They call it “forbidden” because they don’t allow film school there
April 21st, 2008Tom was out of town this weekend on a sort of college choir reunion- I had thought about going along, but we had one of those weird couple divergences of memory where he was SURE he had told me about this trip some months ago, and I was EQUALLY SURE that he hadn’t, but the end result was that the first I remember hearing about it was just a few weeks before it was to happen, so I didn’t make arrangements to take off from work or anything.
So I was on my own for a few days. Now, here’s what happens when Tom’s away. In some ways, I regress to single-girl habits- no, not “tequila shots with strange men,” but “eating like a hobo because I don’t feel like cooking and watching bad TV.” Also, because I miss having him around and a lot of the things I like to go out and do are things that we go out and do together, I have this tendency to kind of hole up in the house. Which is dumb, because when the husband goes out of town, it’s a perfect opportunity for margaritas with your girlfriends (guilt-free because you’re not leaving your sweetie at home) and seeing movies you know he won’t want to see with you.
So that’s what I did. The weather was excruciatingly gorgeous on Friday and Saturday, so on Saturday evening, I went to Los Tios with Dawn and Steph, where we sat on the patio to enjoy queso and tasty beverages while discussing how we’d quit our jobs if we won the lottery. Suffice it to say, I’ve got a nascent comedy bit brewing in my notebook.
Saturday, Steph and I went out again, this time for pho at the best pho place ever, followed by a matinee of The Forbidden Kingdom.
Here’s what you need to know about this movie. It’s not what one would call “good.” In fact, by most objective measures of Western cinema, it’s a terrifically bad movie. In the tradition of The Karate Kid. But, for those who love kung fu movies for their own sake, this is not just unsurprising but actually expected. Kung fu movies, as Steph points out, are like pr0n. The ridiculous plot and writing are justified by the, er, action sequences.
And as far as action is concerned… people, Jet Li and Jackie Chan. Two of the greatest kung fu stars since Bruce Lee, okay? When you see one of these two in any other movie, the fight scenes generally have to be choreographed around the shortcomings of the costars; in the Rush Hour movies, Chris Tucker has to be able to participate, for example. But for the scene in which Jet Li and Jackie Chan face off, Yuen Woo Ping only had to choreograph for two incredibly talented and agile performers, and it was really pretty awesome.
But as a movie? Oh, it’s awful. Don’t bother with it unless you’re a kung fu movie fan generally. Steph and I laughed all the way through… especially at the serious parts. Just Netflix it and fast-forward through all the non-fight stuff. But watch the Chan/Li fight over and over.
links for 2008-04-18
April 18th, 2008-
This is so brilliant it nearly made me cry.
not another boy band reunion
April 10th, 2008
A rule of thumb, guys… if your members are visibly graying at the temples, the optimal window for a boy band reunion has passed.
links for 2008-04-09
April 9th, 2008Unexpected treasures from housecleaning
April 8th, 2008While we were cleaning up this weekend for the party, I was rearranging some of the stuff that’s on the lower level of our coffee table (ie, the place where we stick photo albums and stuff that we don’t know what to do with), and I found this beautiful silver frame, with our names engraved at the top, which contained what looks like handmade paper with little red pressed flowers on it, and a possibly-handwritten 1 Corinthians 13 (you know, “love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy…”). We must have put it down there with the other silver frames we got as wedding gifts but hadn’t found any pictures to put in them… In any case, I pulled it out, dusted it off, and it now occupies a prominent place on our bookshelves. It’s perfectly beautiful, and as over-used as 1 Corinthians 13 is at weddings (since Paul wasn’t actually talking about romantic love, but whatever), it’s one of my favorite passages.
The problem is… I can’t for the life of me remember who gave it to us. Which makes me absolutely *terrified* that someone didn’t get a thank-you note for it! Y’all KNOW how I am about thank-you notes.
So if this sounds like something you gave us, please pipe up in the comments so that I can send you an inexcusably belated thank-you note, as well as an apology for letting your lovely gift languish on our coffee table’s lower shelf for too long.
the first big grill of the year
April 7th, 2008
At Hacienda Bridge, the onset of spring means a lot of things. Baseball season, more daylight, more small animals brought back to the house by our cats (Macro has this thing for nightcrawlers lately), but my personal favorite has to be the return of frequent weekend dinner guests.
