Sunday, February 14, 2010

 OLYMPICS TIME!!!!!!

So begins two weeks of watching nothing but sports i would normally ignore completely!

I don't get why some people are like "blah blah i don't care about Winter Olympics blah". Obviously there isn't the wide variety of sports you get in the summer, but all the winter stuff is INSANELY CRAZY SHIT that puts its competitors in mortal peril. Let's do things at incredibly high speeds on incredibly slippery surfaces! HELLO, that is awesome. I'd kind of forgotten how intensely stressful short track speed skating is, but all it takes is watching one race and seeing everybody jostling and bumping into each other and possibly crashing at any moment and taking out other racers and super long sharp skate blades very close to faces and hands to remember oh right, that shit is whack.

I am so so excited to get to snowboarding and SNOWBOARD CROSS (!!!) and oh man newly introduced ski cross! And figure skating!!! Another big reason i have never discriminated between Summer and Winter Olympics is because as a kid i loved gymnastics and figure skating pretty much equally. So... basically a win/win.

I want to go to Canada! Oh, fun fact: tonight here in Florida it is colder than it is in Vancouver. LOL WHAT. This winter is bonkers.

- 12:24 AM

Thursday, February 04, 2010

 I just found my first grey hair.

WHAT

THE FUCK

IS THIS SHIT

- 2:33 AM

Friday, January 15, 2010

 I didn't want to post about this whole late night debacle until it was done and we for sure knew the outcome, but since it's nearly over and the outcome is already pretty set i might as well vent my immense frustration now. I AM SO FULL OF IMPOTENT RAGE. It's an all-too-frequent feeling nowadays with good shows being cancelled left and right, but this situation is so egregious and so mishandled by corporate fuckbags and there is nothing anyone can do about it and i have nothing to do with my hate except, i dunno, swallow it? Which is not very pleasant. SO MUCH HATE.

Needless to say, i support Conan, much like anyone who has any semblance of taste. I remember when i first discovered Late Night with Conan O'Brien, the summer after 6th or 7th grade when i realized i could stay up past midnight. The first bit i ever remember seeing was the fake commemorative stamps, one of which featured Mayim Bialik, star of TV's "Blossom". I laughed so hard. I used to crack up endlessly at "If They Mated". In the era of AOL, when i was still in middle school and got my first computer, the shutdown sound that my brother set for me was "it's great, it's really great... for me to poop on!" The most famous Triumph sketch- the one where he visits the line for Star Wars Episode II- features many of my internet friends in the background (and a couple in the foreground), who i later met and am now real-life friends with. Triumph didn't visit when i lined up in New York for Episode III, but Robert Smigel did, just to say hi. Throughout high school i stayed up all ungodly hours of the night working on papers and the metric tons of homework i had to do, and back then they aired Conan not once but twice- they would recycle the previous week's shows immediately after the current shows, and those kept me company while slogging through hellish assignments (...or, more accurately, allowed me to procrastinate slogging through hellish assignments). I remember how weird it was when Andy left (versus how unusual i thought it was in the beginning to be watching a late night host with a sidekick! ...having not grown up watching Carson and McMahon), and how worried i was about Conan not having anybody to talk to at the desk (or a co-pilot for driving the desk, or co-announcer for "In the Year 2000", ETC. ETC.), but it all worked out, with the help of Max Weinberg and the Max Weinberg 7, and the absolute bizarreness that came from anything involving Joel Godard. When i was in college, between afternoon classes i watched reruns of the previous night's show on Comedy Central. The Walker Texas Ranger lever was one of the most sublimely hilarious inventions ever. The first time i ever heard Ted Leo was when he was a musical guest on Late Night in 2003, and he went on to become my favorite musician ever. All because of Conan. (Ted recently posted about it again here.) (it was also an episode in which Jennifer Garner was the featured guest, which was notable at the time because Alias was my favorite show.) One Christmas Eve several years ago i was talking to my grandma about the late night shows, and although she was a fan of Jay (that's grandmas for ya!), she told me she liked Conan because of the funny faces he makes, which made me so happy. The Finland special and writers' strike episodes (STRIKE BEARD!) were some of the most brilliant tv ever, because Conan just being Conan is the funniest of all.

