Taken - Spoiler Alert!

So I watched "Taken" last night and apparently my expectations were far too high. As much as I feel like I should warn you that this entry might spoil the movie for you, I'm afraid the movie needs no assistance in that domain and it's a disappointment in and of itself. I heard it was very intense and people were on the edge of their seats, never going to talk to strangers again, were sweating by the end of the movie, etc.

I felt misled and under-amused. A few thoughts...

• WAAAAAAAAY too much "character development" (to put it nicely). Why do we spend 20 minutes seeing this ridiculous spoiled daughter that cannot possibly exist in real life? All it did was make it harder for me to root for her to be saved. And make it harder for me to think the ends justified the means. All that sugary-sweetness just made me feel ill. And the time we spend meeting friends of the protagonist/dad character... why?
  
• If the ending wasn't surprising, shouldn't there at least have been a storyline or some intellectual thread of mystery or suspense that kept audiences entertained? I wanted Liam Neeson's previous cases and work and enemies to be part of the whole thing, coming back to haunt him. There was no mystery in the movie. Just mediocre car chases in a glorified Audi ad.
• No sense of justice restored here... most movies only kill off obvious bad guys while the main character rescues the innocent character in jeopardy. Nope. Here the wife of corrupt official gets shot in the arm and no one even blinks. Lower-level guys in horrible economic situations who may or may not know about the bad things going on or may not have any choice in the matter (rather than the greedy bastards at the top - seemed like some of these guys think they're just working security, not unlike what our friend Liam Neeson is doing at the beginning of the movie) are killed and we simply ignore that 10 to 20 people are killed so Liam Neeson can get his daughter back. I like my justice legitimate, not overly excessive (more Jodie Foster in "The Brave One.")
  
• Maybe some intense action scenes could have restored the experience for me, but ultimately some care chases and admittedly badass fight scenes weren't enough for me. I think if the intellectual plotline had existed, that would have been enough for me, but the rest of it was definitely not nearly good enough to stand alone. And the gag-inducing cheese-fest of an ending... umm, wasn't this supposed to be an action flick and NOT a movie only 8-year olds could take seriously as a depiction of ANYTHING? (I'm pretty sure that Walt Disney didn't actually make this as a sequel to Cinderella, but perhaps I should check, as that's the only way the end "fits" into anything.)
  

A Farewell to Icons

Apparently MJ's death almost crashed the internet. At least according to CNN. Apparently he did manage to affect Google News, Wikipedia, and Twitter... or at least made it difficult to search for anything using any of them.

Given that it's so pretty much everyone on the planet has been talking about these two deaths, it's pretty hard to say anything all that unique or even witty and insightful. But Meagan K (a fellow 20sb member!) had some awesome thoughts on it and managed to sum up some of the best of both, like which colors make the best accessories (white for gloves and red for swimsuits) and so I think all I'll say is that you should read what she said...

Bad things in 3s?

One of my mom's friends - a particularly spiritual woman who enjoys Paganism, being psychic, mysticism, and other non-traditional perspectives on life - claims that bad things happen in sets of three.

So if Farrah Fawcett is one and Michael Jackson is two, who's unlucky number three?

Both those guys were SO young and so iconic to so many, it's terrifying. How could both be lost on the same day?

It's terrifying to think that some day I'll be able to say that I was alive when Michael Jackson was, when he toured around... the same way some people talk about Elvis.

"It's Okay NOT to be Okay."

"Sometimes someone says something really small and it just fits into this empty place in your heart." -Angela Chase, "My So-Called Life"

I had a great chat with an old friend who I haven't seen in awhile tonight and I forget how much I like her. She's honest and believes in being open and telling you what's happening in her life without sugar coating it, yet she's a pretty kick-ass listener (because people can be okay at it, and then there are some where you really notice how good they are at it and she's one of those). And as she was leaving tonight, she reminded me to call her anytime and I told her I was okay, doing okay. And she casually leaned back and told me that it was okay if I wasn't doing okay, that's okay not to be okay.

And I hadn't realized how much I needed to hear that until she said it and something just clicked, and I just relaxed. Everyone wants you to say you're great when they ask how you're doing, they don't pause for the honest answer and she does. She wants to know. And she's okay with the messy stuff, with the crap, the horrible stuff no one wants to hear about. And sadly she's not always there to hear about it because she makes this offer to so many different people, but that's fine. I feel good just being reminded that every once in awhile people come along who listen and ask how you are and wait for the answer. And just listen. Without judgment.

I need to be more like that.

