The other day I realized, not for the first time, how sadly deficient I am in Russian and French lit. So measures are being taken (but I won't say by whom - maybe I'm getting spankins from some hot Russian lit professor!). In real life, no spankins. Just my library card and some late nights with a couple of fellas named Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (is that how you spell it?). I still have a bad taste in my mouth from Madame Bovary, so the French will have to just wait for my good opinion. Plus I have to do some research to uncover which novels are considered the greats in the French canon of literature.

This is a glamorous life, but hey! It all starts when I shake up my reading list! I'm proud of myself for trying new (to-me) writers instead of reading the same books over and over again. Maybe I used to do that...

Oh, also, fuck medical advice! I'm doin' the yoga! I figure since they didn't find a hiatal hernia with the barium swallow, then I don't have one (several medical articles advised that that is the only way to find a hiatal hernia). So there's no reason to continue abstaining. I'm stretching and posing, my friends. The stress relief will only do my alleged ulcers good!

Had a girls' night with the SSLP last night, and we actually got away from our houses and walked around in society like grown people! We ended up shopping a wee bit, which is totally out of character for us. But we preceded the dread shopping with a curbside beer and chocolate eclair. The beer liquored us up and got us all relaxed for the event, and the eclair gave us a realistic size gauge. More for me than for her - she possesses this thing called "self-discipline." She also has one of those fellas around to keep her woman parts satisfied and doesn't rely on sweets to replace that satisfaction because she's a stronger person than I am in that regard. SELF-DISCIPLINE.

Anyhoosies, in honor of the triple-digit temperatures that are settling in, the word of the day is SUNDRESS. The other word of the day is TUBETOP.

Then, after our three-hour tour, we went home with some choice Messican food and watched Pineapple Express.

This was my second try at Pineapple - the first effort failed due to some bedtime distractions. The parts I remembered (albeit out of context) were unsavory so I didn't feel compelled to watch it again. However, the SSLP was not amenable to that because she has a married-woman-love-jones for James Franco.

I have to say I'm glad that she's one of the chosen people who get to tell me what to do, because I laughed my little bubble butt off. Everything was so funny and off-key and unexpected. The men, all of them, were soooo lovably gay. And I mean that they were all indescribably feminine in the way they talked and related to each other, even the villains of the piece (the interesting ones - the assassins hunting down the two main characters). And I liked that they all fought the way peace-loving stoners would when confronted for the first time with life-or-death choices - meaning, they fought really badly. When they won fights it was purely accidental. I think my favorite part was when Seth Rogen threatened Danny McBride with a cactus to get him to spill everything he knew. HYSterical. Oddly, though, a disappointing and unfunny gag reel.

But who cares about gag reels when James Franco is blazin' hot?

I watched a film called Atonement two nights ago. I was mildly interested in this one when it first came out - interested because I like Keira Knightley and Joe Wright, mildly because I'd tried to read the Ian McEwan novel the film was adapted from and failed. Ian McEwan is incredibly difficult for me to read, but the plot of this book was intriguing to me. When I watched the film, though, I only knew the skeleton details of the plot and for that I was glad.

Glad, you say? Oh, but why?

Well I will tell you.

This movie really surprised me. I knew that it was extremely well-reviewed and nominated for all sorts of awards, but that actually turned me off a little, and that's why I'm just now seeing it. I was concerned that it would be a reprisal of The English Patient*, a film that I still consider incredibly overrated and, frankly, kind of boring.

Atonement is no such a thing. Joe Wright is becoming one of my favorite directors because of his handling of setting. Yes, setting - believe it. He captures the beauty of every scene, but in a way that is realistic at the same time it is glowing and ethereal. He's the first director who's ever let us see a Jane Austen character sweat during a vigorous ball, and let the farm be an actual farm where a hog's balls are of great interest to his owner.

Keira Knightley and James McAvoy are amazing in this as well. I'll talk about James first, as he is lesser known than Keira, but carried a love story through with amazing power and depth. My favorite scene with him is when they meet again just before he goes off to war. It is a very awkward moment and he tries to play off indifference, but then she touches him, and he breaks apart, and he makes this sound...I can't describe the sound with a word, because it would undermine his masculinity, which is very much in place. They both really sold the love story in ways that were new and fresh, in my opinion.

Keira, as always, is magnificently beautiful. Without hesitation I would rate her as one of the top ten screen faces of our time. Perfection does not play a part in this category: it's character, and something iconical - I don't know. Hard to describe, but I think she has it and Audrey Tautou and George Clooney and Cate Blanchett. They're all beautiful in their own way, but striking, and archetypical.

