I've brought home my next car.

I left work early, took the light rail to Beaverton, got to the dealership I went to last Saturday, wrote the largest check in my life (using funds left to me by my Grandma Dorothy), filled the appropriate paperwork and asked the appropriate questions, and...IT'S MINE!

It's a 1998 Honda Civic Coupe, black and sleeker than my previous cars. It drives well. It has air conditioning (something that stopped working in my Accord about a year after I bought it, and I lived without it) and heat.

And it's mine. Mine mine mine mine mine mine!

Right Now I Look Like This:: accomplished
Current Movie: The Afternoon Buzz: Daria, Mitch and Ted (105.1 The Buzz)

Fraggle Rock: The Motion Picture.

Apparently I've been living under a rock for the past few years. I just started watching "Avatar" about a month ago, and just got to season 2 before I decided to look up voices. OMFG! Mae Whitman is Katara!? I can hear the voice of Katara, but I can't picture it coming from Bland.

I am really impressed.

Right Now I Look Like This:: amazed

Ollie "Treason" North, Schoolhouse-Rock style (courtesy American Dad):



(Yes, it features at least one (possibly intentional) misused comma)

RACHEL'S BIRTHDAY PICNIC: SUNDAY, MAY 4 - DOLORES PARK

Food:

• lemon pie
• barley salad
• strawberry-kiwi juice
• red velvet cupcake
• melon
• Mexican Chicano chocolate ice cream

Ratio of People I Knew to People I Did Not Know:

• approximately 5:3

Threadless Shirt Worn:

• A Key for Everything
• Heidi wore Playground Joust, keeping up our streak of wearing Threadless shirts around harriettheelf

Something About Hair:

• Noel was impressed at and complimentary of the fact that I noticed that she was now blonde, as people in her own apartment building had not commented on it all; I had met her six weeks ago and not seen her since

Leftovers Scored:

• strawberry-kiwi juice
• bottled water

Homoerotic Moment of the Day:

• I asked Jake if I could use him as a pillow, and he assented

KEVIN & KATIE'S BIRTHDAY PICNIC: SUNDAY, MAY 11 - GOLDEN GATE PARK

Food:

• tortilla chips and six-layer dip
• pita chips and hummus
• tortilla chips and salsa
• grapes
• chicken dijon sausage
• some marinated chicken thing
• a salmon burger
• pomegranate soda
• chocolate-banana-strawberry cake
• freeze-dried chocolate ice cream

Ratio of People I Knew to People I Did Not Know:

• approximately 4:9

Threadless Shirt Worn:

• Hypotamoose

Something About Hair:

• This girl named Amira had purple streaks in her hair

Meetcute:

• Despite having introduced myself to him only minutes earlier, Roy was very serious about including me in a potential Indiana Jones outing with this group of people I did not know
• As we were leaving, I got a "Nice to meet you" from a girl who then proceeded to introduce herself as Claire, after which I gave my name, and the nearby Amira cracked up and smiled because she loved when that sort of thing happened

Leftovers Scored:

• grapes
• hoagie rolls
• sweet basil pesto chicken and turkey sausage

Some Cute Thing I Did for a Girl:

• Meredith, co-baker of the amazing cake along with her husband, was beginning to get very chilly in her skirt (she had brought shorts to wear underneath, but they weren't enough), and after Katie's jacket didn't completely quell the shivering, I walked over to a large beach towel/blanket on the ground, shook off the debris, and draped it over her like a cloak; thankfully, people thought it was helpful and not completely stupid

Tags: food, girls, lists are less time-intensive, personal, pesceducation, pimpings, real life friends
Right Now I Look Like This:: nostalgic
Current Movie: Puddle of Mudd - Control

In the increasingly unimportant race for network supremecy, ABC has announced their fall schedule.  Most of it wasn't that much of a surprise with the exception being the pick-up of Eli Stone (I've never watched it, so I can't say if that's good or bad).   Everything else on the renewal list was either a foregone conclusion (Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy) or had previously been announced.

Scrubs is moving from NBC to ABC and will be a mid-season replacement.  I guess that means that Zach Braff realizes that Garden State was a fluke.

Dancing with the Stars will be back to once again mock the true definition of the word "star."

New shows include a U.S. version of Britain's Life on Mars.  Let's hope it translates more like the Office and All in the Family and not like Men Behaving Badly.

...but the biggest surprise, the thing that makes me question the American public, the thing that makes me think that the Nielsen Ratings are fixed, the thing that makes me wonder about the intelligence of the ABC executives:

They've renewed According to Jim for an eighth season.

Say thank you to the American public everybody.  Thank you for not watching Arrested Development and Kitchen Confidential and Once and Again but, instead, watching fucking According to Jim!


Oh, and while I'm bitching.

NBC made it official that Jimmy Fallon will take over Conan O'Brien's spot when he moves up to 11:35 to replace Jay Leno next year.

Here's hoping that the ratings look like this:

Craig Ferguson   6.8
Jimmy Fallon       0.05

Let me start by saying that I'm a long time fan of Scarlett Johansson, all the way back to The Horse Whisperer.

I just heard some songs from her new album and, ah, how can I put this......it ain't good. Maybe it's just hearing them over the internet or something, but she sounds a bit flat at times (oh, wait....that's "pitchy") and it seems that they are trying to mix her voice way under to maybe hide a few things.

For those who are interested, here's the first video from the album:

Ah, upfronts, where fans see their favorite shows cancelled and bitch, not knowing or caring one iota about how the television industry works.

Whenever I think of masks I think of "Eleanor Rigby". From the time I was a little kid and first heard the song I visualized her peering out the window of the church with a face on a tongue depresser. Sometimes leering out the window at the world and sometimes sad with a tear going down one cheek.

As I got older I started to observe people and the many masks they wear. People always seemed to have a mask for whatever time they needed it. I got pretty good at seeing beneath the mask to the person hiding behind it. Until I met someone who was blank. There was nothing beneath the mask they wore and it scared me. I had never met anyone who was like that.

I spent a couple years trying to figure him out. Why was he blank to me? Why did he not reveal something beneath his many masks? After I left the job we both worked at I found out from a mutual friend that he had committed suicide and it finally clicked. It bothered me for a bit that I didn't figure it out sooner and like most I spent time wondering what if I had been able to prevent it. I know better now that I could not have prevented it. By the time I met him he had given up on everything but most of all himself. A person who lived entirely within masks.

Tags: lj idol home game

I got a shuggoth for my (early) birthday from atomicgypsy. I love it! He lives with my stuffed octopus now. She always gives me the most awesome presents.

It's her birthday today though! Happy birthday, atomicgypsy!

MSNBC.com had me write a more grown-up analysis (compared to the free-associating, let's-talk-about-why-Denise-Richards-is-back-in-the-audience-again versions that I do for Advocate.com) of this season's "American Idol" contestants...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24585165/

I just started looking at the transcript of my interview with Tarsem, director of The Fall.

13,376 words.

A full-page A.V. Club interview is 2,000 words.

A really, really long, three-page interview online is 5,000 words.

I think my personal record is 10,000 words for the Alan Moore interview, and we ran that over the course of two days.

So. Much. Interview. Editing this thing is going to be three different bastards in a bastard-sack.

Right Now I Look Like This:: horrified