Sorry about the lack of entries -- like everyone else, I've been battling a cold since Saturday night.
Last year, I did an entry about all the movies I saw that year, so I thought I would do it again for 2000. Before going through the list, I'm going to bet that I saw more movies this year (note: I can't find that entry from last year! I know that I did one! Where is it?)
ALMOST FAMOUS: Probably my favorite movie this year. I saw it twice in the theater -- once with Mary and Terry, and once with Jim. I can't wait until it comes out on DVD. It did have a few cheesy Cameron Crowe moments, but overall I really loved this movie.
BEST IN SHOW: A very, very funny movie. Plus, dogs. I saw this in Toronto with Jim, Wing Chun, and Glark.
BOUNCE: Mary and I went to see this. It wasn't that good, even taking into consideration my inexplicable attraction to Ben Affleck. I know he's smarmy and omnipresent, but I'm drawn to him for some reason. Anyway, this movie was loooong.
BRING IT ON: Only the best movie of all time, in that cheesy teen way. I saw it three times in the theater. Three times! Twice in Vegas and once with Mary. And it comes out on DVD soon.
CENTER STAGE: Another great cheesy movie. The dance scene at the end is just the best. I have one word for you: motorcycle. The inexplicable costume changes are bizarre. One of the most fun parts is trying to figure out which ones were cast for their acting skills and which were cast for their dancing skills. I own the DVD. I saw it twice in the theater -- once with Wing Chun, and then again with Wing Chun and Mary.
CHARLIE'S ANGELS: This was a movie that I didn't expect to be that great, but I really enjoyed it, despite my dislike of Lucy Liu. I liked the over-the-top-ness of it, and the girls kicking ass. Jim and I went to see this one.
CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON: Jim and I just saw this last weekend (which I guess isn't really 2000, but whatever). I liked it, although not as much as I thought I would given my love of Jet Li movies and other "wire-fu" type stuff. I think it was overhyped, as I had read reviews where people said they left the theater shaking and stuff.
DOWN TO YOU: Remember this one? The Julia Stiles/Freddie Prinze, Jr. vehicle? Me neither. I saw it with Mary.
ERIN BROCKOVICH: My mom and I went to see this. I barely remember it. My mom liked it quite a bit, if I remember. I enjoyed it, but I do recall there being a little bit of "All the other women hate me because of the way I dress, but they're just bitter fat old hags who are jealous," and that kind of bugged me.
FREQUENCY: I think Mary and I went to see this, but I can't figure out why. It was surprisingly good, especially if you were willing to set aside all of the time travel issues. Plus, Andre Braugher. It reminded me why I used to like Dennis Quaid back in the day.
GLADIATOR: You all saw it too. I fell asleep during the boring "plot" parts. I liked the tigers. We have it on DVD now, but I don't think I've watched it. I saw this with Jim.
HIGH FIDELITY: I got this on Pay Per View while we were in Vegas and I was so tired that I could hardly stay up until the end. I loved the book, but the movie didn't move me in the same way, despite the fact that it was pretty faithful (except for that whole London thing). I'd like to see it again, when I'm not so tired.
MISS CONGENIALITY: Jim and I went to see this a few weeks ago, because he loves Sandra Bullock and I thought it looked slightly entertaining. It was. Slightly.
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE II: Jim and I went to see this one. Not that impressed. Very John Woo. The first one was better.
MY DOG SKIP: I literally just saw this yesterday on HBO, and I had a fever while I watched, so I might have missed parts of it. It was good, though. Little Malcolm was so cute.
NEXT FRIDAY: I'm not quite sure where I saw this. I know I saw it on video, not in the theater. I remember it was not nearly as funny as the first one. That's about all I remember.
THE PERFECT STORM: Jim, Eric and I saw this, and we were all disappointed. I read the book, and enjoyed it, so I was really disappointed by the movie. Plus, how bad did George Clooney and Mark Wahlburg want each other? I really thought that they were going to kiss at the end.
PITCH BLACK: Jim and I just watched this Saturday night on DVD. It was kind of silly, but not terrible. Of course, I wasn't paying that much attention.
RETURN TO ME: We got this on Pay Per View in Vegas. I really liked it, but I have a soft spot for Carol O'Connor because he reminds me of my dad. Also, Paulie Sorvino. Anyway, it was sweet and charming. And I really like Bonnie Hunt.
