Britney is knocked up. Like we couldn’t have predicted that one.
Category Archives: Media
Rocky V: A Critique
We watched “Rocky V” over homemade turkey burgers (mmm, yum) last night, and here are my thoughts:
* The beginning was good, showing how Rocky was brain-damaged after getting the crap beaten out of him by the Russian guy. And it seemed realistic – I don’t know how any professional boxer can get punched in the head year after year and not have brain damage. But there were a few major plot inconsistencies between Rocky IV and Rocky V. In Rocky IV, they show his kid watching him fight the big Russian dude on TV, and the kid is maybe 6 years old. At the beginning of the 5th movie, Rocky gets home from Russia and the kid is now around 13 years old. What the hell? How long was he in Russia, anyway?
* I think Stallone made the “Godfather III” fatal mistake of casting his own real-life son as his son in the movie. I’m not saying that Sage Stallone is hopeless – I looked him up on IMDB, and apparently he’s also a writer and a director now; he could be brilliant for all I know. Much the same way that Sofia Coppola is. I’m just saying that neither one of them should act. Ever.
* Speaking of Coppola, Talia Shire starred in both “Godfather III” and “Rocky V” in 1990. Sister apparently had a rough year. Poor thing.
* The big up-and-coming fighter in this movie has a mullet. I know it was filmed in 1990, but come on. Interestingly enough, I looked up this actor (Tommy Morrison) on IMDB too, and it turns out that he really was a heavyweight boxer in real life. OK, maybe that explains his horrendous acting skills. (Although nothing can excuse the mullet.) His only other claim to fame, besides “Rocky V,” is that he was banned from boxing in 1996 because he tested HIV positive. Which I think would’ve made a way more interesting plot twist in this movie, had it been used. Sadly, it wasn’t.
* No inspirational training sequence. No cheesy Survivor theme song. No good.
* The big street fight at the end? Was so obviously filmed on a soundstage and not in some rough neighborhood in south Philadelphia. It looked like the background of a video game like “Mortal Kombat” or something. Lame.
Moral of the story: No matter what he does, or how bad the movies might be (“Over the Top,” anyone?), I will always love Sylvester Stallone, because I associate the Rocky movies (the first four, anyway) with my childhood. I have some kind of weird nostalgia-crush on the man, which I cannot explain. It’s the same reason that I will always love Harrison Ford, despite the fact that he’s now a bloated alcoholic who hasn’t made a single good movie since “The Fugitive,” and that was 12 years ago.
P.S. to Lauren – I really want to know who your boyfriend was in this movie. Was he the little street thuglet who beat up Rocky Jr. and took his lunch money? Or was he one of the random kids on the playground?
notes from the desk of the bored
This week hasn’t exactly been action-packed. I’m still waiting for my new job to start, so I’ve been slothing around the house a lot. They’ve been showing all of the Rocky movies on AMC this week, and I’ve been watching them obsessively. I still cry when he wins at the end of “Rocky II” and says “Yo Adrian, I DID IT!!!” I also cry in the third one when Mickey dies. And again in the fourth one when Apollo Creed dies. It’s funny, I grew up on those movies, and I hate boxing in real life – probably because real boxers hardly ever bleed, and there are none of those cool punching sound effects. I’ve actually never seen “Rocky V” (I don’t know why, somehow I just missed that one), so I’ve decided that when they show it this week, I will watch it. I’m expecting it to be horrible, but I’m going to watch it anyway.
In other news…
* Steve is here, and he’s started working on our yard – there’s now a big mud pit where our deck used to be, because we’re going to get an all-new fancy deck that wraps around the side of the house. In fact, the guys are off getting price quotes on lumber as we speak.
* The guys go into abusive-brother mode a lot (no headlocks or anything, but lots of unnecessary mocking and name-calling), which is a side of Dave that I’ve never seen before. It’s funny for a while, then I just have to get out of the house or go hide in another room.
* I’ve been cooking a lot, which seems to take up an awful lot of time & energy when you’re feeding two grown men. On the plus side, they’re both pretty good about cleaning up the kitchen when I cook, so that’s cool. I’d much rather cook than clean.
* I’ve spent way too much time designing our wedding invitations. I want the damn things to be printed, addressed, stamped and mailed already. Sigh.
