I’ve seen several previews lately for Johnny Depp’s new animated movie, Rango. For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, Depp voices a lizard who becomes sheriff of an animal town to eradicate a troublesome rattlesnake. I saw a different preview the other day, and it showed the snake being launched into the air and writhing around. Given my love of Johnny, it’s a shame I won’t be able to go see the movie.
You see . . . I really, really, really hate snakes. Like, really. I could fill the page with the word “really” and it really wouldn’t be enough to express to you how afraid I am of snakes. This is no ordinary “eek! A snake! Somebody get it while I stand on a chair!” type of fear. It is more an unbearable, paralyzing, soul-crushing state of terror.
I have nightmares about snakes. I have never been in a reptile house at a zoo in my entire life – every time I have been presented with the option, I have dug my heels in and threatened a conniption fit of the most epic proportion humanly imaginable. I can’t look at pictures of snakes. When I was a kid I got these wildlife magazines, and if there were snakes I had to put the magazine inside of a book or a bag or something and give it to my mom to take the snake parts out. I can’t watch snakes on TV. I can’t even watch cartoons of snakes, as evidenced by my refusal to watch even previews of Rango. When it comes to films like True Grit or Harry Potter where I know snakes will be just a minor part of a movie I otherwise want to see, I prepare by either knowing when to leave the theater for a well-timed “bathroom break,” or I bring a hoodie in which to hide my scaredy-cat face. Being presented with a snake will cause me to hyperventilate, sweat, get nauseous, throw up, and/or weep, even if it is only one cleverly drawn as a google-eyed cartoon safe behind the glass of my TV. Magnify that by about a basquillion per cent if faced with one in the real, physical world.
I hesitate to use this example, as I’m pretty certain it’s going to cement my status as batshit crazy. But it’s probably the only viable option to use to express the gravity of the situation. Plus, looking back, I’m sure I looked hilarious. Saturday morning, unbeknownst to me, the neighbors below me decided to move out with the most ridiculously huge moving truck ever around 9 AM. I was sleeping peacefully, as I see no good reason to be awake at 9 AM on a Saturday. The truck apparently backed up to their garage (located directly underneath my bedroom), and did some sort of truck maneuver that I neither understand nor care about that released some large amount of pressure or something, resulting in an outrageously obnoxious hissing-air-type sound. Even in my deep, hardcore sleep, my brain managed to equate this sound with a snake (and apparently one proportionally large enough to be capable of emitting such a loud hiss), and I sat straight up in bed screaming in terror. I so completely lost my shit, it took me a good hour to calm down, even after it happened again and I heard the people and truck doors and sounds of moving outside and realized what was going on.
Seriously, I hope to God nobody heard me, because there is no way to rationalize it as any type of normal human behavior.
Snakes may supposedly taste just like chicken (to which I say, just eat some damn chicken if you want the taste of chicken), but I myself actually am a huge, pathetic, featherless chicken.
Sarcasmo
Currently Excited About: THE OSCARS! I don't even care if you judge. There has already been some excellent fuckery parading down the red carpet. Apparently, when you slide on a designer gown, you become mirror-proof.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
What's That Thing About Gift Horses Again?
My mother is the single most difficult human being on God’s green earth to buy gifts for.
She is the type of person that, when she decides she wants or needs something, she just goes and gets it for herself. Which is great, I applaud her for that – but we, her children, who often find ourselves in a position to get her gifts, are totally screwed.
Her tastes are so random, unexpected, and particular, that it makes it almost impossible to figure out a gift that will surprise her, and she will actually want to keep. I pride myself on being someone who pays attention to other people, especially those close to me. I love, LOVE, LOVE to get people awesome presents. I always try to notice what they like and don’t like, and use that information to find the most perfect gift imaginable – like this past Christmas, when I got my middle sister a Jesse and the Rippers concert t-shirt, and she lost her ever-loving mind*. But somehow, with my mom, the math always gets screwed up. The opposite of something she dislikes does not automatically create something she likes. Something very similar to something she likes doesn’t mean she will like it as well. You can see how frustrating this can get.
*If you don’t know who they are, I’m not explaining – A) because you should know already, and B) because you’ll judge.
Sometimes she throws out some wicked wild cards. This weekend she went to Lowe’s and bought a planter that I never, in ten million years as her daughter, even after incredibly specific questions administered through a lie detector test, could have possibly guessed she would like. It’s a delightfully tacky, ethnically-painted frog – I think it’s great, but never would I have picked it for her. The fact that she was so in love with it – even went so far as to affectionately name him Senor and giggle every time she shows him off – completely blew my mind.
The bottom line is, it’s nearly impossible to guess what she likes or wants. Usually the only safe bet, the only way we can have any creative input on her gifts and achieve the ultimate goal of giving her something she didn’t expect and won’t return, is with wine or wine-related paraphernalia. But wine can only get us so far. What normally winds up happening is she tells us specific things that she wants or needs and has managed to restrain herself from buying so that there is something left for us to get her. So we at least have a few options we can get, but any element of surprise is ruined, and we end up with situations like this past Christmas where my sister gave her a gigantic wheeled trash can. Festive, right? If we’re planning to do something to surprise her, it’s best to keep the receipt.
Her birthday is coming up in March. It’s a big birthday that some people would like to force her into celebrating, but lucky for her, she refuses to go to work on her birthday and instead hides like a hibernating gopher. This policy achieves 2 goals: One, nobody can publicly exploit her birthday, and two, she doesn’t have to work on her birthday. I’m 26 and can’t remember her ever being at work on her birthday. My sisters and I are playing a risky, risky (and probably stupid) game this year. In honor of an important birthday, we’ve thought outside the box. We haven’t asked her what she wants. We haven’t just purchased her perfume or anything like that which we already know she likes and just needs to be refilled or replaced. We haven’t asked her to refrain from buying herself things she needs. We came up with this one all on our own. We’ve whispered and plotted for weeks. Outside consultation was brought in to participate and assist. And I think, I think, that this time, finally, we have been able to put together a present that she won’t expect, and will really use and enjoy.
