The Russians are Coming & other gems from my week

First off two posts within a couple of days of each other -- you guys should be proud. LOL.

Typically my weeks are pretty cookie-cutter. I'm the type of person who needs structure to accomplish some of the life changes I'm trying to make and this week there have been some interesting deviations to my normal day. Some bad, some funny, and others that I'm pretty excited about.

First off I have finally added in some exercise to my life. I hate exercising, with the exception of swimming, which I love but I haven't had access to a pool in years. So I bought an old Tao Bao VHS tape for 2 bucks on Amazon because I know me and I didn't want to buy a 15.00 DVD just to have it become another dust collector. So I finally did it for the first time on Sunday and it was a litte rough, but then when I did it again on Tuesday I actually felt pretty good. So hopefully I can commit to doing the tape every other day to start out with and hopefully work up to everyday. I have to take change in little increments and I've discovered that if I do that it's easier for me to work it into my regular routine.

I guess it helped too, because I pushed passed the 15 lbs. mark this week which I was pretty excited about. So I'm still trucking along and have a long way to go, but I'm trying to be proud of what I've done so far. I'm not very good at taking compliments from other people or feeling proud about something I've done because I feel like it's just what I need or am supposed to do so it doesn't really deserve recognition, but my Weight Watchers leader is trying to encourage me to be proud.

Work has been...colorful this week. First off, I'm the returns supervisor in our market and summer is a really heavy time for returns. We have 18 stores spread across the state and all of them ship their defective product back here to me -- I am the returns departments -- and my little cubicle is drowning in product right now. So it's been a little stressful trying to get done my other responsibilities (because in a small office you never just have one job) while trying to stay on top of the defectives.

To make matters worse and my progress even slower our system is antiquated to say the least and when the home office is doing maintenance it can take up to 15 minutes for a page to load -- really not good when a customer calls with an issue that needs to be researched, which inevitably happens when the system is down. Figures, right?

Monday was particularly odd, because it seemed to be the "customers calling with weird issues day" and the sales reps were slammed up front, so we in the back had to answer the phones. One of the handicaps of answering the phone and it being a customer, is the fact that we back here have very minimum knowledge of all the different services so we can't help them as well as they want to be and it just leaves everyone frustrated.

Then on top of all of us answering phones all day, we all started getting these security warnings of a trojan horse in our system and apparently a hacker in Russia was trying to get in. Why a hacker would choose our rinky-dink little system to hack -- I don't know. One would think if he was really good, he'd go after a bigger company or at the very least corporate Verizon and not us. But oh well, our systems guru got it fixed.

Of course a week at work would not be complete with back room drama. One of the inventory guys picked up one of my other co-worker's keys, which she had left by the kitchen sink. So he thought it would be funny to hide them from her as a joke. I don't know why he thought this since she can't stand him and he knows this, but he did. Well he left the office before her and never gave her her keys. So her keys were locked in his office and anyone else that would have a key was gone. She was livid and I'm pretty sure is plotting her revenge.

But he always does crap like that. He's a 27 year old man with the maturity level of a thirteen year old boy and a laugh that makes you wonder whether or not he owns a white panel van. He also does the minimal amount of work possible, so any prank he pulls on any of us is not going to go over well because we all know he has better things to do.

But hey the weeks almost over and I have fun things to do this weekend. I'm going to see one of my favorite bands, Hoots and Hellmouth Friday with my friend Emaleigh. I'm her "plus one." The guys in the band got her on the guest list, so she's giving her extra slot to me. If I can figure out how to, I'll post a couple YouTube videos of their shows -- they're amazing.

Then Saturday I'm visiting with my mom's family for our July b-day gathering (my mom being one of them) and hopefully they will have good ground turkey this time because I'm sick of chicken. They're a burgers and hot dogs sort of family, but me being the obtuse black sheep that I am, I choose a couple of years ago to stop eating beef and pork.

I'm mainly looking forward to seeing my paw-paw. I guess since the death of my dad's dad I realized I really need to put forth the effort more to see my maternal grandfather, who was as much like a "daddy" to me as he was a grandfather. I love the man dearly.

Hopefully, work-wise, next week will be a little less weird, but of course we're getting close to commission time again which means a whole new set of issues pre-packaged for us.

Sorry, but he does nothing for me

I work for a small company that is an Authorized Verizon wireless retailer, which basically means that we sell the same stuff as corporate Verizon, but also get screwed by them alot too. Well a few months ago we had this promotional stuff about a Motorola ear-bud headset and the celebrity in the ads was David Beckham. We even got a few life size cut-outs of the man, which we had fun using the extras to play pranks on each other here in the back office. Like one morning I came in (I'm almost always the first one there) and there was David Beckham standing a couple yards away in the hallway.

