Live-blogging the Oscars

11:55: Best Best picture group hug ever.

11:45: Seriously? I waited 3 hours to watch Mickey Rourke not win? Sean Penn's was the second best performance of the year. But still.

11:34: Mr. Winslet! Score one for the crazy dads.

11:24: I get annoyed every time I'm forced to rewatch Julia Roberts' endless acceptance speech.

3 am? This thing is lasting for-f'ing-ever.

11:05: Yes, yes, Hugh. We get it. You like music.

10:44: Humanitarian or no, you introduce Jerry Lewis, you show a "King of Comedy" clip.

10:37: Finally, the words I've longed to hear: "Coming up, a tribute to Jerry Lewis."

10:16: Zose wacky Frenchmen!!

10:09: I'm deeply appreciative of the fact that they did not schedule a musical montage right after the Best Supporting Actor presentation.

9:57: Zach Efron's top hat fell off! Funny!

9:54: This musical montage better get funny.

9:39: Do they ever NOT send a young hot actress to host the technical nerd awards?

9:39: Jessica Biel forgot to untuck her dinner napkin. And to brush her hair.

9:37: Wait, that Visa/MasterCard dog is still lost?

9:23: The boobs are struggling mightily

9:17: Sarah Jessica Parker's boobs try to offset her Unsexiest Woman in the World honor from a few years back

9:15: Ah, there he is. But not as sing-y.

9:11: Um, where's Hugh Jackman?

8:59: Angelina's death-ray eyes aren't quite doing the job on Jennifer Aniston.

8:58: Gay Mormons are always so pretty. (Hi Margaret!)

8:50: My husband just dropped a head of cabbage on the floor.

8:47: "Thank you Woooooody."

8:45: Back in the Habit!!

8:44: Eva Marie Saint seems to be experiencing a second, Peter Brady-style puberty.

8:42: Tilda, you so crazy!

8:39: Angelina = the new ungrateful Russell Crowe

8:30: The parenthetical "...for some reason" should come after every introduction of "Your host, Hugh Jackman!"

8:28: Uh-oh. We're out of wine already.

Live-blogging the pre-show

7:35: And to think I used to find Peter Gabriel hot.

7:36: Fingers crossed Angelina and Aniston are wearing the same dress and have a Brenda-and-Kelly-like smackdown as a result.

7:41: Switched over to Barbara Walters. Mickey Rourke on winning an Oscar: "You can't eat it, you can't fuck it, it won't get you into heaven." Love.

7:43: Switched back to red carpet just in time to catch Phillip Seymour Hoffman in a skully. Double love.

7:45: Angelina looking extra-boring, extra-haggard and extra-bitchy. Brad looking a mite bitchy as well.

7:49: Swinton bringing the beautiful/crazy.

7:58: I ain't no Seacrest fan, but appearing in movies like "Wanted," "Kung Fu Panda," "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," "Alexander," "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," "Tomb Raider," "Tomb Raider II," "Beyond Borders," "Original Sin," "Gone in 60 Seconds," "The Bone Collector," "Playing God," "Firefox" and "Hackers" doesn't exactly put you above the fray, Angelina m'dear. Suck it up.

8:13: Robert Downey Jr. = Tuck Everlasting.

8:15: There is a funny French bee in the commercial I'm watching. (Yes, Oscar ennui has already set in.)

8:27: I can't wait to learn about the MAGIC of the MOVIES!!!!!!

I'm back

Why does bad crap always seem to happen to me before the Oscars? So far, 2009 is best summed up by the fact that my dog is now on Prozac.

No matter... I'm back and ready to live-blog this shit. Without further ado....

First Blog, Part Two

Freshly finished with the SAG Awards (huzzah to "Benjamin Button" being shut out), I'm now watching "First Blood" on AMC. That fact in and of itself deserves dissection, but I'll leave it be, because there's so much else to talk about.

