Julie & Julia

But if the men had been portrayed as more high-spirited, it might have taken on intriguing dimensions. Both husbands are, frankly, a little boring: They’ve been assigned their supporting roles in their marriages and are reluctant to question the singlemindedness of their wives.

Ebert on "Julie & Julia"

Gee, that sounds like the wife/girlfriend role in oh, just about every other movie made. I’m sure he’s equally upset about women in movies not having anything to do but be supportive of their husbands.

Thoughts upon watching Journey's "Separate Ways" video

Next time I strut around a warehouse, I'm definitely wearing white heels and a black leather miniskirt.

Air keyboard is just lame. Sorry.

Wait, when did Derek Smalls become the drummer for Journey?

Wow, Steve Perry is going to burst a blood vessel.

Journey - Separate Ways
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Danny Sullivan's tweet: "steve brill who started clear is heading up that company to save newspapers. good luck with that"

Struck me as odd, because I don't think of him as "Steve Brill who started Clear," I think of him as "Steve Brill, founder of 'American Lawyer' " or "Steve Brill, founder of 'Brill's Content' " or "Steve Brill, who created Court TV," so the idea of him doing a publishing venture is not that surprising to me.

But then, Wikipedia seems to think that Brill is "best known as the founder of Verified Identity Pass, Inc." Reminds of when I overheard someone refer to Mikhail Baryshnikov as "that guy from 'Sex and the City.' "

Commercials that suck, again

OK this is for Carmen.



Because no good parent would let their kids watch TV when they could be feeding them donuts!



This one I can't find a cliup of but here's the synopsis: Two moms are spying on their kids, who are playing outside on a swing set. Whew, how tiring trying to watch them. Suddenly, they get an idea! Cut to: kids running around Chuck E Cheese while the moms have a soda. Thanks Chuck E Cheese! Why let my kids be outdoors when they can run around unsupervised in a dirty ball pit!

At state-mandated career seminar, which would be very useful if I lost my job in 1985. Instructor told us we should always come by the office, because the web site "can't be updated at the last minute" e.g. the day before. Also asked people in the session to explain LinkedIn; she's never used it "because I have a job." But she's a "certified resume writer," so there's that.

Meant for each other

So last week, the Heffalump's teacher told us she had been having some issues lately with general grouchiness and crabbiness, which, um, yeah, sorry about that. Those are my genes, and she should be over it in about 20, 25 years (or at least have learned to keep it all in an internal monologue). In the meantime, feel free to tell her to stuff it, pipsqueak. (Or "redirect all that great energy and assertiveness in a positive direction! Yes!")

Anyway, the teacher used the phrase "sassy talk" in this conversation, which led to me telling LawyerMan that I had to stop letting Jackee babysit, which led to about a week of us doing Jackee impersonations.

And we've now written an entire SNL sketch called "Sassytalk with Jackee" which would have been hysterical about 20 years ago.

At this point all one of us has to do is say "Maaaaaary" and the other one is proactically rendered speechless.

Testy test

Can you imply that on television?

I saw this commercial the other night, and was only half paying attention. Then I had to rewind the DVR a few times to make sure it was really going where I thought it was going.

Spam or scam?

So over the weekend, I got some bizarro texts on my phone. A string of three messages announcing the "sad news" that the prime minister of Zimbabwe had been in a car accident and his wife had been killed. LawyerMan and I were like "huh that's odd," I deleted them, and didn't think about it again until I picked up the paper the next day and saw that the PM had, in fact, been in a car accident, and his wife was killed.

Then a day later, I got another text, addressed to someone named "Simba" talking about the accident and the effect on the Zimbabwe political scene and stock market.

So now I'm wondering if I just got a phone number that used to belong to Simba from Zimbabwe, or if this is some elaborate scam.

Any thoughts?

In Transition

As part of my severance package, my company gave me "career transition" assistance. First, weeks of phone calls, where no one can pronounce my name, or even actually answer the phone, for that matter. Every call goes to a machine, and I get a call back a few days later. I finally get scheduled (after massive confusion), and schlep into Boston for the meeting.

So the meeting kicks off when the leader announces that he's filling in for the regular instructor, who has a spinning injury. Then he spends the first ten minutes cracking jokes about how we all look so serious. "Why is no one smiling?" Ass.

It starts out ok, we introduce ourselves, talk about what we dide, what are strengths are. I'm pretty much the only one who isn't in financial services (hi Fidelity!) or biotech. Most of them are "project managers" or "program directors" but even after they give their little intros I have no idea what they actually do.

The woman sitting next to me has been a senior administrative assistant at a major financial firm for the last 30 years; she's floored "I've never written a resume. I have no idea what to do next."

For people like her, I think this sort of thing is useful. For me, I don't know. The next two hours are spent on how to write your "personal statement," finding buzzwords for your resume, and psychological babble about how you shouldn't be depressed because it will show up in interviews.

