it all.
Janey unemployed.
Janey broke.
Janey scared.
No.
Janey terrified.
Janey defective.
Janey broken.
That's all I got today, folks.
Fuck it all.