Nanny McPhat. Oops, McPhee.

I love me some Emma Thompson, so when i saw that she had written the screenplay for the recent film, Nanny McPhee, I wanted to take a look.

The story follows a group of misbehaved little monsters, and the Super-Nanny that will put them on the right path. Nanny McPhee shows up sporting a thick unibrow, a couple of hairy warts, a figure that stereotypically screams ‘wicked old witch’ more than ‘cute little nanny,’ and a record-setting snaggletooth. As the little children learn each of five valuable lessons, Nanny McPhee’s ‘flaws’ begin to disappear one by one.

Emma delivers Nanny McPhee with a great, dry-humor sense of style, and I really like Colin Firth (in just about anything he does). It’s just a picky point with me that as the final lesson is learned, Nanny McPhee, of course, gets a slim, lovely waistline. So a fat waist is as noticeably an ugly flaw as bad manners in a child?

Bingeing on Dutch junk food.

Had a chance to catch the new work, Kommer, by Dutch art collective, Kassys. The work uses both performance and film components to explore the idea of human grief (kommer). In the first part, the actors wander about the stage and interact at a wake for a dead compatriot, saying all the trite and cliche things you can imagine going down at a funeral. It was actually a lot funnier that you might be thinking.

The second part was a film that followed our actors/characters back to the dressing room and out into the ‘real world’. In many ways, I felt like I knew the characters better through the film than through the performance. As it turns out, they all lead depressingly lonely lives. But it was the footage of Ton (abover, far left) in particular that caught my attention. He sits down in his spare, dorm-style room and joylessly binges on piles of Dutch junk food that he pulls from a drawer.

My first thought was, “Yikes. Been there, done that!” But then I got the feeling that my friend Christina was looking at me out of the corner of her eye. It felt a little bit as though everyone in theatre somehow knew that this footage was personally relevant to me. It was kind of unnerving. I never turned to look at Christina, but after the performance she said she was wondering if that clip would bother me. She had wondered if it bothered me that he was bingeing on food but he still remained thin. I actually hadn’t thought of it that way. But a lot of people I’ve met in Group will say they spent years trying to find the easy solution that would let them keep eating compulsively without suffering any side effects. And how often do we see the magazine cover stories promising to let you ‘eat anything you want and still lose weight’?

In the Kommer piece, we don’t see the side effects. But for all we know, Ton goes right off camera to puke up all that junk food.

Urban Vampires

Finished Fledgling, and while I still like Octavia Butler’s storytelling skill, I just didn’t enjoy her take on vampire mythology all that much.

I also mentioned in the above-linked post that I was going to be starting Minion by L.A. Banks. After finishing only the first 25 pages, I’m confident enough to say that I won’t be going anywhere near the rest of the series. I’ll just starve until the next Laurell K. Hamilton book comes out. Banks takes a try with a more Afro-centric look at vampire mythology, but it just comes off as a strange mish-mash of gothic and urban. The narrative is full of vernacular phrases like trippin’, frontin’, and buggin’. Call me an old fashioned, Anne Rice kind of girl, but I was not enjoying the mix of language and theme. There was no elegance. No sense of seduction. My romantic sensibilities create an expectation of vampires in my mind, and they rarely resemble street thugs.

Loring Park’s Mysterious Black Squirrel

Is this the opposite of an albino squirrel? Why does this squirrel look like he/she stopped at Target for a box of hair color? Maybe a distant cousin of Loring Park’s dusty gray squirrels? Either way, it remains a very engaging mystery for me to think about as I walk towards downtown.

Drunk blogging!

Most of the time, I stay away from the alcohol. I’ve never really been inclined to enjoy drinking, and I actually have no talent for holding my liquor. Believe me, I feel the weight of the shame coming down from all my Irish and Scottish ancestors, AND my white trash Idaho relatives. But it’s been a bit of a week, and when it comes to that, I figure I need to do some proper drinking.

The latest episode was a good-bye soiree for a lovely co-worker. Denied a proper goodbye by her evil (passive-aggressive, micro-managing, misogynist) supervisor, I took it upon myself to recruit some help (thanks, Giselle!) and put on a party for dear Christina.

Let me just say that the Red Dragon in Uptown mixes their drinks STRONG. Combined with my light weight drinking abilities, I was slouching and slurring only 1/2 way through the first cocktail! It was so strong, in fact, that I asked other people to finish it while I ordered something a little fruitier, that I thought would be a little lighter. It wasn’t that much lighter, and well into the party I realized that Giselle was outing me to the entire group as a compulsive shoplifter during college. Strangely, it didn’t bother me, and then a number of co-workers raised their hands in a show of solidarity. See? How do other people make it through college without a little shoplifting on the side? More beer!

Thankfully I wasn’t left to walk home in that state, and Masami, Nick, Christina, and Isaac, took me along to dinner for Indian food. I started in on the Diet Coke while the beer kept coming for everyone else. By the end of dinner I was more lucid, and Christina assured me that I was a funny drunk, and I should give drunk blogging a try. Better than being obnoxious, I suppose. Except being obnoxious might really work for this blog!

The best part about dinner was the conversation with Isaac about Jesus and Mary Magdalene and Fundies (fundamentalists). Isaac is a theologian. Academia is so hot.

If you get two e-mails and one text message from me, wouldn’t that indicate a desire to meet?

