pseudostoops

Remember a few weeks ago when I shared with you that a game of pub trivia had led to the shocking revelation that four of the world’s top 10 visited sites were Disney theme parks?

Well, at least that was a good trivia question, even if I found the answers outrageous. The question (”what were the top ten most visited sites in the world in 2007?”) was the kind of thing you could reason through, make educated guesses. Even if you didn’t get all 10, you probably would get a couple. It was the kind of question that gets you a range of answers, too (some teams will get only a few right, others will absolutely nail it) that helps you separate teams in a close contest.

Last night, we went back to trivia, and the bonus question absolutely blew goats. It was: “name 10 of the 15 main characters in Animal House.”

DUDE. That is a TERRIBLE question for the bonus round. Either you have seen the movie or you have not. If you have not, you have NO CHANCE of getting any points. At least with the “ten most visited” question, you could do some reasoning, and talk with your teammates to try to make educated guesses. With the Animal House question, if you’re me at least, you look around your table blankly, hoping someone, anyone, has seen Animal House. (One guy had, years ago, but didn’t remember much. Something about smoking something illicit that clouded his memory?)

So here, in no particular order, were our answers:

1. John Belushi’s character
2. That guy
3. That other guy
4. The one who wore a toga
5. The one who did a kegstand
6. The nerd who inexplicably gets the girl
7. The irritable school official
8. The cheerleader
9. The pledge
10. The frat house mascot

Needless to say, we did not win.

Before I get any comments to the effect of “what?  You’ve never seen Animal House?!”, allow me to list for you some other movies I’ve never seen, all of which have come up in trivia contests at some point in my life (though, I will note, I have gotten some of the questions correct, even without seeing the movies):

• Ghostbusters
• Goonies
• Gremlins
• Adventures in Babysitting
• The Wizzard of Oz
• Star Wars
• Back to the Future
• Caddyshack
• Jaws
• ET

What can I say?  We didn’t have a VCR until I was 12, and even then my mom held tight control over what we watched, and she doesn’t like adventure/fantasy/sci fi/any movies that might have swear words.  I can’t be the only one with gaping holes in my movie watching history…can I?

A friend from work and I usually go to Muscle Max on Wednesday mornings and spinning on Thursdays.  It’s a nice routine.  This week, though, friend has a meeting early on Thursday, so we decided to go to Tuesday morning spinning instead.

We’d been to Tuesday spinning once before and I vaguely remember not liking the instructor nearly as much as I like the Thursday instructor, but I figured I must be exaggerating that in my head.

Wrong.  Not exaggerating.

Instructor Lady walks in and the first thing she says is “you guys, I totally got called back for Cabaret, so since I’m going to be dancing at my audition later I’m not going to be on the bike this morning.  I don’t want my legs to be like jelly.”

Now, I may be a demanding jerkface, but I strongly prefer it when the instructor is sweating along with you- it makes me hate them less when they yell at you to “push it!” or “keep going!” because hey, if they can do it, I can do it.  When they’re casually standing off to the side, exhorting you to “stop being such a wimp!” I get a little testy.

But the worst of it was, the instructor used that time when she was not on the bike to rehearse her dance routine for us. “It’s Cabaret, so it’s, like, Fosse, you know?” she said.  “You have to kind of round your shoulders and carve out your midsection and kind of turn your knees in?”

And for the rest of class, while we tried not to die on the bikes, she kept talking and talking and talking about Fosse, and singing along to the music, and dancing, and doing little steps, and at one point she asked us how one particular step looked and whether we thought she would get the part and OH MY GOD ANNOYING.

For at least 10 minutes after class, my friend and I debated writing a comment card about it.  We elected not to, because we didn’t really want to get her in trouble or anything, but seriously: Fosse?  In spin class?  No.  Just no.

And now, since I am already afflicted with this earworm and would like company in my misery, I leave you with Beyonce’s highly Fosse-esque video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZn8o0oc4FE]

Pressing questions about last night’s Oscars:

Angie: dress was meh, hair was kinda large, but the earrings were gorgeous.

But can someone please explain to me the physics of such a pair of earrings?  How have her ears not stretched into floppy loops from the sheer weight?

Then we have Nicole Kidman, who honored Angie for her best actress nod. (P.S. I loved that format, of having 5 actors introduce the acting nominees.  Even if it took a long time, and even if it was, as I suspect, simply a device that made it possible to say some kind and reflective things about Heath Ledger when announcing his name, I loved it.  I hope they keep it.)

