Film Trivia and My Week Thus Far

Last night I watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation both with and without the DVD commentary. That's 206 minutes of movie viewing the same material twice. This is what I learned:

1. Even on his downward spiral, Chevy Chase was still a comic genius.

2. LA really can look like Chicago during winter time and dupe me enough to think that's real snow.

3. The nippily girl's stage name is Scorcese - what the hell was she thinking?

4. Apparently everyone asks the kid who plays Rusty if he made out with his sister off camera. Eww.

5. Aunt Bethany was the original Betty Boop AND Olive Oil.

6. Beverly D'Angelo is obsessed with her hair in this movie - I don't think she had the same hairdo twice.

7. This was the highest grossing of all the Vacation movies - rightly so. This movie kicked ass and deserves a twice viewing in one night.

Halloween turned out to have some great weather. My co-workers and I took advantage of this and dressed up like burritos to claim our free lunch at Chipotle that day. Free lunch always tastes better.

I can't wait to see Borat! 84 minutes long, but I think it's going to be 84 minutes of pure entertainment.

Neilies lost

Yesterday I ventured out into DC's new cold weather to go to a club to see Super Diamond. Unfortunately this Neil Diamond cover band was not as exciting as I had hoped. I spent a lot of the time scoping out a couple in the audience getting their groove on in a "you shouldn't do that in front of children" manner. They were actually very funny - the guy looked like an accountant and the woman looked like a school teacher. This concert was by far the whitest concert I have ever been to - in the words of my companion, it was vanilla. The band played Neil a little too hard and didn't interact with the audience the way Neil does. Sad times.

I'm going to make a concerted effort to unpack my closet tomorrow - too many clothes! I should just give them away.

Stack: The Blog

Just a random thought - I think there should be a blog devoted entirely to Robert Stack. It would be a hit.

And maybe one to Bea Arthur. Or a six degrees of Bea Arthur. Now that would be interesting.

Chocolate, history, and Amish country

Neuhaus has always had chocolate made from various cocoa origins, and they have recently decided to really push this line of extra dark chocolate. We currently have a window display with a map of the world pinpointing where all the cocoa comes from. Unfortunately (esp. for me) there have already been people coming in complaining about the poor conditions of cocoa farms in Africa. Customers ask if Neuhaus is aware of the practices they equivocate to slavery happening on the other side of the world - usually it's while they stare at you accusingly like you're standing out in the middle of a cocoa field in West Africa directing these folks.

I have no idea what farms Neuhaus gets their cocoa from. If people want to complain about something Belgian, how about creating racial tension in Rwanda that led to the genocide.

Speaking of good chocolate, I had the best canolli at Vacarro's bakery the other day. I highly recommend it - lower level, Union Station.

Two weeks ago I got a fairly thorough tour of Arlington National Cemetary by my aunt (if you're reading, word up). I had no idea the original cemetary was created out of spite for revenge on Robert Lee for being a confederate. Crazy fun facts like that make history all the more enjoyable.

Last May I was planning to take a trip to Amish country in October to experience the local delights and maybe buy a couple $30 dollar quilts to sell on eBay. I'd also like to talk to some Amish kids on Rumspringa about the prevalence of drugs on their time off. This trip got postponed to next Spring due to scheduling difficulties - and what a relief. Tooling around Dutch Pennsylvania with the media frenzy going on right now would not have been fun. Go Rumspringa!

The Return

After not updating this blog for three full months, I feel it is time. In one week I will be moving into my new apartment in Dupont after couch hopping for a month and a half. I'm still amazed everytime I move at the hiccups that happen when trying to do the mundane tasks that are neccessary to moving, ie. change of addresses, setting up your tv/internet, organizing the actual move. I think there should be a service out there that does all this for you that only the people with a lot of money can afford. I guess they call that a personal assistant?

A rare occurrence has just taken place in front of Neuhaus as I write this last sentence. A whole group of teenagers (~20) just walked by and there was no annoying sounds. No jumping, yelling, giggling...they came from Gallaudet. I'm going to be completely non-PC here and say I like the deaf in general for this trait.

Last Friday one of my co-workers left my company. What better to do on a Friday afternoon than prank the unassuming victim as a bon voyage gift. My fellow co-workers and I spammed her email continuosly for over an hour with newsletter signups and personal ads she "might" be interested in. She also received phone calls from Richard Branson through an automated Virgin hotline and a university to talk about her interest in enrolling as a student. For my part, I found interesting personal ads on Craig's List to send. My favorite was the fellow interested in suffocation as a means of arousal. In detail he described how he wanted to be gagged and bagged with a rope pulling the plastic shut around his head. His selling slogan was "Suffocate me. I breathe only for you." This situation sufficiently freaked her out and she called us all Stinkers. I like that word.

Baltimore and Batwoman

Today I fingered through a Baltimore visitor guide. I got a vibe the city is into rhymes. A big picture of the harbor featured the copy, "Explor Baltimore" and there is a museum there called The Great Blacks in Wax Museum featuring famous African Americans. There's also a Japanese restaurant that's rated as one of the top 50 in the United States. This has nothing to do with rhymes, but I really want to go there after seeing the giant model boat filled with sushi. Next week I might have the opportunity to go there for work, but I'd really like to sample the city on a more personal occasion.

So the new Batwoman is gay - not for film, but for the comic book. Apparently she's an old acquaintance or friend of Batman, but he's apparently out of town. She's gay because DC Comics wants to have a more diverse set of superheroes. That's from the horse's mouth. My favorite bit of this news was hearing what others had to say in response to it. Some people feel it would be more diverse if a superhero were bald or overweight, or even (and this is my favorite) if the hero had cold sores. I'd personally like to see a superhero with a raging case of herpes. Nothing teaches kids about the realities of kissing a lot of folk like seeing your favorite cartoon character with facial blemishes.

I write this while watching the current Batman in slimmed down form in The Machinist. The entire movie you just want to feed porr Christian Bale. Apparently he ate a can of tuna and an apple a day for 60 days to get that thin, then he had to bulk up fast for Batman. Scary.

Idol and Service

On Wednesday, I watched the season finale of American Idol. I was happy to see they brought back the little cowboy with the turkey who could sort of sing for his one and only opportunity in life to perform in front an audience of that size. This season I haven't really been rooting for anyone in particular, although I would have preferred to see Katharine McPhee win over Taylor Hicks. I just feel like she would be someone I would listen to on the radio, whereas Taylor will probably be relegated to the easy listening contemporary station. He's just a little too Joe Cocker. But, like I said I wasn't rooting for anyone really, so this all changed when Taylor won. I saw David Hasselhof crying in the audience. It was all worth it.

This week I finally tried the Italian restaurant a few doors down from my apartment. I decided to order takeout, but I checked out the reviews online first. They were all along the lines of "good food, worse than terrible service." A couple of the reviewers said the waitstaff and owner were the rudest service people they had encountered. I was warned that you can either be completely turned off by this or allow it to just be a weird quirk of the establishment. I decided to adopt the latter attitude and call them. After I ordered, they quickly hung up on me. When I went to pick up, there were no pleasantries and the owner ignored me after handing me the credit card slip to sign. It was a little like dealing with the Soup Nazi. I have to say for the price, they give you a lot of food and it's pretty good. The place is called Banducci's.

This holiday weekend I will be embarking on my apartment search. Not really looking forward to this, but it must be done.