Waitress, or "The Chick Flick that Would Not Die"

Reasons you should hate this movie:

• The making out/sex scenes: Scary and injurious-looking, and not in a good type S&M-sorta way. Slamming Ken and Barbie together in a plasticky simulation of sex does not translate well when using real people, where it just ends up looking like someone's gonna end up chipping a tooth.



• The name of the stereotypically rednecky, abusive, sex-obsessed, controlling husband: Earl. Creative.



• Keri Russell. She is seriously so irritating that she makes me wish my eyes would scab over.



• Jeremy Sisto. I once had a dream that you fucked me up against the freezer door at the McDonald's where we were both apparently employed, Jeremy Sisto. Despite the gross fast-food theme, it was a *good* dream. One of the better sex dreams I've had. The kind that continued to make my toes curl just a little if I happened to walk past the tv and hear your voice. Enough so that it even came up in conversation recently with the very same people who pinned me down and forced me to watch this movie. So seriously: how could you do this to me, corrupting that exquisite memory with your HORRIBLY generic vision of the abusive rage-aholic redneck husband with the terrible southern accent? Even though you are super-hot on the new Law and Order episodes, I'm still not quite sure I'll ever recover.



• Is there ANYone who DOESN'T cheat on their significant other down south? If I'm to believe this movie, the answer is No no hell the fuck no.



• What makes the illicit affair hot and believable in a movie is the build-up, the slowly-accruing tension of bodies just a LITTLE bit too close to one another and lingering just a bit too long there, the hand held on the arm long after it should've been removed, the sizzling eye contact. What does NOT make an illicit affair hot is a complete absence of any sort of connection or sexual tension between two horribly boring people until suddenly one jumps the other and you have a Freddy Krueger jump-out-of-your-seat moment because you KNEW it was coming, and yet there was absolutely nothing to prepare you that it would be that sudden.



• Nobody in real life gets lipstick smeared all over their face when they're having an affair. And if by some odd chance they do, they remember to wipe it off. Keri Russell. I'm talking to you.



• Nobody hates the prospect of having a baby THAT much and yet still has it. Nobody. And assuming that I'm wrong and there IS somebody out there who DOES, they most DEFINITELY end up leaving it in a garbage can at a sports game and in NO WAY SHAPE OR MANNER end up having a total change of heart and falling madly in love with the baby just because it shot head-first out of their lady-parts.



• There are people down south, Keri Russell, who know how to speak without using the words "ain't." Crazy. And yet true.



• Just knowing that somebody thought up a song with the following lyrics, had it sung twice throughout the movie, and then topped that off by having it play over the credits, is just further proof that there is no god:
  
  "Baby don't you cry, gonna make a pie, gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle. Baby don't be blue, gonna make for you, gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle. Gonna make a pie from heaven above, gonna be filled with strawberry love. Baby don't you cry, gonna make a pie, and hold you forever in the middle of my heart. "



• Keri Russell, what is up with that scene where you just creepily smile for like 20 minutes? I almost included this movie on my horror movie blog because it's been a while since something has managed to chill me to my very core as completely as that scene did.



• Where are you walking to at the end, Kerri Russell? I don't get it. I mean, clearly it's "off into the distance," but why? Have you no car or other mode of transportation? Especially when you have a young child and you're walking in the middle of a country-road where you KNOW some semi is gonna come barreling by and make roadkill out of you? Perhaps you accidentally wandered off onto that country road because you were dreamily and distractedly contemplating pie again in that "charming" way you have which makes us want to pause and say:
  
  "Waitress Makes Me Want to Kill Myself Pie... You take plastic-acting and sweeten it with the cold hard stare of endless boredom. You make it into a pudding and drown it in caramel."


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*I realize that Keri Russell was obviously not the one to make any of these bad film-making decisions. But she is irritating enough that I do not feel guilty for holding her responsible for them. Because if you choose to be in the world's worst movie, and you choose to make the world's worst movie even MORE lame by your presence, then you sort of deserve it.

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All Tatted Up

So I am suddenly, as of today, as of right this minute, totally pumped at the prospect of my upcoming half-sleeve tattoo (6 more months or so, if all goes well, woot woot!). I love the prospect of coming up with a tattoo design because it's both exciting and intimidating (because you better damn well like it enough to live with it FOREVER... EVER... EVER... EVER...). And a half-sleeve is even MORE exciting and intimidating. And even moreso, I love knowing that I will have designed it all, every square inch, and it will be all mine mine mine.