I love that Nic rocks the fair skin and doesn’t get all fake tanned, (though the Botox is a whole ‘nother story) but why, for the love of all that is sacred and holy, has no stylist convinced her that she should not wear clothes that make her look like Casper?

The dress is probably lovely, it’s just hard to tell because all I see up there is pale.

Nextly, what is up with the random young actresses, (it’s sort of unclear to me how they got invited in the first place), dressing themselves in wackadoodle, voluminous gowns?  You are young! And have cute figures!  Why do you insist on drowning in weird fabric-scuplture?

Exhibit A:

Amanda Seyfried, if your goal was to make us forget that you were in Mama Mia and Big Love by looking so much like the ditz you played in Mean Girls congratulations! You succeeded!

Exhibit B:

Miley, are those…fish scales?  Seashells?  WHAT IS GOING ON THERE?

Finally, and this is the most burning question of all:  Why the hell was I subjected to so much of Zac Efron last night?  And if ABC was going to take advantage of being the network home for the Oscars by trotting out their bankable teen hunk, would it  have been so hard for someone to teach the kid how to do his hair?

I mean, seriously.  Ew.

New mathematical formula, recently proven by young-ish Chicago resident, dazzles math world:

1 hour “wintry mix”
+
freezing temperatures which turn “wintry mix” to “base layer of ice”
+
overnight snow
+
just enough sunshine to make everything glisteningly damp
=
most treacherous walk to the train EVER.

Seriously, I almost ate it like 5 times.
********************
In an effort to be more cost-conscious, and in reaction to the recent decision by my favorite coffee shop to raise the price of a small cafe au lait to OVER THREE DOLLARS, I’ve decided to start drinking the coffee made by our office. Starting today. I had to use non-dairy creamer. I want to cry.

********************

Two things of note in today’s news:

Thing the first:

Pepsi is releasing a new (old) version which uses real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.

I’m all for moving away from the high fructose corn syrup, and I’m relieved that I will no longer have to seek out Mexican Coke to get my HFCS-free cola fix, but really?  “Throwback?”  Somehow the name just seems a little…silly.

Thing the second:
Disney has its first black princess, which is pretty cool and all.

But in this interview with People, when Anika Noni Rose says:

“Not only is she the first black princess, she’s the first American princess. We’ve never had an American princess. So, the scope and the significance is larger than people even realize.”

it makes me a little nutso. I mean, say what you will about her mediocre movie, but can’t we all agree at least that Pocahontas was American?

In our first corner, we have:  Power Breakfast!

Brown rice cakes, spread with a little peanut butter, plus an apple and a nice full bottle of water!  Nutritionists would be proud!

And in the other corner, we have….the Healthy Diet Underminer!

Also known as Tenderhearts, or “my favorite candy in the whole world which I discovered at a store across the street from our office for 75% off so obviously I had to buy all they had left which ended up being, um, kind of a lot.”

Let’s go down to the ring for the blow by blow:

Power breakfast opens strong with a one-two punch, reminding pseudo that she is on a health kick, and that by eating fiber and protein first thing in the morning she will feel full all the way until lunch!

Tenderhearts counters with a cheap, but effective sucker punch, appealing to pseudo’s sweet tooth: “but we’re deeeliciousssss.  And you don’t want us to go stale, do you?”

Power breakfast breaks back in with a quick jab: “with as many preservatives as you’ve got in there, you won’t be going stale for MONTHS.”

Tenderhearts takes that one on the chin, and asks, with puppy dog eyes: “why do you hate us?  we loooooove you!”

Power breakfast continues the attack with a stiff uppercut: “you’ll regret it if you let them win!  Fight the good fight! Being healthy means striving to make healthy choices every day!”

Just when it looks like it’s down for the count, Tenderhearts roars back with a stunning hook!  “Have we mentioned we taste like cherries?  Cherries are fruit.  Eating us is like eating fruit for breakfast!  Who can criticize you for wanting to eat FRUIT? Fruit is healthy!  You’re doing the healthy thing here!”

I think we all know where this is going:

Round 1: TENDERHEARTS!  (And the crowd goes wild!)

You know the worst thing about having to work on President’s Day? It’s that no one else has to work, and thus treats Sunday evening like it’s Saturday, even going so far as to throw a karaoke party. A KARAOKE PARTY. Awesome! Thanks, neighbors! I mean, after all, who doesn’t love tossing and turning, trying fall asleep to the dulcet sounds of “You know it’s truuuuuue, everything I dooooo, I do it for yoooooou” coming through the ceiling from the apartment above us for HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS?

Seriously, it’s in my head still. I have a Bryan Adams earworm. Someone please send help.

