The Beverly Hills Chihuahua Drinking Game

There are some movies out there that are just bad.

There are some movies that make you feel violated just by making you the unwitting viewer of the trailer, be it in the theater before a movie you paid money for or just on the teevee.

There are some movies that inflict such atrocities on you, an innocent victim, and make you so outraged at the film's very existence (never mind that of its trailer--you're a bigger person than the soulless assholes who let that loose upon an unsuspecting public), that you grasp at the straws of humorless jokes in a futile attempt to cope with the degradation of popular culture and general intellect that these films clearly indicate.

There are some people out there who see that, and laugh at it, and add these movies to your Netflix queue just to fuck with you.

Well, we'll see who has the last laugh.

It is this thirst for revenge, and for alcoholic beverages, that led to the epiphany that ANY movie, no matter how abysmal it may be, can be made palatable with the simple addition of arbitrary rules for alcohol consumption while viewing it. And so I bring you The Beverly Hills Chihuahua Drinking Game.

Rule #1: Participants must have a sufficient amount of alcoholic beverage available at all times, such that they can take a drink whenever mandated by subsequent rules.

Rule #2: Whenever a cliche Spanish expression is used (Ay caramba, arriba, yo quiero anything, amigo, etc.) is used, take a drink.

Rule #3: Whenever a character breaks out into song, take a drink.

Rule #4: Whenever a new character is introduced with a totally stereotypical Hispanic accent, take a drink.

Rule #5: Whenever a new character is introduced with a totally stereotypical Hispanic name, take a drink.

Rule #6: Whenever Hispanic culture is grossly misrepresented EVER, take a drink.

Rule #7: Whenever a female character acts like a total idiot and clearly needs some male character to come to her rescue or impart some words of wisdom, take a drink.

Rule #8: Whenever someone learns a lesson, after-school-special style, take a drink.

Rule #9: Whenever someone does NOT learn their lesson, after-school-special style, take a drink.

Rule #10: If at any time a participant finishes their drink, they are obligated to immediately proceed to the kitchen/keg/bar/neighbor's house/nearest wino for a refill, and to take a drink for every incident mentioned above that takes place in their absence upon their return.

Rule #11: There are no penalties for taking a drink when no other rules have prompted such action; after all, you're watching Beverly Hills Chihuahua. We feel any and all drinking that results from exposure to such a travesty of American cinema is completely understandable and justified. (Additionally, you might want to write a letter to your congressman regarding MPAA standards--they certified this film as child-friendly. I'd rather my kids watched Trainspotting.)

DISCLAIMER: I have not actually seen this film as of initial publishing date and cannot ensure that all rules are in fact relevant or will result in the drunken stupor that is necessary to survive the viewing of this film. I am open to suggestions, however, and will make any and all changes I feel necessary in the future to enhance one's viewing experience and take one's mind off the implications of what they are currently seeing, since no one deserves to fully process and understand such a thing. That is why drinking games were invented.

What are you typing into Google? Round 2:

Looking through keyword lists to anecdotally assess overall quality or even just to find bad keywords that need to be filtered out (I can't believe some of this stuff actually goes live) is something I do on a regular basis. And on a regular basis, I come across keywords that educate, amuse, baffle, and disgust me (sadly, most of them are in that last group). But those of the amusement- and bafflement-inducing variety are the silver lining, and you lucky folks have the opportunity to take the good without the bad.

Well, mostly. After my last post about this, Google has indexed my site as being relevant to some rather distasteful queries; namely, any and all misspellings of the word 'vagina'. (I have yet to see any traffic on the correctly-spelled version, which I suppose is just as well.) I find that these have their own brand of comedy:

The Vigina Search Logs:

• very small viginas
• very large viginas
• big brests and big pences and viginas (the one that started it all... thank you, Tom)
  
• picture of vijinas
• big brests (no, it's not vigina-related, but I find it funny nonetheless)
• nice viginas video (this one has actually shown up twice, and I just keep wondering: are videos of vaginas being nice and polite just very hard to come by?)

A few other recent queries from searchers who must have been very disappointed in what they found when they came to this site:

Better luck next time:

• bridesmaid cowboy hat
• post-mortem scrabble
• adrienne's pantyhose (sorry, but those haven't been a part of my wardrobe for a loooong time)
• where to buy a real lightsaber
• Bags of Water Really Repel Flies (I've gotten 3 separate clicks on this query from Ask.com, which clearly needs to put some work into its search algorithm)
• typing google into google

And my favorites: the ones that our company actually (inadvertently) purchased ad space on. Here are a few that were recently brought to my attention when an alert employee noticed that we were paying for clicks on the keyword 'pantie wearing woman.' After sorting through a list of eleven thousand keywords containing the substring 'pantie,' and finding no less than 3,500 that were completely unrelated to the retail business (and losing faith in the decency of men everywhere in the process), I found a few that were funny enough to keep me going:

The Pantie Raid:

• grumpy bear panties
• bowling with no panties
• precision interface panties
• lame panties
• future mrs panties
• lady in black bra and panties with a dog
• panties hats
• panties gone wild

And finally: the random shit that people type into search engines never ceases to amaze. The following keywords were all entered into Google or our own website search box at least twice and I found them while scanning some of the output files. It's probably clear that I didn't really make it past the letter d while looking through this (there are two million keywords in each of these files, people), so I'll just list them in alphabetical order here.