So when Conan's run on Late Night ended, it was sad, and i didn't want him to leave New York because he belongs there, and i didn't want him to go to an earlier time because he couldn't be as weird, but at the same time it was so exciting because he was getting the Tonight Show! And it filled me with pride that he had grown so much and gotten so popular. I was actually overwhelmed with joy when he finally debuted. With the triumphant return of Andy, no less! While the Tonight Show does lack a certain spontaneity and exceptional weirdness that Late Night had (there is a special "nobody's watching, we don't give a shit!" quality to the later shows that cannot be recreated; Conan's absence at that hour freed me up to switch to Craig Ferguson, who i now love precisely because of that quality) and the musical guests are more mainstream i.e. far less awesome, it's still Conan and he's still great.

And now here we are. With Jay Leno returning to the Tonight Show after his failure of a primetime show (which, ASTONISHINGLY, was exactly the same as his Tonight Show: awful!) for endless years of more of the same, an interminable parade of anti-humor and smiling dumbshit mediocrity. (HE STILL MAKES MONICA LEWINSKY JOKES OH MY GOD WHAT) A mere seven months ago there was a bright shining future of a new era for the Tonight Show, CONAN'S Tonight Show. It should have been a legacy, and i had no expectation of it ever being ruined so harshly and abruptly. But, like someone overly devoted to the Snuggie, NBC couldn't let go of Leno's comforting, stupidity-embracing blandness, and Leno stubbornly refuses to cease existing. So Conan- with his old job filled and his new job stolen- is left with nothing but his own awesomeness and the support of comedians, critics, and the entire internet. I will watch whatever he does, but i will never forget what could have been.

- 9:39 PM

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

 Wow, so i guess i haven't posted in this thing for almost a year! WHOOPS. I think between facebook, livejournal, and message boards, i finally kind of reached "commenting about things online" saturation. In any case, here is an attempt at some updates, and since i'm pretty sure nobody reads this thing: this is what has been happening this year, future Marina!

- In the worst news and the thing that has affected me most and actually probably the main thing i was avoiding posting about: my grandmother passed away on June 2nd, two days after my 25th birthday. It's the first major close family death i've ever experienced- my dad's parents died when i was too young to remember them, so i basically grew up with just one set of grandparents. I know that a grandparent's death is something that the vast majority of people are likely to experience and is really simply expected as a basic part of life, but that hasn't actually made it less difficult to cope with. I continue to get emotional about it on a regular basis, and especially now that the holidays have arrived her absence is at the front of my mind. Of course this has been especially hard on my mom, and on top of the fact that she lost her mother, she has had to deal with every aspect of getting affairs in order (since both her brothers are out of state), finding a place for my grandpa who has Alzheimer's (a whole other layer of awfulness!), selling my grandparents' house in this wretched market, etc. It really is the worst. Additionally, my grandma's only brother then passed away on July 17 (the same day Walter Cronkite died). I hadn't seen him in a very long time, but it still added up to a strange, sad family year.

- On the entirely opposite end of the spectrum, my best friend is pregnant and ready to give birth within the next two weeks. !!!???!?!!! It has been pretty mind-boggling, but in a happy way. Well, a happy way and kind of a bittersweet way because things will be changing so drastically. I really hate the mommy culture that exists these days, which i think has also made me lose sight of the fact that the birth of a child is a really huge deal and actually is pretty awe-inspiring. Even though i've gone through many family members having kids, it's never been someone i'm so close with and who is so close to my own age. I don't really remember much about my mom's pregnancy with my younger brother except for the day of his birth (BECAUSE IT WAS CRAZY). Feeling a baby moving inside someone else's belly is one of the most bizarre things i've ever experienced. SEEING a baby moving inside someone else's belly FROM THE OUTSIDE is, well, Alien in real life. Terrifying.

- I went to Japan! It was awesome and awkward and interesting and hilarious and fun and exhausting. Seven months later, i still have not sorted through my photos. I can't quite believe it happened and is over now. I want to go back.

- I attended two weddings and have a third coming up this weekend. This is the most weddings i have attended EVER. I think it means i'm getting old.