Lessons from last night’s pub trivia outing:

Four of the top ten most-visited sites in the world in 2007 were DISNEY THEME PARKS. (Including EuroDisney, which I’d always heard was kind of a flop.) I felt like I at least earned the intellectual high ground for overestimating my human brethren by guessing such off-the-beaten-path places as “the Eiffel tower” and “the Vatican” and “Mecca”.

Thursday, I flew to New York for work and stayed through the weekend. In my experience (and I’ve been to New York a bunch) there are two kinds of trips to New York: those that make you wonder why anyone lives in such a busy, crowded, dirty, frustrating place, and those that make you wonder why people live anywhere else.

This trip was the latter.  I actually sort of started thinking through in my head ways that John and I could swing a move.  (Answer? We can’t.)

I did a lot in four days, too much to recount in any way other than a boring recitation, which I’ll spare you. There were some tremendous highlights from the resumes of the hundreds of students I met at the career fair I was attending, which I might assemble into a separate post sometime this week. (Seriously, people, have we learned nothing from my past posts on resumes? DO NOT list your character and avatar and screen names for WoW on your resume! Just don’t!)

Some longtime readers might remember the summer of 2006, when I lived in New York and worked an unpaid legal internship and lived in a series of very grimy apartments. (Remember my roommate Jonas? The cockroach? What I didn’t tell you at the time was that I actually had a pretty robust debate with myself about whether I could afford NOT to eat the food from the roach-infested fridge. That’s how tight my budget was.)

This weekend I was that neighborhood again for two days, and it was a total delight to be able to go into the delicious coffee shop and order an amazing latte without stressing about money.  See also: delicious bagel shop, delicious deli selling delicious black and white cookies, delicious Belgian beer bar, and delicious eggs benedict at place where brunch comes with 3 free mimosas.

Um, so yeah- recommitment to healthy eating starts TODAY!  Or, more likely, starts tomorrow, after John and I finish the black and white cookie I brought home as a souvenir.  (WHAT? I like black and whites and you can’t get them here.  Don’t you judge me!)

Saturday night, to recover from Friday night’s Milk and Honey-induced hangover, Murphy and I decided to lay low and go to the movies.  We were waiting outside for the theater doors to open (this is apparently a Thing in New York: you have to wait in a line that snakes around the block to get into the movies) when this woman who looks AWFULLY FAMILIAR walks by me.  I do a double take, then whisper to Murphy “Did you see that?  That was Kelly Rutherford!”

“Who?” she said.

“Kelly Rutherford!  Lily van der Woodsen! Just walked by us!”

“Probably wasn’t her,” said Murphy.

We made our way into the theater, got our seats, and were chatting as we waited for the movie to start when who should walk up the steps and seat herself in the row immediately in front of us?  Lily van der Woodsen!  No question about it- it was her.  She was totally like 6 feet away from us!  And because we were seeing the chick-iest of all chick flicks, the theater was 98% women, all of whom probably watch Gossip Girl, and you could hear the buzz rising as everyone realized who it was.  The girls in front of us actually tried to strike up a conversation with her (”oh my god, we LOVE your work!”) which struck me as awfully rude- let the woman go to the movies in peace!

I am proud to say that Murphy and I were much more nonchalant, and waited until the movie was over and we were out of the theater to announce via Twitter and facebook that we were, like, totally besties with a famous actress now.

BethFish kindly offered to interview folks a few days ago, and I would like the record to reflect that I was one of the first 10 commenters so technically, though this has turned into a widely-used meme, I am being interviewed.  By declaring this, I hope to skip the whole “tagging” business (at which I suck).

Without further ado:

1.  Remember the movie Brewster’s Millions? That happens to you, except on a smaller scale.  You receive a million dollars that you must spend in 30 days.  However, you cannot have any assets to show for the money at the end of the month (and you can’t buy something and then destroy it), you cannot waste the money, you cannot give it away, and you cannot tell anyone what you are doing.  How do you ditch the dough in a month or less?

So I would do two main things:

First, I would buy the Alinea cookbook. I would rent out a huge tricked-out restaurant kitchen, invite some of my best friends (who happen to be excellent cooks) to cook through it with me, and we would throw the dinner party to end all dinner parties. We hire several prep chefs to help us set up, and several more dishwashers to spare us from the worst part of any dinner party. We would hire Grant Aschatz to spend the evening with us in the kitchen, so when we invariably hit some snags with his super-complicated recipes, we’d have help. We would buy all the crazy wacked-out ingredients (dehydrated caramel powder, anyone?), make the ridiculous foams and emulsions, serve it to 100 or so of our nearest and dearest (flown in from out of town if need be) and we would wash it all down with many many many bottles of excellent wine. We would rent a photo booth to put in the dining room so our nearest and dearest could take amusing pictures of themselves as the night progressed to have as souvenirs, and we would hire an army of cars to drive our friends there and home so everyone stayed safe.