Help me, Google, I'm looking for:

• 6 ft animated jason voorhees
• a favor for frank
• a new way of thinking
• a picture of an mp4
• a rocket in my pocket
• a sight for sore eyes
• a soft place to fall
• a trapezoid
• a tribute to the king elvis
• bad stuff
• bong building supplies
• build your own bedroom vanity
• build your own english pub bar
• build yourself a micro wind generator
• building crappie beds
• can a whitening pen work on dentures
• can't breathe
• can't stop the bum rush
• cheapper than dirt
• crazy light up socks
• dominican guys
• draw a picture of a turkey
• find things in picture
• one child per laptop
• robo hamsters

Oh. My. God.

I just bought one of these.

Out and about

I still don't know what people who don't sleep in do with their mornings on the weekend, but I was forced to actually contemplate it this morning: I woke up at 9:30 am, of my own volition, and didn't go back to sleep. (And yesterday I woke up at 7:15, all on my own, a full 20 minutes before my alarm went off. What is the world coming to??)

Fortunately my roommate is an early riser and was able to help me in my time of need. Kind of. Her suggestion was for us to go do The Stairs in Santa Monica. Hating stairs as I do (seriously, I can't even count the number of times I've fallen down stairs), I didn't think this was too awesome a suggestion, but since it's a beautiful day out and seriously what do people who get up in the morning do because I have no idea I couldn't come up with a reason not to go, so I went. And I'm glad I did, because the scenery really is very pretty, and the people there are a really eclectic group. There are hardcore athletes, people there with their trainers, moms who look like they wanted to mix it up and do stairs instead of yoga this time, college kids, and people just there with their friends. People are doing a loop up and down one set of stairs (they kind of look like lemmings), stretching on the grass, doing pushups on the street. My favorite sighting was a group of 5 women all walking along carrying what looked like yoga mats, all different colors but clearly made by the same manufacturer.

After my seven minutes of exercise (one trip up and down each set of stairs), three minutes of situps and fifteen minutes of lying on the ground and staring up at the palm trees, I was starving. And because I am somehow still not tired of Baja Fresh, I hit it up at 11 in the morning to get a bean and cheese burrito. Still in workout clothes. And was gratified to see three other people exactly like me, in workout gear, ordering food at Baja Fresh.

And on my way home, I passed three girls in USC gear, clearly heading to a friend's house to watch the game, all carrying the exact same cup from Starbucks.


This place is so LA. I'm learning to embrace it. Particularly when I just see sunsets like this in passing on the 10 and 405 interchange:

I heart LA part deux

Last night: dinner out at World Cafe on Main Street in Santa Monica, outside on the patio.

Tonight: dinner out at Napa Valley Grille in Westwood, followed by George Gershwin Alone at the Geffen Playhouse.

Both meals were absolutely delicious, and George Gershwin Alone was fantastic. The music was wonderful, and the venue so small and the acoustics so good that you could actually hear people wanting to sing along to 'Someone to Watch Over Me'... and restraining themselves. Like a collective bated breath. And then at the end we all did get to sing along--the performer took requests for favorite Gershwin songs and played them all, recruiting soloists from the audience and prompting us with the words and when to sing, and the music just swelled all around, with so much energy.

Definitely nights to remember.

I heart LA

Every so often I have one of those days in LA that make me really love living here. I spent a gorgeous Sunday afternoon last December visiting the Getty Villa for the first time, seeing a fantastic Magritte exhibit at LACMA, and going to my first Laker game (awesome seats courtesy of my job, for Christmas). There have been other great experiences this summer, too: a night at the Hollywood Bowl, listening to John Williams conduct some of his best-known film scores (and watching a whole troupe of lightsabers wag along to anything from Star Wars); a pub crawl in Hermosa Beach; a bike ride along the beach to Marina Del Rey. Great experiences that I couldn't have had, had I lived anywhere else.

