giggles and struggles

can't quite remember where i found these, probably at agirlandaboy though things have been popping up simultaneously on the blogs i read and in my inbox these past few days (most recently garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com)

barack obama is your new bicycle

and

hillary is mom jeans

just brilliant.


aside from that, insomnia continues, followed by unintentional napping. today the napping was so necessary that after inadvertently falling asleep on my couch, i had a dream about inadvertently falling asleep on my couch. go subconscious. we're so in sync.

mauricio was not quite as terrifying this morning as expected. i was better prepared, he gave me a ton of stuff, but i was able to sort out what was relevant and what was not and thus come out less depressed than last time. i feel bad ignoring half of what he said, especially as he's one of my graders, but he hasn't read anything i have and doesn't totally get my project. so hopefully it'll be fine.


rooting for obama on this end of things. come on texas. msnbc makes good background noise while i finish up some of my reading. gobama. obamanation. obamaniac. its just so much more fun to pun with!

mmmmmm hott

i want me one of these please! of course, i'd have nothing to talk to him about.... would need much much much brushing up on my classical music first. but really. gorgeous, venezuelan, and extremely talented! hott. with two ts.

amusing things for sunday nights

back in chicago after fabulous long weekend in minnesota. ill write more about it later - right now i need to catch up on some reading. but something to amuse



(thanks projectrungay!)

first comes love, then comes....

"A Political Marriage that Never Quite Fit"

isn't that just the perfect headline for that image? i haven't read the article yet, but i just love the photo.

oooops

well, i haven't gone to sleep yet, so it still counts as today. right?
sorry. no book today... i can't get a book out tonight. i've spent the last four hours going through new york times ads from the 1930s looking for travel advertisements for guatemala.... a few of my favorite finds....





and, though it's not to do with travel, it does have the word guatemala in it!

It's Noah!!!

This guy is the sweetest, funniest, most talented person i've met in a long time. and he's huge. making costumes for this guy was ridiculous. he's got a 50" chest. but he sings like a nightingale both in tenor and soprano ranges. he was our ralph rackstraw last year in pinafore and when he descended from the sky on a ladder singing and swinging, everyone went crazy. he also sweats like a pig and requires lots of laundry, but he's so willing to help out that it didn't really matter.


if you can't guess which one he is, well.... and listen to the little clip on the article - ignore the dumb harvard jocks - and remember that this is him after playing a football game. there's also a better bit at the end with an orchestra (not so hot) and all. sadly, i don't think he's in mikado this year.... oh well... i hope he gets to sing from here on out.

jutting breasts

"You don’t even have to wait for the flying spears and airborne bodies that — if you watch the movie in one of the hundreds of theaters equipped with 3-D projection — will look as if they’re hurtling directly at your head. You could poke your eye out with one of those things! Which is precisely what I thought when I first saw Ms. Jolie’s jutting breasts too."

“Beowulf” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Gory violence and a naked Angelina Jolie avatar.


rp and i have committed to not seeing this movie (apparently the giggles i post are for movies i don't want to see). but we are cracking up over this review. thank you nytimes.

Fading Hopes

"Wang got the news in a voice-mail message. “I just don’t understand why the U.S. Olympic Committee won’t push for me,” she said. “How can there only be one person representing all of North and South America?”"


well, this is both a giggle and a disappointment. i got so excited last night when the nytimes homepage had a link to an article about rhythmic gymnastics under the sports subtitle. must be a very slow day in sports for my beloved discipline to make the homepage. so that was a hurrah! notice for rsg! but then i read the article and realized that in the long run it means even less notice - without an athlete in the competition it means its highly doubtful that the networks will show any rsg during their broadcasts. damn it!

on the article itself, i do find it a little ridiculous that they managed to get such a horrible shot of lisa for the top of the page. really - i'm sure she did many an impressive thing while the photographer was there - why show something so ungainly and ugly?

also - the us trying to get one of the tripartite commission spots for countries that send small delegations? hahahahah i can totally see why the us olympic committee wouldn't go for it, even if it makes me sad. lisa is a very good gymnast - she was competing back when i was still coaching and we saw her a few times. i can't believe she's only 19 and admitting that her olympic dreams are crushed, but it really is true. there's very little chance of a 23 yr old gymnast competing.

it's a beautiful sport that has ruined my back and hips for life, but i still wish it got more attention here in the states. so long as it stays in the olympics - there are always calls to cut it out in favor of something else, mostly coming from the us where it is little known despite its huge popularity in europe and parts of asia - i'll be okay. and i just have to hope that wherever i am next summer is more interested than people here so i can see at least some of the competition.

green with envy

"Dear reader! Should this column impress you as being more than usually lyrical, recalling perhaps the imagery and elegance of poetry by Baudelaire or Verlaine; should it seem a bit decadent, redolent of Oscar Wilde’s withering hauteur; should it have a touch of madness or perversity, combining, say, the tastes of Toulouse-Lautrec with the passions of van Gogh; should it simply sound direct and forceful and knowing like one of Ernest Hemingway’s characters; should it do any or all of that, let me credit something that each of these figures fervently paid tribute to: the green fairy, the green goddess, the green muse, the glaucous witch, the queen of poisons."

what is an exclamation point doing in the nytimes??? i have always wanted to try absinthe, actually...

strike!

"On the far side of the alley is a gigantic American flag draped across the exposed brick. Since the rest of the décor is such a consciously ironic throwback to Midwestern working-class haunts, it’s unclear if the patriotism is meant earnestly. Considering the varied clientele, the precise level of sincerity is impossible to gauge."

nytimes giggle of the day. actually, it's in tomorrow's times, but it's online already, so it counts.

i love bowling. seriously loooooove bowling. especially when it includes the option for beer. the two bowling alleys at home are definitely down home "working-class haunts" with pitchers of cheap beer and lots of truck drivers shooting pool. but when we go, of course we go all hipster. and generally fail miserably at breaking 100. during senior week last year, a bunch of us found a place in jamaica plain in boston that was more in the hipster vein of things, a little more conscious of its appeal, decked out in vintage art with sangria and a tapas style menu. also much fun, if a little more expensive. there are a couple bowling alleys that i've walked past here, but they all look upscale and shiny and very expensive. plus, i'm not sure how into bowling my friends here are. wish i'd found the place in jp earlier in college so we could have gone more often, but i'll always know it's there. and when i'm in brooklyn, maybe i can convince rs etc to go bowling with me. but only if we can get a lane.

if you're in boston and want a fun place to dance/chill/bowl:


of course, being boston, it's candlepin bowling

a deadpan sociopath with a funny haircut

just as the haircut suggests a lost Beatle from hell



a movie i don't particularly want to see, but gotta love the nytimes reviewers

as they say in france: what's this?

"Perhaps the most astute critic present was a small boy sitting atop his father’s shoulders. As a model walked by in lacy underwear, he dug his fists into the man’s hair and began giggling wildly."

thank you for making me laugh, nytimes