Blog Con Queso

Having been stricken with a savage craving for Matt's El Rancho queso this afternoon, I proceeded to google it and stumbled  upon a most serendipitous discovery.  How I thought a google search would satisfy my fierce jonesing, escapes me.  I presume that in my queso craving haze I must've momentarily believed myself to be Jane Jetson - thinking a molcajete of queso was going to pop out of the computer. (Google Labs, get on that)  But the Google gods had something almost as good as instant food synthesis: the best blog ever...

Blog con Queso. Okay, so maybe not the best blog ever - but absolutely the best blog title in history. Blog con Queso is only like 5 entires, the most recent post being from July of '07 - but I think its name alone pretty much makes up for its lack of content.  Have you ever heard anything so brilliant in your life.  Shit, I might name my first born child Blog con Queso I love it so much. I am a little disappointed that these self proclaimed 'queso lovers' are holding hostage such a fantastic  name and have failed to deliver on its false promises of 'quesopertise' (word coinage fail). This blog is like one of the Octo Mom's poor babies that desperately needs to be reclaimed by someone who would give it the proper care and attention it deserves. If I ever get back to Texas, I'm going to hunt down this 'Mean Rachel,' challenge her to a duel for this blog's honor then show Blog con Queso what it's been needing/wanting all along. 

Man, I would do many terrible things for some Matt's El Rancho queso right now.   

Oh My Rockness

yes!

Favorite new discovery: Oh My Rockness

A kid after my own heart

I love this kid.  He is awesome. This is like senior year in high school when KB and I thought we were sticking it to the man when we snuck fake names into the yearbook index (oh yeah, they were published, go have a look) I still well up with pride at that little act of rebellion.  Being sneaky just does it for me.  

Courtesy of Heather

Calling all Sugar Daddies, I need this Headphone Necklace

I was browsing Fred Flare to use up an old gift certificate that may or may not be expired. I set out determined to not spend a dime over the $25 gift certificate, but in typical fashion, I manage to fall in love with the most expensive item on the site.   Ahhh...the road to credit card debt is paved with such good intentions.

Sugar daddies (or mommas) click here!

Yes!!!

Just received this friendly email from JamBase!

Hi C,

Your favorite artists have recently added shows in your area:

The Bird and the Bee 4/6/2009 - Mon Echoplex
Los Angeles, CA
Passion Pit 5/28/2009 - Thu The Troubadour
West Hollywood, CA
Passion Pit 5/29/2009 - Fri Echoplex
Los Angeles, CA

Who's with me?!

F**k Me

Well, all my attempts to avoid this delightful bulletin are officially futile after a fear mongering coworker has forced out of my comfy bubble of denial.   

Apparently, based on historical records and analyzing the current flurry of sesmic activity in SoCal,  there is a high probability that a 7 point Earthquake will rock the LA area within the next 3 days. To put it in Hollywood natural disaster terms -- an earthquake of this magnitude would be the equivalent to the type of tornado that Bill Paxton in Twister describes all ominously to everyone as the 'Finger of God.' Awesome - literally and sarcastically.

(i spent like an hour looking for the right clip -- it happens about 2 seconds after this video ends -- sooo close)

As much as I want to load up my car and high tale it back east where a 120degree heat wave and the occasional flash flood warning are Mother Nature's only devices...there is really nothing I can do about this impending calamity.  I was aware of this possibility when I moved out here - just like I was well informed about the shitty pay, high rent and fantastic weather (plus!).  So, in order trick myself into feeling like I have any control whatsoever, all I can do is be as prepared as possible. 

Some things I learned today in my quest for Earthquake survival skillz: 

1. Indoors: Do NOT seek solace in a doorway. (What?!) Yes, this is the oldest myth of earthquake survival.  Seek safety under a desk or table.  It may protect you from falling objects and debris.

2.  In bed: hold on and stay there, protecting your head with a pillow. You are less likely to be injured staying where you are. Broken glass on the floor has caused injury to those who have rolled to the floor or tried to get to doorways.

3. Driving: Pull over to the side of the road, stop, and set the parking brake. Avoid overpasses, bridges, power lines, signs and other hazards. Stay inside the vehicle until the shaking is over. If a power line falls on the car, stay inside until a trained person removes the wire.

4. Near the shore: Drop, cover and hold on until the shaking stops. Estimate how long the shaking lasts. If severe shaking lasts 20 seconds or more, immediately evacuate to high ground as a tsunami might have been generated by the earthquake. 

oh holy shit. and looks like I'm due for my reoccurring tsunami nightmare tonight. maybe it'll happen during the earthquake and i can just have a heart attack and call it a life. 

Click for more tips and a fun quake animation that'll make you piss yourself! 