- For the very first time in my life, i have exercised regularly and in escalating difficulty for almost the entire year (i say almost because in the past few weeks i've fallen off completely, which is not so good). So what happened is i started out on WiiFit at the beginning of the year, and i was super diligent about it and i actually amazingly started getting thinner and gaining muscle tone. It made me feel pretty good about myself! So i started doing its little jogging-in-place exercise, but that got tedious so i moved to briefly jogging outside at the end of my WiiFit exercises. And then all of WiiFit got tedious and i moved to exercising on my own and actually jogging extensively. And then it got too hot out so i started swimming extensively. And all the while i got stronger and better and it was crazy. So now it's cool outside and i should be jogging more, but the time change means it gets dark out way way way too early and since i jog after work, that doesn't give me any daylight to do it in and jogging at night is scary. Plus my knee has been bugging me which probably isn't good. So we'll see. Skipping even a couple weeks makes me feel like i'm gonna balloon up with fat (and it DEFINITELY makes me lose a lot of strength). The thing is that i've never really been fat, i've just always had that extra layer of flab- especially in the tummy area- which feels gross and i guess made me perceive myself as fat, maybe fatter than i really was. But once i started exercising, my legs and my stomach slimmed down and gained definition that i did not even know was POSSIBLE. It was crazy! But i also kind of plateaued after the initial fat loss and i still really need to improve a lot, and to do so i think i have to stop eating junk. WHICH I DON'T THINK I CAN DO. Soooooooooooooooo. Yeah. Exercise! Who knew! I'm a person who enjoys running! What!

- I finally started selling my shit on eBay! I have made at least $300 by now, which is immensely satisfying (making money for getting rid of stuff i don't want, whaaaat!), but after being really dedicated to listing stuff for a while, i took a break and haven't been keeping up with it like i should. I still have a room full of junk to get rid of.

- In the end, though, despite some productivity improvements, i remain a massive self-pitying loser with no social life whatsoever. Quarter-life crisis: now worse than ever! Anxiety about the future: eating away at my insides!

- 9:52 PM

Thursday, January 01, 2009

 I really don't like taking stock of the previous year when New Years rolls around, simply because i lead a pretty pathetic life when it comes down to it. Facing up to that is a bummer. I've had a good job for over a year now, but it's fairly uneventful. I feel like i've matured a tiny little bit in professional ways, but i've also gotten complacent due to a slowdown in work coming in and i don't push myself to learn new things or find stuff to do. I still live at home with my parents, which is massively lame, but the economy is such that like, oh god, i don't want my little paycheck to collapse under the weight of paying rent. I haven't made art in a long time, and i only have a few friends to hang out with occasionally. BASICALLY, i could make like fifty resolutions that will probably not get resolved due to my crippling social anxiety and laziness. Nonetheless, i would like to find my own apartment this year and perhaps make some new friends (IF THAT'S EVEN FREAKING POSSIBLE) and try try try to get back into artmaking. Annnnnnnnd i'm going to Japan at the end of April so i've got at least one big thing to look forward to. If nothing else i seem to always travel at least once a year; i almost forgot that i went to Vegas (for the first time) and New York (for the fifth time) in 2008. What the hey.

We got Wii Fit for Christmas and i've been playing that for the past week. I've been sore for several days! I actually enjoy the yoga even though i never thought i'd be one for that kind of stuff, and despite the pain some of the exercises have caused me (LUNGES AND PUSH-UPS ARE THE DEVIL'S WORK) i feel pretty good about doing some physical activity every day. I hope i keep it up, which might be a fool's hope because everyone i know who got a Wii Fit when they first came out has abandoned it, and i am nothing if not lazy. D:

And we finished watching LOTR tonight! Awww. Happy New Year, the One Ring is destroyed. You might say i... RANG in the new year?!??!?!? ...Oh god.