This weekend was one of those weekends, too. Saturday I biked the 20 blocks to the beach and met a coworker and his family there--I'd forgotten how much fun the beach could be. Grownups just have the wrong idea. Left to myself I lie as still as possible, listening to music on my iPod, and every so often I decide I've gotten hot enough that I need a dip in the ocean to cool off. So I tiptoe into the water, eventually get myself completely submerged, spend another minute or two out there (cuz it takes a lot of work to get in past your knees and not feel cold anymore), and come right back to my towel, where I lie down on my other side. Repeat.

But with kids, the ocean is an experience: not a single wave escapes your notice, because to people that are only two and a half feet tall, even the ones that barely hit my knees are a triumph for them to withstand. We go into the water, then back out, then back in again, and back out again. Finally we persuade them to come back to the towels, where everyone rests for maybe five minutes before someone has to go to the bathroom, which means a hike back across the sand to the bathrooms (ew) and, thankfully, the showers (yay!). Then back to the towels, where it's time to, obviously, build mountains out of piles of sand, name them, and then destroy them all. And then back into the water. I'd spent four hours at the beach, and my friends five, by the time we finally decided to head back up the cliffs to El Cholo for some mexican and margaritas (mmm, cheese enchiladas...). I can't remember the last time I was that tired, or had had such a satisfactory time getting that way. I tried to follow the day up with a trip to Hollywood Forever for a screening of His Girl Friday that night, but by the time I got there, they'd closed the parking lot and I had to just head back home. Probably just as well--I doubt I'd have been able to stay awake through the movie. I came home, watched Philadelphia Story (which I first saw at Hollywood Forever last summer), and was asleep by midnight.

Jump to today at 11:30 (yes, after eleven and a half glorious hours of sleep), when I realize that I'm too sunburnt to make good on the beach plans I'd made with another friend of mine and decided to cast around for other ideas of stuff we can do together. And hit upon the idea of going to the newly-reopened Griffith Observatory. I was able to get us reservations for today, so we drove over around 5 (I spent most of my afternoon doing stuff for work, trying to redeem it by accomplishing it on my laptop on the outdoor patio at Coffee Bean) and caught the shuttle up at 6. It was a great day for going up: not a cloud to be seen, warm, breezy. And the view up there is one of the most amazing in all of LA. We were too far inland and it was too hazy to see the ocean, but we had an unsurpassed view of the Hollywood sign and the hills around it, and all the way to downtown in the other direction. We wandered around the observatory and into one of the new exhibits, where we saw a film on the history of the observatory and learned that it was named after one Griffith J. Griffith (which my friend and I found to be unaccountably funny) and got more facts on its renovation, which was actually pretty impressive: all the underground exhition space is new and had to be dug out from under the existing structure, which necessitated them putting the entire foundation on hydraulic lifts and raising it so they could dig under. To look now, you can't tell such a thing ever even took place.

We came out of the history film to find the sun was in the middle of setting, which made waiting in line for the planetarium show a lot more enjoyable, as everyone was outside on the west side of the building. The planetarium show was really good as well, if a bit cheesy (there was a woman narrating it live who seemed to have an appreciation for the melodramatic). By the time we got out of that, it was dark, and the moon was rising--full moon, too. Our last stop there was the big telescope, where anyone can go in free of charge and have a look, which is pretty cool. It was trained on Jupiter and its moons, and one of the astronomers there was lecturing on the climates of the different moons, and space missions, and other related facts, and taking questions from the people waiting in line. Altogether a really cool experience--I recommend a trip up there to anyone.

And the icing on the cake: our night ended with burgers from In-N-Out.

I heart LA.

In the land of China

I recently went to China for a few weeks with my family. Have been meaning to post about it but thought I should talk about everything we did, where we went, etc. Well it turns out I'm too lazy to do that, and since I've been back for a few weeks now, it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon. However, I have put up all my pictures (taken with my fantastic new digital camera), which pretty well outline where we went and what we did, and a picture being worth a thousand words and all that, they probably give a better idea of what the experience was like anyway. At least the highlights. Y'all are probably better off not knowing about, say, the experience of even being near an eastern toilet, let alone having to use one. So put that out of your head and check out my favorite pictures from the 1,902 that I took (did I mention that digital cameras are awesome?) of Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Guilin, Xi'an, Chongqing, and the Yangtze River. (Link to all my online pictures here.)

What are you typing into Google?