Wish us luck. If we’re wrong, we’re screwed, because it can’t be returned.
Sarcasmo
Currently Excited About: I recently finished reading The Hunger Games trilogy of books by Suzanne Collins. They’re technically young adult level novels, but I really got into them! I think I finished all 3 within a space of 7 or 8 days. They may have been YA, but there was some seriously dramatic, traumatizing stuff going on. I’m thinking about going back and re-reading already because I tend to get too excited about moving on through an engrossing book to find out what happens, and my comprehension/thoroughness suffers for it. I’m not saying they’re magnificent works of literature, but if you’re looking for a quick, simple, enjoyable read that is dramatic, entertaining, and creative, check these out!
She is the type of person that, when she decides she wants or needs something, she just goes and gets it for herself. Which is great, I applaud her for that – but we, her children, who often find ourselves in a position to get her gifts, are totally screwed.
Her tastes are so random, unexpected, and particular, that it makes it almost impossible to figure out a gift that will surprise her, and she will actually want to keep. I pride myself on being someone who pays attention to other people, especially those close to me. I love, LOVE, LOVE to get people awesome presents. I always try to notice what they like and don’t like, and use that information to find the most perfect gift imaginable – like this past Christmas, when I got my middle sister a Jesse and the Rippers concert t-shirt, and she lost her ever-loving mind*. But somehow, with my mom, the math always gets screwed up. The opposite of something she dislikes does not automatically create something she likes. Something very similar to something she likes doesn’t mean she will like it as well. You can see how frustrating this can get.
*If you don’t know who they are, I’m not explaining – A) because you should know already, and B) because you’ll judge.
Sometimes she throws out some wicked wild cards. This weekend she went to Lowe’s and bought a planter that I never, in ten million years as her daughter, even after incredibly specific questions administered through a lie detector test, could have possibly guessed she would like. It’s a delightfully tacky, ethnically-painted frog – I think it’s great, but never would I have picked it for her. The fact that she was so in love with it – even went so far as to affectionately name him Senor and giggle every time she shows him off – completely blew my mind.
The bottom line is, it’s nearly impossible to guess what she likes or wants. Usually the only safe bet, the only way we can have any creative input on her gifts and achieve the ultimate goal of giving her something she didn’t expect and won’t return, is with wine or wine-related paraphernalia. But wine can only get us so far. What normally winds up happening is she tells us specific things that she wants or needs and has managed to restrain herself from buying so that there is something left for us to get her. So we at least have a few options we can get, but any element of surprise is ruined, and we end up with situations like this past Christmas where my sister gave her a gigantic wheeled trash can. Festive, right? If we’re planning to do something to surprise her, it’s best to keep the receipt.
Her birthday is coming up in March. It’s a big birthday that some people would like to force her into celebrating, but lucky for her, she refuses to go to work on her birthday and instead hides like a hibernating gopher. This policy achieves 2 goals: One, nobody can publicly exploit her birthday, and two, she doesn’t have to work on her birthday. I’m 26 and can’t remember her ever being at work on her birthday. My sisters and I are playing a risky, risky (and probably stupid) game this year. In honor of an important birthday, we’ve thought outside the box. We haven’t asked her what she wants. We haven’t just purchased her perfume or anything like that which we already know she likes and just needs to be refilled or replaced. We haven’t asked her to refrain from buying herself things she needs. We came up with this one all on our own. We’ve whispered and plotted for weeks. Outside consultation was brought in to participate and assist. And I think, I think, that this time, finally, we have been able to put together a present that she won’t expect, and will really use and enjoy.
Wish us luck. If we’re wrong, we’re screwed, because it can’t be returned.
Sarcasmo
Currently Excited About: I recently finished reading The Hunger Games trilogy of books by Suzanne Collins. They’re technically young adult level novels, but I really got into them! I think I finished all 3 within a space of 7 or 8 days. They may have been YA, but there was some seriously dramatic, traumatizing stuff going on. I’m thinking about going back and re-reading already because I tend to get too excited about moving on through an engrossing book to find out what happens, and my comprehension/thoroughness suffers for it. I’m not saying they’re magnificent works of literature, but if you’re looking for a quick, simple, enjoyable read that is dramatic, entertaining, and creative, check these out!
Monday, February 21, 2011
This Is Why I'll Never Be An Adult
I stole this blog post.
I don't even feel bad about it.
Follow the link HERE to a post from one of my favorite blogs in the whole wide world. Even though I didn't write it myself, it's an excellent (and hilarious) representation of how I function as a human being, and why I'm not very good at it. It's much better than I could have written it.
Plus it has illustrations!
Sarcasmo
I don't even feel bad about it.
Follow the link HERE to a post from one of my favorite blogs in the whole wide world. Even though I didn't write it myself, it's an excellent (and hilarious) representation of how I function as a human being, and why I'm not very good at it. It's much better than I could have written it.
Plus it has illustrations!
Sarcasmo
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
School Sweet School
As we all know, I am a loud mouth who thoroughly enjoys being right. I admit that. But I do try my best to admit it when I’m wrong, as much as it may taste like acid coming out.
That being acknowledged, I take back everything bad I ever said about going to school at St. Mary’s.
I wondered why, when I came here to UT for orientation, we weren’t taken on a tour of the campus. I wondered why, when I inquired about coming to school here, I wasn’t invited to come to the school and meet anybody, or take a tour. Now I understand a little better. One would think, considering state funding, the hundreds of photos around the building honoring distinguished alumni and their generous donations, and my ridiculous tuition, that we would have classrooms with electrical outlet capabilities for all students to plug in laptops. Not so. I end up getting to class ridiculously early so I can claim a prime spot to reach the outlets that are few and far between. Without that, I’d even settle for a school with working clocks in the classrooms. Or how about not taking a class in a room so overcrowded, people are forced to just sit in chairs in a corner, without a desk or table to put their books or laptops on?