- 12:18 AM

Monday, December 29, 2008

 I think probably one of the things that adulthood ruins most is Christmas. Which is not to say that i don't still love Christmas- because i do- but getting the joy sucked out of you as you grow older is a total bummer. It happened pretty gradually, but now i'm able to sleep on Christmas Eve without feeling like i'm going to throw up from the excitement, and i'm able to sleep in on Christmas morning rather than waking up at 5 AM ready to open presents but having to wait interminably for my parents to get up. It's a family tradition of ours to make the gift-opening last for as much of the day as possible, and as a kid i got so FRUSTRATED when we had to break for breakfast and lunch. Now i actually prefer to go reeeeeally slooooow in order to delay the sadness of all the surprises being over with. AND THEN OF COURSE there's being a part of the working world! Wherein you have to work up to Christmas Eve (and if you're really unlucky, including Christmas Eve) and have basically no time to get into the Christmas spirit because YOU'RE WORKING THE WHOLE TIME. Thanks for destroying everyone's fun, adulthood! Great job!

BEING A GROWN-UP SUCKS.

Tonight i started a rewatch of The Lord of the Rings (lol being a grown-up!), because i entirely associate those movies with this time of year and it's been a long long time since i saw them. Watching Fellowship majorly brought back some memories; i have a hugely enormous amount of nostalgia attached to LOTR because i saw the movies in the theatre like three times each (THAT IS A LOT OF HOURS OF MOVIE-WATCHING) and the first one was when i was in my senior year of high school which was holy crap a long time ago, and before each movie came out i crammed in a reading of the book (i don't know why i didn't read them all at once, but i guess i just wanted it to be fresh before seeing the movie... and anyway it made for some pretty intense NERD TIMES). There really aren't too many movies that hold so much obsessive weight for me, it opens up some floodgates to see them again. I still remember like every nuance of things that i super duper loved and things that were badass and things that bugged me! OMG LEGOLAS, REMEMBER THAT GUY BEFORE HE WAS A PIRATE. Now i'm super pumped for the badassosity (?!?) that's to come in the next two movies. I love stuff that starts off all happy and nice and goes completely bonkers with epic angst-ridden craziness. I also love stuff that starts off epic and then goes even more bonkers! Basically i love stuff being EPIC. And bonkers.

I also watched the fancy new Sleeping Beauty re-issue on Christmas, and holy crap was that gorgeous. I actually don't remember seeing Sleeping Beauty quite as much as a kid (although i do remember we watched it at my very first sleepover in kindergarten [AT my preschool!] which has a special place in my heart) but i feel like i have always held it in the highest esteem of all the older Disney princess movies, not least because it has a) Maleficent and b) pink vs. blue. In any case, ART. GORGEOUS INSPIRATIONAL ART. Oh, old school 2D animation. The more time that passes, the more i love and miss it.

Hey guess what! Heroic fantasy good-and-evil magic and swords and monsters and kingdoms! Apparently my mood has shifted from my recent Doctor Who re-obsession and right now i am THAT KIND of nerd.

- 11:29 PM

Sunday, November 16, 2008

 I got to stay home from work on both Thursday and Friday because i was sick, but i did not even get to enjoy the days off... BECAUSE I WAS SICK. Ugh. Lame. I literally slept on and off for like two days straight, and that is all i did.

Yesterday i watched some movies! I saw Quantum of Solace, which was pretty cool. And in the evening i watched Demolition Man and The Abyss, both of which i had not seen for a long time. Demolition Man was a surprisingly hilarious version of the future, it was very entertaining. The main thing i have always remembered about it is Taco Bell because that is like the best part, but the constant swear word citations are hilarious. And of course the three seashells. THE FUTURE IS SO WACKY! The Abyss is a movie that i saw a LOT as a kid because it's one of my parents' favorites. I remember the whole thing really well, and while the aliens at the end are a little goofy, the movie is overall so freaking good i appreciate it even more now, especially the love story aspect of it and the fact that Lindsey Brigman is way cool. It really has everything that's great about things-going-wrong-on-a-spaceship scenarios except it's set underwater, but the obvious similarities between deep sea and deep space are perfect. And oh my god the drowning scene remains one of the most intense and scary and awesome scenes ever. There was a lot of stuff in it that kind of unsettled me as a kid (dead bodies trapped in a submarine! breathing liquid! crazy guy goes crazy! DROWNING.) but all that just serves to make it such a great engrossing movie. So awesome.

