Sunday, May 31, 2009

Liz's Movie Review Corner

Today was my mom's birthday. So we saw a fun-filled family movie called "Drag Me To Hell." Let me just say this: I love you, Sam Raimi. The movie was what all horror movies should be: suspenseful, dramatic, eerie, a bit gross, and at times both heart-wrenching and hilarious. From the retro opening titles and the jarring eastern European violin score and the stellar cast (including a favorite of mine--Justin Long of "Jeepers Creepers" fame) to the tidy, almost folkloric plot, "Drag Me To Hell" is storytelling at it's best--and a total delight for a longtime horror fan like me. It hearkens back to some of the very best episodes of shows like "The Twilight Zone" and "Outer Limits," building tension and raising the stakes in each and every scene without even one wasted line of dialogue or unplanned dutch angle or rapid dolly zoom. Sam Raimi's film idol is Alfred Hitchcock, and while his influences certainly shine through in "Drag Me To Hell," Raimi is a writer-director with a voice all his own--a voice I look forward to hearing from again soon.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Flesh Prison

Sometimes, when I've been lying around in my room for three or four hours straight, I start to get a little restless. So usually, I'll get up and come over to my computer...you know, for a change of "scenery." Instead of looking at the TV screen, I look at a computer monitor. Instead of clicking the buttons on the remote, I click the keys on the keyboard. And sometimes, like today, it doesn't really work to cure my restlessness.

It just got worse. I opened iTunes and started playing music that makes me feel melancholy. I'm now listening to Anecdote by Ambulance Ltd. This song makes me feel melancholy because it reminds me of when I lived in the dorms at Columbia College Chicago--or, as my friend Kate and I refer to our dwelling back then: "Apartment 215" or simply "215." Those were two of the best years of my life.

Not that my life isn't good now. It is--very good. It's just, on days like today, I get all restless and I start wishing for things that I may or may not ever get. Like, I hate to beat a dead horse (actually, that might be kinda fun!), but I always imagine that I'll have a better body in the future. But I've been doing that since I was like 10 years old, and I still haven't achieved that goal. When I close my eyes and picture my distant future, I sometimes imagine myself sailing on a boat, or standing atop a rocky cliff overlooking the sea, or riding a dolphin, or playing the violin on a darkened stage in an empty auditorium, or driving the PCH in a cherry-red convertible, or leading an archeological dig (and then a man flies in on a helicopter and offers to fully fund my dig for another 3 years if I agree to come see his "theme park")--but no matter where I am, I always have rock hard abs.

Will it ever happen? My dad is worried that it won't. In fact, he thinks I need professional help. I feel like a pregnant teenager in the 1960s.* He wants to send me away. We had a big fight about my "weight issues" this past Thursday. Me wanting a bite of cannoli was the catalyst. If I write it out, blow by blow, it will just make you think my dad's a jerk. He's not. He loves me. But sometimes it feels like the only thing he notices about me is that I'm fat. And he's the living embodiment of all the things I already tell myself in my head: "Fat girls don't get to ride dolphins, Liz."

I'm not ready to throw in the towel on weight-loss just yet. So I think I'll go kayaking right now. If I'm not back in a week, assume I've been shipped off to a fat farm. Don't come looking for me. We are all on our own journey.

*In this movie, Cheryl gets pregnant and is shipped off to a "home for girls." It's a good movie.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Summer Lovin'

It's summer! Well...not officially, but as far as my brain is concerned--it's summer! Now is the time to enjoy the outdoors, to sip lemonade, to wear flowy dresses (or for you guys out there, flowy linen shorts) and sandals. Now is the time to buy new moon boots, to see Saturday matinees, to swim with manatees, to make a crown out of daises, to go spelunking in uncharted caves and fight off the half-man-half-bat carnivorous creatures that live there, to "accidentally" run over someone's pet marmoset. These are all things I do each and every summer--along with a few road trips to Niagra and three weeks at mime camp.

But THIS summer, I've decided to forgo all that craziness in favor of three months of...lying in my bed and watching summer programming. So without further ado, the TOP FIVE REASONS I'M EXCITED FOR THE SUMMER OF 2009:

1. Big Brother: Season 11

I know all you haters out there think Big Brother is trashy. And maybe it is, but who ever said reality TV had to be classy? I'll tell you who: nobody. Strangers locked in a house, forced to compete at life-sized Tic-Tac-Toe and eat slop? That's a recipe for entertainment, my friends. And if you're too cool for that, I pity you.

