Correctionville Terquasquicentennial...?

I might be a little bored, as I was looking at Correctionville's city Web site. And it looks like they've already started the countdown to the next big celebration, the terquasquicentennial -- the 175th anniversary of C'ville. I can only imagine the excitement after having survived the sesquicentennial...

9021-Uh-Oh

It hurts me a little to know that they're remaking Beverly Hills, 90210. It hurts me even more knowing that a) Jessica Walter, who played Lucille Bluth on Arrested Development (and who I absolutely loved on that show!), is playing the grandmother of one of the teens, and 2) instead of having the midwestern schmucks come from Minnesota, she's now from Kansas City. Nice.

Click here to watch a cheesy preview and interview with cast members. Hello, Lori Laughlin, it's nice to see you back on The CW after getting canceled on Summerland (um, not that I watched it or anything). And welcome back to Jennie Garth, Tori Spelling, and Rob Estes. Good to see you've moved on beyond the original 90210 and Melrose Place.

Selling Point...

Today Tom and I attended several open houses around Kansas City.

When we went to look at this house, we were immediately overwhelmed by the hugeness of it. Everything we own would have fit into the living room, let alone the nine other rooms in the house.

We also were a little overwhelmed by the package of edible underwear (one of those candy necklaces, only shaped into a penis-covering G-string) that was prominently displayed on the dresser in the master bedroom. And that, my friends, is one way to sell your house.

SVH

If you know what I'm referring to based on that short acronym, then you've got to be as excited as I am.

They've "updated" the Sweet Valley High books, re-releasing the first two books in the series. SVH books were the ultimate brain candy. Incredibly trashy, incredibly ridiculous, incredibly fun to read. If Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen had been born 20 years earlier, I'm sure they would have been the models used for the original SVH book jackets. Heck, if I would have been born 10 years earlier, I could have enjoyed the first SVH books as they were initially released. (The first one was published in 1983 -- my calculations tell me that the Wakefield twins would be 41 today if they were real people.)

I can't wait to head to a bookstore tomorrow to pick them up. Granted, it's going to look a little weird, I know, but seriously. Elizabeth and Jessica, all over again. And thank God they're now a Size 4 (and no longer Size 6). Those '80s fat asses.

To read an entertaining review of the book, click here. To read an entertaining review of the fasions discussed in the book, click here.

One More Writer Scribes the Formulaic Plot...

I'm sure most of you have heard my tangent of how much I hate some so-called writers that have bestselling books with the same formulaic plot where you can essentially move one character from one book to another and still have the book make sense. My previous example of this: Nicholas Sparks. Boy/girl meet; boy/girl can't get together due to social differences/time constraints/something in a bottle; boy/girl finally get together for 2-3 chapters; boy/girl suffers tragic death/debilitating disease/obvious contrived fate. I'd rather watch Nancy Grace for days on end while sitting on a stiletto heel than read another book written by Nicholas Sparks.

Jodi Picoult has fallen into that same category for me. After reading three of her books now, I've decided that she is the female equivalent of Nicky baby. The only differences I've decided are that her books are a lot longer. She also does so much heavy foreshadowing in her books that to not figure out the ending by Page 12 means you aren't really paying attention to what she's written. Which you don't need to, because you can figure out the entire book by Page 12. It's like she's smacking you in the face with her "surprise" ending.

Of course, having not become a national bestselling author myself, I have little room to talk. This tangent would be a lot longer, but I still haven't fixed my keyboard's space bar, and it's rather like playing Whac-A-Mole. If you like Jodi and Nicky, well, um, that's great. Let's just not talk about them again.

Potluck Panic

I blinked, and it became November.

Tomorrow at work, we're having a Thanksgiving potluck. I have two strategies when dealing with potlucks: 1. sign up to bring beverages or 2. schedule a meeting with someone--anyone--during the duration of the potluck. Anything to spare my coworkers the agony of being subjected to my cooking. Unfortunately, against my better judgement, I allowed someone to talk me into bringing cornbread after someone had already signed up to bring the drinks.

Tom bought me a couple of boxes of Jiffy cornbread, but I don't think a boxed mix can save me. I'm going to blame the unintentional food poisoning I inflict on my coworkers on the barbequed turkey (yes, that's right -- they're barbequing a turkey) that they've ordered. That will teach them to invite me to a potluck where I have to bring a solid food item...

Holy Gaping Ear

My mother keeps asking to see a review of the last Harry Potter book on my blog. I'm not really sure why...although, in a lame effort to make myself sound either really cool or really pathetic and to end this first paragraph with something, I read the last book in roughly seven hours in one sitting.

Since I've been incredibly lazy with my blog over the last few months, mostly to which I blame having a spacebar on my keyboard that sticks unless I hit it in precisely the right place, I'm going to sum up the book with one thought:

Holy muggles, J.K. Rowling blasted out George's ear and left him with a gaping hole in the side of his head. This image bothers me more than the bloodbath that took place by the end of the book or the image of Hermoine and Ron getting intimate in order to reproduce children. (Oops, spoiler alert, right, kids?) So seven books later, all I'll ever remember about the series is that the one redheaded twin ends up with a hole in his head.