- 5:38 PM

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

 I am still having a hard time adjusting to the election really, finally being over. And Obama won. HE WON. It's been making me so happy today and i have gotten teared up way too many times. The West Wing came truuuuuuuue. Even my dad is coming around, Obama's acceptance speech last night really struck a chord with him and made him optimistic about the next four years. Here is my family, reaching across the aisle! My mom went to see my grandparents today and she said my grandma was like "well i guess YOU'RE happy." and it makes me laugh because old people love the GOP. But my grandma did also concede that McCain ran a pretty bad campaign.

There were some local precincts that were apparently stupid and used felt-tip pens instead of ballpoint (GREAT JOB), and there was some issue with them bleeding through the double-sided ballot and screwing up the machines. So on the news last night they were saying "The Bleeding of the Ballots", which sounds like an awesome political horror movie.

This thing i'm feeling must be relief! But i'll miss Tina Fey's Sarah Palin most of all.

- 4:57 PM

 AMERICA

THANK YOU

I cried in 2004 out of anger and sadness. This time it's tears of joy.

I actually saw it announced first by Jon Stewart, and i was kind of like "WHAT, ALREADY?!?" So, you know... i guess that was my initial reaction to Obama being elected president. Uhh, i'm kind of used to these elections being too close to call long into the night! And FLORIDA WENT BLUE. YESSSSSSSS. (MY COUNTY, EVEN. MY COUNTY IS ONE THAT WON IT FOR HIM. SAYS THE NATIONAL NEWS. MY VOTE FUCKING COUNTED.) We didn't fuck it up! I was so happy to go vote today, it just makes me feel proud and idealistic and grown-up and i love it. Although having to fill in a bubble with a pen is a little nerve-wracking because WHAT IF I SCREW UP; i spent a good amount of time making mine as perfect as possible. I liked electronic voting, it was so quick and easy. Meh.

I really really really miss Tim Russert. God that is still so depressing. But Luke Russert is pretty rad.

McCain's concession speech was actually really great, but could have done without the crowd booing. Class act, McCain supporters. Sarah Palin looked SAD, she was barely holding back tears. (and i... admit to feeling a fair amount of schadenfreude. I am also a class act, apparently!) Hey remember when nobody had heard of her? OH MAN. This election. Crazy. Obama's acceptance speech was of course beautiful and thrilling and was so representative of what i love about this country and its history. HOLY CRAP AMERICA. You know, i was so worried leading up to this, but in all honesty i could never truly imagine a McCain presidency. He ran such a weird, negative campaign, and Obama just SEEMS so much like the right person at the right time. I don't know. IT JUST FEELS RIGHT.

Of course, in other areas of the election, it's not all sunshine and flowers. Idiotic Florida passed the goddamned ban on gay marriage amendment. A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. TO TAKE AWAY PEOPLE'S RIGHTS. I just don't understand it. Because all heterosexual marriages work out so well! Because love is wrong if it's between certain people! Because some relationships just don't deserve to be recognized! Really great. Nice work. BARF VOMIT BARF. Aggggh, gay rights and women's rights are my #1 issues, they really get to me. And hey, speaking of women's rights, i just have to mention abortion here briefly, because apparently right now i am spouting off about my political views, which almost never happens so bear with me! The term "pro-abortion" is something i've been hearing a lot, and every time i hear it it sends me into a fit of blind rage. DEAR PRO-LIFERS: NO ONE IS PRO-ABORTION. The opposition to pro-life is pro-CHOICE. The right to CHOOSE whether to terminate a pregnancy or not, should the need arise. The right for a woman to CHOOSE what she does with her own body, and to have the option for safe healthcare. No one is going around saying "ABORTIONS! I LOVE ABORTIONS! KILL ALL THE BABIES!!!!!! YAAAAAAAYYYYYY BABY-KILLING", which is what the term "pro-abortion" implies. Sometimes semantics makes me ANGRY! Hulk smash!

But anyway, back to happiness. PRESIDENT OBAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D NOT ENOUGH SMILEY FACES IN THE WORLD

- 12:25 AM