They better be making soup

Well, a friend of mine asked me to fill out this survey sort of thing. I objected at first because I usually make my lists in "5's" like Rob in "High Fidelity" but I broke down and decided to do it. I added a few items that I felt needed to be added.

4 Things

FOUR JOBS YOU'VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE
1. Local newspaper delivery bitch. In my grandma's neighborhood. They handed me ten dollars every week, and fifteen when there was a "newsletter"
2. T-shirt presser/manager at Hometeam Sports Memories. Yes, that's right. I actually hand-pressed mass amounts of t-shirts every day. On slow days though, it was great. I worked alone and read a lot.
3. Head of Internet Sales & Shipping/Guitar & music saleslady at the Karaoke Kandy Store. Yes, a karaoke store. They exist. And I'm still marginally employed there.
4. Editor-in-chief and staff writer for BW's Maelstrom. Stick it to the Man. Alternative press rules.

FOUR JOBS YOU'D LIKE TO HAVE
1. Staff writer for The Onion or SNL
2. Owner of a record store/coffee shop
3. Whale trainer (seriously)
4. Owner of an independent movie theater

FOUR MOVIES YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER
1. Love Actually (I like to cry myself to sleep watching this one.)
2. Kill Bill Volume 1 (Even though I prefer Volume 2, it's more fun for me to watch Volume 1 repeatedly.)
3. American Beauty (I once watched this film three times consecutively)
4. The Wedding Singer (Four times in a week!)

FOUR CITIES YOU'VE LIVED IN:
1. Cuyahoga Heights, OH
2. Brecksville, OH
3. Berea, OH
4. I lived in Cincinnati for about a week once. Yea the whole "moving" thing will probably happen someday but college is sort of getting in the way right now. Anyway, Cleveland is a pretty okay city. You get what you put in around here.

FOUR TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH
1. Saturday Night Live
2. The Colbert Report
3. The Office
4. Grounded for Life (Because I want to do Donal Logue)

FOUR PLACES YOU'VE BEEN ON VACATION:
1. Punta Cana en la Republica Dominicana. I fulfilled one of my life's dreams there--I swam with a shark. I broke away from the beach with my snorkel and happened upon what I'm pretty sure was a baby port jackson shark in a small patch of reef. Someday I'll graduate to bigger sharks.
2. Seattle, Washington. A beautiful and truly unique city. I love all the piers and the artisans on the streets. My kind of weather too.
3. Bar Harbor, Maine. Whale-watching, The McLobster, rock climbing and hopping. So perfect. If I ever become a great and famous writer I will buy property here.
4. Yellowstone National Park. My favorite area was in Wyoming.

FOUR PLACES YOU'D LIKE TO GO ON VACATION:
1. California. Specifically Napa Valley or maybe even San Francisco. I have no desire to see LA.
2. Ireland. Seriously let's go right now.
3. Japan. As much as I'd love to see Japan's countryside, I'd probably do better in Tokyo since I don't speak Japanese. I could be like Bill Murray in "Lost in Translation."
4. Shark Bay, Australia. Remember that part about graduating to bigger sharks? There you go.

FOUR WEBSITES YOU VISIT DAILY:
1. www.bw.edu/campus. I check my mail a lot. A LOT.
2. www.livejournal.com/login.bml. Yea, I have another blog.
3. www.imdb.com. I'm one of those geeks that communicates on message boards about film.
4. www.facebook.com. I am, after all, an American college student.

FOUR OF YOUR ALL-TIME FAVORITE RESTAURANTS:
1. Stancato's of Richfield
2. La Dolce Vita, Little Italy Cleveland
3. The Tin Angel, Philadelphia. (Best bangers & mash I've e'er tasted!)
4. Blaggard's Pub, NYC (The one on West 38th)

FOUR MEN/WOMEN YOU'VE THOUGHT ABOUT IN THE PAST FOUR DAYS:
1. Matt McKenna, my co-producer from BuzzTV. I had such a crush on him. Then I found out about the whole "I'm married" thing and I realized it just wasn't going to work out.
2. James Catullo. He was in my intermediate improv class and he's positively delightful. We've been e-mailing back and forth and it's fun.
3. Shawn Gaines. He's got a new lady and I'm not her. Good for him. Life goes on!
4. Angela Spisak. I need to call her. It's been a while.

FOUR OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS:
1. Pesto. On bread, on pasta--I love it.
2. Veggie lo mein
3. Quiche
4. Diet Coke. It counts, bitch. And yes, I do eat meat, contrary to what one might imply from my answers.

FOUR SCHOOLS YOU'VE ATTENDED
1. Highland Elementary
2. Chippewa Elementary
3. Oakes Road Middle
4. Brecksville Middle/High (I got bounced around because I was "gifted")

FOUR OF YOUR FAVORITE THINGS TO WEAR
1. My big heavy black ribbed Eddie Bauer sweater--I pretend that I borred it from my nonexistent boyfriend.
2. My black Pumas
3. My glasses!
4. My black Mossimo jeans, cuffed.

FOUR ALBUMS YOU LISTEN TO ALL THE WAY THROUGH
1. The White Stripes "Elephant"
2. Ellis Paul's "American Jukebox Fables"
3. The Police "Synchronicity"
4. Over the Rhine "Drunkard's Prayer"

FOUR PLACES YOU'D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW:
1. Bed
2. On a couch with James Catullo
3. At the river ford (during summer though, reading.)
4. In a loft. Any loft, really.

Alright. There it is. Never again.

Only in the Movies

This morning I woke up and hit my head on the ceiling. I guess that's the price you eventually pay when you loft your bed. The strange thing is that I've lofted my bed for two years now and this is the first time it's happened. It really hurt. I'm still feeling it.

When it happened though I was reminded of two films:

1) "Zoolander", simply because he hits his head in similar comic fashion.
2) "Magnolia" because of my make-believe boyfriend Philip Seymour Hoffman's excellent telephone monologue.

His character discusses the possibility of extraordinary circumstances and quasi-cinematic occurances happening in real life and he painfully tries to convince someone else to believe that what he is saying is not some fantastic fabricated sob-story. In fact, in the opening of this movie the narrator tells us, "These strange things happen all the time." And I think that hitting my head this morning was a case of life imitating art or the other way around or something. Then I went to turn on the TV and it was already on. I had it set to "Input 2" last night whilst I was watching a movie and I must have forgotten to turn it off. So when I pushed the power button on the remote, I heard a click and nothing happened. It was strange.

Last night I saw a screening of the new Woody Allen film, "Match Point." As always, he offers up a really insightful and captivating (if sometimes slow-moving) exploration of the politics of sex and ambiguity of love. Scarlett Johansson was weird. I mean, I love her a lot but I guess I wasn't used to seeing her playing such a forward and overtly sexual woman. To me she's still the awkward indie girl from "Ghost World" with a thrift store skirt and a crush on the guy at the gas station. I make bizarre connections with characters in movies.

I hope that I never hit my head on the ceiling again--not because it was so painful--but because if it happens again it won't be such a special occurance anymore.

The girl next door is singing some horrid radio "country" hit. I like the old country--back when it knew what it was. Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, George Jones.

I can't think of anything good to say. I think I'm going to finish watching "Girl, Interrupted" and simultaneously forge bizarre connections with two of my favorite cinematic foils. (Susanna (Angelina Jolie) Kaysen and Lisa Rowe (Winona Ryder)). )))))(().