All the Single Ladies

Since I am doing book reviews I might as well do movie reviews. I love movies and I am an avid fan of Netflix, so let’s do this.

Obessesed

You know with Netflix when there are no movies left for you to see that are new so you have a “might as well” list? It’s in your queue and at times you forget to update it or move any movie to the top, so you get a random movie in the mail one day and you watch it just for the hell of it? That is what Obsessed was. 

Obsessed is the movie with Ali Larter of the whipped cream bikini fame and Beyonce of single ladies fame to make a bastardized sub-par version of Fatal Attraction. The only difference (besides the boiling of bunnies) is the husband, Derrick (who is actually Charles from The Office, whom we hated for replacing Michael for a short time) has no guilt in the matter.

Ali Larter plays Lisa, the psycho temp from Derrick’s office who falls for Derrick and tries to replace his wife Sharon (Beyonce).  That’s the entire plot. There is no complicated storyline here.  What you see is actually what you get.  I could tell you how the movie ends 15 minutes into it. And the acting, do I even need to comment? Larter can only play one role. The role of the seductive annoying chick.  Her role in Heroes is one of the reasons why I don’t watch it anymore. And Beyonce needs to stick to dancing in leotards, work with what you know, I say. 

The start of the movie, mild flirting happens between Lisa and Derrick.  The warning signs are all there, but Derrick being a man is oblivious to them and goes on about his day.  The hormones hit the fan when Lisa tries to molest Derrick at the company Christmas party where (of course, and inexplicably) no spouses are allowed.  She follows him into the men’s room and all hell breaks loose. 

At this point, in my opinion, Derrick has every right to grab Lisa by the hair, yank her outside to the rest of the party and say, “Yeah, so she tried to rape me.”  That’s justified to me.  Does he do this? Of course not.  He doesn’t sleep with her or lead her on.  He just has the unfortunate luck of having a psycho for an assistant. 

If you are completely innocent and you can see the obvious crazy eyes (to me, she doesn’t even have crazy eyes, she has dead eyes) in the office temp who wants to get in your pants my first course of action would be....Anyone? Anyone?  TELL YOUR WIFE! If you have nothing to hide, tell your wife everything. Then, tell Human Resources.  You just saved your job and your marriage in about ten minutes time. Tah Dah!!! It really is that simple. If you don’t want to appear guilty, tell someone. It’s as simple as that.

But that wouldn’t make a very interesting movie would it?

Things get out of hand, as they always do in bad movies, and Lisa ends up trying to kill herself in Derrick’s work retreat hotel room because she can’t have him.  He finds her dying in the bed and takes her to the hospital where everything comes out and his wife and job want him gone. Saw that one coming. How could THAT have been avoided???

Lisa recuperates and Derrick and Sharon reunite and everything is just peachy, they go on a date and Lisa comes to their home while the babysitter is there and takes their child. 

Hold it right there...

One, this child is DUMB.  I have no children but I do have nephews who are pretty dang smart. If some crazy bitch comes into their room and wants them to go with her into the night their first question, I have no doubt, would be “Who the fuck are you?” They are my nephews, what can I say? They don’t know this person and their second reaction would be screaming for the babysitter, that they do know, to stab someone. Or they would forget the babysitter altogether and they would employ their Power Ranger moves and drop kick her where she stood.  

Two, what kind of babysitter is this? If a crazy stalker was after my husband and she was watching my child, maybe let her know. If someone you don’t know comes to the door, give the parents a ring. Problem solved.  

Of course none of this happened. Derrick and Sharon get an alarm system and forget the entire thing ever happened. 

What would I do???

I would say to David, “Where is your biggest gun?” and when that gun wasn’t big enough I would mosey on down to Wal-mart to find a bigger one. You know the elephant gun that Reba McEntire has in Tremors (I am SO Netflixing Tremors right now) I would need something that big. I would keep it on my person at all times.  I would then wait at the front door to blow her brains out. Done. Movie over. 

This doesn’t happen.  Sharon comes home to find Lisa in Derrick’s old football jersey in their martial bed and Sharon then beats Lisa down. 

Could I survive in a fight such as this? Probably. I have an older sister and we fought often. Christy was always in much better shape and she had a good four years on me but she was never a match in a fight. Christy may me stronger than me and in much better shape, but I am meaner. In any small fight we ever had, I got the upper hand because I was always so mean. We never really had any Thunderdome type fight to the death.  I was never that pissed at her and she would quit once I had her on the ground, so it never came to bloodshed.  But if I ever was in a fight, even with a person who was far beyond my physical prowess, I am full of enough piss and vinegar to hold my own, or at least I think so. 

