Christmas Countdown

First it was Halloween that whizzed by me so darn fast it left me in a tailspin and with literal dried fake blood drying on my chin (from the costume. You know.). Then it was Thanksgiving, which was a blur of raw turkey and vegetable stock and simmering cranberries, mixed together with a helping of bittersweet family drama and a climatic coloring contest. ("I'm gonna win!" My mother would sing-song. "Stop it, Tia!" exclaimed one of my young cousins. "You're making me nervous!")

And now we move on to Christmas, and I feel like I've barely taken a breath! But Christmas remains my favorite time of the year, and this time, I'm determined to actually put some thought into my Christmas mix and not let it pass me by like I did the Halloween mix.

I've discovered that life just has no 'hold' or 'pause' button and while it's exhilarating, it's also a little exhausting!

Notable Things of the Last Few Week:

1. "The Grinch" at the Pantages Theater - Eh. It was cute, but honestly as far as Grinch stories go, I preferred both the movie and the cartoon. The Grinch himself was hilarious, but he was clearly doing a Jim Carrey impersonation, and honestly, for 80 bucks a ticket, I would have rather had something a little stronger than what I saw. The music was forgettable (except for the two you already know), the jokes were silly, and the dog, usually my favorite part of the movie and the cartoon, rapidly began to annoy the crap out of me. So there you go.


2. Movies, Movies, Movies - Two really great ones, and one that had me just plain perplexed.
a: Everybody's Fine - youtube trailer
With Kate Beckinsale (PRETTY!), Drew Barrymore (PRETTY!), Sam Rockwell (...COOL!) and Robert Deniro. It was actually a very sweet movie about a widowed father who, when his grown children all cancel on him for a visit, decides to hop on trains and buses to surprise them one by one. Along the way, he discovers that his children are not as 'fine' as he thought they were, and that thanks to his demanding nature, have grown to lie to him about how things are in order not to worry him.

Enjoyable movie, if sad and bittersweet.

b: Precious - youtube trailer
What's sad is I grew up in the inner city in LA, and I knew plenty of kids like Precious. There are too many true life stories of kids with abusive families and no hope, and this movie really got to me in that sense. Definitely worth watching, even if sitting through it can be an uncomfortable experience.

c: Twilight -
Er... what? Yeah, I rented it. I finally got curious. And I just don't get it guys. I tried, I did. But OMG it made my brain hurt. This movie is like a sugared-up Harlequin romance for a preteen so I get why they would love it so but... yeah. I was bored silly. And honestly, nothing drives me more crazy than 'telling' and not 'showing' and so I really wanted to scratch my eyes out because I couldn't figure out WHY Edward and Bella loved each other so much. There was NOTHING there but 'she smells good' and he 'couldn't read her thoughts'. I need MORE. Plausibility! Please! Find a nugget of it and I'll latch on! It's all I need!

Coming up? A Christmas Masquerade at the Disneyland Hotel, and 'the Wedding Singer' in Irvine. Yes, the musical. Am I excited? Oh you have no idea.

It's Never Too Late to Send the Invitations to the Last Night Of Your Life...

I'm in a P!nk state of mind. I've always been a P!nk fan, but after getting the chance to see her live in concert, my appreciation and obsession increased tenfold. She gets me psyched.

And I have a great reason to get psyched, because I'm finally, FINALLY going to visit New York.

This is a huge deal for me. I've camped out in the swamps of the Everglades, walked cobblestone streets in London fog, threw rocks at a rooster in the Philippines jungle, and even gotten reprimanded by hotel clerks in Hong Kong, but I've never ever been to New York.

What's even more silly is that I feel like I've already been there. Years as an executive assistant have lent to learning every twist and curve of 5th Avenue, the Financial District, and finagling cranky hostesses at hotspots trying to get a 7PM reservation at BOA or Norma's at Le Parker Meridian. My broadway obsession has sent me to see Idina Menzel open Wicked in London, Rent in Las Vegas, and season tickets at the Ahmanson Theatre & the Pantages, but Broadway, has eluded me. I salivate over the cuisine at Top Chef Harold's Perilla and ache for a frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity3.

If New York and I were a romantic comedy, we'd be Sleepless in Seattle. Except it would be called 'Hungry in Los Angeles', and it would star me and my neverending quest to get to New York to eat a friggin slice of pizza and sit in Central Park.

And New York would be a cold and elusive lover - so ornery and yet so lovable because of it's indifference. Smooth and suave and cold and calculating and indifferent - in other words, New York would be Mr. Darcy.

Except instead of just insulting me it would also hurl cabs at me and stink like garbage.

What? Even Mr. Darcy can't be perfect.

In which Melly gets Jury Duty...

And it's nothing like Law & Order.

Not that I didn't already know that, because there's a reason why the majority of our population groans like they've been gutted when they see that summons in the mail. Because it's a pain in the butt.

Don't get me wrong, I get that it's important. This weekend I sat through four screenings of genocide featured documentaries and films: The Killing Fields, The Long Way Home, Darfur Now, and Hotel Rwanda.

It's sobering to watch them all at once, because you're reminded just how LUCKY you are to live in a country where your biggest gripe is that you have to sit through jury duty once a year, and not in one where you've being killed simply based on your skin color or heritage or no reason at all.

And to be honest, jury duty did have it's amusements. There was the 'actor' in the box who insisted on being referred as the 'award' winning actor and also vehemently added that as an actor he was more in tune with the human mind and therefore qualified as the psychologist expert. When he was summarily dismissed, he got up in a huff and stated to the rest of us that 'justice would not be served'.