Now having a life size cut-out of David Beckham in your office starts the unavoidable conversation of how hot he is. If I remember correctly one of my co-workers, while intently studying David's face, said that he is the hottest man on the planet, but I'm sorry he does nothing for me.

I'm not blind -- yes, he is a very attractive man, but he's the type of person who you're suppose to find attractive. There's nothing that makes him interesting or stand out in the well of pretty people that live in Hollywood.

I guess I've always been a little obtuse when it comes to what people generally like and what I like. I'm odd and I'm attracted to things that lean a little to the odd. Even in high school (and I was in high school at the height of the "Titanic" and Leonardo DiCaprio craze), while my friends we're drooling over Leo DiCaprio, I'd prefer to watch "The Gift" and drool over Giovanni Ribisi...even if he was a little psychotic in that.

I remember a friend for either her 15th or 16th birthday had a Leo themed party. We went and saw "Titanic" (most of us for the third...or eighth time) and then we watched "The Basketball Diaries." And I'll admit I did get caught up in the hype (I mean I was 15, you do what you have to to fit in at that age), but I never was googlie eyed over Leo.

Now, I will say that DiCaprio is a good actor (just watch "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" -- he's brilliant), but I just don't get the attraction to blond pretty boys. Maybe it's because I grew up around horse people and blue collared people who went out and got their hands dirty, I don't know.

Then a few years ago, while I still worked in the video store, my boss at the time asked me what I thought of Brad Pitt because he had a movie coming out and he was on the cover of our Entertainment Weekly. My initial response was to ask him if he had a man-crush on Brad Pitt, to which he laughed and guiltily admitted that he guessed he did, and then I told him, "he's all right." And he is all right. Some of his movies are enjoyable, but there's nothing that catches my fancy in an "oh my god he's so hot" sort of way." Maybe when he first came out and he was doing films like "Kalifornia" and "Twelve Monkeys" where he seemed to actually be acting as opposed to doing bigger budget films or trying to out do Mia Farrow with his assortment of children.

Personally, I'd rather dig up Vincent D'Onofrio's films or watch LOCI, because there you're going to see something interesting. In some instances he may scare the crap out of you, but it's fascinating to watch nonetheless. I tend to like people who aren't stereotypically attractive and who aren't afraid to get down and dirty into a role. It's like my choir director in high school said, "You ain't really singing till you ugly," and I think that could be applied to great acting as well. Not that I think the only truly talented people look like Quasimodo, but just aren't afraid to go to that place where life, humanity, what have you, isn't pretty and can't be perfectly wrapped up in ninety minutes.

I like when you have to work to appreciate someone, when you have to study them and then you begin to see them as these really fascinating, crush-worthy talents. Like Giovanni Ribsi is brilliant and can be over the top, but he can be very subtle too. I love James Marsters, who maintained an English accent for seven years on Buffy, while David Boreanaz struggled to do an Irish one on only a handful of episodes. He has such a range and can play the buffoon just as well as he plays honest emotion. His character was really the Shakespearean fool of the series and was done wonderfully.

Probably my most disturbing crush is Vincent D'Onofrio and it's only disturbing because he is old enough to be my dad. In fact he's only a year younger than my dad, who will be 50 in September. I guess it's kind of like a crush you'd get on a really awesome professor and a lot of it is wrapped up in admiration. But he's just so interesting to watch and fits my obscure, underrated profile that I tend to lean toward, even if I do feel a little perverted for lusting after him.

I've always had weird and obscure taste, in fact most people who don't know me very well probably think I'm crazy with some of the things I like, but what can I do. I like what I like and I am what I am.

Sorting Through the Bullshit

Things with my dad's family are generally a little awkward because none of us really know each other. I spent most of this weekend with my dad's family because my grandfather's first memorial service was on the eleventh. Yes, there will be a second service in September at Arlington National Cemetery because he was career air force, though I honestly feel like I won't be able to stomach another service full of these great words about this great man, who wasn't really a great man at all.

I had prepared myself as much as I could for the service to consist mostly of bullshit and I wasn't disappointed. A friend of his and WiVi's (my grandfather's wife) led the service and it painted my grandfather, who we all knew as Pop, as this great American hero and someone for young people to aspire to be. What they didn't say, and maybe what only I and the rest of the blood relatives know, is that that would mean the youth aspiring to be a self-centered drunk who annoyed the hell out of his first wife and changed his will so that his children wouldn't get anything from his estate.

Then members from the crowd, which there was a pretty big crowd, were invited to share there stories. A couple of his army buddies shared and then his older sister who looks like a movie star from the 1930s and gave a impressive performance, albeit slurred and hard to understand, about her "baby brother."

Then at the end they played a series of songs. First was "The National Anthem," then "Taps," which apparently makes everyone but me cry, and then an old air force song from the forties.

I felt like I was wading through a pool of lies and that the stench was evident to anyone who mattered to me.