We recently started a keyword push at work, which means we tap all our available sources of keywords to find what people could possibly be typing in to get to our site and the products we sell, and then go buy those keywords on the different search engines. Among these is what people have typed into Google before they clicked on one of our ads. Looks as though that broadmatch algorithm is a teensy bit broader than we might have liked; here are a few keywords that didn't make the cut:

the people who know what they want:

the honest

• a bathing ape
• a folding stroller for adults
• a glass of milk
• a happy new year
• a man a can and a plan
• a real lightsaber to buy
• a real pirate ship for sale
• a trap
• a very small monkey
• a woman s brest
• adamsunderwear
• beeping golf balls for sight impaired golfers
• big brests and big pences and viginas
• girls that start there consert and end with no clothes on vidios
• ladies bube

the dishonest

• a paper on citizenship
• answers to earthworm worksheet

wtf

• guy buffet
• hamster thongs

the people who can't quite put their finger on it:

• a chinese mathamatic tool with beads on a wire
• a chocolate sweet with a u in he second letter
• a diary of a kid in a life of a kid in tunisia
• need to buy or see some cricket bats ball and other stuff
• place to buy things
• this oven frys food like a deep fryer but looks like a microwave

the people who are out to teach Google a thing or two:

• a pangolin is a type of reptile
• babies are angels sent from above
• bags of water really repel flies
• boys get wedgies

the people who can't spell:

• a girl giving a guy a head
• baby cars eats
• plague remover

the people who just want to know:

• are any more captian underpants books coming out
• are hoverboards real
• are leather pants in style for 2006
• are pantyhose with closed shoes out of style
• are penguins birds
• are plants living or non living
• are there some major waters in france
• are unicorns real
• are vampires scared of crosses
• is bb king alive
• is cheerleading a real sport
• is dancing a sport
• is godzilla real
• is kelp an animal
• is matt retarded
• is my phone tapped
• is there a bat called demarini explosion
• is there famous painting in itly
• is there really a santa claus
• is there such a word as rheam
• is tweety bird a boy or girl
• is water organic or inorganic
• what material are fingernails made of
• what's what

Where the hell is Matt

This is quite possibly my new favorite site (well, after Twitter, and The Onion): WhereTheHellisMatt.com.

I didn't even find out about him on YouTube. I found out about him after reading a story about how a bunch of other people found out about him on YouTube. His video of him going around and just dancing in a bunch of different places is great, mostly because so many of these places are so cool: Norway, Bolivia, Namibia, Antarctica... I watch it and just think "no fair!!" Because when you're a mature 25 year-old, that's how you react to stuff.

Anyway, I'm interested in all things travel-related, and Matt has some interesting stuff. He's documenting his travels through Africa right now, pictures and all, and doing a great job of it.

A shoe story

Lately I've become a bit enamored of shoes. Heels, to be exact, with peep-toes. It all started innocently enough with this pair from White House Black Market (they're much sexier from other angles). But then I was out with some friends one night and my friend CJ was wearing these:

Now I don't know about you, but I think that's a pretty fabulous-looking shoe. Add to that the fact that my friend assured us the shoes were comfortable (that! comfortable!), and I was sold. (And not just me: another girl we were out with caved last night and bought them too.) We made her take off her shoes so we could see the brand name and go take the credit for her good taste. I ordered them from Nordstrom.com the following morning.

They showed up on Friday, just as gorgeous as the shoe in that picture, size 8 1/2, my size. Well, not quite: they were just small enough that I knew they'd murder my feet, but not so small for me to be certain the 9 would be the right fit, and not too big. (Every so often you're between sizes, and if you want the shoes you just have to suck it up and go with the one that will stay one but chafe, or the one that could fall off when you walk too fast.)

Well, these had shown up in the mail, and I wasn't keen on going through all of the effort of returning them, getting a 9, and finding the 9 didn't fit either. I decided to go find a Nordstrom that had them, or at least similar shoes by the same designer, and try the 9 to see if it was right or not.

Sunday I was down in South Bay to run an errand, and noticed a Nordstrom on my way. I stopped in on my way back home to settle my sizing issue. I explained my situation to the sales guy and asked if they had this particular shoe. They didn't, but had others by the same designer. I asked to try on an 8 1/2 and a 9 so I could decide. The 9 fit! There was hope my red shoes and I might stay together.

The sales guy asked if I had the shoes with me: I could return them there and order the replacement pair online, or he could check and see if other stores had them in my size. I decided that beat the hell out of having to mail them back (honestly, mail: how antiquated), so I went back to my car and retrieved the shoes and the box they'd been shipped in.

Upon my return I wandered around looking for my sales guy, hoping I'd recognize him--I mean, all the sales guys were in similar-colored jackets, going through similar shoe customer-service motions; how am I supposed to pick my sales guy out?--holding onto my oversized box from Nordstrom.com (you'd think they'd have shoebox-sized shipping containers by now). I stand near the register and look around, making sure it's easy to see me so I won't have to go find him. No one approaches me. A guy behind the register who I'm pretty sure wasn't the one who helped me asks if I need help with anything and I explain I'm looking for someone I'd been talking to earlier. (Like that narrows it down.) He calls in back, and a couple minutes later, my sales guy comes out.

"Look what I found."

One pair of red Linea Paolo "Babe" (shut up, yes that's their name) shoes, and they were in my size.