Only a choice few of the professors I have encountered seem to genuinely care about their students. Most of them just come in to class, speak their peace, and hustle out when class is over. At St. Mary’s, I knew a lot of the professors, and most of them had an honest interest in the success of their students. I know St. Mary’s was a smaller school and smaller community, but most of the professors I’ve seen here don’t make much of an effort to give a damn. Most of them just flounce around, proud of their own importance for teaching here. After many of my experiences here, I can attest that being a UT law professor isn’t necessarily something to brag about. One of my professors last semester made several callous comments about how UT students were the cream of the crop (I’ll get to this in a moment), and that students who went to “lower-tiered” law schools are less intelligent and less motivated. I suppose she didn’t realize that she had 2 LLM students in her class, myself and my friend Shannon, who went to one of these so-called “lower-tier” schools. We both shot hands into the air to contradict her. We may have gone to a “lower-tier” school, but we were motivated enough to continue our education with another degree here at her precious school, and I’d gladly put my skills up against most of the students here. My experience with a different professor has been another type of nightmare. At UT, 1L students are allowed to take some upper level electives in their 2nd semester, so there are several in this class with me. The professor has us jumping through a number of hoops that are totally irrelevant to writing my thesis paper, and is simultaneously supremely unhelpful in guiding the class through writing the paper our grade is based on. She has assigned students to each weekly class to “lead discussions.” It so turns out that what she really intended by this was for each week’s students to basically teach the class. Seriously, she expects us to read the materials, and then pretty much run the entire class period ourselves. It’s one thing to throw out some questions or topics or something and invite a discussion, but that’s not the case. So please, somebody explain to me what I, an LLM student who already has her JD and has already passed the bar exam, am supposed to learn in an advanced property class from a 1L who hasn’t even finished first year property, and how that is putting my tuition money to good use. No really, please, explain it to me.
I’ll wait.
Still waiting.
Exactly.
UT Law is regarded as one of, if not the best law school in Texas. Graduates are automatically given a high regard by potential employers. After almost a full year here, and putting UT in comparison with St. Mary’s, I am really just incensed by this. I have no doubt there are some incredibly intelligent students here, and I don’t want to discredit that. But several of the LLM students, who all went to school elsewhere, have been honestly surprised by the type and quality of legal education being afforded students here. In a class I took earlier today, for example, my professor requested we bring a copy of rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to class Monday. On the way out of class, I overheard a guy asking a friend where he could get it. Honestly? If you’re in an upper level law course and don’t know how to look up a law, get out, you have no business here. In the same class a few weeks ago, my professor asked who had read certain cases having to do with regulation of commercial speech. I was the only one who raised my hand. She asked which professor I had for Constitutional Law, and I explained that I had gone to St. Mary’s for my JD. She was shocked that the UT students hadn’t been exposed to these (fairly important) cases. In so many classes it has really surprised me how much basic legal knowledge is unknown by most of the students around me.
Again, I realize St. Mary’s was a much smaller school, but there was a great sense of community there. Like many of the professors I’ve encountered, most of the students here are too consumed with their own superiority to worry about any other students. It’s been appalling to me how uncaring, arrogant, and flat-out rude a lot of the people here have been. At St. Mary’s everybody knew each other and while we may not have liked each other, we at least conducted ourselves with respect. I came here expecting the same, and conducting myself in such a manner. But there’s no attempt for anybody to get to know each other or to give much value to anybody outside of their little cliques, or, God forbid, a student from a different school.
I fully comprehend that UT is a state school, and so it functions in a different way than the private St. Mary’s did. And I won’t get into discussions about admissions and grading (although the fact that almost all UT exams are take-home, floating, or open book is suspicious to me – what are you actually learning and retaining??) or any of that, or what numbers prove UT to be the better school. I can only speak to my personal experiences. I know how I’ve been treated, I know how I see others treated, and I can compare the information that is being taught in both places. I take back my (now seemingly trivial) complaints about how expensive St. Mary’s was, or delays in getting loan refunds, or how disgusting our parking lot was every April after Oyster Bake. I take it all back. If I ever (and that’s a considerably large “if”) pay off my mountain of student loans, any alumni donations I ever make will go to St. Mary’s. It had its faults, for sure, but overall, knowing what I know now, it was a positive, valuable experience.
Sarcasmo
Currently VERY Excited About: I bought tickets today for my sister and I to see Rock of Ages in May! It’s one of my favorite musicals, second only to Rent. And that’s saying something, because I love a lot of musicals. Don’t judge.
That being acknowledged, I take back everything bad I ever said about going to school at St. Mary’s.
I wondered why, when I came here to UT for orientation, we weren’t taken on a tour of the campus. I wondered why, when I inquired about coming to school here, I wasn’t invited to come to the school and meet anybody, or take a tour. Now I understand a little better. One would think, considering state funding, the hundreds of photos around the building honoring distinguished alumni and their generous donations, and my ridiculous tuition, that we would have classrooms with electrical outlet capabilities for all students to plug in laptops. Not so. I end up getting to class ridiculously early so I can claim a prime spot to reach the outlets that are few and far between. Without that, I’d even settle for a school with working clocks in the classrooms. Or how about not taking a class in a room so overcrowded, people are forced to just sit in chairs in a corner, without a desk or table to put their books or laptops on?
