Below are some choice bits from the initial reviews of the Sex and the City movie. I was spitting a little vitriol at work yesterday when asked if I was going to go see it. The answer, in short, was “FECK NO.” Except I wasn’t saying those words like Father Jack on “Father Ted.”

Important to note also is that I did tell my friend Theresa that I would see it with her as a matinee because she is a huge fan of the series and her show/movie-viewing buddies are in New Hampshire and England. Theresa is my dear friend and this would mean a lot to her. I also believe in knowing thine enemy. Therefore, I might end up seeing it. But I’ll have to sneak in a little airline bottle of rum (or 2), pour it into my Coke, and enjoy it that way. Because, DAMN. While I’m not a drinker per se (the last drink I had was at a business dinner a few weeks ago; before that, it was my birthday in April), desperate times call for desperate measures.

For professional reasons, maybe I should’ve been more neutral in my response at work and said that I simply don’t care for the series. But this and the Super Bowl both elicit visceral reactions from me. Visceral, angry, “no wonder the rest of the world thinks we’re stupid” reactions. I’m just not very good at hiding my emotions when they’re strong.

Anyway, despite shitty reviews, many of the theatres in the NYC metro area were sold out and experiencing ridiculous amounts of group ticket sales (no, I am not surprised - just sadly aware). Here are some of the review bits I liked:

This movie provides no good reasons to revisit “Sex and the City,” except to fulfill fans’ desires for one more for the road and add millions to Time Warner’s coffers. Be careful what you wish for.

Yes. Well said. “One more for the road” because people just cannot get over the loss OF A TELEVISION SHOW. The phrase “beating a dead horse” comes to mind.

Montage after montage after montage with each and every problem finding a solution by the fabulously dressed four getting together, squee-ing in a pitch that will deafen dogs and neuter most of the males in the audience, and realizing that friendship will get you through any bout of rampant self-absorption. Oh, so this is what happens when you leave Bratz dolls in the sun too long.

Ha ha! Bratz dolls reference = key. It’s the same market - except 10, 20, 30 and 40 years older. And with more money to waste on cheap plastic shit, like knock-off Coach purses because you KNOW you have to have the insignia print. You just do.

In need of some serious tightening up, the flabby picture does what the old Samantha would have never done: It keeps hanging around, pushing for a long-term relationship.

Again, “beating a dead horse.” When has this series NOT been about hanging around and pushing for a relationship? For all the fans’ pontificating about how empowering it is, how can they not see that it’s always been about a “happily ever after”/”GET THE RING!!!” ending? Who else was around for when The Rules was a runaway self-help bestseller? I was a bookseller in those days and I remember railing against it then. I rail against it just as much when it’s dressed up in Vivienne Westwood and on the TV/silver screen.

It’s as long as five series episodes, a big sweet tasty layer cake stuffed with zingers and soul and dirty-down verve (it’s not above having one of the girls poop her pants). Given the running time, though, not that much happens, and what does has several shades more gravitas

“Stuffed with zingers and soul”? “Dirty-down verve”? Oh, one of the girls poops her pants, huh? I heard a woman on the radio yesterday (NPR was interviewing people who had gone to the premiere) say she loved the series because it made her see that all these incredibly successful, well-dressed NYC women were “just like us”, accessible and also had problems. That they worry about the same things that “we” do.

I pity her. I don’t think she’s ever fully realized that the things she sees on TV and the movies aren’t really real.

Sigh. I’m going to do some of the glamorous things that real women sometimes have to do - take my car for an oil change! Put some laundry in the wash! Change the sheets on my bed! All while wearing these sexy-ass pajama pants I bought at Target. That’s right. I’m living the glamorous life.

Perhaps I should sit down and list every single internets meme they boys from Weezer have included in this video. Damn. I shouldn’t like this, but I do.

Friday. I haven’t looked forward to a Friday this much in quite some time. It’s been a rough couple of weeks. I’ve not been working out as much as I’d like and since I was getting angry at myself and aggravated at my lack of progress, I decided to take this week “off”. Come Monday, I’ll approach from a different angle and make it work for me. More running, more Pilates, more weights. It can be done. In the meantime, fun stuff!

• PAPERCRAFT STEAK DINNER?!??!? Yes. Fire up your color printer and assemble a paper steak to delight your friends and family. The site’s in Japanese, but you can figure it out.

