June 26, 2008

Sales

We had a sales meeting today at work. It was one of those deals where they drag us all into the conference room, hop us up on coffee and doughnuts and make us do the company cheer. Rah rah shoot me now, go team, in the face. What’s our motto?...I ‘d rather have hot coals up my ass than be in this meeting! Well…I may have changed a few of the words but I’m sure a few other people were thinking the same thing.

I mean it really isn’t that bad, hell it’s time out of the cube so I can’t complain…but I will!


After all, management is offering us ways to make incentives for cross selling, that’s like extra pay just for being annoying and pushy, so again, can’t really complain, but I will. I was raised to be annoying and pushy for free. It just seems somehow tawdry to get paid for it. When you’re giving it away you can pick and choose, but put a sales quota on it and now I’ve got to push every Tom, Dick and Harry that dials my number. Now that’s annoying.

And the guy pimping this sales meeting was walking around saying stuff like, “There’s more where that came from if you hit your goals.” Or “Bend over backwards….for your team sales drive, the effort will pay off.” Every time one of the cubies chimed in with the desired response he’d toss a buck at them. Hell, had I known there was going to be an old guy at the meeting with a pocket full of $1 bills I would have worn a different outfit.

Confucius Say..Check Out This Week's Non-new Review





THEY ARE ALL STEVES!
Steve Austin, Steve McGarret, Steve McQueen and Dex


TAO OF STEVE (2000)


Writer/Director Jenniphr Goodman




Dex and his buddies practice the Tao of Steve, a guylosophy that involves the three steps to getting laid, getting laid often, and getting away with it. Until dot dot dot, the one you really want comes along and isn’t interested in a Steve.

STEVE: The ultimate American male. Men want to be Steve, and women want to bed Steve.

Donal Logue, who had a short stink on ABC’s The Knights of Prosperity in 2007, plays Dex an unlikely Steve; a fat stoner in his thirties who works part-time and bullshits full time. Yet his mastery of the Tao gives him a mastery over women, most of them anyway. When Dex and his friends go to their ten year college reunion he re-unites, sort of, with Syd, and the Tao goes into a tailspin.

Syd, played by Greer Goodman who is also a co-writer and sister to the director, ain’t buying Steve or Dex’s line. She matches him intellectually and is unimpressed by his usual bag of tricks. In fact Dex is so thrown he misses the mark on all three of the steps to naked nirvana. But the movie doesn’t totally become a chick flick, the romance is cut with humor, interesting dialog, and the characters are real and relatable. (Meaning they’re as fat and ugly as the rest of us.)

The story is based on Duncan North (co-writer) and his life in Santa Fe. It’s a good story and a good movie with a refreshing realistic take on love. So this weekend if you don’t act like you want to see this movie, mention that it was a Sundance Film Festival award winner, then say you are just going to return it and start to walk away, you will have mastered the Tao of seeing the movie you want to see and your mate will think they talked you into it.


June 23, 2008

Crushin on My Captain

Saturday afternoon it was Captain Kirk and Saturday evening it was Captain & Tennille. I got Wayne to go out for a little Karaoke; I wonder if he regrets telling me he would give me everything I want? Probably not, that’s why I love him like a muskrat. Love will keep us together but maybe not Karaoke, however, he is a good sport and even sang two songs; he’s really pretty good, I wonder if he secretly likes to sing?

My first at bat, I hit a home run and got a fan. He was pretty old and said he had left his hearing aid at home, but I trust in his assessment of my Karaoke prowess, even if the old fart did grab my ass. Then Wayne sang and he was a hit too; so I grabbed his ass. By the time my next turned rolled around I had about 28 beers, the sound system misfired, so I had to stand there on stage for 2 agonizing minutes while it got fixed and restart my song twice. I bombed! Gawd, how quickly a drunken crowd forgets your past glory.

Wayne sang again, did great, got some applause but the crown was thinning and yawning. Beer, singing and the Florida heat can wear you out. I was determined to go out on a high note though. I was once told I have a soprano inside me I just have to let her out. NEVER believe anyone who is trying to sell you something; especially singing lessons. NEVER try to hit a note out of your range just because you’re drunk enough to think you can. And NEVER sing Broadway in a country bar. Uh Baby, can we go home now?

So the evening ended with me begging Wayne to do that to me one more time. And, once again living up to his promise to give me everything I wanted, he did! My Captain sang me one more love song on the home karaoke machine he bought me before tucking me in with 2 aspirin and a bottle of water.