Athletes Behaving Badly (...or just broadcasting badly)

"I didn't kill nobody, I didn't rape nobody, so that's it." -Manny Ramirez, while explaining why he thought the media should move on from the fact that he was suspended for violation of anti-doping laws

I lied with the title... sort of. I'm actually just frustrated with the announcers for the College World Series. They fawn over various characters on the big stage in Omaha and completely ignore facts and reality. I feel like I blog a bit too much about sports, but I do watch a lot of them and one of the benefits of watching ESPN a lot, for a lot of years at this point, is that I can remember these past indiscretions that these pathetic excuses for journalists somehow forget to mention...

First, Robin Ventura is one of the commentators and has been for years. His colleagues help him re-live the glory days, when he played for Oklahoma State and set records that didn't even have all that much to do with skill (consecutive games with a hit... as opposed to batting titles and RBIs). However, they ignore what Ventura SHOULD be most famous for, which is taking a serious ASS KICKING from Nolan Ryan. Seriously, Nolan Ryan just punches him the head while he has Ventura in a headlock. It's amazing and you should REALLY watch it here on YouTube. And it's the only thing Ventura really did in the majors, but somehow his colleagues spend inning after inning, game after game, year after year, re-living the same minor accomplishments. Honestly, it's not really amoral or anything, it's just part of how I feel like allowing former athletes with borderline narcisstic personality disorders to simply talk for hours at a time is a bad idea.

Second, the bigger problem with athletes today, as spotlighted in the College World Series, is how journalists and commentators ignore enormous indiscretions on supposed role models. Augie Garrido, the coach of the Texas team, currently playing in the finals, is constantly revered for his wins and being a living legend in college baseball. This would be fine if old Augie didn't get a DUI this year. Yeah, he's not the only one to get a DUI - not the first or last famous, infamous, or regular Joe to get one. But the problem is that Augie is a supposed role model. He recruits high school boys and tells their parents that he has a whole program and turns them into model young men. If he's anything like any other college coach, he tells moms and dads everywhere that his program is about more than just the sport, but about learning life lessons and molding these sons into the men they will become. And Augie gets a DUI and a few months later we're all pretending that he's still this great role model for young men, that his actions didn't invalidate the words he's been spewing for years now... shouldn't the people struggling for something to talk about for three or four hours, who are supposed to be journalists, mention this rather than sweeping it under the rug? I thought maybe I'd been wrong about when Augie had this incident, but it was this year, the end of January, as the article is still on ESPN.com here.

I know hypocrisy runs rampant and these aren't really injustices - particularly given that Manny Ramirez gets to go back towards the majors by making a minor league start earlier tonight OR that the governor of South Carolina disappeared, probably to a nudist weekend despite his conservative stance on everything - but it's just frustrating and it's something that annoys me on a regular basis because I just think ESPN should screen and test these people a bit better before giving them three to four hours a night to talk to the nation. But maybe it's just me...

Recent Stuff I Love

"When the dog bites,
When the bee stings,
When I'm feeling sad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don't feel so bad..."
-Maria, "The Sound of Music"

Enough with the "woe is me" attitude, at least for now. It's time to get back to work and so I'm focusing on the positive, so here it is...

I've purchased several things lately (mostly online because of my immense dislike of in-person shopping) and been quite satisfied with those, as well as some other discoveries, all of which I feel compelled to share. So here's what I'm loving now!

First, the free discoveries (we are surviving a rough economy right now!) -

Last.fm radio: Sort of like Pandora, but more focused on the social aspect and more information about different bands. Easier to manage in some ways, though I think it just has a wider variety of music I like and its own player you can download for free! (And if you want to be my friend on this, and you should, I'm melbelleinsc.)

Kaboodle: You can make a million different wishlists and love lists and enough lists to satisfy all of your OCD tendencies. You can look at what other people save and list and see prices for all kinds of cool stuff, while organizing what you want from a number of different sites.


As for clothes and some recent satisfying purchases -

Nick & Nora PJ Pants in "Cocktails" from Target: Only $16 and very light and comfortable for wearing around the house. They're so cute that I feel like I'm in a movie going to sleep (because movie stars always look cute when going to sleep). (I really want to buy more and they're all online, so it could be tempting...)


Champion Blue Striped Sports Bra: Another fantastic find at Target. While working out in it, I feel all Jillian-Michaels-esque. Not exactly sure that she's ever worn something similar, but I just really like it. Lightweight and avoids uni-boob, though not so good for real running (at least not without another sports bra... though I usually wear two anyways to avoid awkward gym encounters). It's $18 online, but in the store I got this one for only $5!

Shirts from Fossil: I only own this in brown, but I ordered another shirt from them and I really like the quality of them. Material isn't see-through, but it's still lightweight and very rich color. Sort of justifies why they're more expensive than Gap and similar competitors. This photo also hints at what I love and am wanting right now - the jewelry they make. I LOVE the necklaces they have right now, but they're WAAAAAY too expensive for me. At least while I'm a poor grad student...

