dulcet tones

Eric Strausser,

If you're reading this, STOP! It's bad and wrong and you shouldn't be doing it!

That is all.

L

Anyone want to see a soccer game on Aug 18th? The NY team (Red Bulls, really?!) play the LA Galaxy, and clearly I only want to go because Beckham will be playing.

And I love him. And would LOVE to see him play.

So, anyone?

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday dear Liiii-indzzzz

Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuu...


Hope your day is FAB!!

:-)

What Will the Movie of Your Life Be Called?




Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Dear god in heaven...I'm in Tuscany and very, very drunk so my apologies for the following content...

First of all, the subject line, really? (btw, I have to freakin' hunt every motherfuckin' time for the "?" and the "'" as they are SO not in the right place!) There was a stupid fucking whore who went to TELL on me at the gym a week ago Friday night after work because I was on the cross trainer but DARED to make a phone call on my BB while she was on the machine next to me with her headphones on watching TV? Hi, is this the 5th grade and I stole your pencil case, you stupid fucking whore. And believe me, I so wanted to use the "C word" there...

But, alas, this has taken me FOREVER to write and it's 4a, and I'm very, very drunk...

V E R Y

But I am having an exceptionally fabulous time in in Italy!! I flew into London on Friday with my boss, had like 4 hours in the city, then flew on to Pisa with her. Then drove about 20 min to her villa where I'm staying until the 18th.

GOOD MOTHERFUCKING TIMES!

Oh. My. God.

Lots and lots of wine. LOTS. And tonight she flew back to London and Will, who works on her grape and olive farm, took us out to dinner and to clubs after. w00!! LOVE LOVE LOVE Will, and had the best time tonight!

Imagine, if you will, the band at the club. Talking, talking, talking in Italian, and then bizarrely singing in English - "Stand By Me"?! followed by one of my all time faves, "Sweet Home Alabama"?! Hi, Skynyrd in Italy!! Com e dy.

Will could not be more lovely, and Ruby and I had a fantastic time.

:::sigh:::

Time for bed.

But last, and certainly not least, fuck you, Chelsea! HA HA HA!!!!

Man U - the premiership is ours!!

w00!!!!!!!

I tried. I didn't love it from the beginning but I hoped it would get better. So I kept reading. And hoping.

But to no avail.

I STRONGLY suggest you avoid this book at all costs.

Unless you enjoy being alternately bored and irritated.

At the end it was all I could do to not throw the stupid thing across the subway car.

I think I actually said, out loud, on the train, "Seriously?!" When I read the last page.

I'm actually angry that the book was so bad, and disappointed in myself for not bailing on it.

I want Adam Rapp to give me my money back.

Wee World

OK, the pre-game segment on Brian Piccolo and Walter Peyton totally made me teary...WTF? I can only blame it on the movie, BRIAN'S SONG that I remember watching on TV in the late 70s/early 80s. I think this is where my love for all movies sports-related comes from. That and SOMETHING FOR JOEY.

GAH.

That would be the combination to the lock I had to buy today. It's been so long since I've been to the gym that I forgot the combination to my old lock.

LAME.

I started my pre-Oscar movie-viewing fiesta yesterday, seeing two - WE ARE MARSHALL and BLOOD DIAMOND.

I knew I wanted to see WE ARE MARSHALL from the first time I saw the preview. Sign me up for any movie-based-on-a-true-story-about-sports - I LOVE THEM. MIRACLE - saw it, LOVED it, such a great story and I clearly remember all that happening when I was a kid. The Marky Mark movie, INVINCIBLE, saw it, thoroughly enjoyed it. I even saw and liked The Rock hoodlum/football movie.

So WE ARE MARSHALL is just what I'd expected, the classic sad-yet-uplifting story. I fell for it big time, and was emotionally exhausted by the end. For godsake, the story STARTS with a plane crash that kills almost a whole team. Good film.

Then I met up with justsayin and we saw BLOOD DIAMOND. I wasn't particularly looking forward to this one, but I like Leo and had heard good things and it's going to be Oscar-nominated so I'd have to see it eventually. Turns out it's a fantastic film. Very much like THE DEPARTED in that it's not always easy to watch, lots of really bad stuff happens and the tension is sometimes almost unbearable, but the screenplay is unexpectedly good. I was completely invested in the characters and once again drained by the end of the film.