June 21, 2008

Crushin on Captain Kirk


Saturday afternoons in my neck of the woods they show an episode of Star Trek and I love it because I love Captain Kirk. (In a totally sexual yet innocent way.) Mind you I am not a Trekky; I don’t go to the websites or the conventions or dress as Spock or Uhura at Halloween, that would ruin it for me. No, a good Saturday for me is to get some chores done and then settle in for an episode while half napping and waiting for Wayne to get home. The episodes are much better if you are half asleep; makes Kirk kinda dreamy like.

You should also not confuse my attraction for Captain Kirk with any sort of attraction for William Shatner. Though I enjoy his work save for
TJ Hooker, should go without saying, I don’t have a have naughty little prepubescent girl lust for him like I does for Cap'in Kirk. Allow me to elaborate.

I don’t remember if I first saw Shatner as Kirk or as a disturbed man in an episode of
The Twilight Zone; I just remember being a little girl and being totally ga-ga for Kirk. I…loved….yes loved……the way he…..talked. And the smoldering gazes, SHAZAM, hit me like a thunder bolt in my little, just discovering that boys aren’t all butt-cheese, heart. Hold me Captain, I am weak in the knees.

My brother had bunk beds in his room and would play Star Trek; the top bunk being the bridge. Sometimes I got to play, but not often, as he was older and a butt-cheese. I don’t remember what character my broham would be, but I sort of think of him as Scotty the engineer because he was always into electronics and is kinda of nerdy. (He actually went to a convention once.) If you got called up to the top bunk you were doing pretty good; usually I was the Ensign that got killed in the beginning of the episode when they beamed down to whatever planet.

I didn’t like playing with them anyway; I preferred to keep the Captain to myself. OOOO like when you got to stay home sick from school and there was an episode on. I wanted to be Kirk’s green
Orion Slave Girl soooo bad. Or that episode where he gave Uhura the shirtless tonsillectomy; daaaamn! Had I been older I would have let Kirt go where no man had gone before, but that didn’t even occur to my little girl brain, I just wanted to be grown up so he could kiss me like that. SHIVER!!




A Playdoh colored fantasy in space all wrapped up after an hour and put away till next week.

Saturday afternoons can lead to some pretty good Saturday nights around here. All grown up, I get to be Captain Wayne’s beige, farmer tanned, oh so willing slave girl, and I get to be on top whenever I want.

June 19, 2008

Have you seen everything in the new releases? Do you need suggestions for your queue? On Thursdays I pick non-new releases I like, and you might too. This week; how about a little something with a twist?


MATCHSTICK MEN (2003)
Director: Ridley Scott




I don’t remember why I thought I didn’t like
Nicolas Cage, but I loved him in this movie. Cage is a quirky neurotic fellow with lots of tics that are really fun to watch, so he was perfect to play Roy, a quirky neurotic fellow with lots of tics....


Cage does a great job and so does
Sam Rockwell as his protégé Frank. Roy and Frank love each other, not in a Brokeback Mountain way, but in more of a Sting way. Roy is the senior antiques dealer, aka con artist, and is teaching Frank the trade….or is it Frank doing the teaching?

Roy is obsessive, obsessive, obsessive and has a hard time with doors, but all that changes when his long lost daughter Angela shows up. Alison Lohman plays the teen to perfection; much like her character plays her father. Do all teenage girls have some sort of gene that allows them to reduce grown men to rubble with two tears and a pout? I wish I would have known about that back then because it sure as hell doesn’t work when you’re forty! Anywho, Angela has got Roy’s number and she talks Roy into teaching her some lesson’s too, (think Paper Moon.)

In this story of two men and a teenager, there is great acting, directing, writing and laughs. With three snaps up and a twist, I recommend checking out MATCHSTICK MEN this weekend, not taking calls from people who claim you’ve won something and keeping your dog out of the money, or vice versa.

June 18, 2008

Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful

Today I have packed clothes and am going to the use the gym at work before I go home for the day. Wayne leaves the house for work in the morning with keys. I leave for work, a four hour shift, with an overnight bag. But no matter, because I am going to be so skinny that everyone will hate me. Wouldn’t that be a great way to be hated? Right up there with being hated for your tons of money.

I plan on putting in a solid thirty on the treadmill. Fifteen facing forward and fifteen facing backwards. I saw this on an episode of Biggest Loser; works the back side really well. I want to make sure to concentrate on keeping my backside looking good because I have been told I look better when I’m walking away.

June 17, 2008

Wish Me More Luck; if you want to.