• CROSS-STITCH! I’ve been thinking that once I finish knitting this baby blanket I’m making for my friends, it might be time to take up a new craft - like cross-stitch. To that end, I’ve been checking out the cross-stitch kits at my local craft stores. They’re all rather corny and so not me- “Footprints”? Precious Moments characters? A bald eagle against the flag? I’d prefer and old school grandma sampler, honestly. But that’s me. My aesthetic runs in a different vein. Just imagine my delight when I discovered this cross-stitch generator at Dark Lilac! I can upload a picture I create in Photoshop or a favorite image and it will generate a cross-stitch chart including the colors of DMC brand embroidery floss you’ll need. I have plans to create one of my gimpy wrist MRI (just have to resize in Photoshop) as well as one of brussels sprouts or other such food.
• SHRINKY DINKS. I stopped at Michael’s on my way home from work with my friend Krys. She was picking up scrapbooking supplies; I went in to buy unnecessary stuff. Craft stores and Target are perfect for that. I found they were selling packs of blank frosted Shrinky Dinks and my childhood came rushing back to me - like the fumes generated by sticking sheets of plastic into the oven to watch them shrink. That said, I bought a pack. I have colored pencils. I have an oven. I have jump rings. This means I can make pendants and keychains and other random crap - but however I want to do it. Crafty crafty! ($4.99 for 10 sheets)
• Summertime = bright nail polish colors. The new Essie colors for this summer left me a little underwhelmed. There was a color near the display, though, that attracted me. It’s not new for this season, but it fits right in and it’s awesome. It’s called Calypso - a bright fuchsia. It garnered compliments and that’s always nice.
• After much deliberation and whatnot, I’ve finally selected and ordered my new cell phone. Not a Blackberry, not the LG Voyager, not the Samsung Glyde. There were issues with each one (bulk, size, price, less than stellar reviews) so I did a Goldilocks kind of thing. In the end, I checked the Howard Forums and reviews for the phones I was considering - these led me to several people raving about the LG enV(2). It also had good ratings from c|net. It’s not as sexy as the others - it’s not a touchscreen phone; it doesn’t have a huge display on the front. But that’s OK. I wanted a full QWERTY keyboard - it’s got that. I wanted a larger display for web browsing and email composition - it’s got that when you open it up. I wanted a phone that’s easy to use AS a phone - this actually has a number pad for regular old dialing. And it cost me a whopping $49 after my upgrade discount. It arrives on Tuesday. Yippee!
• I’ve just pledged to be a part of Firefox Download Day 2008. It’s not a pledge to do anything other than download the newest version (that would be version 3) of Firefox on the day it’s released. Love love love love love. I love a browser. Hmmm. This might be part of the reason I’m single.

Post title inspired by Bob Dylan. Kind of.

Tonight, I watched “I’m Not There” - the highly stylized biopic about Bob Dylan. I’m glad I watched it with a friend who is a Dylan fan (inasmuch as she feels you can call yourself a Dylan fan - what she’s got is a love/hate thing - but the fascination is there) and has knowledge about his life; I am not what you’d call a Dylan fan. I’m aware of him: I know some songs, I recognize his voice and will occasionally mock it, I recognize some of his mannerisms and such - but I knew nothing about his life.

I guess you can say that I still don’t really know anything about his life since it was all a bit surreal and removed from reality - very loosely based on his life.

I don’t think there was a point where he was a young black boy playing the guitar for some suburban housewives and talking about wanting to go to Hollywood.

But there was a point where he, like the young black boy version of himself, went to visit Woody Guthrie in an asylum. I had to keep asking my friend, “Was that something that actually happened?” and “And who is that character based on in real life?”

All in all, though, it was good. I enjoyed all 2.5 hours of it. The performances by Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Charlotte Gainsbourg were impressive - especially Blanchett. Hence the Academy Award nomination, I guess.

The “chaos and watermelons” thing is from a scene where one of the iterations of Dylan (”Drew Quinn”, the one played by Blanchett) is giving an interview to a British music show host while they’re driving around in a limo. It’s just before Cate/Bob/Drew says, “Everyone knows I’m not a folk singer…” and then turns to the camera (audience) and slowly breaks into a teasing Cheshire-like smile. Oooh - breaking the fourth wall.

Anyway - it’s getting late. Today was a pretty demanding day at work, so watching a movie and eating Chinese take-out (delicious Jade Green Delight - I was craving veggies) with a friend was just what the doctor ordered. To add to the fun, I painted my nails an obnoxiously summer-inspired shade of pink and I’m ready for Friday, dammit.

I think some people might be watching “Lost” tonight; it’s some two-hour finale thingie. I’ll think about catching up online tomorrow night. For now, go go gadget sleep.

There is a blog devoted to the ampersand.
I love it in general and I love that it exists. From the page:

I like the ampersand. I think it is often the most attractive punctuation mark of them all. This blog is an attempt to give this humble character the respect it deserves.

After seeing some of the beautiful ampersand tattoos, I know what I want. An ampersand tattoo. I have to find the typeface from which to take it, and I have to decide where, but that would be beautiful.