Only a choice few of the professors I have encountered seem to genuinely care about their students. Most of them just come in to class, speak their peace, and hustle out when class is over. At St. Mary’s, I knew a lot of the professors, and most of them had an honest interest in the success of their students. I know St. Mary’s was a smaller school and smaller community, but most of the professors I’ve seen here don’t make much of an effort to give a damn. Most of them just flounce around, proud of their own importance for teaching here. After many of my experiences here, I can attest that being a UT law professor isn’t necessarily something to brag about. One of my professors last semester made several callous comments about how UT students were the cream of the crop (I’ll get to this in a moment), and that students who went to “lower-tiered” law schools are less intelligent and less motivated. I suppose she didn’t realize that she had 2 LLM students in her class, myself and my friend Shannon, who went to one of these so-called “lower-tier” schools. We both shot hands into the air to contradict her. We may have gone to a “lower-tier” school, but we were motivated enough to continue our education with another degree here at her precious school, and I’d gladly put my skills up against most of the students here. My experience with a different professor has been another type of nightmare. At UT, 1L students are allowed to take some upper level electives in their 2nd semester, so there are several in this class with me. The professor has us jumping through a number of hoops that are totally irrelevant to writing my thesis paper, and is simultaneously supremely unhelpful in guiding the class through writing the paper our grade is based on. She has assigned students to each weekly class to “lead discussions.” It so turns out that what she really intended by this was for each week’s students to basically teach the class. Seriously, she expects us to read the materials, and then pretty much run the entire class period ourselves. It’s one thing to throw out some questions or topics or something and invite a discussion, but that’s not the case. So please, somebody explain to me what I, an LLM student who already has her JD and has already passed the bar exam, am supposed to learn in an advanced property class from a 1L who hasn’t even finished first year property, and how that is putting my tuition money to good use. No really, please, explain it to me.
I’ll wait.
Still waiting.
Exactly.
UT Law is regarded as one of, if not the best law school in Texas. Graduates are automatically given a high regard by potential employers. After almost a full year here, and putting UT in comparison with St. Mary’s, I am really just incensed by this. I have no doubt there are some incredibly intelligent students here, and I don’t want to discredit that. But several of the LLM students, who all went to school elsewhere, have been honestly surprised by the type and quality of legal education being afforded students here. In a class I took earlier today, for example, my professor requested we bring a copy of rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to class Monday. On the way out of class, I overheard a guy asking a friend where he could get it. Honestly? If you’re in an upper level law course and don’t know how to look up a law, get out, you have no business here. In the same class a few weeks ago, my professor asked who had read certain cases having to do with regulation of commercial speech. I was the only one who raised my hand. She asked which professor I had for Constitutional Law, and I explained that I had gone to St. Mary’s for my JD. She was shocked that the UT students hadn’t been exposed to these (fairly important) cases. In so many classes it has really surprised me how much basic legal knowledge is unknown by most of the students around me.
Again, I realize St. Mary’s was a much smaller school, but there was a great sense of community there. Like many of the professors I’ve encountered, most of the students here are too consumed with their own superiority to worry about any other students. It’s been appalling to me how uncaring, arrogant, and flat-out rude a lot of the people here have been. At St. Mary’s everybody knew each other and while we may not have liked each other, we at least conducted ourselves with respect. I came here expecting the same, and conducting myself in such a manner. But there’s no attempt for anybody to get to know each other or to give much value to anybody outside of their little cliques, or, God forbid, a student from a different school.
I fully comprehend that UT is a state school, and so it functions in a different way than the private St. Mary’s did. And I won’t get into discussions about admissions and grading (although the fact that almost all UT exams are take-home, floating, or open book is suspicious to me – what are you actually learning and retaining??) or any of that, or what numbers prove UT to be the better school. I can only speak to my personal experiences. I know how I’ve been treated, I know how I see others treated, and I can compare the information that is being taught in both places. I take back my (now seemingly trivial) complaints about how expensive St. Mary’s was, or delays in getting loan refunds, or how disgusting our parking lot was every April after Oyster Bake. I take it all back. If I ever (and that’s a considerably large “if”) pay off my mountain of student loans, any alumni donations I ever make will go to St. Mary’s. It had its faults, for sure, but overall, knowing what I know now, it was a positive, valuable experience.
Sarcasmo
Currently VERY Excited About: I bought tickets today for my sister and I to see Rock of Ages in May! It’s one of my favorite musicals, second only to Rent. And that’s saying something, because I love a lot of musicals. Don’t judge.
Monday, February 14, 2011
The Dilemma
What’s a girl to do when a celebrity she loves is caught up in scandalous behavior?
All the ridiculous celebrity behavior we see, especially lately with people like Lindsey Lohan and Charlie Sheen, raises a lot of questions to me. I realize that the personal lives of celebrities are really none of our business – making movies for a living doesn’t necessarily mean you deserve paparazzi to stalk you down and catch every embarrassing move you make. Exposing yourself onscreen doesn’t necessarily mean you should have to expose yourself off screen. If you were an accountant, the entire country wouldn’t care if you slipped a nip or engaged in illicit office hijinks with ladies in blue dresses. But at the same time, it’s fascinating. People are nosy. I get that.
It’s really difficult to separate the celebrity from the person, but that’s what I try to do. For example, I very much enjoy a lot of Lady Gaga’s music. Personally I think she’s an irritating, attention-whoring maniac, but I will absolutely throw down a red light dance party to a lot of her tunes. Or take my love of Ben Roethlisberger. I like the guy because he’s a great quarterback. Whether or not he sexually assaulted a girl has no bearing on how he plays the game. I’m not a fan of him because of the guy he is off the field, but yet I feel kind of dirty for being such a big fan when he’s caught in such a nasty scandal. It’s really easy with players like Emmett Smith, who are known for being great on and off the field, to reinforce your fanship by recognizing he’s both a good guy and a good player. I’m a fan of his as a football legend, and as a human being, as separate achievements. Oh, and as a dancer. But with someone like Ben, it makes it difficult to rationalize being a fan at all when his behavior out of uniform is so sketchy. Just because I like the way the guy throws a football or takes a hit in the backfield doesn’t mean I’ve become a one-woman walking endorsement for sexually assaulting the fine citizens of Georgia. On the flip side, where a person you’re not already a fan of has their character brought into question, it’s super easy to make a quick judgment and write them off – say, for instance, Kobe Bryant. I don’t follow basketball, I don’t know much about the guy, so when his hotel room incident blew up, I was pretty quick to just up and decide Kobe Bryant is a douchebag. I admit it, I’m a hypocrite. But how many people do this?