* Only 5 more days until I start my new job. Yay!
the busy bee
So, let’s see. This week I found a dress, which has been ordered in my size, and since I paid a rush fee, it should be here in plenty of time before the wedding (also allowing time for any last-minute alterations that might need to be done). For the record, I have pictures of the dress so I could show it to my mom, Mags, my sister & a couple of friends, but I’m not posting them here. You’ll just have to wait until you see the wedding photos. I must say, though, that I am really annoyed with most of the women who work in bridal shops, who stare at me incredulously, and almost all of them say things like, “You’re getting married in less than 3 months and you’re just now getting around to looking for a dress??” I’ve been engaged for 4 days, lady, back off. Then they point me toward the maternity dress section. No thanks, it’s not that type of wedding. I promise.
Also, on Monday, I had a job interview at a very large software company that everyone in the world knows the name of, but which I shall refrain from writing here just in case they end up being my future employer. (Here’s hoping.) I was supposed to have a 2nd interview with them this morning, but the person I was supposed to meet with got stuck on the east coast and couldn’t get a flight back in time to meet with me. So that’s been postponed, probably until early next week. Keep your fingers crossed.
Today, I am frantically cleaning so we can take off this afternoon for the mountains in eastern Washington. I know I don’t have to leave the house spotless for the cat-sitter, but it makes me feel better if it’s at least somewhat presentable. Anyway, this is the romantic Valentine’s weekend trip that we were supposed to take last week, but then Dave got sick and it didn’t work out. I’m really excited to be going this week, I think some quiet time in the mountains will be wonderful. But before we leave town, we have a meeting with the event coordinator at the place where we want to have our wedding. This less-than-3-months thing is gonna be fun. Whee!
One last side note: Project Runway last night was FABULOUS!! It was “beat up on Wendy” night, which was awesome to watch. The one thing that disappointed me was that I thought I really liked Vanessa, but she was such a sour-grapes bitch that I’ve pretty much decided that I don’t like her anymore. But the outtakes were great – my favorite was during the credits, Austin flitting around in front while Jay was doing some kind of kung fu samurai thing with an empty roll of fabric as his sword/light saber in the background. Awesome.
In the name of all things holy
How, oh how, did Wendy make it to the final 3 on Project Runway? Someone please explain it to me, because I am distraught that Austin got cut. I know some people didn’t like him (I know some people even considered him dead to them), but even his strongest detractors must concede that just his blonde foppish bangs alone had more talent than Wendy has in her entire skunk-striped soul. Blah. Everyone knows she’s only there because the producers have a say in who gets cut. I hope she gets destroyed at fashion week.
Btw, if any of you read Manolo’s shoe blog, it has a great summary of this past episode of Project Runway. He’s also where I found these links to the final 3 designers’ web sites: Jay, Kara Saun, and even our nemesis, Wendy.
I also have to mention this great new blog that I found, the Bad Date Club. It’s basically 2 girls’ stories of their really horrible dating experiences as young, professional, single women living in a medium-sized midwestern town. I read the whole thing this afternoon, it’s hilarious. I cannot recommend it enough.
In other news: Dave is back home from Massachusetts, and he has some kind of weird cold/flu thing. So much for our big romantic Valentine’s weekend getaway to the mountains. Sigh. It’s ok, we’ve rescheduled for next weekend. In dog news, Rose has yet to reappear, so maybe her mom is being more attentive after getting a “hey, we have your dog” call from the neighbors. Oh, and I’ve had 2 job interviews this week, both of which were really promising (and both of which would include significant raises), so fingers crossed there. I guess that’s about it.
irresponsible pet owners
It appears that we have acquired semi-partial ownership of a dog. Dave mentioned to me before that there’s a brown lab that sometimes shows up at the house, and if it’s cold and/or rainy, he lets her in to hang out for a while. Apparently that was the case at about 5 a.m. this morning; I vaguely remember him telling me that the dog was here, but I was half-asleep at the time. When I went downstairs at 8:30 a.m., she was sleeping in the living room. (The cats, meanwhile, were keeping a safe distance upstairs.) She’s very sweet and friendly, but I noticed there was an I.D. tag on her collar. It says her name is Rose, and there was a phone number. So I called the number, got the answering machine, and left a message basically saying that I hope they aren’t worried about Rose, but she’s at our house, left our number, and that we’d like to know where she lives so we can take her home. I didn’t say, “And you should build a freaking fence,” even though that’s what I was thinking. I gave Rose a turkey dog, which she gobbled down in about 1/2 a second, and then I put her outside so I could make breakfast. She has since wandered off – hopefully she’s gone home, but who knows.