But I won’t be making those kinds of decisions tonight because I’m a bit upset and angry and sad and feeling let down tonight (albeit for understandable reasons), and finding that while I thought I could adjust fairly easily to a friend being far away, that’s really not the case.

Whatever. Boo-hoo. Woe is I. I need to buck up. Sigh. Here are some pretty ampersands.

Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle entertains me. In a smarty pants way. This time, it goes nicely with my recent crap magazine overdose. He’s written about magazine photo retouching (and the “noxious, silly game” of image manipulation to the point of plastic perfection) and why it’s not going away anytime soon. He starts:

I have a vision. It is for a smart, sexy new upstart fashion celeb lifestyle hipster magazine and it will be a raw and shocking and anarchic thing, mostly because its radical manifesto will contain the resolute and mighty vow to be as real and authentic and photographically honest as possible in every way at all times without fail, almost. How radical? Well, my magazine will have this one overarching rule: no Photoshopping. No professional retouching to any ad or product or grisly food item, no ridiculous digital enhancement of any celeb’s face or torso or battle-scarred pelvis, no dramatic re-backgrounding, no slippery light effects or lip enhancements or ass lifts, with the possible exception of zapping a few errant nose hairs or stray gray pubes and of course excepting any shot containing Ashlee Simpson or Tom Cruise or Adam Sandler, who will be eliminated from any photo completely and replaced with a feral squirrel or perhaps some nice shrubbery.

There will be pimples. There will be blemishes. There will be wrinkles and scars and flab and sag, stretch marks and cigarette burns and age spots and syringe holes and bone spurs and dark circles and giant moles and droopy kneecaps and asymmetry galore. Won’t that be wonderful? Won’t that be refreshing?

Yeah, he’s good times.

On Memorial Day, I opted to spend the day with friends. We went to the pool, did a little swimming (well, what passed for swimming since I had my contact lenses in and no goggles) in very chilly water that eventually became comfortable and then quickly turned bone-chilling again, and enjoyed a selection of the worst women’s magazines the media have to offer.

Magazines with tantalizing cover stories including:

• Candid Cameron on Sex, Dating and the Perfect Tan
• At Home With Miley Cyrus
• The Hottest Things to Do to a Man (in 60 Seconds or Less)
• 4 Things All Guys Crave Hearing
• Dragging Ass Lately? New Energy-Boosting Advice
• 9 Things That Make a Guy Worship You in Bed (and out!)
• His Ex Didn’t Do It: The Girlfriend Habit That’ll Deepen His Love
• 5 Signs a Guy is Capable of Rape
• OB-GYNs Tell You What’s Normal (and not) Down There

The last three are my favorites.

“His Ex Didn’t Do It” plays upon every insecure female who spends time asking her “guy” if his last girlfriend was prettier, thinner, sexier, [insert other superlatives here] than she is. It presents that desperate woman with a gift - the magical habit that she can adopt to make her better than her predecessor! Deepen his love! The magazine knows for a fact that the other chick didn’t do it.

“5 Signs a Guy is Capable of Rape” - beyond the (subtle?) ridiculousness of having this on the same cover as “4 things all guys crave hearing”, “dragging ass lately?” and “hottest things to do to a man” this article is a total misnomer/misleading title once you get inside the magazine. Then the article is suddenly, “How a Date Rapist Works”… and segues into “Five Traits of a Rapist”… which doesn’t even make sense. One of them isn’t even a trait (#2):

1. he carefully plans his attacks
2. he is likely a serial rapist
3. he holds stereotypical views of men and women
4. he uses alcohol and/or drugs as a tool
5. he uses psychological dominance more than brute force.

Ah, well. They warn against guys who try to take a girl “somewhere quiet” to talk, who hold their palms down when they gesture with their hands, etc. Basically, as my friend Theresa put it, “just don’t meet guys at bars.”

Last, but not least, “OB-GYNs tell you…” - down there. DOWN THERE? Are they actually using the euphemism “down there” on the cover of COSMOPOLITAN? Didn’t Tyra Banks boldly go where no woman had gone before and introduce us to a mystical world of more poetic and creative terms for a woman’s genitalia - like vajayjay? Really, anything is better than “down there” on the cover of Cosmo. It reminds me of the book my mother gave me when I was in third grade to teach me all about growing up.

Next time, I’ll be quoting from Steven Pinker. That’s who I’m reading right now. And not only to legitimatize myself.

On Friday night, some friends and I went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. We had free movie passes from the last time we went to see a movie together (Iron Man - the projector broke… twice… everyone in the theatre received two free movie passes) and this seemed like a perfect way to use one of them - on a solid eye-candy summer flick.

