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I know that complaining about Elisabeth Hasselbeck is not a new thing to do, but I caught her on a rerun of The View when home sick the other day, and I swear she made me feel sicker than I already did. It's not only her heinous views that bother me but also the irrationally belligerent and ridiculous way in which she spouts them. She actually argumentatively asked why those people who choose not to get married are usually the same ones who are in favor of gay marriage. Something like, "If you don't care about marriage, why are you such a proponent of gay people being able to get married?" And Joy Behar just looked at her with blatant disdain and said, "Um, because if straight people should be able to choose whether or not they want to get married, then so should gay people." Not stated but understood: "You fucking idiotic twit." Then, to further display her stupidity, the guest host, what is her name, the Dancing with the Stars winner from General Hospital. Oh yes. Kelly Monaco. Was saying very sanely that she and her boyfriend of fifteen years find it fully normal and acceptable to have crushes on people, particularly non-attainable ones, because we all have pulses and heartbeats and can't help having crushes on people even if we're committed to our partners. And Batshit Crazy Elisabeth was saying that it's "dangerous" to have crushes and could not believe that Kelly Monaco was not lying through her teeth when she said she doesn't mind that her boyfriend has crushes because she's been with him since she was fifteen years old, they are totally married in their hearts, and it is no big deal. Elisabeth looked like she was about to jump over the table and throttle Kelly Monaco because she was saying something so preposterous and unbelievable. Then she just said, "It must be because you're not married that you feel this way." Or something equally as asinine. It was just uncomfortable to watch. It's so evident that the other women think she is a lunatic and says the most ridiculous things ever uttered by anyone. Ever. I do not know how Rosie O'Donnell is going to handle sitting at a table with her. I just do not. I don't see how it's possible. Love her or hate her (and I love her, as I've mentioned), Rosie O'Donnell cannot abide bigots or idiots and I just don't know how in God's name this is going to work out. How! How. Elisabeth Hasselbeck truly, unbelievably, extraordinarily sucks. Recently I went out into my backyard to pull up some weeds by the fence. After about two minutes, I thought, "Self, perhaps you should have put on some Off before coming out here," and I looked down at my legs, and sure enough, they were dotted with mosquitoes. I yelped and ran in the house, swatting at my legs, and set forth in applying some topical Benadryl. I counted the rising welts as I applied the spray, and I had twenty-nine new bites on my legs. Twenty-nine. In two minutes max. I am not sure if I even have any blood left in me at this point. Needless to say, my legs are not looking their best, and I am wearing a very long skirt. It's as hot as blazes today as usual, too early in the day to mow the backyard, and all I feel like doing is taking a nap, so I forced myself off of the couch and came to the coffee shop. I've got my headphones plugged into Shiny the laptop and I've got a frozen lemonade, so all feels right with the world. Is it wrong that "You Raise Me Up" by Josh Groban is reducing me to tears right here at my window table? Perhaps. When I was still heavy into couch time a few minutes ago, I flipped to Girls Just Want to Have Fun. I do not know how many times I watched this as a child, but it must have been a lot, because I can recite every line in that weird way where you can hear the line in your head before it's uttered by the actors. It's buried somewhere so deep in your memory. IT IS BIZARRE. It is also beyond bizarre that Janey Glenn grew up to be Carrie Bradshaw and that Jeff's little sister Maggie grew up to be Brenda Walsh. And Helen Hunt, as Lynne Stone, was already so beloved by my siblings and me as Tammy Maida. This is just one of the seminal films of my childhood, and to deny it would be pointless. It was made in 1985. 1985! Whatever happened to Jeff Malene. That is all I want to know. To this day, my sister will sometimes say randomly something along the lines of, "Look, there's Jeff's partner and that cool girl, Lynne . . . c'mere, you guys, c'mere!" Baby, I've been searching just like everybody else. Sorry, listening to Marc Cohn. My sister's friend danced to this song at her wedding. She told me this when we were discussing songs that she and her new husband might dance to for their first dance in December. We giggled and reasoned that we would not be able to keep a straight face on the "and with wild abandon make love to you like a true companion" line despite how great the song might be. Wedding planning, man. What a headache. There's just no escaping it, even when you are madly in love with your mate, which she is, and even when lots of the decisions you're making are cool and exciting. It's just the crushing multitude of decisions that have to be made and the insane details that are involved in making them. My sister is one organized bitch, though, so if anyone can pull it off, she can. You can do it, sissy! It is going to be awesome. (Also, I maintain that Marc Cohn's best song remains "Strangers in a Car.") Today I was at my parents' house while we discussed wedding music options with my sister, and my dad gave me a watch that apparently my grandmother, his mother, who died in 1984 of ALS, willed to me, but it's been broken for years and years and he finally got it fixed. He said my grandfather gave it to her for Christmas in 1951, and he concealed its identity by wrapping it in a big box filled with paper and batteries. It's just a simple gold watch, and my dad said she wore it every day until she died. So now I'm wearing it, this watch that's more than a half-century old that my