Sunday, November 30, 2008

Milk

i have long believed that one should not be allowed to live in San Francisco before seeing the movie The Times of Harvey Milk, the documentary that won the Academy Award for best documentary the year it came out. that year was 1984, by the way. 1984 was quite a while ago. Anyways, it is not so much that this movie is one of my favorites. i mean, how can a documentary be a favorite movie? rather, it has always just been the subject matter...important times in San Francisco, led by a man named Harvey Milk. It is the movie that documents not only this man's life and his impact on The World, but it also documents what makes me most proud to be from San Francisco.

So obviously, i have been waiting for the release of Milk with bated breathe. i remember, while we were still in SF, thinking "how awesome will it be to see Milk in Denver, and get to see all the SF scenery as an extra nostalgic bonus?" i can make a mountain from a mole hill like no one's business, folks. Screw T-Day. Milk is out.

So we went and we saw. i would break down the demographic as this: 80% older straight and gay couples who already knew the "story". A couple of first straight dates (the awkwardness of straight first dates is palpable and it can take over a whole theater if done badly enough), a few younger gay couples, and one straight married couple who used to live in SF and who have very high expectations of this movie because the wife is borderline obsessed with spreading the knowledge of the man Harvey Milk.

and it was good. it was really good. it was good enough that i have opened up the SF Toll to include this movie as well. it does its job and tells the story, and it does it really really well. in fact the most annoying thing about the movie is that it shows that we were smarter in '78 than we are now. we are repeating our previous mistakes, but worse than the first time. the only fault in the movie is that we, the people of 2008, are stupid and the movie tells us this. but that is not the movie's fault, i think. don't shoot the messenger....pun intended.

what struck me was the conversations outside of the theater when the movie was done. is Milk a gay story? Yes. Is it a San Francisco story? Yes. it is also a story about humanity and civil rights. It is an American story. it is a huge chunk of our...yes, "OUR" history and all the younger folks in the theater had no effing clue about any of it before tonight. but now, if they want to live in san francisco, i will let them. yay them! have fun trying to pay rent! ooh, wait...not where i was planning on going with this.

i watched an interview with Sean Penn once. he basically said that if you are making a movie and you need to heighten the situation to get an audience's reaction, you are actually providing a disservice. you don't get to lie to the audience. that cheapens the acting process and the experience of the movie-goer. it is a simple concept that i appreciate him vocalizing. he honored this in Milk.

so yeah, Milk was great. it gives a bit more insight into HM's personal life. But The Times of Harvey Milk is equally great. both tell the story, but the actors that play the real people are probably better looking. if that is where your priorities lie, get thee to a theater soon. if not, update your netflix, quick like.

oh sorry...i have gone on for so long about Milk. it must be all the twinkies i ate.

and now, onto the real important stuff......christmas FAIL:


Tuesday, November 25, 2008

The Mandatory T-day Thankful List

  • Neil.
  • Having so many pets that if one or some of them are being terribly annoying and/or ill-behaved, there is always another animal around who is being lovely. Most of the time, this weight falls on the guinea pigs. If they would stop going to the bathroom and if I wasn’t allergic to them, they would be Perfect.
  • That Gertie came home after being attacked by a wild (or just very bad) animal. Wait, rewind. That Gertie lived through the attack and then came home with all of her broken parts and that there is such good veterinary care around here that sewed her back up.
  • The radio show “wait wait don’t tell me” of which I can now listen to at my leisure via podcast. It makes me feel smart while I laugh. This is a stellar combo that I highly recommend.
  • The Daily Show for the same reasons just mentioned.
  • The television show “Life”. It’s just good AND it has a red head in the lead. In general, I am a huge fan of police dramas (special T-Day shout out to Benson and Stabler) but there is something refreshingly new about Life. Check it out if you haven’t already.
  • Facebook and blogspot for allowing the world to keep in touch in such a passive fashion.
  • The Arcade Fire. good band.
  • Sarah Palin for motivating all those fence sitters to vote against her. Wait, that wasn’t on purpose? But she was SO good at it!
  • Our neighbor for bringing over fresh tarragon from her garden. How did I go that long without knowing how yummy fresh tarragon is?
  • Satsuma oranges for always being easy to peel, seedless, and as sweet as can be. You rule over all other orangey citruses. Really, the only thing that keeps Cuties at the top is their little stickers. I mean, would Finney get all excited if I put a sticker on her that said “satsuma”? no. so all the moms buy cuties. I get it. I just don’t like it.
  • Teenage vampire crap and yes I did already go and see the Twilight movie and I liked it, too. (Edward should have been more sparkly, though. darn you low budget!)
  • Wind chimes. I need to get some of those.
  • My camelback water bottle. Crap, it is dry here. Might as well mention shea butter while I am on this particular topic. and my humidifier. and how when i get olive oil on my hands when i cook now, i don't wash it off. precious moisture.....you will not be wasted.
  • Potted plants, red paint, coffee, emergen-c, the furminator (it works), scarves, and Neil again. He’s worth a double mention.