2. The Bachelorette: Jillian Harris

Wow. The Buzzhunters are really special--they kinda remind me of the characters on that PBS show "Ghostwriter." You know? Ghostwriter?? The series that features a group of New York City teenagers who solve mysteries with the help of an invisible ghost who can communicate with the kids only by manipulating whatever text and letters he can find and using them to form words and sentences?? Tell me you've seen it! Well, I guess it doesn't matter. The Buzzhunters can get the buzz on all our favorite shows even without an invisible ghost who helps them by manipulating text and letters. And this time, they got the buzz on the new Bachelorette, Jillian Harris!! Huzzah! Yes. I do watch The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. No, I won't apologize for it.

3. So You Think You Can Dance (Otherwise known as: SYTYCD)

I don't give a shit about Dancing With The Stars. Newsflash: stars aren't good at dancing. But the kids on SYTYCD are FAN-bloody-TASTIC dancers! I watched this show for the first time last season, and it consistently took my breath away. I particularly love when the contestants dance lyrical hip-hop numbers.

4. Tori and Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood

People love to hate on Tori Spelling, but I just love to love her! What can I say? Donna is my homegirl. Of all the celebrity reality shows (Dina Lohan? Puke. Denise Richards? So you've got a lot of pets--who the fuck cares?), this is the one I can stand.

5. HawthoRNe

"Jada Pinkett Smith is the latest actress to bring her talent to TNT’s arsenal of strong, complex female characters, following in the footsteps of Kyra Sedgwick on The Closer and Holly Hunter of Saving Grace. This summer, Pinkett Smith executive-produces and stars in HAWTHORNE, a character-driven drama series about a nurse who is a true everyday hero.

Pinkett Smith plays Christina Hawthorne, a compassionate and headstrong Chief Nursing Officer heading up a group of dedicated nurses at Richmond Trinity Hospital who spend long days and nights on the hospital’s front lines. Hawthorne is the kind of nurse you want on your side when you or someone you love is in the hospital. She is the kind of nurse who fights for her patients and doesn’t let them slip through the cracks. When necessary, she takes on doctors and administrators who are overworked, distracted or just unable to see the human being behind the hospital chart."

As I future nurse, I think this sounds interesting!! Who's with me? Come on, who's with me??

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

A Letter To My New Roommate Heather

This is a letter that I wrote when I was transferring to Columbia College Chicago, after I received that little piece of paper in the mail that gives you the names and numbers of your new roommates. At Columbia I had three roommates, not just one, as we shared a large apartment two-bedroom that was nothing like a normal dorm room at all (it had a stove, a full-sized fridge, and a dishwasher!). For some reason the name "Heather" stood out and I was compelled to write this letter:

"Dear Heather,

Hey Heath. I just wanted to write and say that I have been thinking about it, and I’m not sure that we’re going to make good roommates at all. My idea of a good roommate is someone that you can sit around in your underwear with and eat, like, raw cookie dough and mourn the loss of a boyfriend or a parent or a puppy with and watch David Letterman at the same time and tell each other dark secrets after we smoked a joint one of us had hidden in the jewelry box that one of our mothers gave us when we were ten. From the messages I have received from you over Internet email, I have deduced that you’re not the optimum match for me as roommate. I want a roommate with whom I can share deep revelations about life and mostly about sex and about my sexual relationships with men. Usually I have revelations while I look out the window and watch the rain and listen to droopy music and eat a stack of tootsie rolls that I bought at the nearest CMS gas station. I feel like you’re the type of woman who would make a comment about my rolls. You would look down your crooked and probably big and probably ugly nose at me and you would say that tootsie rolls are disgusting or undesirable because of how sticky or clunky or how unlike real chocolate they are because they’re like when a package says ‘cola flavor’ instead of actually being cola or something. And after you made that comment, and after I got sick by looking at you and had to spew a hard chunk of roll on our sure to be dingy carpet, which had we been better friends we could have made light of, but since we’re not just made me feel a lot sicker, I wouldn’t be able to share my revelation with you about the maybe mediocre sex I had with a grad student earlier that afternoon--and then I would be sad, but not like melancholy like how I always get after sex, but because we weren’t as close as I maybe could have been with another roommate, a different girl. Another thing is that I like to do my laundry and then smell the fresh newness of my t-shirts and sometimes when other people’s clothing and shoes (some people wash tennis-shoes) get in with my things, the smells get mixed together and sometimes remind me of smells that I don’t like to be reminded of. It doesn’t happen with every person, but it often happens with people who aren’t good matches with me. And somehow, when I lie awake at night, and when I crawl out my window and go downstairs and listen to my cat cough and then sneak out and ride my bike, and sometimes see another person on a different bike in the empty parking lot behind a Coney Island, and I can smell the special garbage receptacle that is just for grease and also the night air, and I think about how the person on the other bike who is singing church hymns loudly enough for me to hear and I are doing the same thing but we’re on two different life paths, I realize that you are a woman who will never understand how deeply I go. Will you? I hope I’ve been clear enough about the way that I feel, and I also hope that I can get another assignment for a roommate. See you around maybe.