So first of all, is Rambo supposed to be a post-Vietnam Era HIPPIE in this movie? There's an awful lot of reference to his hair being too long, but it's not really long at all. Nor does he put out an especially strong hippie vibe. Je suis confused.

Second, are people ever really arrested for vagrancy?

If so, do small town cops really spend so much time torturing vagrants with razors and such?

Is Brian Dennehy ever thin and not in peril?

Am I very very wrong to find Sly hot in this movie?


Otherwise, this movie is all about confused memories for me. Due to its adult content, I mostly watched this movie from behind the couch at my dad's house and didn't understand what the heck was going on. All I took away from it was that Vietnam vets were a mountainous people. And even then I think the movie I'm really remembering is "First Blood Part Two," since I have very vivid memories of Rambo yelling at Murdoch and far fewer of Rambo making a man-tunic out of an abandoned tarp, which is what's happening on screen at the moment.

Actually, really, what is this tunic all about? He was wearing a perfectly reasonable tank top a few minutes ago. Personally, when I'm being chased, tunic conception and execution is usually low on my list of priorities.

I'm starting to doubt the validity of "First Blood"'s American Movie Classic status.

Hi ho.

Gonna start this sucker up again.

Everything I say is everything you've ever wanted to hear

I know a fair number of talking heads. Between ex-classmates, old co-workers, and LA associates, I usually catch at least one televised acquaintance a week, pontificating on the election or fall fashion trends or Britney's latest breakdown. And if my mood is bad or my confidence low, I invariably mope and wonder, Why aren't I doing that?

And then I remember: Because I'm a liar.

I don't mean to be. I don't want to be. It's just that on occasion, I open my mouth and let loose with a whopper. The whoppers themselves are usually inconsequential, but it's a tic I can't seem to conquer.

Latest example: Last week I was walking the dog at the beach. It was a beautiful afternoon with lots of families out and about, which meant a lot of wee ones squealing at the site of a hound with long, yankable ears.

One such squirt spotted us and came careening over. Watson stopped and obliged with his sad-eyed "just pull them and get it over with!" expression. Meantime, I chatted with the child's parents.

"What a cute dog!"

"Oh, thank you!"

"Is it a boy or a girl?"

It's a boy. My dog is a boy. Watson J. Dog is a boy.

"It's a girl!"

Why? WHY? I have no idea. It just came out. I even felt the idiocy rising in my throat and almost stopped myself, but then realized it would be better to live with the lie than explain why I floundered over a simple question regarding my dog's sex.

And so began the second leg of the walk: Hide the Dog Salami. First, I blocked any view of the dog's pee-pee by jumping next to him and leading him away like a ring handler. Then, once we were past the family, I planned a walking route that took me about a half-mile out of my way, thus circumventing the beach on our way back to the beach parking lot.

It wasn't all bad though -- Watson got some much-needed exercise after a summer of eating many unguarded foodstuffs. And a girl's gotta keep her figure, after all!

James Woods is NO carcarian carcarius

"Shark Week." One of my most favorite weeks ever, it's "The Hills" for armchair ichthyologists. (N.B.: I have never seen a single episode of "The Hills," a matter I truly mean to address in a future blog entry.)

Except.... except. The very honest truth is that while I genuinely enjoy sharks, what I'm really fascinated by is shark attacks. And herein lies the problem. As any shark or "Shark Week" aficionado knows, death by shark attack is about as likely a demise as death by chocolate. It just doesn't happen very often. The International Shark Attack File records something like 65 attacks a year, and most of them are of the "a sand shark just bit my toe! oh no! oh well!" variety.

So there are only so many truly sensationalist attacks that "Shark Week" can focus on, and the other sad truth is that I'm already intimately acquainted with all of them. The 1916 Jersey Shore attacks? I could tell you which limbs were lost by which victims. The USS Indianapolis tragedy? Let's just say that when I saw Jaws for the first time, at the age of 8, and listened to Quint recount his own USS Indianapolis experience, I instantly knew that the screenwriters had plagiarized an actual survivor's account -- which I'd read at the age of 7.