To a point I get it, because if we didn’t have celebrity gossip to spread and make fun of, there would be no magazines or late night talk shows. And I don’t want to live in a world without “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson.” But how much is too much? Too much attention is just encouraging and enabling. And seriously, I’m already sick of Charlie Sheen jokes. I’m not a fan of “Two and a Half Men,” but let me ask those of you who are – does knowing Charlie Sheen enjoys spending his down time with cracked-out whores in closets make the show any less enjoyable or funny? It’s not like you’re being asked to watch him consort with nocturnal maidens of joy. At what point does his radical behavior make you write him (and all of his work) off, when you previously so enjoyed it? Lindsey Lohan being a thieving crack fiend doesn’t mean I won’t watch Mean Girls the next time it’s on TV. Alec Baldwin’s rant at his daughter doesn’t make “30 Rock”/Jack Donaghy any less excellent. Usher is single-handedly responsible for forcing Justin Bieber down the throats of the collective entertainment industry, but I forgive him and will absolutely watch him dance any time I can.
I suppose my internal dilemma is hard to articulate, and a lot of this rant has been a sprawling mess of thoughts on the subject. Celebrity gossip fascinates me as a nosy, curious person, but another part of me just wants to go to the movies or watch TV and enjoy/criticize the respective performances based on talent and not criminal histories. I feel dirty when I have to rationalize being a fan of someone for their work and in spite of naughty extracurricular activities. I try to be good at separating the celebrity from the person, but like I said, I’m still absolutely guilty of using scandalous behavior to reinforce my dislike of someone I wasn’t a fan of to begin with and using it to question people who are fans.
Sarcasmo
Currently Excited About: Season 2 of "Justified." I should have written about this last week, since that's when it premiered, but I didn't. Seriously though, such a great show. It's an excellently gritty FX drama that follows a US Marshal (played ever-so-handsomely by Timothy Olyphant) working in his backwoods Kentucky hometown. Season 2 just started last week, and with the way Season 1 wrapped up, it wouldn't be hard to start watching now and still enjoy it. Most of Season 1's storylines were wrapped up pretty neatly, and it shouldn't be a problem to pick things up as you go - or, you could check out Season 1 on DVD, since it was pretty excellent.
All the ridiculous celebrity behavior we see, especially lately with people like Lindsey Lohan and Charlie Sheen, raises a lot of questions to me. I realize that the personal lives of celebrities are really none of our business – making movies for a living doesn’t necessarily mean you deserve paparazzi to stalk you down and catch every embarrassing move you make. Exposing yourself onscreen doesn’t necessarily mean you should have to expose yourself off screen. If you were an accountant, the entire country wouldn’t care if you slipped a nip or engaged in illicit office hijinks with ladies in blue dresses. But at the same time, it’s fascinating. People are nosy. I get that.
It’s really difficult to separate the celebrity from the person, but that’s what I try to do. For example, I very much enjoy a lot of Lady Gaga’s music. Personally I think she’s an irritating, attention-whoring maniac, but I will absolutely throw down a red light dance party to a lot of her tunes. Or take my love of Ben Roethlisberger. I like the guy because he’s a great quarterback. Whether or not he sexually assaulted a girl has no bearing on how he plays the game. I’m not a fan of him because of the guy he is off the field, but yet I feel kind of dirty for being such a big fan when he’s caught in such a nasty scandal. It’s really easy with players like Emmett Smith, who are known for being great on and off the field, to reinforce your fanship by recognizing he’s both a good guy and a good player. I’m a fan of his as a football legend, and as a human being, as separate achievements. Oh, and as a dancer. But with someone like Ben, it makes it difficult to rationalize being a fan at all when his behavior out of uniform is so sketchy. Just because I like the way the guy throws a football or takes a hit in the backfield doesn’t mean I’ve become a one-woman walking endorsement for sexually assaulting the fine citizens of Georgia. On the flip side, where a person you’re not already a fan of has their character brought into question, it’s super easy to make a quick judgment and write them off – say, for instance, Kobe Bryant. I don’t follow basketball, I don’t know much about the guy, so when his hotel room incident blew up, I was pretty quick to just up and decide Kobe Bryant is a douchebag. I admit it, I’m a hypocrite. But how many people do this?
To a point I get it, because if we didn’t have celebrity gossip to spread and make fun of, there would be no magazines or late night talk shows. And I don’t want to live in a world without “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson.” But how much is too much? Too much attention is just encouraging and enabling. And seriously, I’m already sick of Charlie Sheen jokes. I’m not a fan of “Two and a Half Men,” but let me ask those of you who are – does knowing Charlie Sheen enjoys spending his down time with cracked-out whores in closets make the show any less enjoyable or funny? It’s not like you’re being asked to watch him consort with nocturnal maidens of joy. At what point does his radical behavior make you write him (and all of his work) off, when you previously so enjoyed it? Lindsey Lohan being a thieving crack fiend doesn’t mean I won’t watch Mean Girls the next time it’s on TV. Alec Baldwin’s rant at his daughter doesn’t make “30 Rock”/Jack Donaghy any less excellent. Usher is single-handedly responsible for forcing Justin Bieber down the throats of the collective entertainment industry, but I forgive him and will absolutely watch him dance any time I can.
I suppose my internal dilemma is hard to articulate, and a lot of this rant has been a sprawling mess of thoughts on the subject. Celebrity gossip fascinates me as a nosy, curious person, but another part of me just wants to go to the movies or watch TV and enjoy/criticize the respective performances based on talent and not criminal histories. I feel dirty when I have to rationalize being a fan of someone for their work and in spite of naughty extracurricular activities. I try to be good at separating the celebrity from the person, but like I said, I’m still absolutely guilty of using scandalous behavior to reinforce my dislike of someone I wasn’t a fan of to begin with and using it to question people who are fans.
Sarcasmo
Currently Excited About: Season 2 of "Justified." I should have written about this last week, since that's when it premiered, but I didn't. Seriously though, such a great show. It's an excellently gritty FX drama that follows a US Marshal (played ever-so-handsomely by Timothy Olyphant) working in his backwoods Kentucky hometown. Season 2 just started last week, and with the way Season 1 wrapped up, it wouldn't be hard to start watching now and still enjoy it. Most of Season 1's storylines were wrapped up pretty neatly, and it shouldn't be a problem to pick things up as you go - or, you could check out Season 1 on DVD, since it was pretty excellent.