It did not disappoint in that regard.

It was the usual Indiana Jones treatment but:

WWII : Nazis :: Cold War : Russians

Hat : Indy :: Hair : Mutt

There are other analogies I could strike, but then I’d be revealing the plot. The plot that was a little ridiculous even for an Indiana Jones movie. Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it, but I did find myself muttering, “WTF???” on several occasions and laughing out loud during moments of suspense because they were just so over-the-top. Suspension of disbelief, yes… but Shia LaBeouf (Mutt - Indy’s greaser son) suddenly going all Tarzan, inspired by some cute little monkey and swinging (his CGI self) across acres of rainforest in about two minutes? Or pulling some storyline and special effects from “The X Files” movie? And just how many dead languages does one need to pull into a movie to make up for 15 years of Indiana Jones-lessness? Answer: a lot. Pictograms, too.

It was a leeettle heavy-handed at times, e.g. “Knowledge was their great treasure!”

Overall, though, enjoyable. I’d see it again. Especially since I didn’t have to pay for it this time. Also, it’s a solid two hours, which does seem pretty long in this day and age, but it’s well-paced (maybe even a little too fast) and this viewer did not find herself checking the time.

I never wrote about Iron Man, which I liked very much. Robert Downey, Jr., is terrific and deserves a lot more credit for his acting chops than I think he’s gotten overall. I know he’s had some critical acclaim, but it hasn’t turned into a nomination or anything bigger - and Iron Man certainly won’t be that movie for him, either. But it should throw him in the way of other roles that will. And I get that that might not be his goal, but come on… it’s the trajectory. If he wasn’t hoping for some commercial and professional success, he could’ve stuck with roles like Fur (excellent, excellent film, by the way), where he played a man with hypertrichosis.

He and Christian Bale are following a similar path at the moment - both doing their big action hero roles for summer 2008, while toiling away on toothy “Actors’” roles elsewhere. Well done, gentlemen.

I’m looking forward to seeing The Dark Knight when that comes out. There was a longer trailer prior to Indiana Jones; it gave me goosebumps, and that was even before Heath Ledger was on the screen. I don’t have the whole, “Oh, poor dead Heath” thing… but between the music, the overall darkness of tone, Christian Bale’s voice, Ledger’s voice and the 10 or 15 seconds of the trailer where Ledger actually appears, I got some chills. Ledger as the Joker conveys something really unsettling and unstable; it’s going to make him scary as hell in that role.

Maggie Gyllenhaal looks about as useful as Katie Holmes was* in Batman: Beyond, so that’s too bad because she’s a good egg.

There were some other good previews before Indiana Jones - including one for Hancock, the upcoming Will Smith super-hero action/comedy. I’m torn. The concept is a little hokey, but I begrudgingly admit that Will Smith is charming and funny and wins me over in spite of myself, even if I don’t like the movie he’s in.

And the preview for Hellboy 2: The Golden Army sucked me right the f— in, even though my friends were totally disinterested. That’s OK. I’ll geek out to it solo. Guillermo del Toro does amazing things with fantasy worlds - he and his partners in crime have visions of monstrous beauty. Literally and figuratively. I’ve now seen some of the Spanish-language horror films he did before Pan’s Labyrinth and they’re equally frightening and lovely. He also wrote the first Hellboy (screenplay adaptation, anyway), Pan’s Labyrinth and Devil’s Backbone. He gets it, man. I’ll check it out.

And I’m done. I still haven’t even touched on books and music for this weekend’s media fix. Tomorrow.

* word around these parts was that her role could’ve been played by a squirrel

There was a haircut. I brought a photo of Victoria “Posh Spice” Beckham because I liked her haircut as a general style. This photo:

I’m sort of fascinated. There’s just so much art and artifice; she’s so shiny and plastic-looking. And, um, surgically altered. In the left photo, she kind of looks like her wax Doppelgänger at Madame Tussaud’s must/will look.

Anyway - I got a cut based loosely on that. I like the shorter back and that whole jam. In trying to get a photo, I realized that it’s not easy to photograph the back of your head without a tripod. I gave up, but at least you can sort of see the (blurry) front:

I’m a big dork because it’s a three-day weekend and I just spent the last three hours of my Saturday night doing work… as in, day job work.

Why?

Because what I’m working on is something I enjoy, as well as something I know I won’t have much time to work on at work this week. Also, it involves the use of software I don’t have at work (though perhaps it will be worth requisitioning such software at this point) so it’s something I’d end up working on in a piecemeal fashion throughout the week anyway. But I have to quit this. I could (and should) be doing other things FOR ME.

And cleaning.

This kid has got some good pitch, yo.