I have never seen Marcus as happy as he is right now -- he is playing Super Smash Bros. Melee on our new flat screen tv. And he is giggling like a little boy. I am so so in love right now.

I'm rape-er-iffic!

Hi! I'm the movie Crank. I am an 87-minute action romp starring Jason Statham. I have 61% positive rating on RottenTomatoes.com, where critics like Owen Glieberman call me "stylish" and invite viewers to "just enjoy the ride." I enjoy hating women, but so does everyone in the cast. Do you like half-naked women in plastic bubbles on the side of a penthouse rooftop like decorations? I have that! How about rape that turns into enjoyable sex? Sure! Fellatio during a car chase? Don't worry -- the woman loves it! It's all okay, because right at the very end, I grasp for a moral center. That excuses not just the incessant, untempered misogyny (I have some dialogue during the climax that suggests that being called "somebody's bitch" is worth murdering everyone on a rooftop!) but the racism (aren't all Middle Eastern cab drivers in al Qaeda?) and homophobia (try to count how many insults involve the word "faggot" or references to gay sex!). All it takes is Jason Statham saying that he's sorry he didn't stop and smell the roses as he falls to his death from a plane in a CGI sequence as thrilling and believable as his girlfriend's realization 30 minutes earlier that she did want to be forced to have sex in front of a busload of Japanese schoolgirls -- who, of course, I show marveling at how "masculine" and "magnum" Jason Statham was! (All Japanese schoolgirls want a big American to force them to have sex!) Oh, and did I mention the black drug dealer? Or the Hispanic transvestite? Those are some of my most fully realized characters! You should also know that I feature plenty of innovative direction: everything from slowing down the film (when Jason Statham is tired!) to speeding up the film (when Jason Statham is being serviced during a 100 MPH car chase!). So give me a call! I'll give you everything you wanted in a film -- just as long as you are a 13-year-old boy with no soul or conscience of any kind!

Brother?

I really like my wife. How's this painting of our little brother/brother-in-law?



This isn't the best photo, but it's a great piece; at least you can see the background getting it done and Justin rocking it there.

Aesthetic.

Catherine says I have a Japanese aesthetic. I like this piece of hers, so maybe:



It's way good. It's also the back of a Nutrigrain package, which adds something awesome to it. I have a neat wife.

I also liked this picture I took of the outside world when it snowed a week back:



That's a little like a Japanese aesthetic, sure.

But where I know I have a Japanese aesthetic is right here:



Just kidding. I can't even make a joke that I like Dragon Ball Z. Akira Toriyama makes me sad.

I feel you, me. I feel you.

No feelings

As I left work today, I entered a deluge. The thought of walking thirty minutes to the train station in the pouring rain did not particularly appeal to me, so I ran to the gas station across the street to attempt to buy an umbrella. Unfortunately for me, this gas station does not sell umbrellas, nor did the person behind the counter have any idea where the closest place was that did sell umbrellas. So, in my panicked, frustrated state, which apparently the young man found endearing, I asked for a bag to at least put over my head to keep me slightly dry. Said young man one-upped my idea and gave me the biggest garbage bag he could find and ripped a small hole in the side of it so that I could see. So, if you had been one of the tens of thousands of people bustling about midtown in the rain, you would have seen a petite, animated garbage bag waddling across town.

Once I arrived at the train station, only half-drenched and slightly amused with the situation leading to my arrival, I decided that I needed to reward myself for my hard work with some rocking music. Seriously rocking. Like Salt-N-Pepa and my number one husband, Biggie. Well, you can imagine my disappointment when this came on shuffle:



He, unfortunately, doesn't have any feelings. Or ever make me smile.

*Marcus adds, "Have you ever thought about a bass line two and a half minutes in?"

Sugar and spice and everything nice.

The husband kept asking me this morning as he posted about video games whether I wished I was a boy. Well, being a girl really sucked after I hit about twelve or so, but before that, I had some experiences which rival Marcus' memories of playing video games with his brothers.

First, there are the entire Saturday afternoons that I spent reading Babysitters' Club books outside on the swings:




Or the evenings in the fourth grade when I would come home and read Animorphs while listening to Backstreet Boys and Hanson:


Oh the crushes that I had on Jake and Marco.