Anyway, back to Keira. Beautiful, yes, and there is a green gown that has been rated as one of the historical screen gowns (like Audrey Hepburn's dress in Breakfast at Tiffany's, and Marilyn's white dress from The Seven Year Itch, and Scarlett's red gown from Gone with the Wind). But while she was wearing it, I was so distressed by her drastic weight loss that I kept getting distracted by meal planning for a dinner over at my house. Special guest: Keira.

Here's the menu:

1.) We'll start with a creamy, caramel flan. I like to have dessert first every once in a while.

2.) Cobb Salad, with extra eggs and avocado.

3.) Creamy beef stroganoff over egg noodles, with some fluffy fresh bread and butter.

4.) For a vegetable, yams with honey.

5.) We'll end with coconut cream pie. Two desserts, why the hell not? It's my party.

6.) For an after dinner drink, I was thinking about Bailey's and cream. And maybe a chocolate milkshake for during dinner.

I'm not saying this to be catty. I really do worry about these actresses who starve themselves as well as over-exercise. You actresses can eat and still maintain a slender figure, especially if you're as petitely built as Knightley is and have unlimited funds for personal training.

Seriously, Keira, some sandwiches with mayo and extra cheese. It can only help you.


*I am speaking only of the film version. I read the novel after I watched the movie, and it was an amazing book. In fact, it pointed even more emphatically at the flaws in the movie.

(PLEASE READ THE POST FROM EARLIER IN THE EVENING BEFORE READING THIS OR IT WILL NOT MAKE SENSE....)

I just wanted to clarify something: I am drinking real beer. Not my pseudo-beer. ACTUAL BEER. I decided I need to clear out some leftover Labatte Blue before my new roommate moves in and sees them in the fridge and starts to think that maybe I'm some down and out floozy single mother who chain smokes Capris and yells all the time and has strange men over in the middle of the night who wear wife beaters and scratch their chests as they say "call me Uncle CharlieTomPeteKennyDaveHankStevie" and then I have to kick them out of bed early in the mornings 'cause I want to be on time to go pick up my welfare check and then run get my nails done and my roots touched up so's I can start all over again later that night at the local country and western bar. Blech.

So I'm drinking beer to fight stereotypes - power to the people!

Aside from being the host city for the best weekend of personal Olympics EVER (and I mean all weekends in the universe, not just mine), Denver, Colorado also hosts these two other events that make me want to come back for more.

Here's one:



Yup. The city's first ever SNUGGIES PUB CRAWL. When I sent this to Auntie Sister she shit a chicken because she did, in fact, predict that Snuggies would take over the world when it was still just a silly infomercial a year or so back. We mocked her then. We are not mocking her now.

And here's the other one:



Technically, it's Boulder, but geography does not matter when this many people run naked through the streets with jack-o-lanterns on their heads while they freeze their ASSES off.

So I have a new roommate moving in this month. And my resume is polished and going out into the publishing world. I'm still considering grad school, but leaning back towards English because I whole-heartedly ruled out law school. Don't know yet whether I want an M.A. or an M.F.A. or a Ph.d, but there's time. And I'm fine sticking with the research stage at this point, as far as looking at schools and deciding on programs. Plus I have a new writing project on tap that just sort of popped into my head this morning.

Things are moving forward. I'm feeling better. I'm drinking beer!

FOAMMMYYYYYY.

I got the film version of Little Children and it's driving me FUCKING insane. Another story about a man letting his masculine pride and entire selfhood get trampled and destroyed by a woman. Look, I'm no feminist, nor am I necessarily a traditionalist - I'm back and forth about gender roles. However, I'm absolutely black and white about personal freedom, and there's no way in anybody's hell I would ever let a man make me ask permission to get involved in some sort of extracurricular activity. Nor would I expect a man to ask me permission like I'm his mother or something. Yes, it's courteous to let each other know what's going on and where we're going and what time we'll be home and can we set this up so the kids are taken care of, but these women in these stories - it's unbelievable:

The Man: "I'm gonna play football on Tuesday nights. (pause due to a raised eyebrow look from the woman) Is it okay?"
The Woman: "I have to think about it."

Fuck off.

The only thing that's keeping me going on this thing is Kate Winslet being fucking amazing as always.

This weekend I bought myself a Belgian wafflemaker because in my dream about Garbo, la femme schnauzer, she ran away from me in the work cafeteria which happened to be serving breakfast which happened to be fresh Belgian waffles, dripping with butter and syrup with bacon on the side...it was better than my sex dreams.

So I get this magic-maker and I epiphanied that I can make each waffle individually however I want it. The little voice in my head and I suffer from a difference of opinion regarding chocolate chip waffles vs. cinnamon pecan waffles. But I can sprinkle each waffle however I want to without making the whole bowl of batter one way or another.

It's a dream come true.

Dude. It's shiz like this that makes me glad I live in such a gloriously uncensored decade. And dude, how lucky would JT be to actually get la Sarandon? Seriously. She would break him.

I'm so happy to be alive!