SCREAM 3: Jim and I saw this in the theater. We really liked the first movie in the series, and then they got progressively worse.
TRAFFIC: Jim and I just saw this a few weeks ago. I didn't get why everyone loved it so much. The performances were all great, but the material was just not that ground-breaking, and I thought the direction was almost like Soderburgh parody with the blues and the yellows.
28 DAYS: I got this on Pay Per View by myself one night. It wasn't that bad. I'm glad I didn't pay to see it in a theater though.
THE WHOLE NINE YARDS: Jim and I got this on Pay Per View. It was funnier than I expected, but I still hate A-MAN-da Peet.
WONDER BOYS: Mary and I saw this quite some time ago -- the first time it was in theaters. I liked it then. I liked the book. I didn't hate Michael Douglas OR Tobey Maguire OR Katie Holmes. You should see it.
X-MEN: Great summer popcorn movie. I think Jim and I saw it together. I had no familiarity with the backstory, but Jim did, so after the movie I made him explain everything to me.
So this was kind of a lame entry for everyone but me, I guess. Oh well.
So I had a few thoughts today. Just a few, I promise.
The first is this: I was grading some papers. "Papers" is such an outdated word since I'm teaching a distance class and all of the submissions are online, but what other word should I use? Submission? Exams? I don't know. Anyway, I started grading them. The course I'm teaching is a graduate-level course. And these papers sucked. Well, some of them. I'm not even talking subject matter, although some of them missed the point there too. I'm talking misplaced apostrophes, improper use of "a" versus "an", "their" versus "there", "its" versus "it's", sentence fragments, randomly capitalized words, the whole nine. Now, some of my students are not Native English speakers, but it's fairly clear who they are. And some of them are Deaf, and typically Deaf people have a harder time with English usage and spelling (or so Jim's sister tells me) because they don't hear it every day like hearing people do, and a bunch of other education-related reasons. But even so -- those two things don't apply to all of my students, and a lot of papers were like that. At a graduate level. Is it so wrong for me to expect better? I'm not asking for no mistakes -- I make mistakes in this journal all of the time, sometimes because I'm too lazy to proofread, and other times because I don't know any better. But I just can't believe that anyone could read over some of these papers and think, "Yeah! That really gets my points across clearly!" A simple spell and grammar check in Word would have eliminated about 75% of the problems.
Another thing that I was thinking about was diabetes. Specifially, my own misconceptions about diabetes and their causes. See, there was this girl in my elementary and high school who had diabetes. I don't know what type or anything. All I knew was that she got to go to the nurse's office every once in a while and eat crackers and drink Tang. And she got to miss the first few periods of high school whenever she wanted. So I thought that diabetes meant that you were hungry and tired a lot. This girl also had a Port Wine Stain on her face, a huge birthmark. Molly told me she thought that diabetes meant that you had a huge birthmark. What did we know? We were kids! I probably learned in health class what diabetes was, but I still don't really understand the types. My college roommates was insulin-dependent, but she was very standoffish about the whole thing, so I still don't know. She had to give herself like four shots a day. All I know is that we had a loft and she claimed that she couldn't take the upper bunk because she might get low blood sugar and fall off the ladder trying to get down in the middle of the night. And then she spent the night at her boyfriend's apartment every night anyway, so no one ever slept in the lower bunk. What a waste. So you can see why I might be confused about these things.
And then I had the most bizarre dream last night about a killer holding a bunch of us hostage at the place where Brenda had her wedding reception, and Leo from West Wing was guarding the door. He let Molly and I (and the girl with diabetes from our school, which is how the conversation topic came up) out, because he liked us or something, and we escaped. I should start keeping a dream journal, because I come up with some crazy shit in my dreams. My mom does too. I wonder if that's hereditary or genetic or whatever.
And finally, I was watching L.A. Law today and it was the hundredth anniversary episode, and they were doing a retrospective thing hosted by Jane Pauley of all people. And one of the head writers for the show was David E. Kelley! I don't know why I never knew that before. It seems so obvious now. It was so the prototype for Ally and The Practice. I hate David E. Kelley and his fear and hatred of women. I guess that's all I have to say about that.
So I was reading Sars' latest Tomato Nation (which I totally agree with, by the way) and reading about Brian Wilson reminded me of this story from the weekend.