Lisa gets a few good hits in but in the end, Lisa falls through the attic floor onto the glass coffee table. This doesn’t kill her but the falling chandelier does. 

Movie over.  

This movie is full of flaws and gaping plot holes but I didn’t expect much from a movie starring a Tyra Collete wannabee and Beyonce, queen of the catchy pop hits. And I loved entertaining bad movies, but this was not one of them. It’s just a bad movie. 

My Life at Grey Gardens: Someone Hand Me a Wet Nap.

I know, I know, I haven’t written in two weeks. Here you go.

Reading. I read a lot. I enjoy reading anyway but now I have nothing but time to read all day unless I sleep all day. So I read or sleep.  That’s my day. So I thought, BOOK REVIEWS! I usually only buy a book if someone of whom I value their opinion tells me it’s good.  I love book reviews because they let me know what I want to read next.  If you read certain books that I do, go to pajiba.com and read their book reviews. That is where I get the majority of my recommendations. 

So yeah, I am doing book reviews now. ENJOY!

I read a little bit of everything but I love a true story. A biography or events that have happened, etc. Especially if the people in this true story are crazy. Cults, psychopaths, etc. Bring it on.  Crazy people amuse me.  I find them both horrifying and amazing.  And true stories are more interesting anyway. You can’t make this stuff up. The most twisted writer in the world could not come up with this stuff. 

My Life at Grey Gardens

A while back I Netflixed the original documentary detailing the lives of Big Edie and Little Edie, the aunt and cousin of Jackie O. Grey Gardens is what they call their house in East Hampton. HBO just did another movie on Grey Gardens with Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange that won a bunch of Emmys, I think. With good reason, it’s pretty good as well and you get some background and there are snippets from the documentary. That can be Netflixed as well but to get the full severity of the crazy that lurks in this mother and daughter, you need to watch the original documentary.  I watched the entirety of it with my mouth open.  

They went from old money and high society and such things that I know nothing about to living in squalor. They became recluses over the years, something I can sympathize with here lately, and they were afraid to leave the house in fear of being kidnapped, run over, assasinated, etc. Loony.  

They bred cats, not intentionally but they had a few cats and over the years those few cats multiplied.  Big Edie couldn’t move around well enough to walk anywhere so she mostly laid in bed surrounded by dozens of kittens. It makes my eyes water now just thinking about it. In the book, the author says she walked into Big Edie’s room one time and found 22 cats on her bed with her. 

It was a wooden house and since wood decays over the years and they certainly weren’t going to have any of the holes repaired, a number of racoons invaded the house. Instead of doing something about a racoon infestation they gave them names and kept them as pets. They even fed them as regularly as their cats. 

I am in no way making this up.  Those crazy ladies fascinate me to no end.  Not only because they live in filth but because they are for real insane. I can not put their insanity into words, it is something you must see for yourself. 

So this book was written by a family friend, Lois Wright, who lived at Grey Gardens, yes LIVED, for 13 months, from May of ‘76 to June of ‘77. I wondered what sort of person could live there for a few hours, much less over a year.  But Wright is a little nutty herself.  She’s an artist and a palm reader.  Yeah.  The book is a log of what they do in this house, how Big Edie and Little Edie react with each other and their crazy outlook on the world outside that house. 

That may sound boring to some of you but let me assure you, it’s not. I read the book in two days, finding it hard to put down.  Here are few WTF? moments that might pique your interests:

- No one has a key to this house, if you leave it, you have to yell through the holes in the windows for someone to let you in.  

- I have no idea how they bathe. The tub in Big Edie’s room is for the cats and what other tubs or showers they do have don’t work even though they have running water. 

- They refuse to cook in the kitchen since they have a gas oven and stove and they fear the house would blow up, so they cook on a hot plate in Big Edie’s room.  Wright complained the few times she had to prepare their meals on the hot plate, it was very hard to cook because the cats wouldn’t leave it and you had to do all of the preparing and cooking surrounded by cats. And this was AFTER what they refer to as “The Raid.”

East Hampton wanted them evicted. The house on the outside was in shambles, and the outside is nothing compared to the inside. So the health inspector came and wanted the house evacuated if they didn’t clean up in a certain amount of time. Big Edie and Little Edie refused to leave and they refused to clean. In steps Jackie O. She paid to have the place gutted and cleaned to get it up to code.  Five years after that is when Wright came to visit.  In the movie they show the health inspector holding back vomit once he steps the door. I can not imagine the stench, nor do I want to.  When the book was written, they were at least trying to be a little cleaner using trash cans which they never did before. How did they used to take the trash out? They didn’t. 