Friday, February 11, 2011
"Martha's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down, man."
- Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden in Fight Club.
Looking back on the beginning of my first year of law school, it amuses me how eager we all were. We were all so excited to be learning the law, and learning a big impressive legal vocabulary full of words like “writ” and “alternative dispute resolution” and “Constitution”. The fun wore off though as we quickly found that the law permeated our lives outside of school to a degree that was a little uncomfortable. News stories, recreational books, grocery store ads – everywhere we looked, we were slapped in the face by the cold, hard, hand of the law. We tried to joke about it, talk about how law was everywhere we looked and it completely polluted the way we looked at things, but really we were all just grasping at straws trying to find ways to accept the fact that we’d never think like normal people again. Never again would we be able to relax and enjoy life without noticing the legal consequences of all the behavior around us.
During Spring Break of my first year of law school, I made a trip to Galveston to go to my sister’s dance competition. On one of the days she wasn’t performing, we went to see the Titanic exhibit at Moody Gardens. Away from school and away from my books, I assumed I was safe from the influence of the law’s harmful brain-probe (the irony of feeling safe among the flotsam of a 100 year old shipwreck escaped me at the time). At the end of the exhibit, there was a room of photos of a handful of different ship passengers and their respective stories. The last one I went to was a well-dressed woman, clearly a first class passenger, named Lady Lucy Duff-Gordon. Fellow lawyers and law students have at this point stopped, gasped, and shared my horror. To you blissful non-lawyers, let me explain. Lady Duff-Gordon was involved in a very famous breach of contract incident studied by every first year contract student in America. The law had followed me to the bottom of the sea. Well, to Galveston anyway. Here, in the bowels of one of the greatest American tragedies was my own personal tragedy – I’ve been ruined for life, never to escape the labyrinth of the law. I sent a desperate email to my contracts professor, the wily Willy Rice, to share my plight. He was delighted by the way we find parts of our legal education everywhere we look. I could not share his amusement.
Our excitement wore off eventually, and learning fun legal terminology and ways to argue the bejeezus out of other human beings wasn’t as fun as it was at first impression. Sadly enough though, several years later, I’m still going through the same things. I know what you’re thinking – “Jennifer, you’re a fully developed lawyer now. This is literally what you have spent years studying to do for a living, clearly even you had to realize that you’d probably encounter legal stories and ideas on a regular basis.” And sure, fine, I’ll give you that. But I don’t like taking my work home with me. I don’t like it sneaking up on me. I’m currently taking a mass tort litigation class, where we are studying class actions, mass accidents like the DuPont Plaza Hotel fire, and mass product cases like Agent Orange and Bendectin. I’m also taking a class on the regulation of toxic substances, where the last couple of weeks have been spent on FIFRA, the statute that covers the regulation of pesticides. Most of the pesticide cases we have studied involve chlordane, which is a pesticide that was taken off the market years ago. This past Tuesday I tuned in to watch “The Good Wife,” one of my favorite shows to begin with, but which had the added benefit this week of guest starring one Mr. Michael J. Fox P. Keaton. Within the first 3 minutes of the episode, the week's plot was explained to be covering the recruitment of plaintiff members for a class action chlordane case. Yes, I realized it was a legal drama and therefore a pretty sure risk of being exposed to legal nonsense, but it was creepily uncanny the way it was so dead on the nose to what I have been studying lately.
I may have asked for it by watching a legal TV show, but even aside from that, the opportunity to ruin the most normal things can pop out and surprise you when you least expect it like a stranger with candy and a windowless van. Last week I was doing some laundry and doing things around the apartment. Since I don’t like quiet, I put on a movie that I didn’t necessarily need to pay attention to, just so I could have some background noise. That day’s ambiance of choice was The Incredible Hulk. At one point toward the end I caught myself paused amidst a pile of socks, holding a pink one and an orange one, marveling at the damage caused by The Abomination and wondering about the possibilities for a class action lawsuit. Never mind the fact that it appears I have the cinematic tastes of a 12 year old boy, but I needed someone to take one of the socks and slap me Zsa Zsa-style to make me stop destroying perfectly enjoyable awful movies with my legal obsessions.
Like my title suggests, I think I’m a lost cause. It’s a good thing I like law. One, because I have to deal with it everywhere I look now that my mind has been irreversibly altered. And two, because I emptied out (read: finished off) a bottle of wine earlier tonight to try and toss/twirl it around like Tom Cruise in Cocktail, and as it turns out, I definitely suck at bartending.
Sarcasmo
Currently Excited About: By admitting to you that I watched The Incredible Hulk the other day, I have necessarily revealed to you that although I am a grown woman proudly in possession of both X chromosomes, I dig comic book movies. So at the moment I’m pretty jazzed about the trailers circling for Thor and Captain America, the just-released-today trailer for X-Men: First Class (even though it was missing shots of the movie's villian, played by my perma-fave Kevin Bacon), and about Samuel L. Jackson telling Jimmy Fallon the other day that The Avengers is set to start production in April. All three of the aforementioned trailers look like they’re leading up to pretty excellent movies, and I haven’t found the words in the English language, even in my special lawyer vocabulary, to express the almighty excitement I am experiencing over The Avengers. Robert Downey Jr. back as Iron Man (which, let's be honest, RDJ as Iron Man is one of the best ideas Hollywood has ever had), and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury (each total badasses in their respective environments, real and comic). Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth are reprising their roles as Captain America and Thor respectively, Mark Ruffalo (who I just love, but I have to admit I think his casting is a bit off) will be The Hulk, and Jeremy Renner will be playing Hawkeye. Come on. Awesome.