I got an email from the script contest; it will be late August before the first round is decided. Damn, I want to make the cut so flippin bad. I completely fell in love with my script and the characters that I submitted. I have started working on the second episode because even if I don’t make the cut, I believe it has some legs and I will try to get it looked at somewhere else.

And an interesting side effect has come from my experiment in script writing, but let me back up a little. Wayne and I have been intending on going to the Y for about forever. We joined, put the membership on vacation, rejoined, thought about going, bought workout clothes, new shoes, and couldn’t manage to get there. Well we finally went, and then we went back and then we went back. OMG we are practically ready for the Olympics. But anywho, I have discovered that while fighting the boredom and tedium of the treadmill, my mind wanders, and with a little direction it will wander into my sitcom and come up with plot lines and dialog. So I am multi-tasking my ass off…literally.

This is a good thing because you can’t accept an award on tv for the best new sitcom writer in the world with an ass big enough for them to screen the show on.

So I am going to keep this up. Treadmill equals dialog and plot lines, and maybe with any luck some jokes too. I wonder if this method will squash my fear of running out of stuff to write about. It seems no matter what project I start I get all caught up in the fear of not finishing it. But with this method as long as I have ass to burn I’ve got a source of ideas. At 30 minutes 3 times a week, it should take me 2 years to run out of ass, but if you factor back in Saturday night wine and cheese with the occasional Sunday waffle, I could have a very long career.

June 15, 2008

Sexy?

Yeah, well I got the glasses and the librarian thing is not really working out. I do look kind of cute in my new glasses, but not exactly sexy and naughty. Before glasses, I used to feel young and sort of trophy wife-ish when Wayne would ask me to read some small print for him; but the other day he couldn’t find his glasses so he grabbed mine and read for himself. It was so not sexy for me to see Wayne, in my “sexy librarian” glasses, reading the directions on some medicine.



PS It was really hard to take this picture, because my glasses are in the picture.

June 12, 2008

Wayne Made Me Watch Them Both...Twice

This week’s non-new review is a two-fer; two movies, two cars, one actor, and one plot. But if you or your someone go for tough guy movies, then this is the duet for you.


The Transporter (2002)
Transporter 2 (2005)








Transporter stars a BMW 750i E38, (per IMDB, the only one ever produced with a manual six-speed gearbox). I found it to be shiny and black. Transporter 2 stars an Audi A8L W12, also shiny and black. In a supporting role for both movies is Jason Statham as Frank Martin, The Transporter; I found him to be shiny and white, his head that is. But this bodacious, ballsy, baritone makes bald beautiful.

In the 1st movie the damsel in distress is a beautiful Asian girl with an oppressive father. In the 2nd movie the damsel is a beautiful Anglo girl with an oppressive husband(Matthew Modine). No matter, ex-Special Forces operative Frank Martin and his car to the rescue. But Frank has a set of policies before he’ll take a job, and the 1st rule is; when you break a rule it makes a better movie. So it is Frank’s soft spot for a pretty girl, in the first movie and a cute kid with a hot mom in the second movie that provides the stimulus for him to deviate from his self imposed regulations.

Quick synopsis of both movies: Ultra cool guy gets hired to do a job. Rules are broken and job goes awry. Fight….Chase….Smoldering Stare…..Fight…Chase….Death Defying Car Stunts ad nauseam, and there you have it. Both movies are fast paced, and the few slow parts are used to advance the story. While the writing is nothing to write home about, the action and special effects in both films are really good. Some of the fight scenes are as choppy as a syncronized swim meet though, but then Jason takes his shirt off and your like; OH! OK! And there is a truck chase/fight scene, in the first movie, reminiscent of a scene in Raiders of the Lost Arc; only here we are fighting the Chinese Mafia instead of the Nazis.

Both movies were written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen and directed by Louis Leterrier. Two time side-kick Tarconi, is played by Francois Berleand while Qi Shu is Lai the hottie de jour in Tran 1 and Amber Valletta is Audrey the MILF in Tran 2. Completing the cast in both movies are some requisite colorful villains and their over the top mad assistants. Look for the Milla Jovovich wanna be,(Kate Nauta) in the 2nd movie, she's a nasty little thing. There were a few other cars, but nothing worth mentioning.

And yes, there is a Transporter 3 in the works; the release date is set for November 26th 2008. Here’s a sneak peak at the preview, which should give you a pretty good idea of what one and two are like. So, you can look at the cars or you can look at Jason, either way you'll have fun watching Transporter 1 and 2.


June 11, 2008

Up Yours Jiminy

We planted the guava bush yesterday and it looks pretty good.