Karen and I went to dinner afterward and then for coffee as we had LOTS to catch up on.

Now I must drag my sorry ass to the gym again, though since they have decided to not only put a shuttle bus in place of the 1 train between 137th and 96th but also make the A train local I think I'll head over to the ghetto Bally's in my own 'hood.

Good. Times.

From VARIETY:

Blige tops Grammy nominations
Blunt, Dixie Chicks up for three of top four awards

Mary J. Blige snared eight nominations Thursday, including record of the year and song of the year, to lead the 49th annual Grammy Awards.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers grabbed six noms, while James Blunt, the Dixie Chicks, John Mayer, Danger Mouse, Prince, Rick Rubin, will.i.am and John Williams had five nominations each.

I so don't particularly care about the Grammys as I honestly think most new music is super freakin' lame, but this made me very, very happy.

Record of the Year
Album of the Year
Song of the Year
Best Country Album
Best Country Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal

All 8 guys in my group at the British Bank (the execs, if you will, that I assist) have left the office for an "off-site."

The "off-site" is, in reality, this.

Com. e. dy.

ST LOUIS CARDINALS ARE THE WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS

Victory is particularly sweet for the team everyone considered the underdogs.

Suck it, Tigers, and for that matter everyone who thought they couldn't do it.

Life is pretty fanfuckingtastic.

Never thought I'd hear those words at the British Bank, but I when I went up to gossip with my friend Rachel one of her guys was on the floor next to his desk. Bit surreal. An ambulance came to fetch him but it didn't seem particularly serious, at least he was conscious and such.

Until my trip to the 5th floor my entry was going to be entitled, "Bitch, if you look at my shoes ONE more time I'm going to punch you in the face."

I had one of the most irritating interviews yet, and that's saying a lot considering how many I've been on. In all honesty, I won't go on just any interview now. I'm on to the bait-and-switch and general un-savoriness of most recruiting firms now and I just won't bother. This is how it goes: I see a job posting on craigslist or monster.com careerbuilder or whatever and I submit my resume. 95% of the time it's not the company that is actually hiring that posted the position but some recruiting firm. I'd say of these firms, about 10% aren't completely incompetent. So then someone will call me and gush about my resume and say how I am "perfect!" for the job but they'll need to meet me before passing my resume along to the company that has the position to fill.

So I go and meet the recruiter and they will either LOVE me and say that they'll pass along my resume right away or they'll be lame/uninterested/sad people who clearly weren't impressed with me at all, which is fine, I'm so just not everyone's type, I get that. But they'll still say that they'd pass my resume to their client, which we both know is a baldfaced lie. Either way, the job description and/or salary differs from what was posted. Sometimes it's been filled, but "I have something else you'd be great for! The money's a little less..." Or they wouldn't even pretend to be offering the job that I was interested in. Or they didn't have anything permanent but if I was interested in temp-to-perm, would I take a few tests?

No, I won't take any of your tests. I am flat-out not interested in being hired for ANY job based on my typing speed and Word/Excel skills. Hi, I've been an assistant for almost TEN years so fuck you and your tests. Recruit at a secretarial college, assholes.

So you see how it goes.

Today I only went because the office was literally 3 minutes from the British Bank and I thought, what the hell? So I went on my lunch hour and clearly wasn't going to traipse over in my heels so I was wearing a skirt, sweater, and my Converse. Now, I'm obviously NOT meeting the client so I didn't even bring my heels.

After making me wait for 20 minutes (and the whore knew I was on my lunch hour) I finally met with her and first of all she was dim and I just don't deal well with that. How many more times can I explain my VERY straightforward resume to you, dumbass? Then she kept looking at what I was wearing. Really? Fuck off. I'm on my lunch, not in my office, and other than the Converse my ensemble was completely appropriate for a corporate environment. At the end she mentioned no less than 3 times - did I have a suit? While looking me up and down. If this had happened at the beginning I'd have just walked out. That's how much I was just NOT HAVING IT.

I'm sure I'll never hear from her again even though she asked me to alter something on my resume and email it to her again. Whatever. The job ended up being $10k less than advertised for a 55 hr work week. Thanks, but no thanks.