Jim and I went to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on Saturday. Capsule review: it was great, if you can accept that it's a fairy tale and not reality. Otherwise, the flying people will kind of mess you up. Wonderful acting, though, and a great story. But back to the point.
After the movie, we went to Borders where we ran into Mary and Terry. Then, we went to eat lunch. We were sitting there, waiting for our food to arrive, and the song "Brian Wilson" by the Barenaked Ladies came on. I like that song, so I was kind of humming along and enjoying it, as was Jim. And suddenly, in mid-song, it cut off and was replaced by some other crap. What do they have against that song, I wondered. I asked Jim, but he didn't know either. Finally, I decided that they didn't want people who were trying to eat to think about fatty Brian Wilson, lying in bed with his fatness. That's the only thing I could come up with, anyway.
In other news, my picture was in the paper today! I mentioned the story the other day, but if you missed it, here it is: my local UPN station changed over to the WB, so we don't get UPN programming anymore. I used to write about WWF Smackdown! for Mighty Big TV, and now I can't. The paper was doing a story on the change, and Molly (who is the assistant editor of the features section) mentioned my plight to the TV writer, and he thought it would make a good angle for the story. So, he interviewed me and they sent a photographer out to my house. The story ran today, with a 4 column picture on the inside of the front page of the features section.
I'm not crazy about the picture, because I'm all squinty and my forehead looks gigantic, but what are you going to do? I talked to Molly about it tonight on the phone, and she pointed out that you are always more critical of photos of yourself than you would be about someone else. You always notice that your collar is crooked, or your smile is weird, or the incipient crows' feet or whatever, and no one else does. I guess she's right. Maybe I'll try to scan the picture so y'all can see it.
You're supposed to sing the title like the Sex and the City commercials. More, more, mooooore! That's because there are more entries this weekend than like all of last month. I'm on a kick. I'm on a roll. I'm en fuego.
More pictures, too. This one is my brother petting his dog, Bailey, while my mom opens her Christmas presents. I just thought it was a pretty picture of my mom. On Christmas Eve, we went to my parents' house first, and opened presents with my immediate family. My brother and I (and our respective partners) chipped in and got my mom a gift certificate to a spa here in Syracuse. Longtime readers may remember that Jim got me the same thing for my birthday, so my mom and I can go together. We're going in February. Anyway, our gift was totally overshadowed because my dad bought my mom a food processor. She was so excited. No, really. No, really. I think she wanted to skip the festivities and go make some soup or something. But she really did like our gift, and I think it will be a lot of fun to go. I have that coming up, plus Mary gave me a gift certificate for a massage as part of my bridesmaid gift back in October, and I haven't used that yet. I'm waiting until I'm really stressed out.
I really like Christmas. I'm almost kind of glad that I waited this long to post these pictures because I get to relive the good times all over again. For the past three years or so, we've had the tradition of doing our immediate family gifts before we go out to my Aunt Maureen's for the whole Reed family thing, and I really like it. It's a little more intimate. Earlier that day, Jim and I stopped by my brother's house to deliver our present to my brother and sister-in-law -- I gave them my old printer, because I got a new one, and they bought themselves a computer for Christmas. I had hardly used it, and it was only a year old. Plus I bought them some new ink cartridges and photo paper. My brother made my sister-in-law a calendar for Christmas with pictures of their dog, and he wanted my help in printing it out, I guess. We hooked it up for him and helped the best we could. I also gave their dog a toy hedgehog, and she loved it. She didn't put it down the entire time we were there.
Speaking of my brother and sister-in-law, here they are. I thought this picture turned out really nice, despite the fact that neither of them are looking at the camera. We have this tradition on the Reed side where, after dinner but before gifts, we gather and take pictures of everyone. It's nice to have an annual photo when everyone is kind of dressed up and looking nice, but it's also a huge pain in the ass. The problem is that everyone tries to take pictures, so you're standing up there and ten people are flashing cameras at you, and you don't know which way to look, and the concurrent flashes generally screw up the picture anyway. I proposed that next year we appoint one official photographer (and I volunteered for the job) and then have that person just give prints to everyone. We'll see how that goes over.
Another nice thing about Christmas Eve is that we always have beef on wick sandwiches. Apparently, these are a Western NY regional thing, although I didn't know that until I went to college and no one had heard of them. It's basically just a roast beef sandwich on a kimmelwick (kind of like onion) roll. You slather on ketchup or horseradish (or both) and dig in. They're really good, and Christmas Eve is the only time I eat them anymore, so I really look forward to it. Between those and my mom's scalloped potatoes, it's quite the feast.