The grass needs a little love, but hey it is not easy to work, blog, party like you're 20, plant stuff and keep the lawn all suburb glorious.


This morning I was watering the new bush, planting some old bushes that outgrew their pots and treating the lemon tree for bugs.



Well I guess this little fellow, (and I say little with a sarcastic tone that alludes to my dislike for bugs that are bigger than a dollar and fly), didn't like the liquid soap bath and dislodged himself from my tree. PS the lemon tree has a little (literally little) lemon and 2 buds, but I'm not braggin.


And so I was brutally attacked and beaten by Jiminy Cricket as I innocently tried to enter my home. Worse yet, he levied this attack with nary a blow. His strategy, beautifully carried out, was to crawl on my screen door and lie in wait. Upon my approach to said door I spotted the cunning locast. I began a scream that would have summoned the fire department but stopped before completing even half a note. It seems that screams can alarm even the hardiest of grasshoppers, and it looked like he might take flight.


I think that with proper sedation and rehabilitation, I could recover to some semblance of a normal life if a bug of that proportion flew in my hair. But not in my mouth.


My poorly executed retreat was shortened by the hastily discarded hose, causing me to slip, tumble and roll down the hill. That damn Jiminy Cricket mo-fackle busted my ass down and didn't even lift any of it's legs.

June 9, 2008

What A Weekend

Friday Wayne called from work and asked if I wanted to go for dinner with friends. Somehow I managed to drag myself through a Friday in the cubicle because I knew that I had a date with my favorite husband. Since we live an hour away from everything that makes sense, it was a rare treat to go out with these friends; a great start to the weekend.


Saturday night Wayne grilled steak. It’s like a religious experience when he grills steak, beginning with the selection ritual at the meat counter. Less care has been taken by those selecting virgins for a volcanic sacrifice. Then there is the fire making ceremony. The briquettes are chosen and carefully assembled in the temple… I mean the chimney; where they will be ignited without the benefit of starter fluid less the integrity of the meat be compromised by the fumes. It takes nearly an hour for the grill to be properly prepared for the meat; Wayne then lays the carefully marinated sacrifice on the grill for about a second, rotates it, flips it, rotates it again, and then takes it off; less time than it took to open the package.



Now the meat must rest ten minutes. It wasn’t on the fire long enough to get tired but I am not going to argue with a man who is serving me a cabernet from our recent trip to Napa and a crab stuffed mushroom appetizer. We then watched the old Indiana Jones movies to be ready for the new one, (Shut up we are not geeks!) and retired, well past 10pm, for some very un-geek like activity.



Sunday well after 7 am we awake; oh the decadence. Wayne has been on a months long quest to perfect his late grandmother’s biscuit recipe. This beautiful morning he is reaching what must be perfection. I can only hope that the fateful morning he reaches his biscuit apex will not be the last. Bake on my love, I will do the dishes.

After breakfast we went to a favored nursery,Lukas and bought a guava bush. We are going to plant it next to the lemon tree to enhance the backyard landscape. We wanted an olive tree but were unable to find one that would fruit in our part of Florida. However, it was WAY too hot to plant the bush, so we planned on having lunch and planting later Sunday evening. Well, that didn’t work out, because we were too busy having fun.


We found a bar and grill on the water not far from our house, Gator's. We had bar food and cold beer, listened to Crazy Joe play Buffet songs amongst others, and hoped for a gator sighting. We didn’t get to see a gator but we saw plenty of tattoos, Harleys, and sunshine. The bartender was great and we were glad to find a fun place near by. A short trip home was followed by an afternoon nap, then more movies and more un-geek like activity. You go Wayne.

We kind of over indulged this weekend, so when the first thing Wayne said to me this morning was, “Are we still going to the Y?”, I looked at him like he had flipped a biscuit, but I didn’t have the nerve not to go. I am not sure if he motivates me or shames me but either way I did some time on an elliptical today so there you have it.

Next weekend maybe we will fininsh painting the house.....or maybe we'll go see the new Indiana Jones movie.


June 7, 2008

A Letter to Our Family and Friends

Let me start by saying how much we love you. We really do! And we love even more that you think of us and try to buy presents that we will like. And so now with Wayne’s birthday on the horizon, we know that you, our loving family and friends will think of him and his love for wine and may want to send gifts. It is with total appreciation for your consideration of our love of wine that we ask you to send wine if you wish to send a gift and not wine stuff.