Right now, I'm still pretty set on the focal point of the sleeve being an anatomical heart.

I'm torn between what *type* of "anatomical" heart design, however.

This one I think is wicked cool in an abstract, totally-lending-itself-to-a-tattoo sort of way:




But I think I'm still pretty certain I want something a bit more campy and retro-looking, kind of along the lines of this (though this isn't the exact design--the one I have in mind is at home and is in blue and red):




or



So yes. I've gotten that far.

However, I am still unsure of what to do with the background. It's difficult, because I don't want it to overwhelm the heart in the foreground, so I want to steer clear of anything TOO busy. But then again, I don't want it to be too monochromatic and UNbusy, because that sort of defeats the purpose of the whole half-sleeve tattoo in the first place.

I stumbled across this tattoo today while doing a bit of roaming, and I am rather enamored with it and the way it curves and curls to fit the arm and shoulder's contours. (If I were a boy, I would be so gloriously tatted. But I like my breasts too much to ink them.)



So I'm thinking something along those lines in the background. BUT not solid-black. AND not up onto my breastal area. AND probably moreso the OUTLINE of these types of curlicues, with some subtle, colored patterns within them. (Basically, SORT OF like the curlicue tatts above, but then again, not like them at all.)

I have ordered several books of Japanese designs from the library, mostly for their pattern-work, which would be something I think I'd like to fill the curlicues in with. I am not Japanese. I have no meaningful connection with the culture. So I don't really wanna snag distinctly Japanese symbols/icons. But I *do* love the sense of pattern in the iconography and designs I've seen, so I may incorporate some of that.

I also know that I would like to very subtly and in tiny script on the inside part of the half-sleeve (so it's readable when I reach out my arm to grab something), sneak the end-most lines from Brigit Pegeen Kelly's poem "Song" which I just adore:

"This song
Is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness."

And that's about as far as I've gotten.

But boy, am I enjoying getting there.

So if any of you with sleeves have any recommendations as to what to steer clear of or what best to consider incorporating, please do give me a holler. Any input would be much appreciated!

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Things

• I think the inside of my nose may have a smell to it. Which is weird, because you'd think it WOULDN'T since you're sorta smelling your nose non-stop. But every once in a while, when I adjust my nose-ring, I smell it. And it smells sort of like my cats.



• Last night was the windiest night I've experienced in my house. It woke me up several times out of worry that my shitty windows were about to implode. Then I had a strange horror-movie-set of coincidental events that should've led up to some sort of chainsaw-killing but thankfully did not: I woke to loud wind at 2am. I went downstairs to pee. As I walked across the living room, the electricity cut out. Then it cut back on. It lightninged. The wind blew loudly again. The seams of my house howled woefully. I peed quickly and returned to my bed. A minute later the phone rang several times and then my answering machine picked it up. I could not make out the voice or the words, but it sounded like it was a call from a cell phone (perhaps a cell phone FROM INSIDE MY OWN HOUSE) and they left a message which abruptly got cut off. Assuming they'd call again if it was important, I rolled over and went back to sleep as the wind shook the third floor violently. I woke up this morning to check my machine, AND THERE WAS NO MESSAGE. And when I asked my friends and family if they had called, THEY SAID NO. Dun dun dunnnnn.



• When I've had a rough day, and there's no one around to snuggle with (or feed me margaritas) to make me feel better, there's nothing better than snuggling it up with Hugh Laurie and a beer. I think he may be my Happy Place. Well, not counting my already existent anatomical "Happy Place." 'Cause if THAT were Hugh Laurie, that would just be weird. For both him and myself.



• I have developed THE best scab I've seen in years. And it is nearly ripe for the picking, which sounds really disgusting, but you all know you do it. Especially when it's a fat, thick one like this bugger.



• I wish I could pull off the use of the "jaunty wink" in normal day-to-day activities. But I cannot.



• I also wish I could manage to incorporate the word "jaunty" more frequently into daily conversation.