RA Deja Vu

At 4 a.m. this morning, Tom and I awoke to flashing strobelights lighting our bedroom, a foghorn alarm pulsating, and an electronic voice saying "A fire alarm has been activated. Evacuate the building. Proceed cautiously to the nearest exit. Do not take the elevator." (The voice sounded much like the robot from Lost in Space ("Danger, danger, Will Robinson.") and the lights reminded me of that scene from Flashdance, where Jennifer Beals performs a crazy techno-strip dance in electric blue spandex tights with her face painted white. Well, the lighting...not that Tom was wearing Lycra.)

After a couple minutes of stumbling around to find shoes, glasses, and keys to our loft, we barreled down the stairs to the courtyard of our building. We were the first ones out the door, with several of our fellow loft-dwellers behind. All six floors of the building had turned into a light show as the alarm lights flashed on and off.

The fire department arrived at 4:11 a.m. with two of the largest ladder fire trucks I've ever seen; at 4:12 a.m., the fire department departed. It was a false alarm. Supposedly a drunk guy had stumbled into the small entryway of our building, pulled the fire alarm, and then stumbled on down the street.

As Tom, our neighbors, and I sat there in our pajamas, watching the building pulsate and waiting for the all clear to return to our beds, it made me a little nostalgic for my RA days, where we routinely had to evacuate Currier or Stanley due to some drunken idiot pulling the fire alarm. Only this time I couldn't partake in all the action, and I missed not being able to regroup behind the Currier desk after all the excitement ended in order to plot our revenge against the perpetrator...if we ever found out his or her identity. Instead, Tom and I returned to our loft where we speculated as to who could think it was a good idea to place a fire alarm pull station in a location that anyone off the street could access.

Better Than Vodka

I am completely fascinated by DVR. It's probably one of the 10 best things to happen to me in years. I now can record all sorts of random, crappy television programs, and I no longer have to flip between programs. It's fantastic.

Part of the best thing about DVR is the free movie channels that we get with the digital cable box, including Sundance and IFC. I'm recording all those movies that I never got to see, or the ones that I remember from years ago.

Currently, I've set the DVR to tape The Heavenly Kid, perhaps Jason Gedrick's best work ever. It's showing Sunday at 3:30 a.m. on the Love Movie Channel. Before, I would have had to set my alarm clock to crawl out of bed to witness the heartwrenching scene where Bobby dies in a tragic drag racing event because his door jams and he can't jump out of the car in time before his car plummets over the edge of a cliff. Not now. Now I can watch the car careen over the cliff in slow motion as many times as I want, or at least until the DVR deletes the movie from the queue. Yay, technology!

Blog-united

Hello, my lovely blog. How I've missed you. We need to stay BFF 4ever and not let things like work and actual living, breathing friends and family get in the way of our friendship.

KC Roller Warriors

I've found a new calling in life: women's roller derby. If my love-hatred relationship with commas finally proves to be too intense to continue as a technical writer, I think I might join the Dreadnaught Dorothys...or maybe the Black-Eye Susans. Kansas City has its own roller derby league, and some of my friends and I attended their first game of the season.

The roller warriors are these fabulously costumed, roller skate wearing ladies, and they looked like they really enjoyed what they were doing, even down to what we speculated were choreographed fist fights. Thanks to Rollergirls on A&E, I understood who the blockers and jammers were and when the announcers threw out terms like "calling off the jam" and "riding the lip". I knew all the time I spent watching A&E would eventually pay off.

10 Days...

...until the greatest St. Patty's Day celebration ever! I cannot wait for the parade!

I'm thinking of making my own T-shirt, but I'm not sure what I want to put on it. Now that Target is mass-producing the T-shirt "Everybody Loves an Irish Girl", it doesn't seem like my best option. I've also found that "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" only leads to uncomfortable social situations.

Speaking of uncomfortable social situations, I wonder if Frank is singing at Gilhouly's again this year. Now that Baikie's in the UK, St. Patty's Day won't be the same without Baikie chasing Frank around Gilhouly's.

Stupid Child Safety Harnesses

I picked up Ryne from daycare a couple days last week. Perhaps one of the most horrifying experiences came when I couldn't figure out how to loosen the safety belt before strapping him into the carseat, which would have inevitably cut off his oxygen supply (allowing you to insert your own dead baby joke at this point). I could feel the eyes of judgemental parents as they casually threw their infants into their carseats, snapping them safely into position with a flick of a wrist.

30 minutes and 3 daycare workers later, we finally got him strapped in his carseat. I'm surprised they let me take him home.

I cannot wait until I'm 85 and he's strapping me into my car seat. It's payback time, baby. Just kind of like I can't wait until he's 5 or 6 and has hair that I can pull.

Mmm...Nutty Bars

If given the choice between Hostess or Little Debbie, I'm going to have to go with Little Debbie. Cheaper and just as unhealthy. And I find it much easier to refer to a snack cake as a "Swiss cake roll", as opposed to a "Ho-Ho" (although both phrases warm the cockles of my heart).