This is my whole family -- Jim, me, mom, dad, Mike, and Erin. You can see the "everyone looking in different directions" problem that arises. Also, Jim is making a goofy face. My Uncle Casey had climbed up onto the couch, I guess to get a better angle or something, and he stepped into a hole in the couch and nearly fell over. So Jim was looking on in horror. I guess the rest of us hadn't noticed yet. I have a tip for all amateur photographers -- something that I learned now that I have taken almost 1500 pictures with my digital camera. When you are taking pictures of people, unless they're wearing Halloween costumes or something, get as close in as you can on their faces. No one cares if you cut out their bottom halves, and in many cases, they will thank you for not pointing out that their pants were too tight, or wrinkly, or you're highlighting their big fat ass (not that I'm speaking from personal experience) or whatever. It's the faces that make the picture, so zoom right in. Mary taught me this, because whenever I would take a picture of her and Terry with her camera, she would tell me to have their faces fill the frame, and they nearly always turn out great. Except for Ter's red-eye problem. But that's a whole other story.
Another tip I have learned is that whenever you think you are close enough, take a step forward. It's hard to be close enough, and most people make the mistake of putting the people right in the middle of the viewfinder, and end up with a picture that is mostly floor or ceiling. How many pictures have you developed only to find out that it's mostly ceiling with some people at the bottom? My grandmother has the opposite problem -- she cuts off people's heads. Anyway. These are problems that I used to have, and I've learned to solve, so I'm passing the tips on to you.
So this is my grandmother and all of my cousins. The only one missing is my cousin Steve, who lives in Colorado with his wife and baby. They went to her family's house for Christmas, and came to his mom's house for New Year's, so later on I will have pictures of them. I was thinking that we should have taken this picture when they were in town, but we didn't. Another problem with the whole picture-taking tradition is that it seemed that we had it narrowed down to the essentials as of a few years ago. One picture of each family unit with significant others. One picture of my grandmother and her four kids. One picture of my grandmother with her eight grandchildren (or however many were in attendance). One picture of my grandmother with grandchildren and significant others. Done. This year we regressed. They actually did one picture of my grandmother with JUST the significant others -- my sister-in-law, Jim, and my cousin's boyfriend. Huh? What was the point of that? Then they did one of my grandmother with each couple. I don't know what happened there. It just got out of control. I swear, next year I am going to make a list.
After all of the pictures were taken, we opened gifts. It's getting weird. It used to be that each aunt/uncle pairing bought gifts for all of the grandchildren. So I would get three gifts, plus whatever my grandmother gave me. That was fine when we were all little kids and easy to buy for -- whatever toy or other interest we had worked, and was fairly cheap. Now they just buy us all gift certificates, which is nice too, but we don't buy them anything in return. Except that my brother and sister-in-law have started buying gifts for everyone too. And we usually all buy something for my grandmother. I don't know. It's getting confusing. If only we had instituted some sort of rule, like once you graduate high school, you don't get all the gifts. We really need to pick names. I just feel so bad getting all these gifts. The other problem is this: let's say that my aunt used to spend $25 on my gift. Now that Jim is around, instead of just splitting the $25 for both of us, they spend $50. I know I shouldn't complain about getting TOO many gifts, and I do feel foolish, but I also feel bad accepting them. Even if we did build up our DVD collection a good deal.
This is my grandmother, Nan, opening her gift from her children. My dad, his sisters and his brother have this tradition where they all chip in each year and get my grandmother something expensive that she really needs. One year it was a new chair for her living room. One year it was a new door for her porch. Anyway, every year my dad reads a poem that he wrote explaining the gift. It's pretty neat -- everyone quiets down and my dad reads it, and it's usually funny and everyone laughs. Then Nan opens the present, which is usually a symbolic representation since it's kind of hard to wrap a chair or a door. Last year, they wrapped up a bunch of dollhouse chairs. This year, they bought her a new mattress for her bed, so they wrapped up an ad for a mattress store in town, and this is Nan opening it. Nan is just such a great lady, and I love her so much, and it fills my heart with joy to see her so happy. I have a pretty great family, and I'm grateful.