• I hate when you walk into a restroom and your first instinct is "Yum, that smells good." Because even if it smells like delicious, gooey, tomatoey pizza, it's probably post-bowel-pizza, and that's just not something you want to think YUM about.

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I Win

I have nothing really to say today, but since I'm having a fricking teeth-gritting, mind-numbing, overwhelming, fairly shit-tastic day today, I figured I could at least get some sadistic pleasure out of making you read a post that was so mind-bogglingly dull that it has demoralized your spirits, left you both angry and purposeless and confused, and sucked all those sunbeams and unicorns out of your day so successfully that you're now sitting there agreeing with me that this is, indeed, the most teeth-gritting, mind-numbing, overwhelming, fairly shit-tastic day today after all.

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So THE MOMENT OF TRUTH was everything I thought it would be: ridiculous, horrifying, and awesome.

I totally need to hire their writers for my next Truth or Dare Jenga party.

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Winter Television Mind-Suck

• I think there may very well be nothing worse than finding your heart get all squishy and sentimental in the face of a lousy stinking jewelry commercial whose goal IS to get your heart feeling all squishy and sentimental so that they can sell you shiny expensive shit. When this happens, I always want to immediately throw myself out of my second floor window, but for the fact that I'd probably just land in the snow without a scratch and then have one of my neighbors drive by in his Car O' Bass and point at me and snicker kind of Beavis-and-Butthead-like and go "Heh heh. Porch Pussy." Cue that lousy f-ing Kay Jewelers commercial. You know: the one with the nauseatingly upper-middle-class couple driving in their newly-washed-despite-the-snow SUV while a delicate and lovely song begins to play and snow falls gently all around them and he slips a diamond bracelet/brooch/earrings into her palm and, despite the fact that they're holding up traffic in what appears to be NYC, no one beeps because they all KNOW that he has proven his love to her in the only way that's sincere: which is to spend money on her. That one. Every time I see that goddamn commercial, my heart goes squish. And I blame the song in it. And the stupid snow (it falls like something out of a Robert Frost poem). I have spent the last two months very adamantly forcing myself to avoid tracking down the song from that commercial, because even if it IS a good song, I figure it is nonetheless unworthy of my support since it's in a lousy shit of a jewelry commercial making me fall all squishy inside about snow, and diamonds, and love and shit. And that's just not right. My heart should never even HESITATE about whether it wants a diamond. BECAUSE IT DOESN'T. UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. EVEN IF IT WERE A DIAMOND THAT I COULD USE TO CUT THROUGH THE GLASS SURROUNDING AN EVEN BIGGER DIAMOND THAT I COULD THEN STEAL AND SELL FOR TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS ON THE DIAMOND BLACKMARKET. And yet--*whiny sigh*--that song's kind of lovely. So I did finally track it down. And although the dude who sings it has the worst name ever--*snickering* Landon Pigg *snickering*--and although I have yet to buy an expensive diamond brooch/bracelet/necklace and will never do so because I think they are ugly despite all the attempts by Kay's Jeweler to brainwash me into thinking otherwise, the song does what it's supposed to: It makes me want to curl up on the couch next to the warm body of someone I'm deeply in love with, watching the snow feather down quietly outside the window pane. And for that, I must now go throw myself down a flight of stairs.
  
  [[ LISTEN TO THE SONG HERE: it's the one called "Coffee Shop"--I hang my head in pretend shame ]]



• Has anyone else seen that IRRITATING multi-grain cheerios commercial where the wife gets offended because the husband accidentally implies that she's trying/needs to lose weight? And is anyone else driven as completely bonkers as me about the fact that their voices are SO obviously (and loudly) overdubbed from what appears to be an Irish or British accent to an American one? Seriously: Everytime the commercial comes on, my skin crawls and I cannot help but glaringly study the way their mouths are so OBVIOUSLY pronouncing words in an unAmericanized way, despite the obnoxiously squawky American voices coming out of the box.



• I am ashamed to admit that I will most likely be tuning in to THE MOMENT OF TRUTH tonight on Fox, just because it is going to be SO awesomely ridiculous, and because if I were a contestant, I would walk the hell out of there in 10 minutes flat with $1/2 million. Because I have no shame. Whatsoever. The hair on their necks is probably standing on end as I write this and they sense that there is, in fact, a single soul out there who, if unleashed on their tv show, would sap them dry of every single cent.