We're going to live happily ever after.

I caved.

I joined Twitter.

Let the minutiae begin!

Twittervision and Kurt Vonnegut

I was inspired to post because I just learned about both Twittervision and Kurt Vonnegut's death (very sad, his books are among the few I've read that have never faded in my memory). And then I thought back to how I came across these bits of information, and the mere chance involved with all of this convinces me it's a wonder I'm ever able to find anything out for myself at all. Here's how it happened, from the beginning:

8:30 pm last night
Get a call from my friend who I've been catsitting for and learn she's going to be out of town until Sunday, so I offer to continue looking after the cat until then.

9:30 pm
Leave the going away party I've been at to head home and go to sleep (have been exhausted for the last couple days); remember I have to go take care of the cat, decide I'll just crash at my friend's place so the cat has someone around.

10:15 pm
Finally get to friend's apartment after stopping at my place to get essentials and make another stop to get something to eat.

11:00 pm
Finally get into bed.

11:45 pm
Finally get to sleep... nocturnal cats are something of a distraction.

6:15 am
Alarm. Mmmph. Snooze.

6:23 am
Alarm. Mmmph. Snooze.

...ad infinitum until...

8:35 am
Mmmph. Whatimeizit. Fuckinshit.

8:36 am
Cannot possibly get up. Eyes hurt. 3 days now. Work from home day.

8:55 am
Retrieve laptop.

9:01 am - 10:30 am
Log onto im, remote desktop connection, etc. Check email, get to work on a data request, make some discoveries, send more email, etc.

10:31 am
Hmm, might like some music while I'm poring over this. Nice thing about working at home is I can just open iTunes and voila.

10:33 am
Oh yeah, wasn't there that song I wanted to buy? How'd it go? Had the word 'dare' I think...

10:34 am
Google is amazing. I typed 'lyrics dare' and the song I wanted (turned out it was by Switchfoot) was just below the fold.

10:35 am
Buy song on iTunes.

10:36 am
Hmm, haven't synched my iPod lately, I should see what the podcast situation looks like these days.

10:38 am
Scanning podcasts to download... get all the Ask a Ninja, disappointed that there's no stock of Onion podcasts going further back than 5 days, Slate Explainer.... hmm, read that... ooh, that sounds interesting... yeah, why does it take hours to evacuate a sinking vessel? Think I'll just go read these now instead of downloading them.

10:45 am
Have read about how advertisers can pull spots from shows (inspired by Don Imus), why David Sedaris' "exaggeration" in non-fiction humor writing is being defended, story on the allure of Twitter, which I'd seen mentioned in another blog I read. Have not read about why it takes hours to evacuate a sinking vessel.

10:48 am
Twitter article is pretty interesting. Favorite find is the link to Twittervision, a mash-up of Twitter and Google Maps. Pretty hilarious to watch tweets come in from all over the world, generally in the local language, too. The kind of thing you could just stare at for hours.

10:49 am
Someone just tweeted that Kurt Vonnegut died. Kurt Vonnegut died?!

10:51 am
Sigh. It's true.

10:55 am
I can't even believe how random it is that I learn stuff in this fashion. If I hadn't been checking out Twittervision I wouldn't have heard that Vonnegut had died; I wouldn't have been on Twittervision if I hadn't read about it in that Slate article; I wouldn't have been on Slate in the first place if I hadn't seen the Explainer headlines in iTunes; I wouldn't have been in iTunes if I'd actually been at work today; I wouldn't have worked from home if I hadn't slept poorly due to catsitting for the darn cat; I wouldn't have been catsitting if I hadn't heard from my friend that she was staying in Texas through Sunday... it keeps going on and on.

I realize hearing news of Vonnegut's death doesn't seem like the kind of event that has enough import to merit this kind of retrospection, but his books did have an impact on me and I'm saddened to learn of his passing. And it was in thinking about that that I realized how chancy it was I came across this information myself, working from home, with no coworkers around to keep me informed. I think it was an interesting exercise to go through that because so many things are the result of lots of little what-if events like that. Big things, like how I ended up at my current job, or small things, like this. Our lives feel so much less chaotic than they really are.

I think it has to do with our sense of control. We feel as though we're in control of our lives: we don't know what the other what-if option was and we don't care, because it didn't happen, did it?And we're ok with not having control over that because we didn't know it was something we wanted control over: you can't know that unless you know the difference your power over the outcome could make. In those cases where we do have control, e.g. you know all of your options and you select what you think is the best one, there is no sense of chaos because you knew all the facts. It's only when you think about all those what-if moments, all the times there were things that didn't happen, things you didn't know, and how those made a difference in your life that the possibilities really start to overwhelm you. Which is yet another reason why life seems less chaotic than it really is: we just don't think about the chaos.