I didn't really feel anything through the whole service, except at the very end, but it wasn't for my grandfather, but for my dead grandmother. It was my maternal grandfather, my pawpaw, who came to the service along with my mom, who did me in. After the service finished I went over to them to say good-bye and he said to me, "The saddest thing about all this is that Dolly wasn't mentioned once." Dolly (or Nanie to me and my cousin) was what everyone called my dad's mom and at the funeral of the man she lived with for more than fifty years, she might as well have never existed. Hell his children and grandchildren were barely acknowledged.

Sixty years of a life just conveniently left out and a woman who was in it for only nine was the most important person there. Wivi (she's Danish) and Pop met about a year after my grandmother died. Pop went from this distraught widower to a love struck teenager on a drop of a dime. After Nanie died, he was obsessive about putting pictures together and even said once, "I've lost children, but there's nothing like losing your spouse." Of course what it really boiled down to is that he didn't have anyone to take care of him anymore and Wivi gladly filled that role. He didn't need his daughter anymore, who lived near by and had really taken on the caregiver role after Nanie died, and all the things that were reminders of his old life slowly disappeared.

I understand moving on after a spouse dies and even taking the chance to marry again, but your new life shouldn't negate your old one, even if it is more fulfilling to you.

We weren't done after the service was over. We had to then go to the condo of a woman who lives below Wivi in their community. I rode there with my cousin and her husband and on the way we joked about what excuse we could use to get out as early as possible. Luckily, they have a young dog named Ladybug and we had a much needed laugh over using the term "LB" when one of us had to get out. I know we probably sound like horrible people, but at least I'm being honest and not pretending to be all nicety-nice to people I don't know and don't even really like.

The majority of people there were people who only knew Pop after he and Wivi were together. It's amazing to me how one person can be perceived so differently by different people. His friends adore him and think he was the greatest thing ever. I can't help but wonder, who was the real Pop? Was it the neglectful, detached father we (his children, Nanie, this grandchildren) knew or the friend with the boisterous stories that everyone loved? Or were they both lies?

Of course, none of us will ever know. All we have are our own personal truths and in the end, as far as how you feel about a person, that's all that really counts. That's what makes a person who they are to you and Pop by blood was my grandfather, but I never felt related to him. Even as a kid when I was around him on a regular basis while Nanie babysat me, he was more of a fixture, who stood at the bar in the kitchen and held a drink in one had and a cherry cigar in another. He was never a real participant.

I wish I felt bad. I feel bad that I don't feel anything for him. Well, I do feel angry about his disregard for his family, but I'm not sad. I guess you can't really feel sad over a fixture.

Vince, Kate, and Jeff...Oh my!

So my fourth of July weekend was pretty quiet (it just doesn't hold the luster it did when i was a kid -- but that's a discussion for a different post). I mostly worked on major cleaning of my apartment (I swear cat hair and hardwood floors -- not a great combo)and watched movies. Several of these movies happened to have stars from LOCI in them (well one who will be a start on LOCI next year) so here our some thoughts on what I watched and the actors who made them happen. There are some spoilers...so just be warned if you've never seen any of these.

VINCE:

So I watched "Happy Accidents" for the first time in a while and I think it's still (so far) my favorite Vincent D'Onofrio film that I have seen. It was the first that I got when I started seeking out his other work beyond LOCI and there's something about unconventional romantic comedies that I love. It's not that far from the same feeling of endearment I get when watching "Benny & Joon." I'm really not much for romantic movies. I'm really at the point where I'm like "okay I get it: Meg & Tom Forever -- I get it!"

But "Happy Accidents" is so different because it's about one person who's either from the future or a complete fruit cake, and another who is a neurotic co-dependent. I don't know what this says about me, but I have a much easier time relating to that insanity than I do the sweet romantics of "Sleepless in Seattle" or "You've Got Mail." Plus it has that sci-fi element, which I love (what can I say my mom liked Star Trek), but what makes the film so clever and me absolutely in love with the writer, Brad Anderson, is that we don't know whether Sam (VDO's character) is really from the future or insane until the very end. It's a very cleverly pieced together film.

The dialogue and the characters are so genuine and believable that it leaves you willing to take a leap of faith in the same way Ruby (Marissa Tomei -- who is just adorable) does with Sam. Even the cheesie parts work because of how naive the Sam character is. One thing that just amazes me about VDO is his ability to go from a intimidating or unnerving character (did you see him as Elton in "Claire Dolan" -- can we say creepy stalker tendencies) to someone as innocent and nearly child-like as Sam is, and do both so convincingly.

My favorite thing about the film, though, is the idea of can you really change the past or will you just make the same mistakes over and over and over? Sam comes back to save Ruby from dying in an accident, but what's interesting is that it's Sam's desperate actions to try and prevent it that lead to the perfect circumstances for her death to happen, but no worries there's still a happy ending.

