don't stop believing

i have been living at work the last three weeks. many 19-hour days, mostly 16-hour days, for that period of time.

but i was still able to take off after just 8 hours of work on thursday afternoon to see the giants play in game 5 of the NLCS. it's old news now that they didn't win that day, but it doesn't really matter now that they WON LAST NIGHT and are now GOING TO THE WORLD SERIES for the third time in my lifetime.

my ticket for thursday's game was directly in front of steve perry's, and when they started playing "don't stop believing," he went crazy and encouraged all of us to sing along. i sang at the stop of my lungs and managed only a blurry photo or two of the journey singer. the excitement in the air was unlike anything else i've experienced, likewise the silence when that homely sonofabitch jayson werth hit a homer to provide a solid lead for the phillies to win the game.

not sure if i'll be able to go to a game in this final series, but i'm still believing.

dooce!

a couple of weeks ago i went to a book reading by the one and only heather b. armstrong.

having been to readings before and gotten stuck in the waaay back, i made sure to get there early, and was fortunate enough to snag a seat for me and also one for marcy. it was definitely cool to see heather in person, and even cooler to see that she's just as irreverent in person as she is on her blog -- she mimed giving the microphone a blow job when someone mentioned she should get closer to it to improve the sound quality.

the crowd was amazing! i don't think books, inc. in mountain view expected as many people to show up as did, and among the many people i spotted a chick i went to high school with. (actually, i had to text vanessa to ask what the chick's last name was because it was driving me crazy.)

i didn't buy her book, but i did go up with marcy and say hello, and of course snap a couple of pics.

hangin' tough

in honor (poor word choice?) of the NKOTB reunion, here are a couple flashbacks courtesy of youtube.

damn straight i saw them in concert, bitches! (sotto voce: but it was after it was out of fashion to listen to them, and my best friend at the time got tickets waaaay in advance, so...plus, we were accompanied by her parents. so we got horribly teased the next week in class. yeah. we rocked it hard core in the 6th grade.)

coked-out

i feel all skeevy posting this, but i'll do it anyway.

here's heath ledger recently, talking about his role in the new "batman" flick. tell me he's not high on something.



sad stuff, his death. not because i'm his biggest fan or anything, but because people my age aren't supposed to die this soon.

cash grab

i went to tahoe/reno over the weekend, and for the first time, i flew. (and boy, are my arms tired!)

i fear it's spoiled me for future trips, as the take-off to touch-down time is 55 minutes, with just 38 of that being flying time.

i was doing well friday night, two-and-a-half hours at the roulette table followed by an hour at a single deck $5 table (!) and fueled by shots of patrón (no chaser, thanks) with a couple of beers mixed in for good measure.

saturday was a downward spiral. maybe one winning hand, total? goes to show -- gotta quit while you're ahead.

the plane ride home was uneventful, save for him being on my flight.

oh, and standing next to him while he boarded the flight ahead of us to LAX. it made me giggle that he had a barney (as in the purple dinosaur) tote bag as his carry-on.

high life

happy independence day!

what's more american than reveling in someone else's misery?

from the genius folks at milkfat :
(click to enlarge, trust me!)






i don't watch "the simple life," thus the "sa na sa" reference was lost on me, until GOOGLE figgered it out for me. if you're like me and haven't seen that drivel, paris and nicole had this running little song they'd do, that goes "sa na sa! sa na sa. sa na sa! sa na saaaaa!" youtube'ing (yay for turning it into a verb!) it will produce this:

knocked up

michael cera is HYS-terical. maybe you remember him from "arrested development?"



and just so you know, it was a joke. michael is funn-nay.

redeemer

i cannot stand will ferrell but LOVE the little girl. (so much so that i don't mind too much that it overlaps into the rightside column.)
you'll need sound.

go your own way

rumor had it that the four seasons wailea was hosting a benefit dinner for the maui food bank at $150/plate at the grand opening of the duo restaurant. while i have no doubt it's a worthy cause, i wasn't sure about parting with that kind of money to see b-list celebs. plus, i had nothing to wear. (age-old female dilemma, dontchaknow.)
we moseyed on down there anyhow, and ended up with first-rate seats by the pool, akin to cheapskate's hill above cal's memorial stadium, only much closer. and with live music!
spotted there: john corbett, christian slater and kids, amanda bynes, chris noth, mick fleetwood.

speaking of mick fleetwood, this is of him and various other musicians (including hawaiian musician willie k) performing fleetwood mac songs as well as hawaiian music and various other hits. what fun!

lovely lady whaaa?