grandmother wore on her wrist. Between that and goddamn Josh Groban, I'm barely keeping it together. Clearly it's time for a little Christina Aguilera and "Ain't No Other Man," which is my new favorite running song. I finally made it back to the gym yesterday after nearly four weeks. I only ran for twenty minutes, and I ran very slowly, but it was good. I'm going to make a new running playlist now. Feel free to send me the name of your favorite running song. There's been a bright green lizard hanging out on the window pane right next to me as I've relaxed here in the coffee shop. I don't recall ever being so intimately close to the underside of a lizard, but it's pretty fascinating. His feet are particularly groovy, the way the toes are so long and splay out so widely. And when he decides to go for a little fly, let me tell you, he is fast. And his little throat keeps opening in and out in a shock of redness. I think I like lizards. I finished season one of Battlestar Galactica last night. We watched a few of the special features, and I have to say that I had NO idea that Apollo is played by an English guy! I was blown away by the surprise of his real accent. He sounds exactly nothing like Apollo. Unsettling! But I still like him because I took his side in what he did in the last episode. The other television show enjoyed this weekend thanks to my boyfriend's taping of last week's episode was Deadwood, which is superior to Battlestar and let's face it pretty much every other show in the history of television. It's no secret that I have my devotion to my favorite shows, okay? And this doesn't take away from my love for them. But this show is just on a whole different level of greatness from anything else I can think of. It moves so quickly that sometimes I just sit there blinking, trying to take in the unbelievable coolness of what just happened while something even cooler is already happening. I had to straight up rewind the scene when Alma was shot at and Al started barking orders and took a flying leap off of his balcony to hustle her inside. Of all of the great moments of this show, that has to be in the top ten. Top five even, maybe. I sit there while watching it and engage in little mental battles as to which character is my favorite. And they rotate with pretty much every passing scene, but Al always comes out on top. I really think I'm going to end up going back and Netflixing the whole series, because I've only seen a few season one episodes, and I really just need to take in the whole fucking masterpiece again as a whole. I sometimes call to mind the great Al Lowe's recaps when I'm watching the show and how she describes things, and as we watched the final scene of the episode and Bullock just sat there at the dinner table listening to Sol ramble on about store orders while Mrs. Bullock went about preparing for dinner like he might go out of his skull in disbelief and horror over the fact that the camp is basically falling to pieces and was trying to keep his composure, I shouted something along the lines of, "Look at him clenching. HE IS CLENCHING LIKE HE HAS NEVER CLENCHED BEFORE." Never has a nonverbal act by an actor been so aptly characterized as Al Lowe's coining of Bullock's almighty clenching. I will miss her recaps, I will miss this show, and I will miss Bullock and Alma and Charlie and Trixie and Jane and Richardson and Jewel and Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. Wu and Sol and Adams and Johnny and Dan and Joanie's hat. But Al. By God, I will miss Al most of all. My boyfriend and I watched two movies this weekend. The first was L'Enfant. Which I knew had won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and I somehow had mistaken for some kind of heartwarming French movie about a young couple and their baby and how they somehow overcome the odds and become a happy family. This movie could not be farther from that concept. I suppose it was well made and what not, but I was so consumed with my hatred of the lead male character that I could not see past it. It blinded me. There was no way I could see past it to evaluate the movie on its own. It was strange. Normally I can dislike a character and still roll with it, but it overcame me so completely that I am like, "Fuck that movie." Now and forever. Dead to me. Not recommended unless you want to be filled with contempt and rage and a disturbing desire to reach through the screen and strangle a fictional character named Bruno with your bare hands. The second was Little Miss Sunshine, and I'm happy to report that I still have a smile on my face a day later when I think of Olive. And the rest of the ragtag gang. But mostly Olive. Whoever cast this child needs a giant gold star. She was as lovable as the L'Enfant asshole was despicable. The tiny theater was so crowded that we had to sit in the second row, which I have to say automatically reduces my enjoyment of a movie because my eyeballs tend to go into spasms at that proximity. But it didn't matter. The scene pictured here made my heart feel like it was exploding. Greg Kinnear in all of his optimism and determination reminded me of my older brother. He defiantly refused to believe that his ideas weren't awesome and that he wouldn't be able to achieve his dream. This was portrayed as a fault, sure, and maybe it is. But I saw his goodness because I see it in my brother. Plus, when he said, "She's kicking ass, that's what she's doing," I wanted to stand up and cheer. And Toni Collette can do no wrong. And the grandpa and the vow-of-silence brother and Steve Carrell were all just note perfect. Highly recommended if you want to see a movie that will make you laugh, will remind you that even the most dysfunctional family can pull together when it counts, and will make you think back to that blissful time of innocence when you enjoyed your big bowl of chocolate ice cream at seven years old without it ever occurring to you that ice cream makes you fat.
About this time in ...
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