Your love and generosity over the years has been truly heart-warming and each and every gift was and is loved. However, while our hearts and cupboards are full, alas the wine cooler is not. To date, amongst the grape shaped refrigerator magnets, the ceramic trivet with wine and cheese painted on, the plethora of wine themed gift boxes dutifully displayed on our plant shelves, the 3 wine racks, the oak glasses rack, the grapevine coffee mugs with matching herb planters, are:

Four of these








and four of these






but none of these..







We have 5 of these





3 of these








and several of these

















Thanks to our loving family and friends we also have:



one of these




one of these








18 of these





four of these







three of these







and one is enough of these








Yet, we are currently sans these










and it never hurts to have a few of these



or these.
Again we love you and more than your gifts, we love that you thought of us.

Wendy

PS I did break one of the Riedel Sommeliers; I’m just sayin….

June 5, 2008

je t'aime ma chérie

It’s Jeudi, and so time to look at a non-new release you might enjoy for the weekend. This week I have chosen a film more delicious than oysters from a Mardi chicken and so full of amour it made me weep for those who go without it, including the suicidal gold fish.



Amelie (2001)



I adore films that are visually appealing and Amelie does not disappoint. Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet uses color as part of his story telling technique. He presents a beautiful make believe world that flavors the movie and bolsters a lovely little simple story into a unique and interesting experience.



Amelie is a boy meets girl story, but they are not your usual boy or girl.
Audrey Tautou, (later of The Di Vinci Code) is Amelie, an awkward girl who prefers fantasy to real life. However, her discovery of a mysterious hidden box changes her life as she tries to change other’s lives for the better. A chance meeting of a man at a photo booth leads to Amelie solving not only the identity of a mysterious man, but also the sweet mystery of life. Reality shared with one of her ilk is not so bad after all.


Our boy, the charmingly odd Nino is portrayed by Mathieu Kassovitz. Also a loner in his own world, Nino excites Amelie’s heart the first time she lays eyes on him. Amelie’s world also includes a sadistic grocer to whom she teaches a lesson, a lonely concierge, a one armed man, who is not a fugitive, and a man with bones of glass. These are but a few that are touched by our heroine on her quest to be a regular do-gooder.


Nominated for five Academy awards, this French film has sub-titles, but you get used to it quickly. Just be careful not to miss too much of the intriguing camera work or engaging acting done by all. Filmed in Paris, you can follow Amelie’s trek around the city at:
Montmartre: in the footsteps of Amélie Poulain.


Amelia has all the ingredients of a great film. A mirepoix of romance, comedy and mystery, the box calls it “The feel-good movie of the year.” The film did make me feel good, but it also made me sad for all the people who can’t or won’t give up their weirdness or accept the weirdness of someone else to find the love and/or companionship they want.


June 4, 2008

Wish Me Luck

Phew, what a week it has been.

Last week
C. Hope Clark posted an entry on her blog regarding a script contest for Fox and NYTVF; thank you Hope. I have always wanted to write a sitcom, but of course I didn’t have anything on paper when I read about the contest. Well, I wasn’t going to let that discourage me, so I dropped everything and wrote like crazy for 3 to 4 hours at least. By then I had 2 solid pages, including the title page and was ready for a little break.

Two days later; I was back and ready to write. Write what? I knew my characters, I knew what I wanted them to do; I just didn’t know what I wanted them to say. I am not used to writing dialog, so unless I wanted the whole show to be a voice over directing the characters through the story, I had to give them voices.

Ok, so now I have got the prologue and most of ACT I. I will just take a little break while I figure out how to write ACT II.

Two days later. You know how life is what happens while you’re making plans? Well, if I could get life to give me a break for a minute, maybe I could get something on paper.


Later that same day as our heroine is nodding off for the night….cranial fireworks. I love it when this happens; I am lying in bed on the brink of sleep and stuff starts poppin'. I have learned to keep a pen and paper by the bed because I don’t remember these jewels of ideas the next day. I have also learned how to work the voice memo feature on my cell phone, as it seems the long drive to work is a likely time for the synapses to start firing.

Now it is Sunday afternoon around 3pm and I make the announcement. “I am done; I just have to …...” Now it is Sunday evening around 8pm. “I am done, could you check my spelling, grammar, and formatting?” Sunday, 11 freakin pm. “I am so done, could you help me save it as a PDF?” “What do you mean we don’t have that function…I didn’t know that, can you help me?” Monday 1 am. “I know you are done baby, thank you so much, you’re the best husband ever!” Monday noon, the script is entered.

God that was fun, I loved it, except for the downloading Adobe PDF stuff, but all is well now. I think it is a good script and I already have 5 or 6 more episodes in my head; just got to write them. Look out life, I’m busy.