Oh yeah and friends and family and my health and all the other stuff people say when they won’t bother to REALLY think about what it is they are thankful for. You hear that Family? I may be in the thankful circle via ichat, but IT'S ON….(blame Anna, it was her idea to get all technologically savvy).

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

happy birthday

this is my favorite picture of my mom and me:



today would have been her 65th birthday.

i had a dream last night that i was trying to serve her a piece of cake, but in doing so i knocked about six pieces on the floor. we laughed.

that's about as good as it gets, i think. happy birthday, ma. you are missed so very much.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Twilight

so, i have decided to use this format to confess to all that i am reading the book Twilight. You would think that the costco price tag would have discouraged me. Not for the actual price of the book, mind you. but for the genre labeling it provided as well. i am 36 and i am reading a piece of "young adult fiction". oh, and i am totally loving it.

some folks, like my lovely husband, think i am just into teenage vampire crap. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is, by far, my most favorite tv show of all time. but it's not teenage vampire crap that i love so much. it is how teenage vampire crap does such a much better job of explaining the complexities and heaviness of life when normal life crap (aka "adult fiction") just does not suffice at times.

last year, i revisited high school. or rather, i went to beauty school. but it was so much like high school. so much. there were the popular girls, who were actually just total coked up bitches, running around in the shortest skirts possible and ugg boots. there were gay boys that the girls fawned all over. there were quiet "misfits" with piercings and tattoos who were actually not misfitty at all. and there was an old broad. wait. there weren't old broads in real high school. but in this fake high school, i was there and i was old, comparatively.

in time, i caved to the masses. i joined myspace and myfriended all of my classmates. since most of my teachers were 10 years younger than me, i myfriended them as well. surreal, i say. now, everyone young and old is on facebook so i don't feel like such a fraud on that particular social networking site. but myspace, it is still quite centered to a certain demographic that i am no longer a part of. because life happens, i forgot about my myspace account for an extended period of time.

a few days after the election, i was basking in the glory of all of my facebook peeps posting about progress and the like. yes! these are my internet people and we are a part of an internet community. we agree! yay us! i remembered myspace existed and went to go see if my myfriends were as awesome as my facebookfriends. there is quite a bit of crossover, so i wasn't expecting anything but more of the same. but the first status update i saw, accessorized with a sad face emoticon was this.....and i quote....in spelling as well as words...."i am so bummed obama is are president".

so i deleted her....but not just because of her presidential choice. i deleted her because of her spelling. i deleted her because in beauty/high school, she said that a woman shouldn't be president because they are too emotional. she also once said that she hated whales. i couldn't make that shit up. she hates whales.

back to facebook, thank you very much. i still feel like kind of a dork for participating, but i like it. so there. and back to Twilight because apparently i like teenage vampire crap, too.

you can't relate to a book about a moron who can't spell and who thinks her own vagina makes her incapable of great promise and who also hates whales. you just can't. you relate to vampires. vampires make more sense. and are a lot less scary.


oh, and i looooooove whales.

Friday, November 14, 2008

First Snow

So imagine that you are moving to Memphis. You would hope that your kids would become Elvis fans, so that they would appreciate Graceland, right? Or if you were moving to the beach, that they would become surfers? Well, one can only hope because really, you never know.

The snow woke me up this morning. okay, maybe it was my insomnia. All i know is that i was wide awake at 4:30am, and there was just a light dusting of snow. i turned the outside light on and watched the continuing snowfall, and i counted the minutes until 6am when Neil would wake up and we could let the dogs out for Their First Snow.

I made it until 5:59am and 30 seconds. Literally, i crept downstairs and said "baby wake up it is snowing" and his alarm went off. Thankfully, he was just excited enough to not hate me for stealing his last 30 seconds of sleep. we bundled up and headed out.

Matilda, who is 9 now, has slowed down a bit lately. with all of the glucosamine i have been sneaking into her meals, well, i was clearly on the wrong track. the answer is snow, people. her and moose ran and ran. and then they ran some more. and then there was some running. it was beautiful. it was also too dark to get any pics that weren't total blurs. but we got a good still or two once the sun was higher in the sky.





in all, we maybe got two inches. enough to cover everything is a sparkly blanket of white. then it melted. it's all gone now and it should be in the 70's next week. welcome to denver? the dogs say "yes, thank you!" and so do neil and i.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

i think i am supposed to be annoyed with this

but i can't be. i just can't.