Steve the Caretaker and I were set to meet with Mark, the Good Twin Property Manager, to discuss the long-term plan for our scuzzy little brownstone apartments. Mark was all about getting more involved with managing the buildings, and I’m all about having Mark run interference between me and the Evil Twin Property Manager. The more distance between me and the ETPM, the more civil I can be as a resident manager.

Steve the Caretaker didn’t show up. Despite the confirmation e-mail I sent a week out. Despite the confirmation e-mail sent the day before. Despite the text message I sent that very morning. I called him and left another message, then got on with the meeting. Forty-five minutes in, Mark mentions that we can’t go any farther without Steve. I call him again with no answer. He promptly calls me back. (Actually, I love that he doesn’t even wait to see if there is a voicemail to get more information. He just registers that I’ve called, and immediately calls me back.)

“Where the hell are you?”

“Uh…”

“We had a 4 o’clock meeting today. I sent you reminders.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. Are you in the ‘hood right now?”

“I’m around.”

“Get over here!”

This is when the meeting really began for me, because I had been looking forward to sitting next to Steve the Caretaker all week. I mock-glared at him as he slunk down in his seat, and he gave me a really goofy grin. The meeting resumed and I laid out my plans to transform the disaster that is the maintenance workshop. Steve the Caretaker’s eyes got really big as I described my proposal.

“I’m serious, Steve. This needs to be done.”

“I don’t want a girl touching my tools.”

“Fuck off!”

Everybody laughs, and then Mark warns me about the empty paint buckets. Apparently some of the guys use them in lieu of finding a restroom. I thought this must be bullshit, but I look over at Steve the Caretaker and he is not laughing. Eww. I told him if I found anything like that, I would personally put the offending bucket in his apartment for him to enjoy.

But best of all, Steve the Caretaker and I have a homework assignment: to go around our buildings and develop a punchlist for long-term projects. He and I headed back home (I had to convince him to walk back with me on the sidewalk, rather than pursuing his idea of jumping down a retaining wall between apartment buildings), and then he graciously took me through the world’s most disgusting workshop and helped me work out a plan to clean it up.

Steve the Caretaker and I will be the most awesome caretaking duo in the Twin Cities, and I’m looking forward to more projects, more flirting, more empty threats involving urine, and more plotting against residents.

Groupie!

Eyeteeth prepared this homage to KISS using the very same marketing piece over which I wanted to throw myself off a tall building. I appear as a KISS groupie with autograph book in hand. Rock!!

The gift of anal discharge…soon available over-the-counter!

The FDA is rarin’ to go to approve Alli (prescription drug Xenical) for over-the-counter sales. This means that you, too, now have the opportunity to enjoy a number of disturbing gastrointestinal side effects for an average weight loss of 6 lbs. Keep spare pairs of underwear within easy reach.

A couple of members of the FDA advisory panel that recommended Alli for OTC sales cited a concern for abuse of the drug, especially among teenagers. A valid concern, I think, given the scary rate of eating disorders among teens. But the advisory panel gave Alli the OK anyway.

If you think the “danger to teens” thing sounds vaguely familiar, you might be thinking of the recent fiasco with emergency contraceptive drug, Plan B, and how it got shot down for OTC sales amid concerns that it will encourage riskier sexual behavior among teens.

Zuzu, over at Feministe, wrote a particularly cool post about Alli and Plan B.

So…Alli can make our teens eating disorder-ravaged (and facing the embarrassing phenomenon of greasy/oily discharge from their butt), but it’s still better than them being sluts, it seems.

Party at the blood bank!

The enduring mythology of the vampire has been a long-time interest of mine. And I’ve been such a lucky girl lately - vampire stuff seems to be everywhere!

Headed to the theater to see Underworld: Evolution. (Yeah, I know, high-quality cinema.) But I couldn’t help myself. There was a lot I liked about the first film, and I wanted to see what they would do with the second one. In this sequel, they make a lot of sophomoric mistakes (more leather! more boobs! more sex!), and it’s not going to make it into my collection, but there were some things I liked. The idea of a vampire hybrid species is cool, and I love the way they kept that cool, blue tint to the film that was in the original. Icy.

(To the group of people talking behind me during the entire film: If I ever meet you again, I will personally sew your lips shut, Assholes.)

Am also reading Fledgling by sci-fi auteur Octavia Butler. I recently finished Kindred and I LOVED it, so I thought I would give Butler another try here. Fledgling isn’t turning out as I hoped. It centers around a 53-old vampire named Shori who is considered a juvenile (and looks like a 10-year old) among her species, the Ina. She survives an attack on her family, but is left with amnesia. Along the way she collects several humans as symbionts to give her blood (Ina don’t kill), as she tries to solve the murders of her family. In a lot of ways, Butler deviates from the staples of vampire mythology, but what’s really bothering me about this book is the sexual intimacy of Shori with her humans. Even understanding that Shori is 53 human years old, the intimacy is unnerving and seems inappropriate. I’m reading this one for a book club, so I’m looking forward to the conversation.

Sitting on my desk at home is Minion: A Vampire Huntress Legend. The title sounds like something marketed to high school goths that hide in their basements and listen to Cure records while coloring their hair (black, of course). Yes, I was one of them. Can’t wait to start this book!

Extreme Makeover: Caretaker Edition

I have been charged with the task of whipping this disgusting workshop into magnificence. Maintenance boys can be so messy. (Except for Steve the Caretaker - he inherited this mess, he didn’t make it. Steve the Caretaker is actually very organized about his own workshop. (But not so organized about paperwork. But that’s kind of cute.))