Looking back on the beginning of my first year of law school, it amuses me how eager we all were. We were all so excited to be learning the law, and learning a big impressive legal vocabulary full of words like “writ” and “alternative dispute resolution” and “Constitution”. The fun wore off though as we quickly found that the law permeated our lives outside of school to a degree that was a little uncomfortable. News stories, recreational books, grocery store ads – everywhere we looked, we were slapped in the face by the cold, hard, hand of the law. We tried to joke about it, talk about how law was everywhere we looked and it completely polluted the way we looked at things, but really we were all just grasping at straws trying to find ways to accept the fact that we’d never think like normal people again. Never again would we be able to relax and enjoy life without noticing the legal consequences of all the behavior around us.
During Spring Break of my first year of law school, I made a trip to Galveston to go to my sister’s dance competition. On one of the days she wasn’t performing, we went to see the Titanic exhibit at Moody Gardens. Away from school and away from my books, I assumed I was safe from the influence of the law’s harmful brain-probe (the irony of feeling safe among the flotsam of a 100 year old shipwreck escaped me at the time). At the end of the exhibit, there was a room of photos of a handful of different ship passengers and their respective stories. The last one I went to was a well-dressed woman, clearly a first class passenger, named Lady Lucy Duff-Gordon. Fellow lawyers and law students have at this point stopped, gasped, and shared my horror. To you blissful non-lawyers, let me explain. Lady Duff-Gordon was involved in a very famous breach of contract incident studied by every first year contract student in America. The law had followed me to the bottom of the sea. Well, to Galveston anyway. Here, in the bowels of one of the greatest American tragedies was my own personal tragedy – I’ve been ruined for life, never to escape the labyrinth of the law. I sent a desperate email to my contracts professor, the wily Willy Rice, to share my plight. He was delighted by the way we find parts of our legal education everywhere we look. I could not share his amusement.
Our excitement wore off eventually, and learning fun legal terminology and ways to argue the bejeezus out of other human beings wasn’t as fun as it was at first impression. Sadly enough though, several years later, I’m still going through the same things. I know what you’re thinking – “Jennifer, you’re a fully developed lawyer now. This is literally what you have spent years studying to do for a living, clearly even you had to realize that you’d probably encounter legal stories and ideas on a regular basis.” And sure, fine, I’ll give you that. But I don’t like taking my work home with me. I don’t like it sneaking up on me. I’m currently taking a mass tort litigation class, where we are studying class actions, mass accidents like the DuPont Plaza Hotel fire, and mass product cases like Agent Orange and Bendectin. I’m also taking a class on the regulation of toxic substances, where the last couple of weeks have been spent on FIFRA, the statute that covers the regulation of pesticides. Most of the pesticide cases we have studied involve chlordane, which is a pesticide that was taken off the market years ago. This past Tuesday I tuned in to watch “The Good Wife,” one of my favorite shows to begin with, but which had the added benefit this week of guest starring one Mr. Michael J. Fox P. Keaton. Within the first 3 minutes of the episode, the week's plot was explained to be covering the recruitment of plaintiff members for a class action chlordane case. Yes, I realized it was a legal drama and therefore a pretty sure risk of being exposed to legal nonsense, but it was creepily uncanny the way it was so dead on the nose to what I have been studying lately.
I may have asked for it by watching a legal TV show, but even aside from that, the opportunity to ruin the most normal things can pop out and surprise you when you least expect it like a stranger with candy and a windowless van. Last week I was doing some laundry and doing things around the apartment. Since I don’t like quiet, I put on a movie that I didn’t necessarily need to pay attention to, just so I could have some background noise. That day’s ambiance of choice was The Incredible Hulk. At one point toward the end I caught myself paused amidst a pile of socks, holding a pink one and an orange one, marveling at the damage caused by The Abomination and wondering about the possibilities for a class action lawsuit. Never mind the fact that it appears I have the cinematic tastes of a 12 year old boy, but I needed someone to take one of the socks and slap me Zsa Zsa-style to make me stop destroying perfectly enjoyable awful movies with my legal obsessions.
Like my title suggests, I think I’m a lost cause. It’s a good thing I like law. One, because I have to deal with it everywhere I look now that my mind has been irreversibly altered. And two, because I emptied out (read: finished off) a bottle of wine earlier tonight to try and toss/twirl it around like Tom Cruise in Cocktail, and as it turns out, I definitely suck at bartending.
Sarcasmo
Currently Excited About: By admitting to you that I watched The Incredible Hulk the other day, I have necessarily revealed to you that although I am a grown woman proudly in possession of both X chromosomes, I dig comic book movies. So at the moment I’m pretty jazzed about the trailers circling for Thor and Captain America, the just-released-today trailer for X-Men: First Class (even though it was missing shots of the movie's villian, played by my perma-fave Kevin Bacon), and about Samuel L. Jackson telling Jimmy Fallon the other day that The Avengers is set to start production in April. All three of the aforementioned trailers look like they’re leading up to pretty excellent movies, and I haven’t found the words in the English language, even in my special lawyer vocabulary, to express the almighty excitement I am experiencing over The Avengers. Robert Downey Jr. back as Iron Man (which, let's be honest, RDJ as Iron Man is one of the best ideas Hollywood has ever had), and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury (each total badasses in their respective environments, real and comic). Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth are reprising their roles as Captain America and Thor respectively, Mark Ruffalo (who I just love, but I have to admit I think his casting is a bit off) will be The Hulk, and Jeremy Renner will be playing Hawkeye. Come on. Awesome.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Ready For Her Closeup
I got a phone call from my mother last week on Monday, and was met with an odd greeting and an inordinately excited tone in her voice – “I’m not really sure yet what exactly is going on, but Leslie [my youngest sister] is going to be on TV.” At first I figured, yeah, ok, she’s going to be on the local news for her FFA or 4-H or drill team activities – but that wasn’t the case, and as we got more information and figured out more of the circumstances, it was actually a much bigger deal than either of us imagined.