They may be loco but I find them endearing. They are obviously a close mother and daughter since they never leaves each other’s side (Little Edie can only leave Big Edie’s room when she is asleep or when given permission), but you can tell they annoy the crap out of each other. The way they speak to one another is hilarious. They are very defensive of the choices they have made to bring them to this but you can tell they regret a lot of them. When Big Edie’s husband died he left everything to his other wife (he never divorced Edie but remarried anyway) and Edie only got an allowance from a trust. When the trust ran out they had no more money.  They were given the choice to sell Grey Gardens right after he died, and move elsewhere so they could live comfortably forever but Big Edie refused. That was her house and she would only leave it “feet first.”

 

The book also takes you back to Grey Gardens after Lois left up until Big Edie dies. She fell out of bed one night and broke her leg. She wouldn’t let any doctor examine her leg and it got so bad she could not move from the bed at all so she developed bed sores since she was never left bed. She couldn’t even use a bedpan and wouldn’t move to wear Depends, so she just went in the bed.  Not sure if she ever changed her clothes. She stayed like this from July to January. Why? Because she would not leave her house and if a doctor ever entered the room they would make her go to a hospital and she wouldn’t leave the house. 

So read the book but watch the movie first. If you don’t like documentaries, then watch the HBO  version.  It’s insane. The only small complaint I had is that Wright gives you every detail she can which sometimes is good and sometimes it’s not needed. She goes into detail about her car that is broken down and I was like “Yeah. Don’t care about your car, get back to those crazy bitches.” but the unneeded detail is few and far between. Most the details in this book will make you cringe.  I cringed and gagged aloud a few times but I also laughed. They are really a couple of genuine, delusional, hilarious nutcases.

Why, this stuff's made in New York City. NEW YORK CITY?!

Travel!

This blog here will be unmanned until Wednesday, September 9th.  I will be in New York City (every time I say or hear New York City I think of that old Pace Picante commercial) visiting Morgan Beene.  

Tisha Leigh and I will be leaving today around 2:15 and arriving home Tuesday around 6:23 in the pm. 

To sum up, these three super cool people right here will be occupied for the next few days:

For both the flight there and the flight home I will be considerably out of it.  I have to take no less than two Dramamine per flight or else it's going to be bad news for me and quite embarrassing for Tish to be with the sick girl who can't stop puking because her head thinks the plane is spinning around in circles.  YAY VERTIGO!\

Tish would look something like this (she's the one on the right):

And I would feel and look something like this:

So you people will have to make due. Sorry to let you down. However, Monday is Labor Day so I hope the lot of you have something fun and exciting to do.  

Will I be summing up the trip when I get back? You bet your ass I will!

Peace to the Out. 

It's Funny Until Someone Sets Themselves on Fire

Amateur Exterminator Observer

One Saturday I was following my normal routine, sitting in the red oversized chair and reading.  David was in the backyard cutting the grass. 

I was nearing the end of The Dark Tower, and I heard a banging on the back door.  It’s frantic and I heard yelling as well but I couldn’t make out what the yeller was saying. The only word I could distinguish was “Fuck!”

I unlocked the back door and David came charging in yelling, “I was stung by a hive of yellow jackets!!!” And he went running into the bathroom. I am not sure what he thought going into the bathroom would do. You can run cold water over the stings, I suppose. I assure you they will not wash off.  

Does anyone remember a commercial back in the day, before DVR, and they were advertising a book or something about home remedies? Well I remember one of them was aspirin over bee stings. You just take the aspirin, crush it up and rub it over the bee sting. I guess to alleviate the pain??? Whatever the purpose of the aspirin was, it didn’t work. 

David was still in pain and he was pissed off and griping and then the swelling started.  David is allergic to a lot of things and I feared that this mysterious stinging beast would be yet another thing that he is allergic to.  Thankfully, it wasn’t.  He started to swell but I didn’t see him make the international choking symbol and his face never turned purple, or even blue so I figured he was alright.  

David is not exactly sure what it was that stung him. He said they looked like wasps but they were black and yellow.  I have seen no such bug in or around our home, but I will take his word for it and we will call them yellow jackets. Whatever these things were, they had to die. 

He brought out an aerosol can of ant killer and headed to the backyard.  I thought to myself “Wow, that is just going to piss them off.”  I pictured David spraying these things with the ant spray and then the entire hive getting wind of this and attacking him. I started calculating alternate routes to the nearest hospital.  I didn’t say anything to him about this being the dumbest idea that he has ever had (not true). You know those moods that people get in and you don’t dare speak up about anything for fear you are just going to make it worse??? Yeah. I kept my mouth shut. 