Lessons from the Book of Job

"Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky." -Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

Sometimes life is just hard. Sometimes you have to just resist the urge to look up at the skies and tell God to take His best shot, strike you with lightning or just destroy you (a la Jena Malone in "Saved!" or any number of other memorable movie moments). I've felt close to that point the past few days.

I rushed home to Atlanta late last night because my dog from elementary school through high school and who my dad claimed was his when I left for college was very, very sick and losing gross motor control. The vets did a biopsy and there's a tumor occupying most of her snout, but they aren't sure if it's a very aggressive tumor that's pressing on her brain or has invaded it. If it has invaded her brain, she's terminal. If not, it's treatable. For now, she is leaking blood everywhere and struggling to breathe. She's lost a lot of weight, can barely sleep because she has to struggle to breathe, and the vets swear it's more discomfort than pain. I'm coaxing her to eat and drink and constantly wondering how we're going to make it until we get biopsy results on Tuesday. This is when we learn her fate, assuming she doesn't get drastically worse and demonstrate on her own that her brain is infected rather than simply affected.

It's truly heartbreaking and horrific. Worse than when my mom had her lung biopsy and they couldn't quite sew her up all the way (that's how it works with lungs -- too many alveoli and little tubes and vessels that don't get sewn up) and she would just start gushing blood from about the bottom of her rib cage. This is worse because Wilma, my/my family's dog, looks so pitiful and helpless and she herself is getting covered in blood, but doesn't want us to wash her. Sometimes she comes over and looks up at me and I know she wants something, but I can't figure it out. We go through the typical things and ultimately I think she wants someone to make it hurt less, but I can't.

I honestly think that watching another living being suffer like this might be the hardest thing to do. And as if this wasn't awful enough, it's my father's first Father's Day without his own father so I'm sure that my grandfather was thinking about his father this weekend and seeing this awful suffering can't help, but bring all of it to mind. And my dad is so close to Wilma. When my dad has been laying around with his radiation treatment, Wilma has napped with him and been there for him and just simply understood and sympathized and try to help in a way that no human ever can. She selflessly loved him and now she has to suffer like this and it breaks my heart. There's no way that she's just uncomfortable, you can't look at this dog and not see that now.

I just can't believe that this is happening right now. I just don't know how much more my family, my dad in particular, can take. And reading up on Job and struggling to make meaning out of this or just find some small comfort... well, it's just not happening. I don't know if I'll ever grow to accept this particular story that's always bothered me anyways, but I certainly can't at this point in time...

Hopefully you all are looking at a much better approaching weekend...

(And a slight update: Had to do something creative or mind-numbing because of a freakin' RIDICULOUSLY terrible email from the thesis adviser and I just can't think about it because I'm so angry and I just can't believe how shitty she is sometimes... like now. So here's a slideshow of William Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job. Images from Wikipedia.)

Houseguests and Fish

"Houseguests -- like fish -- begin to smell after three days." -Benjamin Franklin

Franklin is not nearly recognized enough for his practical genius... just when you think you know all the ways the man is a genius, you discover a new maxim that strikes true in another way and realize he's the source of it.

But I have to keep this short, as I am currently writing in secret from my room, with houseguest in other room. Mostly sleeping. AGAIN. And snoring. VERY loudly. It was exhausting for her to sit on my couch literally the ENTIRE day (she did get up to the to the bathroom, but seriously, I brought her food, the phone, etc. because she didn't want to get up and I didn't want to fight) and thought that was fine - as she told at least 16 people that's what was happening while on the phone with them. And the rest of the time she was watching TV on her laptop with the volume all the way up.

She's leaving tomorrow. And if she doesn't choose to leave voluntarily (hopefully as soon as possible), I will remove her. Some people are fine as friends and then they turn into Godzilla on Vacay in your small apartment and you just can't seem to find your way out of the subway station into the light...

Sadly I'm excited to get her out and then get to clean up my apartment and buy more food because it's useless to try while she's still here. It scares me that I'm looking forward to cleaning and grocery shopping. Though today's highlight involved my car repair taking longer than expected resulting in a legitimate reason to read in the relative quiet of the autoshop waiting room (it's relative and not an oxymoron, I swear).

Difficult Friends

I like to think that this is a trait (or behavior, really) that happens to be particularly prevalent amongst a small group of very smart, very high-achieving people, but I'm not sure if it's true... but the trait is a sort of one-upping, frenemy-ish competition over everything. This behavior manifests itself when you tell your friend that you love summer break because you've already gotten to read five fun books this summer. And competitive friend (hereafter known as CF) tells you that she has already read seven books this summer. Or you tell CF that your mom is really sick and in the hospital again and it's just sort of tough on you. CF then tells you how her aunt is really sick again and it's just really terrible because this aunt has been sick again and she knows it's stressing out her dad. Or you tell CF that your grant proposal got approved. And CF tells you why her internship is so much better than working on a grant.