Sincerely,

Lizzy"


Not my best writing, but you can see why I belonged in the Fiction department. And yes, I did send it. Actually, no, I didn't send it. But after Heather and I became friends, I read it to her and she laughed...which means maybe she WAS a good match with me after all.


Wednesday, May 6, 2009

A List: Things I Want To Do This Summer

In no particular order...

1. Make friends with a hobo



2. Learn to fly. No--not learn to fly a plane. I mean, learn to fly MY BODY. I just think that would be a neat thing to know how to do.

3. Go to Oscoda, Michigan for a long weekend and walk on the beach, canoe, play mini golf, ride a horse, eat at the Turkey Roost, go to the Red Barn and buy polished rocks, contemplate my life while staring at the impossibly brilliant starry sky and feeling the delicate caress of a cool breeze on my face. Lansy, you coming??

4. Immerse myself in a swimming pool filled with cooked spaghetti noodles.

5. Lose a ton of weight, because I'm sick of feeling like a disgusting giant and having almost-constant insecure thoughts. And I don't want to lose weight just because it's going to be shorts season soon! As if I would ever wear shorts. I wouldn't. Even if I had a better body, I wouldn't. You pretty much have to have a perfect body to look good in shorts...and even then I think shorts look tacky. You wear shorts, you live in a trailer park, or you're a hooch who wants to show off the Hello Kitty tattoo you have on your upper thigh, or you're an old woman who likes to garden and has stopped caring about covering up her unsightly varicose veins. I just want to set myself free from my always-gets-in-my-way-makes-me-second-guess-myself-constantly-and-keeps-me-from-being-the-person-I-really-want-to-be body. Also: I'm getting kind of sick of Cheeseburger Mondays, Donut-Ham-Hamburger Tuesdays, Marshmallow Peeps Wednesdays, Liter-a-Cola Thursdays, Fried Fish Fridays, Souvlaki Saturdays, and Chinese Pork Rib Sundays.

6. Go to some Tigers games.

7. Go to Chicago a number of times to see Kate. Go to Taste of Chicago (see list item #5). See Sean and Catie. Finally go to Rainbow Cone (see list item #5). Finally go to Medieval Times. Go see something in 3D at the Imax on Navy Pier, then ride the Speed Dog boat. Of COURSE, visit Novelty Golf and Games and maybe, hopefully, if all my wishes and dreams come true...find a way to ride the Tomb of Doom again.

8. Go to the Detroit Zoo, perhaps weekly.

9. Walk the edge of a live volcano.



10. Go shark diving in South Africa.

11. Go shark diving in South Africa. What? I already said that??? Well, I REALLY want to do it.



12. Do one of those work outs where you get to swing around on a trapeze.

13. Win a GIANT plush toy at Lapeer Days. And I'd like to win it without having to spend any money. This may mean giving out sexual favors to carnies...but I'm ok with that. You don't know how much I love giant plush toys. Also, when you "do stuff" with carnies, they give you VIP ride tickets and corn-dogs (see list item #5). Totally worth it. True story.

14. Go to Naaaawlins. Kate, you're planning this. Thank you for being my travel bitch.

15. Lie on a lawn of freshly cut grass while rose petals fall gently from the sky and land atop my naked shoulders.

16. Stumble upon a duffel bag full of money. And by "stumble upon," I mean watch from behind a tree as a criminal buries it in the woods, then come back later and dig it up, then skip town and start a new life in Bratislava, Slovakia.



17. Find Narnia...because even though he's half-man-half-fawn...and a tiny bit creepy...I'm pretty sure Mr. Tumnus is my other half.



18. Spend an inordinate amount of time inside a darkened, air-conditioned, movie theater watching every summer blockbuster, every horror movie, every indie film, every action movie, every thriller, every rom-com, every everything!! Fuck, I love movies.

19. Go on an ill-fated summer-school sailing trip.



20. Marry this man (because he reminds me of summer):