Duj-ka!

Somehow I missed this picture on Dujka's site when it was initially posted, and I felt the need to post it to compensate for the depressing picture of Britney (and my participating in the frenzy of her shearing. Keith Olbermann, as much as I love your gray-haired goodness, I'm a little disappointed she made your countdown two days in a row).


So, for a lack of motivation to actually write an entry on the decay of journalism in today's pop-culture centric world, I give you a happy picture of Dujka and me at the Dole Plantation shortly before it closed. Our visit had nothing to do with its closure. Or so we're telling people...

Rub My Head

I mean, let's all be honest here: who hasn't had the urge to shave their head?

Jimmy John's is Stalking Me

Every time I've moved in the past five years, a new Jimmy John's has opened nearby shortly after I have relocated. Case in point:

Iowa City: 320 E. Benton Street. In college, unbeknownst to us when we first moved in, our apartment was over the top of an empty business that was soon to become Jimmy John's. Michelle and I listened to construction around the clock during the summer (3 a.m.? Perfect time for using a sledge hammer to uproot a concrete floor). The construction continued after Michelle moved out, so erin was able to experience the joy of late-night construction activities. After several days of Jimmy John's being open, erin and I were dismayed to realize that three-day-old baked bread smells like vomit. We came to this conclusion after I mistakenly accused erin of being bulimic ("Um, erin, you feeling okay? I've noticed that the bathroom has smelled like puke for a week now, and I'm really concerned about you.")

Living above a Jimmy John's wasn't all bad. Erin developed a crush on one of the workers, and she was able to sweet talk him into hooking us up with free sandwiches. While a crazy party and illegal activities helped erin get over her crush on the Jimmy John's guy, we still used him for the free food. And perhaps the world's largest air freshener helped mask the vomit-odor problem.

Kansas City: 4300 Roanoke Pkwy. A couple months after I moved to the Plaza area, the first Jimmy John's in Kansas City opened three blocks away from where I lived. Occasionally I would stop by after work to buy either the #4 (Turkey Tom with no sprouts) or the #9 (Italian Night Club on wheat bread). (Yes, when it comes to Subway, Jimmy John's, and Quiznos, my sandwich preference is predictably the same; very rarely do I deviate from my sandwich choice.) After a particularly draining day at work, I stopped by Jimmy John's. I must have looked as depressed as I felt because the Jimmy John's man (a creepy sort of dude) gave me my sandwich for free. After that, any time I went into Jimmy John's and he was working, no payment was required for my sandwich. It all felt a little dirty, but I've come to realize that I'm willing to demagnatize my moral compass if it means free food.

Grand Blvd. The second Jimmy John's in KC will be opening approximately six blocks away from where I currently live. They recently removed the brown paper from the windows to reveal the familiar black-and-red checked tile pattern and the fascinating signs (such as So fresh you'll want to slap somebody or What happens in your mouth stays in your mouth). It's only a matter of days before it opens.

Frankly, I'm starting to get a little weirded out by my relationship with Jimmy John's, and I'll be more than a little peeved if I have to go back to paying for my #4.

American Fame Pt. 2: Forgetting Jonathon Brandis

This short film kind of makes me want to punch Cam Archer. And I'm usually the nonviolent type.

Prince Performing at the Half-Time Show

I think the giant basterdized Prince symbol serving as a stage says it all.

Generation Wimp

Last summer, I decided that I wanted to own a complete, matching set of the Time quartet. (When it comes to buying book series, I'm quite particular. If I buy the first one in paperback, they all have to be in paperback. If it's a certain publication, I make sure that I'm buying the same publication.)

I was able to buy three of the books at a used bookstore, and then purchased the fourth one at Barnes and Noble. I was distraught to realize that when they rereleased the series, they turned the previously ominous covers into pastel versions for the new generation.

The cover of A Wrinkle in Time when I first read it in middle school:

And then today's cover of the book:

For a generation that is allegedly desensitized to violence and all things scary, I find this cover a little...lacking. You might as well tell the kids that they're about to read a Babysitters Club book with this cover.

Speaking of The Babysitters Club, you cannot buy this series directly off the Barnes and Noble shelf (only online). Or the Sweet Valley High series, for that matter. Um, you know, not that I routinely browse the juvenile fiction section for the brain candy that filled my 4th through 6th grade reading days. (Although only 20 more shopping days until my birthday.)

Side Note: This paragraph on the Wikipedia page caught my eye (ahem, Gwen):

Sweet Valley Heights
This is an as yet unpublished spin-off of the franchise described by Francine Pascal in the April/May 2005 edition of Bust magazine. According to the interview, Sweet Valley Heights will feature characters from the original series living in a gated community and aged in their 20s or 30s. Some sources claim the title has been changed to Sweet Valley Confidential. The Bust interview claimed the initial publication would appear in late 2005, but as of 2006 it has not appeared.

It's like Melrose Place meets Sweet Valley High with everyone being legal to do all those dirty things that they did in the Sweet Valley High series. Phew -- I'm not sure if I can stand the suspense of waiting for this series to hit the shelves...