It's such a shitty thing to do and it's hard to deal with because I honestly don't know how to have this conversation. In my life right now, CF is a good friend and I know that she means well (at least most of the time) and I feel like there are ways that she understands me that others really don't - we have the parents with cancer connection (though her mom has been in remission for years now), but that's not exactly common. And it does mean something because she does understand some of the complex emotions I'm experiencing and the sort of carpe diem that seizes you. But at the same time, her behavior recently has been outrageous atrocious. And previously, when attempting to tell her something she's doing is frustrating me, she ends up telling me she forgives me. WTF?

I'm sure it's making it sound like she's not really a friend, but the truth is that life isn't that easy for her now and she has been there for me in the past and I know that I am asking a lot from her right now... or at least I'm less emotionally available to her than I might otherwise be. It's just such a frustrating situation because I don't know how to tell her that this competition thing isn't okay, that it's not appropriate. That when I'm sad and upset, those are my feelings and they are valid and legitimate if for no other reason than because they are my feelings. Telling me something worse isn't helpful. I know other people are in worse situations, but that doesn't fix my life. And the truth is that things have been stunningly difficult in the past couple of weeks. This isn't how most twentysomethings are living, I don't share the same concerns they do. In some ways, I honestly feel like I'm middle-aged and dealing with the transition from child to parent of my own parents.

But that's not really why I'm writing or what I'm feeling, I'm just experiencing the frustration of dealing with my own particular CF and not sure how to deal with this. How do you tell someone that a trait of hers pisses you off? Can it be changed? What's the optimal outcome you can hope for in a conversation? Can she still change? I think those are important questions that I need to evaluate here and in a similar situation with another acquaintance/colleague... basically, are we still young enough to be molded? Or is the unwaivering belief that one is always right the silver armor preventing the clay from changing shape?

What I've Read This Month (For Fun, So Far)

Sometimes it's great to be super-ADD and constantly moving. Sometimes it's great to want to constantly exhaust yourself and keep busy so that you don't think about other things that suck... and sometimes it means there's a big stack of books on your coffee table that you've read in the past couple of days. Scary.

The books pictured here are those that I've finished since the beginning of June... and it's not that many days since the start of the month...

Hilarious Comeback #1

When I think about how it gets exhausting to think of polite ways to explain to people why you aren't married or engaged and yet over the critical point (age 22 or younger in the deep south, it seems), I always need some good comebacks. Unfortunately, while I LOVE this one from "27 Dresses," I couldn't get away with it because my aunt would immediately report this to my mother and all other attendees and the Western hemisphere, thus making my mother's fears (that I'll "embarrass the family" because the cousin who re-married the bigamist after testifying against him in court and who threatened my grandparents with his gun at Thanksgiving is totally legit), but it doesn't mean I can't dream of saying it...

Jane's Aunt: Must be so hard to watch your younger sister get married before you.
Jane: Yes. Then I remember that I still get to have hot hate sex with random strangers and I feel SO much better!

"27 Dresses"

Super-Regionals by the Numbers

It's the baseball equivalent of the Sweet Sixteen, the Super-Regionals! ...And I feel super-lucky to have both my undergrad alma mater and current graduate school in the mix and get to cheer them on! But I noticed some things about this year's teams that I thought I'd share...

The Sweet 16: Louisville, Cal State-Fullerton, Arkansas, Florida State, Virginia, Mississippi, Rice, LSU, TCU, Texas, Southern Miss, Florida, Clemson, Arizona State, East Carolina, & North Carolina

Of the 16 teams...

• 4 ACC teams: ECU, UNC, Clemson, & Florida State
• 4 SEC teams: Ole Miss, LSU, Florida, & Arkansas
• 3 Conference-USA teams: Southern Miss, Rice, & East Carolina
• 3 teams are in Texas: Rice, Texas, and Texas Christian (TCU)
• 3 post season match-ups: Clemson is one of only a few teams that has had post-season games for all 3 major sports this year (a bowl game in football, the NCAA tournament in basketball, and the current berth in baseball)
• 2 in state-rivalries match-up: North Carolina (UNC and East Carolina) and Texas (TCU and Texas)
• 2 Tigers: Clemson & LSU (are the tigers, though only one has a live tiger mascot)
• 0: previous trips to the super-regionals for UVA
  
• 0: teams from last year's championship series (UGA and Fresno State, the runner-up and winner, respectively)
• 1996: last time that Rice didn't win the regular season title for its conference

We're telling America to "un-think" now?

KFC is now telling America to un-think... are you kidding me? Seriously? Is that happening? They tell America that KFC is now all about healthy food and grilled chicken.

Because America really needs to be told to unthink or be less intelligent and intellectual... what a great idea, KFC!