way to commit, little guy...
we're making progress with the floors downstairs. any minute now, our basement will look like a yoga studio. i wouldn't normally choose such light wood but when one lives partly underground, one needs to think outside the box and lighten things up a bit, yos. our backs are sore and we have matching wounds on our right hand middle fingers. but it will happen. it will.

one thing i love is just how many things i have learned to do over the last year. neil kind of already knows how to do everything. i can cook a mean tarragon chicken...this is no surprise. but putting down wood floors, tiling a bathroom, taping and mudding sheetrock....who knew? and it is actually quite fun. when it is fun, that is. i don't like sore backs and bloody fingers.



why youtube was invented

maybe you thought it was so that americans would have unlimited access to videos of guys getting kicked in the balls or falling off trampolines, but really it is so more people would be able to watch videos such as this:

Friday, November 7, 2008

a little insight to the complexities of zoo management

here are the facts:

-unlike most dogs who feel safest in a small enclosed area, Moose chooses to have access to the entire property. if we limit him to the inside area of our property, he protests by chewing up our books when we leave the house.
-unlike some recent VP picks, we like books.
-if we leave the back door open for him, he doesn't chew up books.
-matilda will only laze outside if she knows she can get back in at her leisure. if i close the backdoor, she panics and scratches to get back in. if i leave the door open, she naps on the deck. she likes sunshine on her face.
-we can't leave the back door open for either dog in the dead of winter. it gets cold here, dudes.
-we bought a dog door that locks. yay!

~~~~dog problem solved? i think not! enter cat problems~~~~

-gertie can not g0 outside and is smart enough to go through a dog door. boo.
-gertie sneaks out through the regular door anyways. sometimes at night. dog door or no, at some point i will have to release her from her hospital room/prison/my office. at that point, it will be virtually impossible to keep her in, unless i were to relock her in the office each time we were to let the dogs out. this seems a wee bit redonk to me.

~~~~soooooo.......~~~~
we are looking into some kind of cat fencing. our 6 foot privacy fence just isn't enough to keep gertie on the property when she gets better. the cat fencing goes on top of our current fence. it's basically netting that is angled in. supposedly, cats won't climb over it. they'd better not. it's not cheap. but this way, we can install the dog door (the back door is open right now and it's about 40 degrees out. awesome), the dogs can have free reign, we'll be able to read our remaining books, and the cats can go out but will be forced to stay on our property that is properly protected by the dogs! jules and midge just sunbathe on the deck anyways. it really is gertie who is the problem child.

so last and final update on the above mentioned problem child. she got her 20 or so stitches removed this morning. yay! the vet says she is most likely pain free at this point, so we can stop giving her the crack. unfortunately this means that she will not be so content in her room, so the above plan will need to happen sooner rather than later. she also saw a neurologist today. looks like her femoral nerve was chomped through. it may or may not repair itself and there isn't anything that can be done to help it. so gerts might be a bit gimps from here on out (see wobbles video below). we won't know for another 1 to 3 months. way to keep it vague, vet dude. but as long as she is pain free and acting like a cat, i am thrilled.

now here is the ironic thing...if her nerve doesn't repair itself, that would keep her on the property. she can't really jump. but only a really evil and selfish person would hope for that. so cat fence it is, folks. looks like installing the flooring downstairs is getting postponed once again...i sleep on plywood! yay!

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

WTF?

When i woke up this morning, i raced to my computer to make sure it was all still true. the two previous elections made me something of a cynic. i expected to hear the sound of the other shoe dropping. and i did. it's just that it wasn't the shoe i expected and it was all the way in california.

people. are you kidding me? while the nation celebrates progress and diversity, California sucked it big time and passed prop 8, a ban on gay marriage. if i was a person with normal blood pressure, i would say that i am disappointed. but i am not so i will say that i am fucking outraged.

did you hear the boos during mccain's concession speech last night? his supporters booed every time obama's name was mentioned. when you run a campaign based on divisiveness and hate, people get confused when you support the "terrorist" as your president. nice speech, mccain. maybe if you took the high road during your campaign instead of after, you'd be president elect right now.

and while i am at it, since i am sitting here fuming already, a large portion of mccain's speech seemed to imply that obama won because he is black. that is the same backwards logic that got him to invite the lovely ovary-having palin onto his ticket(she got a few boos herself last night). i would like to announce to mccain that there are other body parts besides skin and reproductive organs. i have a heart and i have a brain. so does the rest of the country. we've all got the same guts. and THAT is why you are not our president elect.

so equality and progress for everyone in America, unless you are gay. just when i, we, thought bigotry was getting the finger, it rears its ugly head in my home state. hate and fear....hate and fear. shame on you, 52% of California voters. shame on you.

i cried tears of joy last night. this morning, neil and i talked about how our kids will never know that they can't run for president....well, unless they are gay. screw you, 52% of california voters. you are totally killing my buzz.

peace out.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008