In other news, the job drama continues. It occurred to me that I’ve never mentioned the name of my company on here, so I’d probably be safe to talk about what’s going on. In short: They wanted me to go to California every week for 3 months. I don’t know if y’all remember how depressed I got when I did that last summer, but it was awful. I really don’t want to do it again. Nevermind the fact that I’m in the middle of a move, and if I’m gone 5 days a week, all I want to do on the weekends is collapse, and there’s no way I’ll have the energy to pack. It’s more about the fact that I hate traveling for work, I hate airports/flying, and I’m getting settled into this new life routine here with Dave, and I don’t want to get immediately yanked out of it. And 3 months? Is a damn long time. Plus, who knows if the project will end up getting extended longer than that, or if I’ll immediately get put on a different project that requires me to fly somewhere else every week, etc. So Dave & I talked about it and we decided that I should quit, and we could get by on one income for a while. (Which is very scary for me, since I’m not used to being dependent on anyone.) I told this to my career manager, and he’s going to see if I can possibly get a spot in the company’s internal IT group, which would keep me based in Seattle, rather than being a consultant for the western region. Meanwhile, I’m on the job hunt, just in case. So even though it’ll most likely work out fine no matter what happens, it’s still a very stressful in-between time right now.
Also, I have a Microsoft certification exam tomorrow. This is the re-take of the exam that I flunked 6 months ago. I usually re-take them immediately, while the material is still fresh in my mind. But at the time, I was planning to go to Atlanta to say good-bye to my cousin, who died a week later, and somehow studying just managed to slip off of my to-do list. But I’m doing it now. So Friday around 2:30 p.m. Pacific time, send lots of smart vibes in my direction. Much appreciated.
As for last night’s Project Runway, there’s a great recap of it over on Catoptric, so I’ll defer to that rather than repeat what’s already been said.
Sunday catch-up
Sorry it’s been a week since I’ve written anything. Life has been a bit crazy lately, but the main reason for my lack of posting is because last week, our high-speed modem broke. So for nearly 4 days, Dave and I were sharing one measly little dial-up connection. Blogging at 32K? I think not.
So let’s see, what did I do last week? Well, I went to the dentist (twice), went to my regular doc and finally got some drugs to get rid of this sinus thing that’s been driving me crazy since November, we cleaned (most of) Dave’s garage, and moved a lot of stuff out of my apartment and into said garage. Oh yeah, and we goofed off a lot. Having limited Internet access seems to make for a perfect time to catch up on junk TV and video games. [Speaking of which, I did watch Project Runway this past week, but couldn’t post anything about it because it was while we were on dial-up. All I can say is that I am glad Kevin is gone. I was tired of listening to his whiny voice and looking at his buck teeth. Next, they must destroy Wendy and her horrible skunk-striped highlights.]
Movies we rented this week:
* Wicker Park – We made it through the first 15 or 20 minutes, and we were both so totally bored and uninterested that we turned it off. Josh Hartnett should really just stop. I’m not kidding.
* Saved – So great! It was such a reminder of my good little Christian high school, where the girls back-stab you in the name of Jesus. That movie has totally solidified Mandy Moore as a brilliant actress in my mind.
* Dogville – Has anyone else seen this?? It was so strange. I mean, it was good, but my god, that was a dark, rough movie to watch. Plus the fact that it’s 3 hours long. And don’t get me wrong, I really love Nicole Kidman. I think she’s a great actress and a beautiful woman. But she needs to stop with the botox and the collagen now. She should be playing roles that are her age, not 20-something-ish ingenue types. It’s starting to get silly. We all remember you in Dead Calm, Nic, and we know that movie was a long time ago. You’re pushing 40, and you’re still hot. Accept it.
On a more serious note, there’s a lot of crazy changes/stress-inducing stuff that started happening with my job this past week, which I can’t really talk about in too much detail right now. (Paranoid, I know, but you never know who’s reading this stuff. If you really want to know, email me & I’ll tell you.) It could end up being something really positive, but right now it’s a nebulous gray area, and I’m a bit freaked. All I can do is ask everyone who reads this to send happy-job vibes in my direction. It’d be much appreciated.