There is a gentleman in Austin named Bill Blodgett who runs an organization called Majesty Outdoors, which is focused on finding teenagers who, for one reason or another, do not have a father in their life, and giving them a connection to the outdoors. They go on hunting and fishing excursions, and get to learn a lot about wildlife and the environment. Through a convoluted (yet fortuitous) turn of events, Leslie got the opportunity this past weekend to go on an adventure with Mr. Blodgett and his crew. The trip was filmed, and will be aired as the 12th episode in the currently-running 13 episode season of “Majesty Outdoors”, the organization’s television show airing on the Versus channel.
Mr. Blodgett and his wife/show chaperone Susan met Leslie and I in Austin for lunch on Friday before the trip. I could tell immediately that they were great people, and felt completely comfortable with handing my sister off to them for the weekend. Of course, there are times I’d be perfectly willing to shove her into the custody of train-hopping vagrants, but as she’s currently on my good side, I was happy to see that she’d be spending the weekend with a great couple like the Blodgetts. They took her to Corpus Christi Friday and stayed until Sunday, where she did a little fishing, learned a lot about the Texas Parks and Wildlife conservation efforts, spent some time behind the scenes at the aquarium, and scored some cool swag from the organization’s sponsors.
To make it even better, this upcoming weekend a party is bring thrown for all of the featured teens at Bass Pro Shop in San Antonio to film a reunion episode/season finale. So Leslie will be featured on one episode, and likely seen in another episode immediately following, both of which should air on Versus sometime in March. She had such a good time and they enjoyed her so much that they’ve also invited her along on a trip to go fishing off the Louisiana coast this summer.
I’m not a particularly religious person, and I don’t know how much I buy into the whole “everything happens for a reason” idea, but it is really uncanny the way the past week transpired for Leslie to get to do this. Majesty Outdoors is, at its core, a type of youth ministry program. Another trip had been planned, but there were cancellations, so this one to Corpus was kind of put together last minute as a replacement, and they were really on the line to find a kid to take along. Through a friend’s brother they found out about Leslie, and after a whirlwind of phone calls and e-mails she was in. It was a perfect trip for her – we have access to places to go hunting, so a fish-aimed trip was something new for her. She had been thinking lately about a future with TPW, so it was great for her to get this kind of exposure. Plus Mr. Blodgett has the same college degree Leslie has been considering, he used to raise pigs, he used to play baseball (and was drafted by the same team that drafted our cousin), and his wife is big into bow hunting – Leslie just fit in so well with them it was almost bizarre. Even as skeptical as I am, I have to think there was somebody or something pulling the strings here for Leslie to luck into such a cool opportunity so tailored to her and her future.
Check out the website for Majesty Outdoors here. They’re truly great people with a great purpose.
Sarcasmo
PS – For those of you who know Leslie, or as you can glean from the fact that she is my sister . . . she has been exactly as big of a pain in the butt about all of this as you can imagine. She showed up to our Superbowl part halfway through the first quarter, apologizing for her lateness and blaming the paparazzi. But it’s actually been pretty hilarious, and she absolutely deserves the trip and all the attention she’s gotten.
There is a gentleman in Austin named Bill Blodgett who runs an organization called Majesty Outdoors, which is focused on finding teenagers who, for one reason or another, do not have a father in their life, and giving them a connection to the outdoors. They go on hunting and fishing excursions, and get to learn a lot about wildlife and the environment. Through a convoluted (yet fortuitous) turn of events, Leslie got the opportunity this past weekend to go on an adventure with Mr. Blodgett and his crew. The trip was filmed, and will be aired as the 12th episode in the currently-running 13 episode season of “Majesty Outdoors”, the organization’s television show airing on the Versus channel.
Mr. Blodgett and his wife/show chaperone Susan met Leslie and I in Austin for lunch on Friday before the trip. I could tell immediately that they were great people, and felt completely comfortable with handing my sister off to them for the weekend. Of course, there are times I’d be perfectly willing to shove her into the custody of train-hopping vagrants, but as she’s currently on my good side, I was happy to see that she’d be spending the weekend with a great couple like the Blodgetts. They took her to Corpus Christi Friday and stayed until Sunday, where she did a little fishing, learned a lot about the Texas Parks and Wildlife conservation efforts, spent some time behind the scenes at the aquarium, and scored some cool swag from the organization’s sponsors.
To make it even better, this upcoming weekend a party is bring thrown for all of the featured teens at Bass Pro Shop in San Antonio to film a reunion episode/season finale. So Leslie will be featured on one episode, and likely seen in another episode immediately following, both of which should air on Versus sometime in March. She had such a good time and they enjoyed her so much that they’ve also invited her along on a trip to go fishing off the Louisiana coast this summer.
I’m not a particularly religious person, and I don’t know how much I buy into the whole “everything happens for a reason” idea, but it is really uncanny the way the past week transpired for Leslie to get to do this. Majesty Outdoors is, at its core, a type of youth ministry program. Another trip had been planned, but there were cancellations, so this one to Corpus was kind of put together last minute as a replacement, and they were really on the line to find a kid to take along. Through a friend’s brother they found out about Leslie, and after a whirlwind of phone calls and e-mails she was in. It was a perfect trip for her – we have access to places to go hunting, so a fish-aimed trip was something new for her. She had been thinking lately about a future with TPW, so it was great for her to get this kind of exposure. Plus Mr. Blodgett has the same college degree Leslie has been considering, he used to raise pigs, he used to play baseball (and was drafted by the same team that drafted our cousin), and his wife is big into bow hunting – Leslie just fit in so well with them it was almost bizarre. Even as skeptical as I am, I have to think there was somebody or something pulling the strings here for Leslie to luck into such a cool opportunity so tailored to her and her future.
Check out the website for Majesty Outdoors here. They’re truly great people with a great purpose.
Sarcasmo
PS – For those of you who know Leslie, or as you can glean from the fact that she is my sister . . . she has been exactly as big of a pain in the butt about all of this as you can imagine. She showed up to our Superbowl part halfway through the first quarter, apologizing for her lateness and blaming the paparazzi. But it’s actually been pretty hilarious, and she absolutely deserves the trip and all the attention she’s gotten.
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