Oh and the even more serious crushes on Brian and Taylor. There were some feelings there.

And then the fact that I would also play with my Barbie dolls. My next door neighbor, Jana, who was two years older than me (and the coolest girl in school-- everyone thought so) would come over, and we would pretend that our Barbie's had boyfriends (because once you got married, things were boring). My favorite Barbie outfit (which I can't find a picture of) was a bright pink going-out dress that looked like a Spandex bodysuit with a giant tutu attached to it. Man, oh man.








I totally had this Barbie doll.



And this Barbie Jeep.

And, in my spare time, when you know I wasn't totally trying to impress Jana, I would read American Girl books.


Felicity was my favorite.

And then when I got a little older (you know, the ripe old age of 11) and decided that I needed to read about more grown-up things, I started on the Sweet Valley High books. Those are such gems.



Those books really taught me what to expect when I went to high school. All the drama with friends and boys and crazy parties. You know, all that stuff that I experienced in high school.

And I also never nonchalantly worked my way through Anna Karenina for about two months or so.

So, while I may not have memories of different video game systems, game books, and television shows like Marcus does, I was getting done as a kid. Super getting it done.

Blizzard! Blizzard! Blizzard!

The Scrabble computer cheats, and it loves to do it. It's not the best at it, though. The best cheating computer characters are from a time of joy in my life, and by "joy," I mean "rage and violence," specifically toward the games.

Super Macho Man?




I found no pictures of you from Super Punch-Out!!, perhaps because you are hiding from me, perhaps because of the two or three times I might have completely broken that SNES cartridge by slamming it into the ground.

(Hey, Justin, do you remember the time I accidentally "dropped" Earthbound? Me, neither. It was a shame that it broke so badly from such a short drop.)

There are other cheaters in the world of computers, most notably from Mario Kart 64 and every incarnation of Madden, but I just wanted to post a picture of Super Macho Man and a picture of the video game characters that caused my big brother to get so angry one afternoon at our grandmother's house that he kicked the NES and broke the front of it off:

Because computers cheat.

I became addicted to the Mac Scrabble we bought, and I've played something like 200 games against the computer. At the higher levels, I lose horribly (as the computer consistently draws the highest scoring tiles and then invents the word QIZAXY for 750 points), so I just play the Veteran AI over and over again.

So, in the interest of documenting events even my wife doesn't care about, I just pulled this board off:



And here is both my final score and the series of three turns in which I did the best:



Oh, Bee. What are you feeling right now? What emotion is that etched into your metal-bee face? Is it wonder? Horror? Despair?

Let's see:



What makes you tick, Bee? What do you feel when you see DRAINER played? Is it an emotion you can quantify? Do you write about it in your journal late at night before you plot your next attempt to play WZOQY for 300 points?

How's that poetry?

We have a dry-erase board here where we leave notes for each other, and Catherine has left me the following this morning:

I am the cook
Good teeth, strong stomach with you be!
And once you have got down my book,
You should get on with me.
- Freddy Nietzsche

But I have a question: Did Nietzsche ever have a feeling? About anything? Or was he just kind of going through the motions? Especially about Wagner. No feelings there.

BONUS FOOTAGE OF WAGNER:

Flawless victory.

While my wife folds the laundry, I'm watching Lasagna Cat, and I had a very specific reaction to this one. I think you should skip watching that, though, and spend some time here:



Thirty seconds into that video, I knew I'd found a kindred spirit. Here's a little thought experiment:

How would you make the perfect film? And by "perfect," I mean a film that scores 100/100 on any imaginable scoring rubric. A paragon. A movie with flawless acting, music, plot, and so on. How would you do that?

1. Cast Sam Neill
2. Find real dinosaurs
3. Hire John Williams
4. Film

Well, that movie exists. It is called Jurassic Park.

BONUS FOOTAGE FROM THE SAM NEILL LINK:



Listen to the music in that tribute. Think about the kid who made the tribute. But seriously think about the music. And how much time had to have been spent scouring the Internet for the right photos.