KATE:

To keep with the LOCI and Sci-fi theme, I watched "Stir of Echoes." I really need to find other films that Kathryn Erbe has done but I do like this film. It's nice to see a horror film that at the end of the day is really just about a family trying to stay together. I tend to be more fascinated with established relationships than I am with relationships just starting out because there're more complications, more history to build from. It's also nice to see a "genre" film have really well established characters because so many of the bigger budget sci-fi/horror films are much more about the visual effects than they are the people within the story which i really can't stand.

Tom and Maggie (Kevin Bacon & Kathryn Erbe) are just a regular couple trying to make ends meet and this extraordinary thing just happens to them by chance. I think Erbe is great at being a strong woman but also retain a sense of femininity, without either being too over powering. There is more of a softness to Maggie than there is to Eames (she's a little more emotional but it's not over the top), but I find both to be very believable characters. So many female characters we see seem to be more like characitures of real women as opposed to really feeling like a real woman. Even in the clips I've seen of her from OZ, she feels real -- psychotic, but real. It's that honesty and realness that she just naturally has that makes me like her so much.

JEFF:

I noticed this movie called "Hideaway" on my OnDemand this weekend and saw that it had Jeff Goldblum, so I figured I'd take gander and remind myself whether ot not I liked the actor since he is joining one of my favorite shows. At first i was a little apprehensive about welcoming him to the show because it just seemed like such an odd choice. It probably doesn't help that the last thing I saw him in was a film called "Mimi's First Time," which is about this 16, 17 year old girl who has an affair with her step-father and together they plot the murder of her boozing actress mother -- it's a comedy. But Goldblum in that plays their neigbor who is basically a creepy old man who seduces all of these barely legal girls -- so that was my last impression of Jeff Goldblum.

But "Hideaway" is an older film (it's still weird that mid-nineties stuff is over ten years old now) and was based on a Dean Koontz novel. It actually has a pretty recognizable cast with Jeff Goldblum as a protective family man, Christine Lahti as his wife, and Alicia Silverstone either right before or just after her "Clueless" fame. It also had her co-star from "Clueless" Jeremy Sisto as a psycho killer (I have to say Sisto is far more attractive now with his L&O, I bet this is how Goren looked in narcotics thing he has going on.

The movie itself wasn't great, but it gave me hope that maybe whatever character they come up with for Goldblum won't be a Gore-knock off. I could actually see several different possibilities now including a family man, which might be a nice change from the cast of characters we already have (not that i don't love my guarded, commitment phobic Eames and Goren). It would be interesting to pair Wheeler with someone who has been married a long time since she's engaged now...it could add an interesting element to them building a partnership.

The Flip Side...

I guess this post will kind of contradict my earlier post about addiction, but it's a complicated subject that's been around me my whole life. So, while I understand that addict behavior, I also can't help but be angry at parents who choose a substance over their child.

I was watching "Intervention" this week, which i usually do. I think it's an interesting show that offers good information for people who either are addicts or are related to addicts. There was a woman on who was addicted to prescription drugs and she would take them to the point where she was catatonic. She apparently had already survived two overdoses. She had two sons, one was 17 and the other was 11. You could tell the older one picked up the slack when his mother was in between husbands and raised his little brother in many ways. The younger boy was just an emotional wreck because he lived in constant fear of coming home from school and finding his mother dead.

Finally there's a blow-up between the mother and the older son, which leaves the younger in shambles and then this woman says "it's hard on everyone, but especially me because I'm the one causing it." WTF, lady? She's the one that gets to live in her little la-la land while her family cleans up her mess.

It's such a double edge sword, because on one hand they really genuinely can not stop themselves, but at the same time they have the free will to at least try to stop.

I guess watching those two kids just hit too close to home for me because I know what it's like to be passed over for a substance or to have a parent "borrow" your birthday money so they can buy beer and cigarettes on their way to work in the morning. Of course the addict has the luxury of being blind to the damage they're causing and then are surprised when the child resents them.

And it's such a hard resentment to get past, because no matter how much you try a part of you always feels like, "well I'm the child and therefore i shouldn't have to do the work," but it doesn't work that way. Nothing gets solved that way. No matter what, whether you're five or twenty-five, you have to be the adult in the relationship and it is so tiring. And i feel for these kids, especially the older one, because I would think he would have the hardest time forgiving her because he's probably been through more than his little brother has with her. Not to belittle the affect on him, but 17 years of it compared to 11 is a big difference.

Forgiveness is such a hard thing too, but it's important and not just for the person whose being forgiven, but for the one offering it as well. It lifts a weight off of them just as much as it does the person seeking forgiveness.

That's all for now. Hopefully i post a happier, less rant-y post later.