Alanis shows how ridiculous the lyrics for this song really are.

sundancing

Givin' 'em what they want, says I. What that means for you is: few words, lotta pictures.

We hit the ground running on Friday, arriving at 9:30 in the ay-em into Salt Lake City. The rest, bullet-style from the BlackBerry, is more for my own memory than anything else.

Friday:
-saw "the unforseen" (documentary about environmental impact in austin, texas) @ the library
-ate at zoom for lunch
-dinner at the eating establishment and saw perez hilton , pink hair and all
-waited for "the ten" but wait was so long!


Saturday:
-waited from 11 to 12:30 for waitlist tix to the premiere "broken english" at the racquet club
-met Colleen from Ohio while waiting in line
-wait from 1:45 to 2:30 for waitlist spot, we're numbers 70, 71, 72
-wait as volunteer door operator violates ticket policy and continues to let ppl in after the cut off time of 15 mins
-race over to eccles theater on foot to assure number one spot in line for the premiere "the year of the dog" but end up waiting outside (it started to snow!) for an hour
-eccles staff let us inside to wait for another 45 minutes, we end up with waitlist numbers 68 69 70
-it was so dramatic waiting, but we got in with mere minutes to spare!
-saw john c. reilly, molly shannon, peter sarsgaard and other stars of the movie

Sunday:
-up at 4:45am to head to the box office to wait in line for tickets: it was 2 degrees outside!
-waited from 5:30 am to 8 am to buy tickets, we ended up with tickets to four shows: "the night buffalo" (my number one choice for the whole festival), "low and behold," "never forever" and "the nines"
-headed to the canyons for snowshoeing expedition
-headed to the holiday cinema for "the night buffalo." loves me some diego luna, even if the whole movie was effed up
-blazed over to the prospector square theater just in time for the premiere of "low and behold," about post-katrina Louisiana: loved it
-raced over to the racquet club theater to see the premiere of "never forever," about a korean man and his Caucasian wife that cannot conceive a child. she decides to have an affair with a man that looks like her husband in an attempt to have a child
-after three-back-to-back heavy, emotional movies, my head was throbbing

Monday:
-up early to see "the nines" at the prospector sqauare theater; very likely this will make it to theaters
-got to see ryan reynolds, john august, melissa mccarthy
-spent the rest of the day roaming main street

Overall: had a wonderful trip, can't wait to do it again, although after waiting outside in the (literally) freezing cold at 5:30am, the ($3000-$5000) festival pass started to sound like a drop in the bucket. I loved that we got to see a variety of films, even if we only got to see 6 of them. From a documentary to a foreign film, the only thing that wasn't represented in our choices was a comedy. We kept saying, "Where's the 'Little Miss Sunshine' of 2007?!"

The Sundance Bible


Sundance box office


Try figgering this out!


Yummy foodstuffs on our first day


Main Street, as seen from Zoom


Pretty scenery


The Library (and theater), where we saw "The Unforseen"




It looks like one of those miniature Christmas villages!


Movie posters, everywhere!




The cast of "The Year of the Dog"


Waiting (and waiting and waiting) for waitlist tickets at the Racquet Club Theater




Despite the sunny sky, it was brrrr cold!


Finally getting into the lobby of the box office after waiting outside in 2 degree weather for two hours


Here we go!




See that ridge at the very top, through the trees? Yeah. That was our destination!


Yup, we made it to the top -- 10,000 feet!


Looking down from the gondola at The Canyons


Pre-show entertainment at the Holiday Village Cinemas


Voting on "The Night Buffalo" for the Audience Award


Waiting for "Never Forever" to start at the Racquet Club Theater


Main Street (with a sun flare!)