Oh sure, we can and do have people over for dinner during the winter, but the onset of spring means we can do a lot more grilling. Since we have a small kitchen, the use of the backyard as cooking space frees up more space in the kitchen for prep, and things get a lot easier.
Since it’s been a couple of months since we had dinner guests, we invited a bunch of people over for cooking with fire on Sunday night. We spent the weekend preparing- we’ve found that the thing that motivates us to really clean the house is to invite people over to it, and I’m a firm believer that when you find the thing that motivates you to do housework, you just go with it. So the end result is that in the spring and summer, when we’re having people over several times a month, the house is never more than a couple of hours from being company-ready.
We cleaned, we mopped, we purged detritus, we re-arranged the shelf decor, we shopped. And right after we shopped… our freezer died. It’s still cold, but it no longer freezes things. Due to our habit of buying chicken breast when it’s on sale and freezing it, we ended up with several pounds of chicken breast defrosting in our cold-but-not-freezing unit. And a couple of steaks. In addition to the burgers and hot dogs we had just bought.
We grilled every piece of meat in our house. Plus veggies. And potatoes. And I made guacamole, and friends brought salad, chips, desserts, and even more beer. It was quite the feast, y’all. And unlike the last big party we had, where we had either overbought the beer, or people just weren’t thirsty, the beer actually got mostly consumed. As a result, every flat surface in the house has beer bottles on it, not just the coffee table. (Just until I get home tonight- we were too pooped after the party last night to do anything other than put the leftover food away. The trash collection will wait until this evening. And then the house will be clean again. Yay!
Today, Tom is out exploring our refrigeration options. The fridge we have came with the house, so rather than fix the freezer and hope the fridge doesn’t die next, we’re thinking we’ll get a new one, since we can get perfectly nice ones that are still small enough to fit the space for less than $600, and that will probably be more energy-efficient.
One other thing… Tom auditioned to sing the National Anthem at a Nats game yesterday. He nailed it, too. So if all goes well, he’ll get to sing at a game this summer. Which would be awesome.
links for 2008-04-02
April 2nd, 2008-
He draws the fold-in for MAD, without actually being able to fold it in!
give me baseball, and twenty more degrees
March 31st, 2008
This is me at Opening Day for the Nationals. It was freaking cold- more like football weather. But we had a really good time, the new stadium is very nice and much better laid-out than RFK, and the Nats won in dramatic fashion!
oh look, a post!
March 28th, 2008
We went to Pittsburgh last weekend for my dad’s 50th birthday. (Yeah, my parents are young ‘uns.) After the traditional debate about what to get my dad for his birthday, Tom and I settled on the Logictech Harmony remote, so that they don’t have to do the remote-juggling dance while they find all the remotes for their devices, remember which one has to get turned on first, etc. Tom and I have one, and it has made managing our plethora of devices a million times easier- it had gotten to the point where I had nearly given up on watching TV when Tom wasn’t home, because even as tech-oriented as I am, I couldn’t keep track of all the different settings. So I figured that it could handle my parents’ three devices quite easily.
The remote was always sort of a family in-joke in our house- when Dad was around, he was in possession of the remote. And when he inevitably dozed off in front of the TV, someone would try to snag it from him, and he’d always wake up as you tried and grab it back.
On Easter, we went to church with my parents at the church I had grown up in, and where I’ve only been back to visit once in about the last 10 years. I’m old. There was a family sitting in front of us whose eldest daughter had been a buddy of mine, but I didn’t recognize any of the (now mostly grown) children until the mother sat down with them. When a young man sat down with them, I thought he was the middle daughter’s boyfriend… but then I realized he was the youngest boy, who I haven’t seen since he was in diapers. Yikes. On the other hand, the guy who ran he youth group when I was in high school hasn’t changed a bit. I think I might have detected a teensy bit of graying at the temples, but aside from that, he looks exactly the same as he did 10 years ago, despite having gotten married and having two kids since then. Time is weird.