Hmm, I think that's enough philosophizing for today. (I don't want to think about the chaos anymore.) Back to work.

Top 5 movies

So at present, I'm reading a book about the movie "All About Eve"--a book titled, cleverly enough, "All About 'All About Eve'"--and it's pretty interesting, given my limited knowledge of celebrity gossip from 50 years ago (I'm a consumer of much more current celebrity gossip). But it's a good movie, good enough to warrant a book and my subsequent reading of it, and that plus a couple of recent inquiries as to what my favorite movies actually are has led me to consider that question with a bit more thought than I normally would.

I never know what my number one movie is, so I've left that slot blank to be filled in by whatever movie I'm in the mood to see at that particular instant. But I always announce "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" as my number two movie, because while it's not something I want to watch everyday, there's something about it, about what it says about relationships, plus how it was made (Michel Gondry's directorial style is like nothing I've ever seen before and I love him for it--"Science of Sleep" is another by him that's great, though the story hasn't a hope of measuring up to the likes of Eternal Sunshine), that made an impression from the very first time I saw it. I'm all the more impressed by this film because I saw it for the first time in less-than-ideal circumstances: on an airplane, on one of those tiny screens that are at least eight feet away from you, and I missed the beginning. And despite that, after seeing it, I promptly bought it when I next came across it. I adore this movie.

Slots three, four and five (and I suppose six, since I should be naming my top five movies and leaving out number one entirely is kind of a copout... I'll go out on a limb for the sake of this post and just rank Eternal Sunshine at #1) are much harder. Part of the problem is that I'm a bit shaky on my criteria. I want movies in my top five to be able to withstand the test of time, so that I think it's just as compelling five or ten years from now as I do today, but does it have to be a movie that I'm always in the mood to watch? That's generally been my criteria with books: favorites are those I can read over and over and never get tired of (yes, I'm one of those people who rereads books and rewatches movies, and as such I have a large collection of each). But movies... the movies you really love make it onto that list because you have some emotional connection with them that you treasure, and don't want to lose by desensitizing yourself to the movie by watching it too many times. And so the other movies on this list are films I love, and talk up to other people as something they have to see, but watch very infrequently myself. I'm taking a gander at my DVD collection (favorites can only come from within these ranks, as I can't feel very strongly about a film if I'm not even willing to buy the damn thing), other candidates for these other four slots are, in no particular order:

• Thank You for Smoking
• All About Eve
• LA Confidential
• The Sting
• The Incredibles
• The Hudsucker Proxy

Other movies stand out as ones that I really like: The Fifth Element, Anchorman, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Pride & Prejudice... these are movies I've been able to watch over and over without getting tired of them (and yes, I said Anchorman--there are just too many good lines in that movie). But none are of the caliber of those first seven... and since I can't decide amongst them right now, I guess I'm just going to have to revise "top five" to "top seven". It's not like I'll ever remember all of those anyway.

I was going to go on about what it is about all of those that I find so compelling and whatnot, but I'm kinda tired now, and have to get up early tomorrow to actually finally go to the gym (it's been months, for one reason or another, and it's really getting on my nerves).

Bonsoir!

April Fool's!

Hahaha, I'll bet you thought I really wasn't going to post for another six months now, didn'tcha? Didn'tcha?! That, my friends, is what we call a setup. And look, a post on April Fool's to show that you were wrong! BURN!!

Actually, I didn't really have anything to post about: I spent my Saturday in Palm Springs and then drove back to LA today and spent the afternoon at Santa Anita with the social club I joined, at our Father/Daughter Day at the Races. And all of it was great: the weather is absolutely fantastic; there's not a cloud in the sky and it's that perfect not-too-hot-not-too-cold temperature. Much fun was had drinking margaritas in Palm Springs and then drinking Bloody Marys at the track and placing the occasional bet (I broke even, my dad came out ahead after making a big win in the second race). But I don't really have any comment on any of it except to say that it's effing great living in LA sometimes. Oh, and I'm glad my car was able to make it out to Palm Springs and back without incident. My renewed confidence in my car's tenacity plus my proximity to work (about 2 miles, which is maybe a 15-20 minute bike ride) means I have almost no reason to buy a new car anytime soon. I've been thinking about what kind I might want to own and I got nothin'--my favorite car, the very sexy Infiniti G35, is probably within reach but when I think about how much money I'd have to pay and, on top of that, the fact that I'd have to take care of it and be paranoid about where I park and stuff, I just don't want any of that hassle. By keeping my current car (a very unsexy 1988 Jeep Cherokee), not only do I have no car payments but the benefit of having rubber bumpers (which I don't think they even put on cars anymore) means I can run into all kinds of things and not leave a mark on the car. It's just so fantastically low-maintenance that I'm not sure I'm ready to give that up. So the new plan is to drive it into the ground because, even when that happens, I'll still be able to bike to work for a few weeks while I get over what happened to my old car and in the meantime really build an appreciation for the benefits incumbent upon buying a new one.