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One of my favorite things to do is to know something, to have done something, to have loved what I know or have done, and then to never ever share that information with another living soul, so that it is only ever mine to know and have.

It is like having a secret stash of chocolate bars hidden under your mattress, or like staying up and reading by flashlight under your covers long after your mom told you to go to sleep.

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I know my mind is made of matter
But I need to know exactly
What is the matter at its core?
Because my heart is just a muscle
And, simply put, it's sore.

--Ani Difranco ("Rain Check")

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We human beings are so funny, the way we are afraid of everything. We label label label things to make sense of them. Name them so we can say we know what they are. Because if we can see a cat and say, That--That is a Cat, then somehow it puts our mind at ease. But then, stupid as we are, we also grow afraid of the power of our naming, refuse it upon certain things, as though these things are any less what they are if we refuse to breath the power of a name into them; as though, long before we had a name for things, these things didn't still exist; not realizing that, whether or not we choose to name something, it still is what it is, and you are just afraid.

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Can't decide if this quote very horrifyingly reinforces the need for me to keep to my New Year's Resolution (or alternately, makes me wanna shout, "FUCK YEAH TO BEING CEREBRAL!").

So while I decide, I think I'll go shoot Andy Warhol.

"On the other hand, those females least embedded in the male 'Culture', the least nice, those crass and simple souls who reduce fucking to fucking, who are too childish for the grown-up world of suburbs, mortgages, mops and baby shit, too selfish to raise kids and husbands, too uncivilized to give a shit for anyone's opinion of them, too arrogant to respect Daddy, the 'Greats' or the deep wisdom of the Ancients, who trust only their own animal, gutter instincts, who equate Culture with chicks, whose sole diversion is prowling for emotional thrills and excitement, who are given to disgusting, nasty upsetting 'scenes', hateful, violent bitches given to slamming those who unduly irritate them in the teeth, who'd sink a shiv into a man's chest or ram an icepick up his asshole as soon as look at him, if they knew they could get away with it, in short, those who, by the standards of our 'culture' are SCUM... these females are cool and relatively cerebral and skirting asexuality."

--from Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto

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You ever have one of those weeks where you find yourself wanting to hire an uber-realistic human-cyborg prototype to just sit on your couch with your head in its lap, petting your hair, and then maybe later fall asleep in bed with you with its arm thrown real awkward and heavy across your chest and its mouth half-open and snuffily-breathing right next to your ear, its breath all nice and humid and slightly weird-smelling yet somehow comforting?

This'd be one of them there types of weeks.

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Cock

Porch Pussy they hoot
into the night air,
my neighbors,
their words muscling up
against the quiet
of my porch-reading,
groping at me with
hot breath.
These boys whose cars strut
broad-chested up their driveway,
basses thumping like fist on flesh,
like cock beating out its presence
between quiet thighs,
who stare at me
with hard eyes appraising, dumbing
dirty fingers of sight over my skin.
Boys I’ve grown fond of despite this,
because of moments between
all this cock and strut:
the intimate sound
of their knocks against
each others’ windows instead of doors,
like secret codes struck on
tree house walls.
The way I’ve seen one move quietly
through his kitchen, leaning on tiptoe
towards top shelves of cupboards carefully
lined with paper, placing clean cups
mouth-down like his mother surely taught him.
The way I’ve seen him slouched in his driveway,
frantic, pleading with some girl on the phone
to listen, just listen, please just listen.*
I think of them, their baggy pants,
their fuck yous and sideglance spits,
asleep in beds, beneath soft cotton sheets
curled uncertainly like commas around their ankles,
mouths open against pillows,
faces slack and silenced,
the way the one surely burrows into sleep
as though five-years old again,
remembering the way his mother
would smooth her fingers
along his sleepy neck.
In my head I cock
a gun against his temple
just to hear my voice,
just to make him
whimper in his sleep.


--Written by Your Humble Narrator

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Masochist

{{ LISTEN }}

She says 'You're a masochist for falling for me,
So roll up your sleeves.'
And I think that I like her, 'cuz she tells me things I don't want to hear,
Medicinal tongue in my ear.