The cast of "The Nines"


John August, director of "The Nines"


Ryan Reynolds


The famous marquee at the Egyptian Theater

batman or fatman?

Guess who?

let sleeping dogs lie

I had cable installed in my room just before Christmas.

I spent that whole Saturday in bed, reading and watching whatever crap tv was on until it was time to go out in the evening. It was luxurious, but not something I could get used to doing on a regular basis.

I am glad to go to bed with Dog the Bounty Hunter every night, with him whispering sweet nothings like "I know, brah, he's a good guy, he just got into some trouble" into my ear as I fall asleep.

Why can't the good stuff be on later? Like TiVo found "Growing Pains" for me (their "suggestion" algorithm is ridiculously accurate) and reminded me of the crush I used to have on Kirk Cameron. In the third grade we had to practice our writing skills and as such were required to write letters to anyone, and I wrote to Kirk Cameron. Bitch never wrote back. He's now talking about the atheist's nightmare . Perhaps he should have written back to adoring 10 year-old fans, that would have earned him some karma points.

daddy's girl

From SFGate's Daily Dish :

Spelling Expecting Boy

Former "Beverly Hills, 90210" star Tori Spelling and husband Dean McDermott are expecting a baby boy next year.

Spelling, 33, and McDermott, 39, have been married since May. McDermott has a son Jack, 8, from a previous marriage.

She tells People magazine, "We are thrilled to be having a son together. Little boys are a ton of fun. We love talking to him. We play tunes for him and watch him kick.

"He already loves the Dixie Chicks! We went to their concert and he kicked the whole time."

McDermott adds, "Now Jack will have the baby brother he's been waiting for."

Spelling has previously said that if she has a boy he will be given the middle name Aaron after her late father, legendary TV producer Aaron Spelling, who died in June.

They are still deciding on a first name.

She adds, "Yes, his middle name will be Aaron. Dean and I feel it's the perfect way to honor the memory of my father."

What Ms. Spelling meant to say was: "Mebbe if I give my son Daddy's name I'll get a percentage of his estate that I was cheated out of!"

scott caan, the little person

Scott Caan looks like a midget little person in this pic from the "Friends with Money" L.A. premiere:

(and boy did I have to work to get that pic! The source, IMDB, doesn't allow right clicks and upon viewing the source code, the image tag was relatively disguised. Nothing's too much when it comes to sharing funnies like this with my favorite bloggers!)

what took her so long?!

It's about damned time!

Britney Spears files for divorce from K-Fed.

truly outrageous

I over committed myself to activities on Saturday, so much so that I left the house about 7:30 in the morning and didn't return until 9:30 in the evening. But what a day it was!

My morning event went really well. This was my first year participating in this event, and I can say I'll definitely do it again next year. I was there until about 2:30, then I left for SF for Augusten Burroughs' book reading at the new SF Center's Bloomingdales, of all places.

I wanted to wait until the gawkers had died down before venturing to the new SF Center, but when this came up, I figured I'd put up with it. Holy moly, I have never seen so many people in a freaking shopping mall in my entire life. There was a line to get into H&M and the "Food Emporium" was every person for themselves. I should have realized when I had to valet park at the Hilton that things weren't going to be good. (Note to self: never park at the Hilton again, even though self and valet parking is the same price. $40 [the day's maximum] for the time I was there is outrageous, and to fund that whore's lifestyle? No thanks.)

So I killed time until 6 by having a look at what was drawing so many people to a mall. Nothing spectacularly special as far as shopping goes, even though there are a couple of stores that are exclusive to the Center, but other than those, it was the standard fare: Abercrappy, Aldo, Bath & Body Works, etc. It really was far too long to have to kill time, but I got a healthy dose of people watching in, so that was good.

Notice anything about this sign?
His last name is misspelled, thus prompting the quick set change in the next pic.


(and see how close I am to the front?
That's cause I got there early, but that didn't stop two bitches
and two emo wannabes from squeezing into the non-existent space.
If you wanna be up front, get there early, effers!)








The "after party," in the middle of the men's section


Complete with a DJ!