But I digress. My reason for posting today was to share the following very funny new inventions from our friends at Google, all brought to my attention by my friend Sean. The first one is currently featured on Google.com and I don't know how he came by the rest of them, but all are worth a look:

Google TiSP
Google Romance
Google Gulp
Google Copernicus Center
Google PigeonRank
Gmail Paper

Happy April Fools' Day!

Alive and kicking

Ok, so I haven't posted in six months. My bad.

Reading back over some of my old posts I kind of wish now I had that record, but the problem is I'm still not sure just how public I want that record to be. Do I need to post for posterity the fact that I made an ass out of myself at the company party? Everyone at my company already knows about that (ironically, they're the only ones I wish didn't know about it... I have no problem relating these stories to friends that already know I act like a jackass. Such is the risk of over-imbibing at the company party. Everyone stay tuned to see if I've learned my lesson by next year.) So I suppose that's fair game. There's my recent trip to Sweden which was pretty cool (haha, see what I did there?)--pictures of Stockholm, Copenhagen (yes I know that's not in Sweden), the Ice Hotel and me in one of those awesome furry hats are here. New Year's was great too, what with the fan-friggin'-tastic New Year's Eve party and then the fan-friggin'-tastickier Rose Bowl game where we beat the crap out of Michigan. Again.

But aside from the odd noteworthy event, I feel as though I'm too busy to post about industry issues, books, and other topics that are actually worthy of discussion that I accidentally spend time thinking/reading about. And what's left bears uncanny resemblance to the diary I kept in middle school. The only real sign I've made any progress at all since then is the more complex sentence structure and a larger vocabulary.

So I suppose my writer's block stems from the fact that the stuff that's easiest to write about is stuff that I don't feel I can write about, at least not in a public forum. All my favorite conversation topics revolve around work and friends from work (a.k.a.: gossip) or things that I don't necessarily want work or friends from work to know about, and guess what, I work at an internet company. In the search engine marketing department, no less. Query my name on Google and this blog is the first thing that comes up. As a result, scrubbing my writing of anything I don't want publicized takes up enough time that it becomes prohibitive to posting on a regular basis, and is particularly detrimental to the generally on-the-fly style of writing that usually characterizes blogging. Hence my prolonged silence.

Given my attitude, one wonders why I ever started a blog in the first place. Back in grad school, there wasn't as much of a need to censor myself, and I had enough free time to get to know the Chicago bar scene, skip reading assignments, watch every episode of Law & Order: SVU ever made, show up to class an hour late, and blog. And when I posted complaints about how school was going, it was generally railing against the dictates of graduate school assignments and idiosyncrasies. Even when school was hard work, it was still fun and different. But no one wants to hear you complain about your job, particularly when there's precious little to complain about ('ugh, our catered lunch was from [insert caterer name here] again'). And the things that make you unhappy at work aren't frustrations with the work load you imposed on yourself by choosing to go to grad school in the first place, but gossip and bickering and politics. The things that irritate you can no longer be chalked up to "That's life!"--now they have a face and a name. Neither of which can be included here. And thus my dilemma of wanting to write something occasionally, but not knowing what to write.

I think that concludes today's musings. In our next episode, find out if our heroine is in fact able to resolve this conflict! Tune in in another six months for a post that will probably be a whole lot like this one! Until then, this is Adra, signing off.

Garden State 2

AKA, The Last Kiss. In fact, The Last Kiss looks like it could even be confused with Garden State 1. But don't take my word for it. Check out the (really really funny) breakdown here, complete with illustrations (because them words is hard to unnerstand sometimes).

Packrat

My computer at work has a 136 GB hard drive. And today, I found out that I've reached capacity. I've been here 5 months.

The data geekiness is becoming hard to ignore...

Normally I'd stay away from the Dilbert blog as a matter of principle (and I still maintain that I was tricked into clicking on the link by its being referred to as Scott Adams' blog, and I'm ok with acknowledging that I didn't know who Scott Adams was until today), and government-bashing doesn't really appeal to me, but I thought this post was just too dead-on to ignore. Excerpt:

My favorite conspiracy theory is the one that says the world is being run by a handful of ultra-rich capitalists, and that our elected governments are mere puppets. I sure hope it’s true. Otherwise my survival depends on hordes of clueless goobers electing competent leaders.

The only way I can get to sleep at night is by imagining a secret cabal of highly competent puppetmasters who are handling the important decisions while our elected politicians debate flag burning and the definition of marriage.

Read the whole thing here.