At one point, the speaker has drawn a chart on the whiteboard and is talking about how you should focus your resume on the 25%, not the 75%. I finally raise my hand and say that I'm not really following, can I get a concrete example? The answer clearly is no, after another 10 minutes of babble, where he asks what an editor does, I give up.

Toward the end of the meeting, the guy starts talking about some of the courses offered by the program, and says "we have one on LinkedIn." The bald guy who worked at a design firm, who clearly knows and uses LinkedIn, questions this, asking for more info. The instructor starts to explain what LinkedIn is, and as bald guy and I roll our eyes into the next room, he says in a tone of awe "did you know they have job listings there?"

I head for the door.

Random

It's going around Facebook; I'm reposting here (for posterity, clearly).

25 random things about me

1. While I am very short (5 feet, 1/2 inch), I am not the shortest person in my family.

2. I have an intense, and some would say irrational, dislike of walk-a-thons, bike-a-thons, the Boston Marathon, and basically anything that ties up traffic in the name of charity or a race.

3. I can do a cartwheel and a roundoff.

4. I sing in the car, all the time, loudly, to the annoyance and embarrassment of my husband and daughters.

5. I have a brain full of trivia and pop-culture, and I don't entirely know how it got there. Henry VIII's wives and the lyrics to Charles in Charge are just sitting in my brain, taking up the space that used to be filled with the quadratic equation.

6. I can curl my tongue.

7. I was 22 before I learned how to pump gas (Hey - I'm from New Jersey.)

8. Sen. Arlen Specter once patted me on the head while I was interviewing him.

9. I have a big mouth, and a bad temper, and they've gotten me in trouble more than once.

10. I don't tend to have favorite foods, songs, or books. I fluctuate.

11. But when I do have a song I like, I will play it over and over and over again. Like, a dozen times in a row.

12. I didn't realize until I went to college that it was considered rude to read while you were eating, because my family would just sit at dinner with books and newspapers.

13. I can't watch movies or TV shows where there's drowning, or possible drowning. I've never been in trouble in water, and I'm fine on an actual boat or swimming, but I can't watch it without freaking out.

14. Therefore, I've never seen "Titanic"

15. I'm allergic to aspirin and ibuprofen.

16. I knew one month after we started dating that I would marry my husband. Took him a while longer.

17. I can't not watch Die Hard. If it's on, I'm watching.

18. I have a tendency to (unintentionally) mimic the speech patterns or accent of whoever I'm talking to.

19. I overuse parentheses and semicolons in my writing.

20. Things I get from my mom: my ability to schmooze, feet prone to callouses.

21. Things I get from my dad: my sense of humor, my temper.

22. Things I've given to my daughters: my stubbornness (some would say strength of will? Hopefully?), my height.

23. I have very thick, very curly hair. It took me a long time to learn to live with it, but now I kind of like it.

24. My feet turned in when I was born, and I wore a brace on my feet when I was very little. My parents sent me to ballet school "to learn how to be graceful." Didn't take.

25. I've really been enjoying reading everyone else's random stuff, but am secretly worried my stuff isn't interesting enough.

Trying Martha Stewart's meatloaf recipe tonight, and realized half-way through that I didn't have enough ketchup, so I ended up squeezing about 1/4 cup out of a big pile of leftover fast food packets. I somehow don't envision Martha doing this (maybe in prison?)

UPDATE: recipe is tasty, but waaaay to wet and soggy. It was not so much a loaf as a meaty mush ball. But a yummy meaty mush ball, topped with crispy onions.

Golden Globes

I keep mixing up Amy Adams and Isla Fisher. Also, I don't think Tracy Morgan is actually acting on 30 Rock.

When I was a girl, the rule was, you shoveled your driveway and the sidewalk in front of the house as far as your property line. I don't know if that was the law, or just the custom, but all the kids at the local elementary school walked to school, so it made sense. There was always one house where they didn't bother shoveling the sidewalk, and we would always make it a point to throw snowballs at their house as we walked by.

Where I live now, there is no such law, and there is definitely no custom. Most people don't even shovel, if it's any serious snow (and we do get serious snow up here in the frozen North); in my schmancy town everyone has a plow guy.

But the plow guy only comes if it's a significant amount, and today we had this ugly slushy mess, that I knew would turn into ice this evening, and I really hate having a messy driveway (I hate having snow all over my car, too. When I lived in Jersey and parked outside, I always made sure I cleaned off the whole car -- not just the front windshield. And I *always* cleaned off the roof, even though I'm short, and had to use a broom to do it. If you don't clean off the roof, big sheets of frozen snow slide off your roof when you drive and hit the car behind you, which makes you a jackass. So clean your roof.) So I was out there today shoveling up slush, and feeling guilty because of the big drifts on the sidewalk where the plows push all the snow. I know I'm not responsible for that, and really, I couldn't shovel it if I wanted to, by this point it's a foot high pack of ice. But I felt bad nonetheless.