So I fear I'm at the end of my "Shark Week" addiction -- the highs are few and far between and are punctuated by unbearable cravings ("Can we PLEASE hear the details about that recent Laguna Beach attack already? Please please please?"). South African air shark footage is okay and all, but I can only take so many close-ups of doomed limpid-eyed seals.

Guess I need a new animal-attack fetish. Meantime, I'll be writing a long-overdue complaint letter to the producers of "Shark" for blatant misrepresentation.

Weeks of afternoon downpours

And it still has yet to occur to me to close the windows before I leave for work in the morning.

You know....

I should be enamored with the little gray kitty currently perched on my forearm -- especially since I give her almost no attention when our squeaky-wheel dog is in the room -- but, uh, I kind want to toss her off. Except I'm sitting next to the hubby, whom I've frequently berated for throwing the cats across the room, so I'm sort of stuck.

The question is, is it getting old?

The answer is, never.

I have so much more to say, but tonight let me just send out props to all the fair- and foul-weather Celtics fans (Justin and Ada get special props) who really truly get what this means. Johnny and Red are celebrating somewhere together tonight.

The news you can't use but can definitely enjoy

One of my favorite aspects of being down in the Florida Keys is reading the daily paper, The Key West Citizen. The paper consists of two main sections, News and Sports, and is crystalline in its mission: You want real news? Go read The Miami Herald. Witness the front page headline the day after Obama secured the Democratic nomination:

"Man Hacked in Machete Attack"

I'm also pretty partial to the Crime Report, not so much for the writing (though this morning's headline, "The Bicycle Thief Knows Who He Is and Accepts It," should win a Pulitzer) as for the crimes themselves. A recent ditty:

"A woman awoke Sunday to find her car's windshield and rear window shattered and a note under the windshield wipers admonishing her boyfriend, reports say. 'Your boyfriend touched my girl's ass [and] now you have to replace your glass,' the note said.

Even some of the straightest news stories end up being pretty amusing, like this one from today's front page: "Fire destroyed the rental home of a well-known Marathon musician late Wednesday after a tiki torch exploded... Robert Hudson, known locally as "Rocketman," was playing a gig at Porky's Bayside restaurant...."

But far and away the best feature is the "Citizen's Voice" column. All locals are invited to call the paper's hotline to leave a voicemail proclaiming what's on their minds, and every day the paper prints the choicest 15 or 20 messages. Never mind the quaintness of the concept, or the fact that enough people call every day to keep the section humming: The column succeeds on its cryptic insanity alone. Some recent entries:

"Car dealerships, pay attention: No more balloons! Besides, do you really believe balloons help sell cars?"

"Democrats remind us of sheep who voted not to deal with the wolves. It's lazy to be 'against' the war, so don't cry when they come for you."

"I found it fascinating that the trooper stated that the pedestrian killed on Tuesday night was holding a beer can. After being thrown 75 feet?? Come on, now."

"By not using your own mind, that is to say, by not thinking for yourself, you have already paid the ultimate price. Use it or lose it."

"Fire must be contained and controlled at all times or it works against you. Contain and control -- from a book of matches to a nuclear reactor."

To hell with Iraq. The United States needs new cranes."


There's also some sort of ongoing fight raging between several callers squabbling over whether or not Fox News should be made available on Comcast. A caller yesterday placed himself firmly in the "No" camp, prompting today's reply:

"To the person who wants Fox news taken off Comcast, I'm calling Comcast to have you taken off your Comcast service, because I don't want to think like you."

Never underestimate the power of the "Oh yeah? So's your face!" retort.


Incidentally, if you were curious about the machete hacking victim, he's alive and talking, although he did lose his nose in the attack. Police have arrested and charged Jimmy "The Kidd" Dumas in the attack and have already dismissed his claim that he macheted the victim in self-defense. The Kidd is also now under suspicion for soliciting money to fund a liver transplant he never actually needed. Though he may have. No one really knows!