P.S. If anything should happen to me -- I love Jesus and hope he forgives me for the title of this post. I love you family and friends. Lil, remember to clean out my side table drawers and burn the contents of my trunk. Keep what you wish.

Behold, the power of Television

New space station to be named 'Colbert' 

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118001588.html?categoryid=14&cs=1

Even Cooler than the Culture Club Song

Chameleon Vid

Um...you're welcome!

I entered a contest to win Coachella tickets today and this is how they thanked me. I bet they have fun at the Goldenvoice offices. I wonder if they are hiring.

http://goldenvoice.com/thankyou.html

The Facebook / Can't Buy Me Love Parallel

I leave Facebook for a few weeks and everything goes to shit...

So, apparently Mark Zuckerberg is the evil asswipe we always knew he was for: 

A. Inventing Facebook in the first place

2.  Acting like he's GD Moussolini 

C. Having more money than me

Obviously and apparently luckily,  I haven't been exposed to the blasphemy that is taking place on the book right now.  EChance, who is ironically indifferent towards the whole debacle, sent me this appalling article.  Kay Kay was so up in arms she actually made the effort to take iphone photos of the new layout and email them to me, which for someone as computer illiterate as herself, is a very big deal.  I'm sure 'sent from iphone photos' hardly communicate the horror taking place,  but I have an unsettling feeling that my choice for lent couldn't have come at a better time.  Thank God, because I'd probably be strapping myself with TNT and road trippin' it to the Silicon Valley to go have a one on one chat with ol' Marky about this shit.

It wasn't long ago when the first Fbook overhaul took place.  I was pissed and joined about 5 groups protesting the change and may or may not have sent a strongly worded email to the administrators. But, to no avail, they held our hands Obama-style and gently guided us to change.  Now, I hardly remember the old facebook.  I have adapted, moving forward towards the future of fbook. But now this, it's is too much... 

This whole fiasco is eerily reminiscent of a little flick by the name of 'Can't Buy Me Love.'
 If you haven't seen this 80's masterpiece, you are seriously missing out (Netflix that shit stat or you can set your DVR to ABC Family on Sunday - it in constant rotation on that bitch)

  

If you haven't had the privilege of experiencing a young Patrick Dempsey in a bolo tie allow me to summarize: a nerdy kid (Dempsey as Ronald Miller) desperately wishing to be popular, pays the popular girl (Cindy Mancini - best popular girl character name to date) to pretend to date him, thus becoming popular by association...kid turns on his true friends and becomes a dick -- and in the end he must learn the high price of popularity. 

 

I'm sure you can see where this is going... 

Mark Zuckerberg was like Ronald Miller - just a nerdy computer science kid longing to hang with the cool crowd.  So, innocently enough, he concocts this fun new networking site and offers it to a small selective group of college students longing for something to call their own since Napster was taken away aka Cindy Mancini. They skeptically accept, believing this exclusive college-only site to be harmless -- hey, if anything it'll make Bobby jealous. Well, while Cindi Mancini is teaching Ronald how to be cool - giving him feedback on his appearance and helping him flourish by raising his market value, Ronald repays Cindi by giving her 'gifts' and other fun applications.  What could go wrong?!

Now, Ronald, feeling pretty comfortable with his new status, goes and introduces 'news feed' aka crack cocaine -- expanding his massive network of loyal followers.  Cindi thinks she's had enough and insist it's time to stage a public breakup.  Ronald calms Cindi down by assuring that now they've both gotten what they wanted. "Now you know Bobby is jealous because his newly updated status says so!"  OK.  

Before too long, Ronald suffers an identity crisis - completely forgets where he came from and who got him here.  He has tried to be popular for so long that he has turned into everything Cindi always found him refreshing for not being (Twitter) -- Cindi has created a monster and the monster has turned on her - calling her babe. Where did the sweet Ronald go with all his simplicity.  Before the cyberstalking and incessant green patch and hatching egg requests. Before you let my mom join.

Now -- in 'Can't Buy Me Love' Ronald's supremacy is cemented at the prom when he unknowingly performs a tribal african dance and all the high school sheep join in on Ronald's new hot dance craze...Cindi Mancini sees right through it and ultimately calls him out, bringing him back down to earth.   

    

Right now, we are at the prom with Mark Zuckerberg and he's starting to do this ridiculous dance that looks suspiciously like something else.  Who does he think he is?  Does he think we're just going to join in like sheep!?!  We like invented him, ya know!  Doesn't he know what happens at the end of the movie or even the history books?!  The corrupt dictator who stops listening to the people who helped him rise to the top always goes down -- hard.  Lucky for Mark this is cyberspace and not Stalinist Russian.  But whatever, despite the very real economic implications of facebook -- it's really not a big deal to me.  