Random link of the day

There are things that make you chuckle, and there are things that make you laugh, and then there are things that make you laugh so hard it actually starts to sound more like crying. (Please note: this is much more likely to happen when one works in a quiet office and is trying to suppress normal laughter, lest one's coworkers get the impression that one is not actually working and is instead surfing the internet, reading favorite blogs, and watching Ask a Ninja videos on YouTube.) And I was sent a link to something that falls into that latter category: an entry on Bloggy McBlogalot. Funny blog name. Even funnier post. It defies reason. But I still have tears in my eyes.

Ask a Ninja

I think I'm a little behind on discovering the awesomeness of Ask a Ninja, but that's no reason not to share it with other poor souls who have been in the dark until now. In particular, Ask an Animated Ninja, and Ninja Pirates of the Caribbean Movie Review.

And, while unrelated, this is hilarious too.

Goldman Sachs vs. Goldman Sex

I'm not sure this story about Goldman Sachs suing GoldmanSex.com is really a good example of common sense, both on the part of the plaintiff and on the part of the consumers supposedly confused by the names of these two entities. Chances are that anyone dumb enough to mistake one for the other is not bright enough to even know what Goldman Sachs does. I highly doubt they're losing a lot of potential clients this way.

Viva Mexico!

Am off to Mexico for the weekend to overimbibe on tequila (cuz, you know, if you do it there you're 'experiencing the local culture') and just generally enjoy chilling with friends, the beach, reading a book about pirates instead of just seeing a movie about them, Friday southbound traffic on the 405, etc. Should be a hoot.

Like MySpace, but for people who can read

I think the idea behind this website is effing brilliant: catalog your book collection and then get recommendations on other books you might like based on overlap with other people's collections (that's collaborative filtering, people... like what Amazon does, but not colored by the textbooks or gifts you bought that you'd never choose to read for yourself). There's a little bit of social networking, but I like the fact that the website isn't focused on collecting 'friends'. WSJ article about it (free) here.

Spiderman 3 leaked trailer quality less than satisfactory

The Spiderman 3 trailer has been leaked, so now you don't have to wait and see it before Superman Returns... at least, if you want to see the, like, characters and stuff, you do, but if you want to listen to the music and bootleg background noise and try in vain to read some of the teasers, you're set. Much funnier bashing of the quality + the trailer itself here.

Wi-fi for all who want to pay for it...which isn't many

As someone who hates the idea of paying through the nose to get fast internet service (at least, I did until I no longer had a laptop to take advantage of it), I was really excited by stories about wi-max and citywide wi-fi networks growing in popularity, even with the high likelihood that they would have spotty coverage. As far as I was concerned, it was a step in the right direction. Of course, I think I assumed that they would be paid for via taxes and/or advertising and would at least feel free. It could be that that's the only way they'll have the success everyone's envisioning, too: there was an article in the New York Times this morning about how Taipei has set their citizens up with a citywide wi-fi network accessible to 90% of the population (which is impressive--if/when LA adopts this strategy, that kind of coverage will likely take years)...and only 40,000 people (out of 2.6 million), a paltry 1.5%) have signed up for it. It's not expensive: $12.50 a month is completely affordable, and I'd be more than willing to pay such a fee (particularly compared with the $38 a month I'd been paying to Comcast previously, and that a promotion rate... it was going up to $60 soon). Then again, my options are limited. In Taipei (and in San Francisco, where Google and Earthlink are looking to build the first citywide wi-fi network in the US), there are plenty of free options: cafes, work, your neighbor's unsecured wireless, hotels and airports that want to attract more business travelers.

In fact, cities in the US are looking for a way to provide wi-fi free to their residents, with the company that made the investment recouping it via advertising. A company that had started negotiations to build a network in Sacramento pulled out earlier this month because the city insisted they make back their money with advertising rather than subscription fees. People just don't like paying for stuff that they don't see as essential, which is the case in Taipei. We're willing to put up with everpresent banners and commercials you can't skip if it means we get something free. I'm willing to pay a small fee to get rid of it, but we're talking a pretty small fee: I pay Yahoo about 20 bucks a year to get my email advertisement-free. Of course, along with that perk I also get more storage, I got to switch to Yahoo Mail Beta (which rocks, it's like a portable Outlook) months and months ago, whereas regular users still have to sign up to try it out and hope for the best, and there are some other perks that I really can't remember because the beta mail interface is so friggin' awesome... anyway, I think that $20 is well-spent. But I'm not willing to spend much more. With wireless it'd be about the same, I think: ubiquitous wireless access is a nice-to-have: I can't live without the internet, it's true, but I spend 8-10 hours a day in an office where I have access to it for free. And I would imagine that most of the people who would be interested in wi-fi in the first place are in a fairly similar situation. It'll be interesting to see what happens.