After all the gifts were opened, Jim and I had to hit the road to come back to Syracuse. We were going over to his parents' house on Christmas morning. Since there were little kids involved, we had to be there early. Our drive back was mostly uneventful until we got just outside of Syracuse, and suddenly it was snowing like crazy. We were making really good time until that point! Once we got home, we opened our gifts for each other and fell into bed, setting our alarms for 7 AM the next day. But that story will have to wait for another time!
I think there's probably a way that I could get my script to automate the "one year ago" link, but I can't figure out how right now. Oh well. I'm just going to continue eating my peanut M&Ms. I like the peanut butter ones better, but these are pretty good.
Jim and I went to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon today. I liked it quite a bit, but I felt like I was missing out on a lot because of the translation. The acting was superb, and the fight sequences, once you just accustomed yourself to the fact that they were not subject to the laws of gravity, were really cool. I like to see the chicks kick ass. I wished they had used their feet more, with kicks and such, but I guess it's just a different style of fighting. That Chow Yun Fat is a cutie. I like Jet Li better as a fighter, but I like Chow Yun Fat better as an actor. Then we went shopping, and we ran into Mary and Terry at Borders. We chatted with them for a while, then got dinner, then stopped by Jim's parents' house, and then came home.
Anyway, I thought I would finally post some of my Christmas pictures because Jim keeps asking me to, and I have no excuse now. So here you go.
That first picture is of Eric when he came to visit us at Christmas time. We always make fun of Eric, because the kid always falls asleep. Always! I have never known him to watch a movie at home without falling asleep. And obviously, this visit was no different. Except that it was. We managed to watch all of Dogma, which we had on DVD, without Eric falling asleep. It was a miracle. Poor Eric. He had to get a filling before Christmas, and it cost a lot of money, so his parents decided that the filling would be his Christmas present. His older brother, who already owns a PS2, got a DVD player. Eric got a filling. Merry Christmas!
Wing and Glark came to visit us just before Christmas as well. This is Glark, studying the rules to the Simpsons trivia game that Jim and I bought him for Christmas. We ended up playing later that night and Wing would have kicked all of our asses if we hadn't quit because it was just taking too long.
This is Wing and Ken opening their gifts. I know that Ken is scary. You might want to ask small children and the elderly to leave the room. The funny thing is that Ken just left the States to spend eight months traveling around the world. His first stop is Japan, and some other Pacific Rim countries. It's hot there. I asked him if I could start a pool on how long it takes him to shave his head. I just think that when traveling, he isn't going to want to deal with all that hair, plus it will be hot. He didn't seem to think so. We'll just see who's right.
So that was my Christmas with friends. We ate at restaurants and hung out at our apartment, mostly, but it was fun. We played lots of video games, and ate way too much junk food. This lasted until Christmas eve, which I will have to tell you about some other time.
If you have read my weblog recently, you know that when my hosting company switched servers recently, I didn't know that also meant I needed to reconfigure Eudora so that I could still get my e-mail. I was wondering why I hadn't gotten anything at the Fresh Hell address in a while, but I figured with the new comments feature on the weblog people don't need to e-mail me as much.
Anyway, I finally figured it out yesterday and proceeded to download all the e-mail I haven't gotten for the past fifteen days. It wasn't that much -- I have a lot of e-mail addresses and my mail is fairly spread out among them. Most of it was notify lists and spam. But one of them just cracked me up. Here it is for you. I can only imagine what this is going to do for my search terms.
"Hi there what are you up to? Nothing much here. Was just looking at some of your pictures and i think you look so sexy. Do you have a boyfriend? I like the picture of you about getting a haircut. How long is your hair baby? You look so sexy. I hope to hear from you soon sexy. I want to hear more about your hair. Tell me everything about your hair baby. I hope to chat with you baby. Please mail me back as soon as possible sexy.
OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOOXOXOXOXOXOXOX
LOVE,
David"
The hell? I should probably be creeped out, but it came in via WebTV and I just pictured this guy who has never used the web before, sitting in one of those LaZboy recliners with the optional WebTV package, and he comes upon my site somehow (probably one of those "slipper fetish" searchers) and this is his response. It amused me. Did he somehow think that if he only called me "baby" and "sexy" enough times that I would be so turned on that I would e-mail him back? I don't know.
Anyway, I know it's been a long time. Hopefully this new system will help.