The Florida vote

Back in November, a two-week jaunt to Key West gave rise to a very important, very pressing question:

"Of course I like you -- my dick is hard, isn't it?" or "My other ride has tits" -- which is the more offensive T-shirt?

First, some context. Key West is the land of a 1,000 trashy T-shirt stores. Slogans like "It's not the size of the fishing rod, it's how you wiggle the worm" and "I'm not balding -- this is a solar panel for my sex machine" regularly populate local retail display windows and the guts of middle-aged male tourists. In other words, it takes a lot more than a maybe-racist Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt to offend down there.

But I've spent a lot of time in Key West over the last eight years, and there has been an undeniable rise in the offensiveness quotient of T-shirt slogans. "I'm not 50 -- I'm 18 with 32 years of experience" has been supplanted by such lovelies as "I'm a doctor -- lie down with your legs spread and do what I tell you."

I think what really got the hubby and I, though, is that both of the first two aforementioned slogans were spotted on actual men on the streets of Key West, both of whom, unbelievably, had actual, real-life, non-inflatable ladies on their arms. (Granted, one of the ladies was blatantly trashed and staggering about with a margarita mug sporting flashing Christmas lights, but so it goes.)

Once both shirts were spotted, the gauntlet was thrown, and the hubby and I got down to it. I argued that the latter slogan was far more offensive, as it equated a woman with a piece of two-wheel machinery; at least with the hard-dick assurance, the lady in question was maybe being flattered? The hubby, meantime, pushed for the former, pointing out that the man in question could be assuring the woman of her likability right before sex, which would more likely make the statement itself a manipulative lie. (This debate, incidentally, raged on during much of our three-year wedding anniversary dinner. Classy couple, classy dinner conversation.)

Then, the hubby threw in one more wrench by inserting a third contender he'd spotted in a few T-shirt shops: "Hump and Dump," with an image of a man throwing out a woman in the garbage. We both agreed that this one trumped all and then ordered some dessert.

But now we're back in Key West, being regaled with the usual offensive oddities, and coming back fron a yoga class the other day I spotted what I now consider to be the end-all:

"Ass: The New Vagina."

So I throw it to you, dear readers. Which is the most offensive T-shirt slogan?

a) "My other ride has tits."
b) "Of course I like you -- my dick is hard, isn't it?"
c) "Hump and Dump" (with illustration)
d) "Ass: The New Vagina."

Results will be posted later this week. And incidentally, in the interest of complete fairness, I am amenable to the idea of assigning a half-vote to each and calling it a day.

I'm back

Allo.

The last few months have been overscheduled and at times more than a little trying, for reasons I can't divulge. But nothing reinvigorates the soul like a Corona at 5 pm after a day at the beach, the situation I find myself in now. Also, I have a lot more free time over the next month. So yep, I'm back. More postings to come shortly.

Happy Birthday

to my favorite.

Live-blogging the Oscars: a lude

8:31 - This may be a good time to mention that I'm not really a Jon Stewart fan.

8:31:30 - Mostly because he receives a disproportionately raucous reaction to every tepid joke he utters at full volume.

8:34 - A Hillary joke followed by a Jew joke in the first two minutes. WHO SAW THAT COMING?

8:35 - FOLLOWED BY A LAWYER JOKE. UNPRECEDENTED.

8:37 - Javier Bardem doesn't seem to enjoy veiled John McCain jabs.

8:42 - I've already switched from wine to beer.

8:43 - First Best Song performance. This is a good time to talk about the Friday night date night I had with my hubby this weekend. After failing to figure out the broken DVD player, we switched over to the On Demand free movie list, which seemed pretty lacking in promise.... to me. An excerpt of the evening's conversation:

Dan: "Hmmm, this doesn't look very go-- OH MY GOD HOWARD THE DUCK! I've been wanting to see that forever! Do you KNOW that you can't even get it on Netflix? And OH WAIT! OH MAN! LAST TANGO IN PARIS! Okay, we're fast-forwarding to the sex scenes, and then we're watching Howard the Duck. 'Bring me the butter...'"