On somewhat happier news, the British Bank is slowly sucking me in. I had to take a drug test and get fingerprinted as they are bringing me on as a longterm temp. I'm happy about this only because I have no obligation to them but I'll have a steady income as I continue to look for a job. And while the advertising firm I met with last week has seemingly lost interest, I have an interview next week with another one and I'm kinda excited about that one. We'll see.

OK, I have to tidy Florence's desk and get all of my personal emails out of her inbox before I leave.

:-)

Oh, and STL is up 3 games to 1 - w00!!

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday dear ohsofierce,

Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuu...


I hope your day is LOVELY and I think you need to take a damn trip out to NYC!

:-)

It’s not even noon and I’ve already run out of things to do…I’ve read the NY Times and Variety.com, checked the job listings on Craigslist, even went to the Grey’s Anatomy boards which caused me nothing but pain. I loved the writers’ blog, but seriously? The losers who comment are sad little freaks. And the fan site is about 1000 times worse. But I had to find out something about the whole guy who plays George coming out saga. Plus, as I might have mentioned, I have absolutely N O T H I N G to do.

Well, other than bask in the glory that is the fact that the Cardinals beat the Mets and are going to the World Series. For the second time in 3 years. AWESOME. I was talking to my sister and trying to remember what the rivalry between the Cardinals and Mets is all about and all we can remember is during the 80s it was at its peak and a DJ on KSHE started the whole “Mets are pond scum” thing. I mean, there has always been a rivalry with the Cubs, but that’s understandable as they are relatively close to STL, but since they never win it’s more like a fun bit of taunting. With the Mets its pretty much blatant loathing.

I’m not sure the Cardinals can beat the Tigers but it’s not nearly as important as the fact that they knocked the Mets out of the playoffs.

Life is good.

SUCK.

IT.


STL 3, Mets 1.

AWESOME.

OK, THE NINE is a keeper. I finally watched the first two episodes last night and it’s good. Really good. I can’t imagine the Big Question – what went on in the bank for 52 hours – will hold up forever, I mean eventually they are going to run out of things that happened. But the characters are good and there are so many things you want to know after the first 30 minutes that you can’t help but keep watching.

Dammit.

Clearly I’ve been watching a lot of tv lately, way more than usual, but I have an issue with guest stars on series. Is there anyone watching who doesn’t realize that when there is a guest star that you recognize in a seemingly unimportant role that this person will somehow end up being “important,” usually guilty. Doesn’t matter what show, they will have done something bad. If you put Edward Furlong on CSI: NY as a random college student you KNOW he’s going to be involved and probably guilty. If you put Betty Buckley on WITHOUT A TRACE she’s going to not be the nice mom that they want you to think she is. Peter Graves on COLD CASE as a harmless survivor of the Holocaust? Right, except for when he turns out to be a Nazi camp guard. I wish they’d knock it off, is most of America really that stupid? Oy.

I scored a ticket to The Times They Are a Changin’ with Julie and KLui on Wednesday night and enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. Twyla’s choreography is what you’d expect, sometimes cool and sometimes ridiculous, but Michael Arden is fanfreakintastic. If he could have sung all of the songs the show would have been nearly perfect. Damn. As it is it’s still enjoyable, Bob Dylan songs are so much better when someone else sings them. Story is negligible. And the backstage tour to play on the bouncy stage was an extra fun bonus.

Julie and I also saw LITTLE CHILDREN. Let’s not kid ourselves, we went because Patrick Wilson is hot, but the movie was a lot like THE DEPARTED in that it’s not always easy to watch. People are doing stupid, bad things and you spend most of the movie waiting for the really bad stuff to happen to them. But in the end it's a well done, enjoyable movie.

But I gotta say that the best thing I’ve seen in a long while is A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS. I thought this was a truly amazing film. I’d heard good things about it back when I was at SonyBMG and it was going to be in the Toronto Film Festival. The cast was promising, Robert Downey Jr, Rosario Dawson, Dianne Wiest, and my BF Channing Tatum. I didn’t hold out a lot of hope for him, he’s not the strongest actor but he’s just so damn pretty. But it turns out that both he and Shia LaBeouf (yeah, dorky kid with the Jew ‘fro from HOLES) were phenomenal. My only issue is that while I can sort of see Shia growing up to be RDJ, I can’t quite see my BF growing up to be Eric Roberts... But it’s a great film with a wonderful cast, excellent story and it just looks good: the sets, the location, everything sucks you in to a crappy Queens neighborhood back in the day.