Second, after recovering for a few days from my sweet dinner party, I would hop on a plane and fly, first class, to New Zealand. Then Australia. Then Indonesia, then Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. I’d spend at least a week in India. I’d stay in comfortable but not ritzy accommodations, choosing instead to blow the cash on first class plane fares on flights that are at exactly the times I want (instead of contorting my travel schedule to accommodate the cheapest fare, as I usually do). On the way home, I’d swing through southern Africa, taking an eco-safari perhaps. I know it’s a lot- and I would like to spend more time at all of these places – but this is a once in a lifetime, short-term gig. I’ve got to take advantage.

2.  You are locked in a toy store overnight, with no way out until it reopens in the morning.  What do you play with all night?

Am I with other people? If so, we bust into the board games and play Scrabble, Boggle, Scattergories, Balderdash, etc all night. If not, I take this opportunity to actually finish building a complex Lego set for once in my life. I generally do not have the patience for such things, but if I’m stuck, might as well use that time to do something I’ve never done before.

3.  If you could have a dinner party with any three famous people, living or dead, you would be wasting your supernatural powers on hosting dinner parties.  What would you do instead?

Hey, don’t knock dinner parties (see answer 1). I suck at these questions, always wanting to look intellectual and impressive and failing, so I’m going to go for a combination of smart and funny, and take Alec Baldwin, Neil Patrick Harris and Rachel Maddow on a road trip through the Western U.S. I have to imagine there’d be a lot of whiskey involved.

4.  What’s the best thing since sliced bread?  Now, sliced bread ain’t all that impressive, so what’s the best mediocre, hum-drum improvement or advancement that has made modern life just ever so slightly more convenient for humanity, along the lines of saving yourself five seconds every time you want a piece of bread.

Automatic door lock clickers for cars. Especially in winter, when taking off gloves to fumble with keys is a pain in the ass.

5.  What’s your best quality?  The response to this question must be a simple declarative statement.  You may elaborate on that statement, provided that your elaboration does not include the words “but,” “however,” or “although,” or any other hedging, equivocating, back-sliding, gerrymandering (which is not at all appropriate in this context, but I think it should be, don’t you?) or any other type of backing down from the simple declarative statement with which you began your response.

I earnestly wish I could figure out a way to gerrymander a statement. But I can’t, so I’ll offer this:  I am compassionate.

When I was 14, I spent a summer at an international summer school program in Scotland. It was a formative summer in many ways- first cigarettes, first drinking, first encounter-of-a particular-type with a boy, etc, etc. (Not THAT type of encounter. 14! Only 14! Minds out of gutter!)

(An aside: I HIGHLY recommend getting these awkward and potentially very embarrassing formative experiences out of the way when one is far away amongst people one will never see again.  Just in case any of you parents out there are on the fence about sending your children to camp?  DO IT.  They will be doing this experimenting either way, and your exposure to the drama will be dramatically decreased if it all happens at camp.)

Anyhoo, spending a summer in Scotland with a bunch of Scottish folks led to a predictable but entirely sincere affection for Scottish accents, which persists to this day.  Some of my favorite actors are ones with charming Scottish lilts. (See McAvoy, James.)

You know one thing that makes me kind of sad?  There are many many singers and musicians who have lovely English/Irish/Scottish accents, but those accents entirely disappear when they are singing.  Think about Eric Clapton- do you hear an accent when he sings?  No.  U2?  Not really.  A lot of music, it seems, is sung accent-free.

So I get a particular measure of enjoyment when you can hear the accent of a band coming through in its songs.  Recently, I’ve been listening to this great band called Frightened Rabbit, and there’s a moment towards the end of the song “Modern Leper”- the lyrics are “I am ill, but I’m not dead- and I don’t know which of these I prefer” – when the band’s Scottish accent is clearly, wonderfully apparent, and every time I hear that little snippet, it makes me smile.  (Pensive, gloomy lyric notwithstanding).

Anyway, it’s a great song, and a great band, and when I heard it on the train this morning after a very unpleasant start to my day, that little bit of Scottish gave me a much-appreciated smile. So I figured I’d post it here for you to check out.  Maybe you’ll like it, too.

Frightened Rabbit- The Modern Leper