When will it stop? When will it stop?
When will I feel all soft on the inside?
When will I feel all soft on the inside?
When will I feel soft, soft?

You say that my skin feels like no one else's,
That it's different somehow.
But I don't understand, isn't a hand just a hand?
No you don't understand.

When will it start? My broken part?

When will I feel all soft on the inside?
When will I feel all soft on the inside?
When will I feel soft, soft?

Oooo

When will I feel all soft on the inside?
When will I feel all soft on the inside?
When will I feel soft, soft?

She says, 'You're a masochist for falling for me.'


--Ingrid Michaelson

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Apparently at some point between 2007 and 2008, I made it my New Year's Resolution to suddenly acquire a penchant for men with beards. Not the feeble, I-just-hit-puberty, wee groomed beard, but the full-blown, lumberjack-esque beard, the kind that looks like it boldly snuck up on someone and took over their entire face--the kind that a bird could errantly nest in and that makes you want to forage for berries and rub your bare ass against the bark of a tree. *That* kind of beard.

Oh, what you boys and your facial hair can do to a girl.

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To all of us the thought of heaven is dear--
Why not be sure of it and make it here?
No doubt there is a heaven yonder too,
But 'tis so far away--and you are near.

--from Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
(translation by Richard Le Gallienne)

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"When you love somebody and bite your tongue, all you get is a mouthful of blood."

~ Fruit Bats

{{ LISTEN }}

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Take *THAT*, New Year's Resolution!

My one and only New Year's Resolution this year is to be less cerebral, less stuck in my head all the time. (Actually, it's not so much a New Year's Resolution as it was something I'd set my mind to working on about a month or so ago, but I thought it might as well be used to answer the inevitable "What's your NY resolution?" question whenever I get asked it.)

And so far so good, actually (though I *do* still have some noticeable stumbling blocks that I need to work on more).

Although I've long known that I'm a bit too cerebral and frequently give myself a hard time about it, in the last month a few words from various different people have made me much more self-conscious about the fact, and have made me realize that perhaps it really would do me some good to let go just a bit more sometimes, without getting so stuck on overthinking stuff.

Words:

[In response to my lengthy diatribe on the topic of the random hook-up] "Um, couldn't you just hook-up with someone *just for the fun of hooking up with someone*?"

"you're so...moral...or something."

"Man, do you ask a lot of questions."

While I think there's nothing wrong with analyzing things (I'm a philosophy major, peeps--the brain's my favorite part of the body to exercise), asking questions (what can I say? People and their motivations fascinate me), and allowing one's self to be guided by a clear-cut set of morals, I *do* realize that once in a while I need to give myself a break from analyzing everything so intensely, and just let myself get caught up in the moment, be less cautious and skeptical, go with the flow, and not think so goddamn much about things.

Case in point: I had something lengthier written out about this New Year's Resolution (including a bit of analysis about why I *am* this way), but then I realized that in writing all that, I'd essentially be putting a knife straight into the heart of the resolution itself. So instead I give you this shorter and sweeter post.

Lauren: 1

Failed New Year's Resolution: 0

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Reasons I Can't Decide Whether My Netflix is Flipping *BRILLIANT* or is Just Fucking with Me

NETFLIX RECOMMENDATION





Because you enjoyed:

2001: A Space Odyssey
Annie Hall
Apocalypse Now


We think you'll enjoy:

Andy Kaufman: Hollywood / Breakfast

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Ingrid Michaelson - Breakable

{{LISTEN TO THE LOVELINESS}}

Have you ever thought about what protects our hearts?
Just a cage of rib bones and other various parts.
So it's fairly simple to cut right through the mess
And to stop the muscle that makes us confess.

We are so fragile,
And our cracking bones make noise,
And we are just
Breakable, breakable, breakable, girls and boys.

You fasten my seatbelt because it is the law.
In your two ton death trap I finally saw
A piece of love in your face that bathed me in regret.
Then you drove me to places I'll never forget.

And we are so fragile,
And our cracking bones make noise,
And we are just
Breakable, breakable, breakable girls and boys.

And we are so fragile,
And our our craking bones make noise,
And we are just
Breakable, breakable, breakable girls...
Breakable, breakable, breakable girls...
Breakable, breakable, breakable girls and boys.

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