There was hour and a half lunches, where eclectic members of the jury would do everything they could to not talk about the case and instead wandered through downtown, to Placita Olvera, and marveling at the long trek to the parking assigned at the majestic Disney Concert Hall.

There was the bored looking judge, who would comment wryly and do his job, and nod off in his chair, blinking away to check the court record to catch up.

There was the note pad we were given, which was used for notes, and for ADD afflicted me, became a savior in the form of the sketch pad, in which my notes turned into snapshots of the courtroom - witnesses, respondent, lawyers and bailiff.

But the case itself was sobering, and I learned way more about child molestation than I ever wanted to know. In the end, we opted to send the respondent back to the state hospital, and I understand now the importance of jury duty. The importance of being fair.

Even so, I'm very very glad I don't have to go again for another year.

Confession #201: I'm a Gaming Addict

"You're a gaming addict," I was told somberly today.

"I'm not!" I protested mightily even though I had just spent over ten minutes gushing excitedly over the arrival of my newest shiny object, the new Batman: Arkham Asylum game.

Truthfully, I don't have time to be playing video games. I'm close to moving, and what little time I have at home should be spent putting stuff in boxes, not in front of my 360. But I couldn't help it. I had been waiting for this game forever, and thus far, Batman does not disappoint.

Outstanding graphics, a solid storyline (the lunatics have taken over the asylum) and hidden treasures throughout the maze of crazy give this game that kind of addiction that just does NOT allow you to stop playing. Plus, it's just FUN. You get to punch and kick guys, and you get to hang out on gargoyles and swing and crawl through grates, and protect your car when the bad guys are pounding on it.

It's like your inner 13 year old boys best fantasy come to life! ...

Okay if your fantasy was to crawl through grates in a maze full of psychotic lunatics and stuff.

But really, there are some games that are just so engaging in story and dialogue and pure interaction, it's better put together than three quarters of the movies you see out there.

And if loving that is silly, let it be so. I haven't been so in love with a game since the original Max Payne.

I still maintain that I'm not a true gaming addict. I didn't stay up all night playing, though the reason why I stopped wasn't because I felt like I should.

Honestly, I just got scared. Scarecrow boss fight. Dead parents. Late at night. In a morgue.

And Batman had just been drugged with the fear potion thingy.

No thank you, I'd rather sleep.

This is what you call a Support System!?

My bra broke.

Seriously. It burst open while I was at work. And it happened just as I was settling down to work. And I'm wearing a low-cut dress today that can just skirt by as appropriate office attire if I safety pin the top closer together. If I don't I look like I'm going to a strip club for a wet t-shirt contest.

But now my safety pin has been upgraded to bra-fixer, which means i have had to go all MacGuyver and use a binder clip to try to keep the girls from spilling out.

In my distress I emailed the story to a few friends. One yelled at me because apparently the subject line : OMG MY BOOBS BURST OUT OF MY BRA isn't exactly appropriate to send to a work email from a conservative Christian organization, and my other friend apparently was in the middle of a conference call when her laptop (Projected on the screen with 25 doctors in the room) screen also showed up with that as that newest subject line.

Okay that was funny. But still. My boobs and I are officially at war.

Welcome to the '30s!

It's not all that different from the '20s. Then again, I've only been 30 for about four days, so I don't have that much basis for comparison.

There are always goals, but this is the first time that I feel infinitely closer to actually accomplishing. The maturity is hitting me, albeit slowly, but really, how can you really ever truly mature when you get such a gleeful delight over things like a 'ROCKBAND' cake?

I sincerely take that as license to occassionately embrace the Peter Pan in me.

*twitch*

My house has been taken over my ants. It's straight out of a horror movie. The tag line would read 'don't leave the food out – or they'll EAT IT. AND YOU'. They're all over the place. No improperly closed food item is safe from them. They will find it and they will RUIN it, and waste your food AND your money!

And nothing gets me more homicidal than a twenty dollar back of chicken jerky treats for the puppies getting eaten alive by little black crawly things.

Lucy, my mother's poodle, has taken to using my bed as her happy place, and that means once in a while coming back to finding bones (ew) and other things(ew) on the bed. I can't exactly lock the door because Thalia's cage is in there, but still, usually I can tolerate it, until I got home last night, exhausted from the Orange County Fair, and lay on my bed to feel oddly prickly.

At first I thought it was all in my head – the sensation that I kept getting bitten. Until an hour later, I looked down and I realized my bed spread was CRAWLING with ants. Why? Because Lucy had brought a BONE up there, and they had FOUND it.

I had ANTS ALL OVER MY BED!

They had been crawling on me. On my bed! I'm all twitchy and slappy.

Needless to say I didn't sleep much last night.

I immediately devolved into Sigourney Weaver from Aliens, screeching and wielding the ant killer like a maniac. Me and my cousin crawled underneath the bed and found their entrance, and sprayed and sprayed and KILLED.

I don't even feel bad about it.

ANTS WERE IN MY BED.

On the upside side, I got to see the second episode of Glee at the outfest 'A Lil' Bit of Glee' panel, along with hearing most of the cast and producers talk about it. That show is awesome. I love it. It will be forever the best show ever.

Because it's Popular 2.0, but with singing and a less annoying Sam (no offense to Carly Pope).

And as previously mentioned, I also got to hit the Orange County Fair. It was very hot, and everything there is too expensive, but can you really put a price on a good funnel cake and riding an elephant?

No, you really can't.