Me: -----

A half-hour later

Dan: "I am in HOG heaven."

Me: ----

***

8:47 - "And now.... Oscar's most hateful moments."

8:38 - Does Spike Lee show up to this thing solely to be the requisite "Race joke! Quick! Cut to a recognizable black person! Where's Whoopi? Okay, where's the other one?" cut?

8:49 - My mother in law had a viscerally negative reaction to Ratatouille, owing entirely to the fact that it featured rats.

8:51 - NorBIT! NorBIT! NorBIT!

8:51:30 - Dammit.

8:52 - I absolutely adore Frenchmen who speak in fake French accents.

9:06 - Dan and I have been squabbling over who's rocking the Woolly Willy look better, The Rock or John Travolta.

9:10 - Not awarding a major award early on is such a mistake -- that's how you lose the husband vote.

9:10:30 - Dan has just suggested an antidote: have the Oscars co-hosted by Steve Carrell and Scarlett Johansson.

9:15 - Jennifer Hudson just had her Oscar revoked.

9:17 - First non-surprise of the evening (Best Supporting Actor Javier Bardem) just caused the dog to dramatically readjust his place on the couch.

9:23 - Second Best Song performance. This is a good time to try and explain why I hate Angelina Jolie so much. Okay, so first of all, she is not a friend of women. She doesn't seem to have any female friends, only male husbands and boyfriends she steals from women. One day I think Zahara will call her on this. Second of all, I think she's a wildly overrated actress and stunk in that dumb movie she won the Oscar for, and I say that not even caring that she tongued her brother. Mostly though, I hate her because I think she wildly overrates her own value as a humanitarian. When she travels to Iraq to raise awareness of the refugee situation over there, exactly who is she seeking to educate? The US Weekly readership? It just doesn't fly.

9:27 - I DARE Jon Stewart to make an Owen Wilson suicide joke.

9:33 - Jerry Seinfeld as an annoying animated bee totally works for me.

9:39 - One of the reasons I adore my husband is that he loves the oddly beautiful non-Americans: Rachel Griffths, Toni Collette and now, apparently, Tilda Swinton (who just gave an oddly beautifully awesome acceptance speech)

9:45 - Do you think the Technical Award nerds were pissed a hot PREGNANT actress hosted their awards this year?

9:49 - Dan likes the odd hotties, I like the Coen brothers.

9:51 - Peter "thirtysomething" Horton will play the lead in The Michael Bay Story.

9:53 - Third nominated song. Okay, I'll be honest, the superdelegate thing is making me nervous. I just don't trust the Clintons to seek any sort of truthful end result to this primary. Dignity just does not seem to be a coveted quality of their campaign (unless polled working-class Ohio voters suddenly put "dignity" atop their list of coveted qualities in their presidential candidate). And the whole bizarre Karl Rove-playbook accusation this weekend made my meta-blood boil.

10:01 - I have to pee.

10:02 - Peed.

10:10 - Okay, I'm just gonna say it: I don't like these foreigners comin' in and stealin' our Oscars. Where's Lou Dobbs when we need 'em?

10:15 - Forth nominated song. So inspired by Howard the Duck, Dan and I have been engaged in some pretty punny humor all weekend. For the one or two of you who never saw the greatest duck comedy of all time, here's a primer: a midget in a duck suit from another planet suddenly gets sucked into our universe, lands in Cleveland, meets Lea Thompson and spends the next two hours saying things like "that really ruffles my tail feathers!" and "That does it -- no more Mister Nice Duck." So Dan and I started reimagining the five nominated films as dog movies -- Atonemutt, There Will Be Bloodhounds etc. -- and OH WAIT! It's JACK! JACK'S BACK! Whoo hoo!

10:28 - Dan and I just counted, and shockingly I've seen more Best Picture movies than him -- those 50s musicals come in handy.