I sat back down and watched out the window, car keys in hand, for the stinging to begin.  As I am watching David take action I noticed something peculiar, I said aloud, “Is that fire???”

Yes. It’s the Hillbilly Blowtorch. Take an aerosol can and a lighter and stand back.  

I got up from the couch and went outside, not with my car keys but with my phone. The fire department would need be called eventually...Oh and I grabbed my camera. 

I stayed a safe distance away (the photo was taken from extreme zoom).  I stood there with all 3 dogs at my feet.  All of us had our heads cocked to the side in awe of this man on a mission.  We stood there like that for what seemed like forever, watching David engage the Hillbilly Blowtorch no less than a dozen times. 

When he was finally finished he turned back towards the house, threw his hands up in victory and shouted, “Those mother fuckers are dead now!”

We came back inside and I suggested that maybe he take a Benedryl or two and sit for a while since the swelling was increasing.  He agreed that maybe that was a good idea. And then he went fishing instead.  

Painting...

the Fireplace.

Leftover paint is a dangerous thing in this house...

It was the same white as the trim and such. Now it is the same brown as the bathroom. 

But, Seriously, I Need New Clothes...

Worrying.

The unemployed do a fair amount of worrying.  I am a worrier anyway (thanks for that, mom) but not having a job or a steady income adds to this worrying considerably. 

You may think I worry about big things. How will I put food on the table? How will I pay the cable bill? How will I keep my home heated and cooled (in all seriousness, David and I could probably get by without heating for an entire winter. Air conditioning? Not so much)?  Can I keep my dogs in shots and dog food? 

The answer to all of these things is yes. I can do all of these things, at least for a little while. We have 3 fully stocked freezers so we will not go hungry and when those are empty, David can just go shoot something else. (FYI, I haven’t bought any bread or any bread related product in over a month) I am unworried about the aforementioned things...for now. 

I worry about far more important things:

How am I going to buy a new fall wardrobe? I need new jeans, how can I afford them? I really wanted a new computer, will I ever get one? Will I be able to buy a new fall purse? The third season of 30 Rock comes out soon, how can I obtain that?

These are the selfish, shitty things that keep me up at night; how I am going to clothe myself and keep myself entertained.  

Mostly I just worry about what the frick I am going to do for a living. I look for jobs every day. I have yet to hear back from any of them. However if I want to be a telemarketer or sell life insurance, I am all set. I want to do neither of those things. 

I had a job just to have a job for a very long time and I am hoping it doesn’t come to this.  But if I have to, I have to. 

People keep telling me to be a writer. Yes, that is all well and good and that is what I would love to do. But Stephen King isn’t Stephen King overnight. 

Writing is what I have always wanted to be and planned to be I just had no clue of how to be one. Well being a “writer” isn’t exactly the issue. Anyone can be a writer, I would like for it to my career. How does one do this without welfare and government cheese?

I also have a fear that I will sit down to actually write something substantial and I will fail miserably. I will write something mediocre (I have written a lot of mediocre garbage that will never, ever be seen by human eyes) 

However, there are a ton of mediocre writers out there that took their mediocrity to the bank. Stephanie Meyer comes to mind. No doubt the Twilight books were entertaining, but she is a terrible writer. And if it weren’t for millions of horny teens (and housewives) on the planet, she would be a terrible poor writer. Even while I was reading those dang books (I quit mid #4, it got too ludicrious for me to not hate myself for continuing to read) I was thinking to myself, “Wowza, she is an awful writer.” 

Then there is Alice Sebold. Sigh. Okay, I know that The Lovely Bones was a best seller and it got rave reviews and all of that, but it was awful. She had no clue of who her characters are and they change from page to page.  And not a one of them had any redeeming qualities.  I was rooting for George Harvey to kill them all by about chapter 10. If you can make me care about your characters and care about what happens to them, bravo, you did you job as an author. 

And, I may be mistaken, but I know that while I was at Target the other day, I saw a book by Lauren Conrad. Like LC from The Hills and Laguna Beach fame. Yeah. I could be wrong, it may not be THAT Lauren Conrad, but if it is, color me disturbed. 

Anyhoo, I worry that I am not that good to begin with and people are just being nice. I fear everyone is giving me a false sense of entitlement and I really suck out loud. 

I am also worried that my creativity might be completely spent. I am getting on in years, you know. I might end up with something like “See Spot run” and I think that has actually already been taken. 

I am being told not to worry and that everything will eventually work out but in the meantime what do I do? Use the same fall purse from last year???? Unheard of...