In my time away from the book -- I've learned that yes, I can live without it and that life isn't any less of a bitch with it.  I'm sure i'll get over the new layout like everyone else and let Mark Zuckerberg reign as supreme ass hole forever.  In general I just don't appreciate power trips and I hope he gets knocked down a few notches by Cindi Mancini. But this is a defining moment in the life of Marky Z, will he let Facebook become the washed up high school football star with the beer gut and the bad 'remember when' stories or will he hold fast and gracefully endure your growing pains to become the future McDreamy?  

"But who would expect a 24-year-old to be anything but fickle and inconsistent?"

I mean right?!  The article has a major point -- maybe we can't blame him -- quarter life is anything but clear and easy...it's pretty much the most confusing shit ever.  Although I'm sure having a bazillion dollars eases the pain.  But I digress; I guess if Facebook's downfall is eminent it will save me the looming conundrum of "am I really going to put my honeymoon pictures on facebook and then my kid's pictures on FACEBOOK!?!" --- since these are such pressing issues.  Hopefully in the end, Mark will come back down to earth and we can all ride off in the sunset on a tractor together.

  

UPDATE: as of 4/13/09 - having actually logged onto the new facebook, I don't really see what all the fuss is about. Retracted. But I still think Zuckerberg is pompous for saying all that shit. 

GG Recap

For now, until I can share my thoughts -- not that you'd want those

NY Mag Recap

Twilight: The Movie

sucked.   

As someone who wants to punch people who say " the book was so much better than the movie" I hate to say it, but rushing out to rent the highly anticipated Twilight DVD was like crushing on a guy for 6 months only to make out with him and find out he's a really bad kisser. 

My whole twilight experience began as a happy accident over Christmas break. When staying in the TV-less craft corner deemed 'my room' - I was forced to resort to my sister's library of books consisting of a bizarre mash up of  tween/psycho killer literature. Anyone that knows me, knows I immediately passed on 'Helter Skelter' and decided to go for lighter fair in the tween catalogue.  I spotted and settled on Twilight -- just to see what all the fuss was about. Note: the same thing happened during the Harry Potter craze -- I read a few pages, thought it was cute, but decided to wait for the movie.  Sadly, I typically wait for the movie.  But no no, 'twas not the case with Twilight.  

I began Twilight and the next thing I knew it was 3am.  I hear stories of people really liking books and using the term 'I couldn't put it down.'  Now, I had finally  discovered what this sensation meant.  It took me 3 days to complete a 500 page book.  Unheard of.  

And its not that Stephanie Meyer is the next Bill Shakespeare or that her writing is the most brilliant prose of all time; but something about a vulnerable little girl crushing on a sexy vampire just cuts right to the core.  Its the classic 'the bad boy you want, but can't have' dichotomy -- but she has him!  Total wish fulfillment for the awkward adolescent inside all of us.  Plus, there are vampires.  I can't explain how a novel can make an incredulous 24 year old fall in love with a fictional vampire.  I swear the publishers dusted the pages with powder heroin.  

So the film...

Yes, I was warned, that at its core -- its a silly tween flick.  Being one who believes 'Aquamarine' and' Sleepover' to be instant classics -- I was hardly dissuaded by this mere fact alone.  Plus, who doesn't want to see the physical manifestation of Edward Cullen and Bella in hot star-crossed vampire love?!?!  However, as cheese loving as I am -- It was pretty cheesy, melodramatic and lacked much of the subtlety and tension of the book. Having watched it with someone who hadn't seen the book -- I totally understood why she rolled her eyes in scenes that, in the book, had been the most compelling and powerful.  Even the best line in the book lost its impact in movie land: "About three things I was absolutely positive.  First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was a part of him - and I didn't know how dominant that part might be - that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably I love with him" Ahhh sigh, I love him too Bella -- get you some girl.  (side note: check this sweet bracelet)   

Maybe it was how Robert Pattinson says 'Nuting' in stead of 'Nothing' (causing him to loose all sexiness which relegates him to the breed of boy who's good looks have prevented him from learning how to speak/kiss properly - see last week's 30 Rock) or maybe it was just this scene.  I don't blame any one element really...who am I to say it was poorly directed (Catherine Hardwick is a fellow Texan, thus homegirl) or that it was a badly written screenplay --- I mean, have you read this blog?!  It just goes to show to my stubborn illiterate self: that, sometimes, the book really is just better than the movie.  Had I only seen Twilight: The Movie, I would've completely missed out on the nuances that make this story meaningful to me.  So, props to books -  I always knew they had something rare and valuable to offer.  Now, if only I could quit injecting television intravenously a night...