10:29 - Renee Zellweger, I know you're not supposed to insult someone by saying they have a lesbian haircut. However....

10:34 - Lifetime Achievement Award. Okay, so Nicole Kidman isn't quite as creepy-looking now that she is with bun, but there's still something so freakingly waxen about her. And it bums me out because I thought she was hyper-cute when she had normal hair and skin and lips, and she was still totally my fashion icon until maybe three years ago, when she married that country Australian guy who flat-irons his hair (which clearly inspired Tom Petty ahead of his Super Bowl performance, and do you KNOW that I can't even still talk about the Super Bowl and oh my god it's clearly cursed other New England sports teams because the Celtics have lost three in a row since the All-Star break and the Bruins, well, who cares, and but now I'm afraid that David Ortiz is going to break his groin during spring training?) and isn't it kind of weird how she became all Stepfordian only AFTER she divorced Tom Cruise given what Kat(i)e Holmes has become and...

10:39 - oh, commercial.

10:45 - Fifth Best Song performance. So anyway, Patrick Dempsey. So here's a dirty little secret. When I lived in Santa Barbara 15 years ago, there was this video store called "The #*&@* Video Store." You actually called it "The Fucking Video Store," but it was spelled the way I first spelled it. Anyway, it was about a block and a half away from my apartment, which meant that we never returned our videos because it was just too easy a process. So the two movies we had out forever were Dances with Wolves and Can't Buy Me Love. And, well, I loved Can't Buy Me Love. LOVED. But I HATED Patrick Dempsey, mostly because he was just a little too damn skinny and a lot too whiny. And so I still hate him today even though he's genuinely hot.

10:57 - Okay, forget what I said about Jon Stewart. I think it's genuinely awesome that he brought back the woman from Once to give her acceptance speech.

10:58 - And as if on cue, my dog just let rip with one of the smelliest farts that ever was.

11:00 - Okay, I'm lame, but the dead people montage always makes me teary. And it was a total dud of a dead lineup this year ('cepting for Heath, of course).

11:11 - So has anyone actually seen Enchanted? It's getting a lot of disproportionate play this evening, and BOY is that making my hubby angry.

11:15 - "I've served three tours in Iraq and all I got was this lousy Short Documentary subject?"

11-something - I've been totally distracted by reorganizing this blog.

11-something-plus-one - I so extra-love my husband for loving Helen Mirren as much as he does.

11:37 - So if anyone wants to really understand the emptiness of knee-jerk heretical film criticism, go read Stephanie Zackarek's criticism of Daniel-Day Lewis's performance in There Will Be Blood. It made me honestly a little embarrassed for her.

11:45 - Might I just mention that I love the Coen brothers?

11:46 - Okay, Denzel Washington has to be the least-offensive, least-drunk presenter of Best Picture in a long time.

11:47 - Good final win. Otherwise? BOR-ing.

Live-blogging the Oscars: a prelude

I'm cranky. I'm cranky because we spent two hours today shopping for local produce, dairy and bread in a sincere but semi-cynical effort to begin the 100-mile diet. I'm cranky because after the shop we headed straight to our favorite pizza place, but it was closed. I'm cranky because this afternoon I listed a pair of expensive leather boots on eBay that the dog threw up on a half-hour later. I'm cranky because the dog then ate the loaf of our new locally sourced, locally baked multigrain bread. And I'm cranky because I'm now being forced to watch Regis Philbin.

Let's play.

February is National Pet Dental Health Month

Plan accordingly.

Facebook

Okay, I think I'm done. I gathered 83 friends in about a week's time, using the following standard: people with whom I've had at least one memorable conversation (i.e. a conversation I can remember). So that seemed a decent standard and a decent number (although I'm sort of maxed out until I start having more meaningful conversations with near-strangers).