Loved. It.

Oh, KLui.

I was surprisingly productive today. Got up at 8am to go to Target before the madness and then did laundry, cleaned the kitchen, and then my bedroom.

And I've continued to make great strides on clearing off the ol' DVR. I'm actually enjoying the new shows I've watched so far. THE CLASS is alright, I'm hoping it gets better, but the fact that it's one of the few sitcoms that doesn't suck will keep me watching. JERICHO is good, if a bit of a downer. But I do love Skeet so I'm going to go with it. HEROES is great, I have to admit I was totally caught up in it. I think it helped that I watched 3 episodes of each in a row so I was all invested in the story lines. I watched the first two UGLY BETTY's and I actually teared up both times. What is wrong with me?!

Now I'm giving SIX DEGREES a shot. I didn't have a lot of hope for it at first, but after two episodes I'm still interested. I almost wish I wasn't, I don't have the time for more shows, goddammit.

Julie and I watched FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS and I think I'm gonna have to watch that one as well - what am I gonna do if I ever get a real job? It's not like I don't still watch all three CSIs, NUMB3RS, CRIMINAL MINDS, COLD CASE, WITHOUT A TRACE and ER. Plus I still have THE NINE waiting for me. AND I'm still waiting for the pilot episodes of STUDIO 60, SMITH, and BROTHERS & SISTERS so I can watch the episodes I have of those taking up room on my DVR.

I'm never going to catch up.

:::sigh:::

Saturday I did nothing all day long then I actually left the house and saw KEEPING MUM, which I loved, and then Julie met me for THE DEPARTED. Intense movie, not the kind you'd want to watch over and over, but excellent. Not a feel good film, but the last scene makes it all worth it.

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birhtday to you,

Happy Birthday dear itsfreud,

Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuu!


Now, for the love of all that is holy, come to New York already!


;-)

As if I needed further proof that I’ve somehow brought the full wrath of the lord down upon myself. I mean besides the whole not-having-a-job-yet thing. Now he has taken my goddamn motherfucking cable away. On the first night of the new Fall TV Season.

WHHHHHYYYYYYY??????

Because although I am writing this at 9.46pm on Monday night, there is no telling when I’ll actually be able to get online to post it.

GODDAMMIT.

I hate Time Warner Cable with the white hot passion of one thousand suns. This problem started Friday night. So I called them 3 times on Saturday. No problem in our neighbourhood so it was just our house. Fab. By Saturday evening service was back in the living room and we had internet again, but it was still patchy in my room. So I made an appt for Friday, hopefully I won’t have to work. Sunday it was OK, not great but it was still working.

And now? Nothin’. And it would be some consolation if I could still watch what I have on the DVR but, funnily enough, my box keeps searching for a signal and rebooting itself so I can’t even do that.

It would be one thing if cable was like $20 a month, but we pay almost TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS for cable and internet and I want some goddamn motherfucking service for my money. I don’t want to hear you can come in five days, I want someone at my house N O W.

Bastards.

I am so beyond irritated.

All this almost takes away the joy from seeing my BF The Rock in GRIDIRON GANG this weekend. I know my love is wrong but I can’t help it, I find him SO appealing. :::sigh::: It’s not that I think he’s a good actor, dear god, no. But he’s just so lovely. Big and tall and pretty. Oh my. And of course I teared up once or twice during the film. Delinquents overcoming the odds. Yeah. And it’s based on a documentary so during the credits they showed scenes from that an I got teary all over again.

Other than that I did a whole lot of nothing over the weekend. I went to the gym and ran some errands and sat outside in Worldwide Plaza reading and enjoying the sun. It was freakin’ gorgeous all weekend. And I love when I’m so into a book that I can’t wait to get back to it. It wasn’t even that great of a book, but it’s one in a series that I’ve been reading for years but somehow I’d missed this one. So even though I knew how it had to end, there was a lot of back story I’d missed and I was fully enjoying that.

Too bad I finished because right now I have ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD…

It’s 10 o’clock. I guess I’ll just go to bed… How did the pioneers do it? I’d die of boredom. I feel like I should stitch a sampler or something.



EDIT: Yes, it's true, our cable returned tonight.

WEDNESDAY.

M O T H E R F U C K E R S