The Road Goes Ever On and On

Last Saturday marked the first real blizzard of this winter, and Luis and I spent it holed up in our apartment with good friends. Did we drink wine and cook a nice, hearty dinner? Did we sit around and talk about work, friends, school, and life? No and no: we spent the entire day watching the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings.

Everyone in attendance had seen the movies before, so we were free to discuss, complain, MST3K, and offer abject worship without worrying about ruining someone's virginal LotR experience. This was truly fortuitous, as some of the night's most memorable moments came from our side conversations and remarks:

About Shadowfax
"Buckbeak, show us the meaning of haste!"

Something is rotten in the state of Mordor:
"Shuffle off this Morgul Vale"

FIGWIT!

Frodo's neck
Seriously, look at the size of it. He's like a fucking linebacker.

Elrond Hubbard

Theodin's horse totally takes a shit in the water as the party is riding up to the steps of Isengard to speak with Treebeard. Plop, plop, plop!

Mumbles Mortensen

"...and smote his ruin upon the mountainside."
Luis and I cracked everyone up when we said this in perfect unision with Gandalf.

Gimli blowing away the ghostly hands of the dead
Stupid. Just... stupid.

Spotting Peter Jackson
In Fellowship, he's a drunkard in Bree. In Two Towers, he's one of the barbarian horde. In Return of the King, he's the captain of one of the Corsair ships.

All in all, the extended editions are better than the theatrical releases. There are some cringe-worthy moments, like the afore-mentioned Gimli smoke thing, Sauruman's death by impaling, and Eowyn doing her best impression of a cat in heat at Theodrid's funeral. Many awesome additions were made, such as the mouth of Sauron, Aragorn addressing Sauron through the palantir, and the backstory of the Faramir/Boromir/Denethor triangle. All the same, much was still left out, like Denethor actually having the palantir (implied in various scenes, but it might have been nice to see him using it at some point), and some scenes were awkwardly cut or rushed.

Bitching aside, the movies are rad, and it was a wonderful task to sit down and watch them all in one go. Thanks to everyone who came!

Casual Introspection

Things I am good at
Horseback riding
Teasing Luis
Making dessert, from spiced bread to cookies to rum pecan pie
Craft projects
Burning things in the broiler
Cleaning the house - it's down to a science at this point
Being a mommy
Shopping and bargain hunting
Encouraging others to try new things, especially when it comes to style
Dropping five pounds really quickly, and then gaining it all back right afterwards
Doing my own makeup (hey, it's a skill... nay, an art)
Being a vindictive bitch when the situation calls for it
Multitasking
Walking in heels

Things I enjoy, but am not-so-good at
Singing, particularly if harmony is involved (what's my note again?)
Ice skating - I can stay upright and go fast, but I always wanted to do jumps and spins
Playing video games
Hosting - I always forget something important
Playing the bass
Interior decorating
Playing Magic with Luis

Things I am bad at, and that's OK, really
Keeping in touch with people
Photography
Exercising, running, playing anything that ends in -ball
Being patient
Lying (oddly, I can keep secrets just fine)
Debating - I take it too personally
Talking (or caring, for that matter) about politics
Drawing and painting
Letting go
Eating, especially somewhere new
Holding back tears

Celebrity Skin

Growing up in L.A. and working retail, I have had many occassions to interact with celebrities. Nevermind that I was usually fetching their size for them or helping them pick out layette...

Pamela Anderson
Very, very short. Enormous knockers, but only in proportion to her frame. Put those tits on a normal-sized woman and there's nothing special. Her skin was quite freckly, and not in the aren't I cute way, but in the yiiiikes sun damage way. I feel bad talking shit about her, because she was really very nice. She bought a round crib.

Marlee Matlin
Marlee was always nice to me personally, but she was very demanding and always had her saleswoman with whom she dealt exclusively. She hated the owner of the store, and made no bones about shooting her nasty looks. I never knew the backstory, but it was definitely a strange interaction.

Carmen Electra
This bitch is busted. She was wearing an unbelievable amount of makeup (to go shopping at the Glendale Galleria, wtf??), had two bodyguards at all times (again, at the Galleria, wtf??), and was beyond rude. She looks great in pictures, but up close the milk has most definitely gone bad.

Jennifer Love-Hewitt
OK, so she isn't the best actress in the world, and her singing abilities are questionable, but she is one of the nicest customers I have ever had. I was working a Sunday shift by myself (!), and she was not only patient, but sympathized with my plight. She bought about six pairs of shoes, too. She was little and thin, but not in a scary way. Really, she looked good.

Carson Daly
Carson came in with JLH (this is back when he was cute, they were dating, and dinosaurs roamed the earth). Now, Carson was a celebrity of sorts to me long before he started doing that TRL nonsense, because he was a DJ on LA's best radio station, KROQ. As the host of the Furious Five at Nine, my teenage mind looked to Carson to announce that Nine Inch Nails had held on to the number one spot with Perfect Drug. Naturally, when he and JLH came in, I was much more excited to see him, but he turned out to be a pompous jerk. V. unimpressive. Also, he looked like he was coming down off a ridiculous bender.

Zheng Haixia
If you didn't live in L.A. in the mid to late nineties, I won't begrudge you the fact that you have no idea who this is. L.A.'s WNBA team is the Sparks, and since we had Lisa Leslie (who I guess was a big deal), everybody was paying attention to the team. In 1996, this absolutely enormous Chinese woman was drafted. Now, I've seen basketball players in person before, but this woman was unreal. She came into the shoe store to buy a few gifts for her sister and her mother in China, and she picked up our display shoes to examine them. They looked like little dolly shoes in her gigantic mitts. Her hands had to be over a foot long. She had to duck when she came in the door, and when she sat down on the bench to wait for the shoes to come out, her knees were up past her ears. Never in my life have I seen a larger person. Check out this picture. ZHENG HAIXIA SMASH!!

Jerry Seinfeld
I worked for Steve Madden shoes, which at the time only sold women's footwear. Jerry Seinfeld walked in, looked around, and said, "Man's name... women's shoes!" Then, just as quickly as he'd come into our lives, he left.

Just got back from Philly, and boy are our butts tired!

Actually, the drive back wasn't bad at all, especially since we hit literally NO TRAFFIC WHATSOEVER at the Lincoln Tunnel... We didn't even have to wait a single minute once we got to the toll booth! We were flabbergasted: we actually completed the drive from Philly to New York in just a few minutes more than the time Mapquest said it would take, and that's counting the quick stops at EB Games (we needed a PS1 memory card, ok people?) and 7-11 (mmm, irish creme coffee!).

But getting back to what's important: the wedding was super super fun, and I got to meet and hang out with a bunch of Liz's friends from Hopkins. I really like them a lot, and it was awesome to hang out with them. The wedding itself was also great, and the food was outstanding, as was the dancing. I put the less-blurry photos on my Yahoo Photos page, so be sure to check them out. Liz in her bridesmaid dress? H-O-T. So hot that I asked her to wear it to the wedding we're going to in Buenos Aires in May, hehehe.