Then I started scrolling through all my other friends and got really annoyed. Journalists, publicists and LA denizens -- who make up a good chunk of my roster -- ruin the curve, since they know, or at least "know," about a bazillion* people at any one point. The more I clicked over to friends' profiles boasting three-digit friend tallies, the less popular I felt. And if there's one friend I'm not looking to reacquaint myself with anytime soon, it's good ol' Miss Unpopularity.

Then I got defriended. By who I couldn't even tell, but my number went down to 82 for a while, and I was crushed.

Also, because I hate having my photo taken, the only digital shot I had available is a four-year-old picture of me with my sister's dogs. And it's finally starting to dawn on me that pretty much all of my public-domain photos feature at least one dog. Which is just lame.

Meantime, I can't figure out how the hell NOT to send all these TV and movie quizzes to all of my other friends. Which is probably most annoying of all to my "friends," who were probably only looking to up their own tallies to begin with. So sorry, "friends" -- you shouldn't have accepted my "friendship" to begin with.


*the term "bazillion" got reintroduced into my lexicon this weekend by my adorable hubby. I like it. Somehow it seems greater and yet less-threatening an amount than "gazillion."

Steno notebooks

There are seven, half-used, on my desk right now.

2008's beauty resolution, unraveled

Eat better, take vitamins, do more yoga, blah blah blah.... my big beauty resolution this year was hair-related. I do get my hair cut and, uh, color-enhanced on a fairly regular basis, but it still looks like crapola half the time, because all the magazines tell you not to wash it every day, but if I don't my hair gets all gross and oily, but I believe the magazines, so I put my hair back in a ponytail, but I don't have any nice barrettes anymore (dog-chewing bait, those are), so I put it back with an elastic, but that makes me look like some sad-sack "Extreme Makeover" Before, but mostly I don't care. (Exhale.)

Except my resolution is to start caring. So. So this year I bought into a new trend: dry shampoo. My understanding is that this was a 1970s dud of a idea that has since made a successful comeback. At least, that's what the magazines say, and in case it's not already clear, I fearfully believe them. So a few weeks back I bought a bottle of spray-on dry powder shampoo and started playing with it. At first the can sprayed nothing but air on my head (the nozzle was clogged), and so I figured the powder was invisible and, suffering from the placebo effect, spent a few days admiring the volume and fluffiness that the "powder" had bestowed.

Eventually though, the can started dispensing a thin white mist all over my head, and suddenly I got it. My hair was huge, sexy and dry. I fluffed it out and I trotted off to work with Farrah Fawcett-like exuberance, convinced I'd finally solved the gross hair dilemma.

Except two hours later I looked in the mirror and saw that the white powder hadn't dissolved but instead was glaringly scattered throughout my hair and scalp. I looked like some eighth-grade thespian basking in the post-performance glow of her winning turn as the grandmother in "Into the Woods."

Except my actual secondary school acting roles were limited to parts like "Strawberry Vendor" and "Rabbit #8." But still.

My To Do list

... is cracking me up today:

Police
Hockey item
Yamada
1 pm bag
Gym
Platelets
Story ideas
Blog

Last night's indecipherable dream

Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination and Eli Manning died, possibly of a flesh-eating disease.

What does it all mean? I'm stumped.

A tale of two duties

The best part of my day: going to vote with the hubby and bumping into my sister at our polling place. I love that my sister and I vote in the same district -- even if we did split our vote.

The worst part of my day: spending seven-eighths of it ghostwriting a plea for money from a much-higher-up. Actually, it's not even a plea, it's a pre-plea: I'm supposed to get them all greased up for the money demand coming their way in the next month. All I know is that it's an arduous task asking for money when you know you'll never see a dime of it.

What can you say?

The Giants played better. And, I feel like it's unfair to be granted a World Series Red Sox win, a Patriots Super Bowl win, AND a Democratic presidential win in the same 13-month period. I'll take the first and third wins and humbly carry on into that great goodnight.

Overheard from a bride-to-be (or, Why I Eloped)

"and basically, the whole room will be a shrine ... to us!"