Really?

Wow. So people still read this old thing, eh? Shocking, really. But, thank you.The 4 cents I've made from this blog have been totally worth the effort.

About a month ago I, begrudgingly, moved from the city to the suburbs. If you've ever been to Atlanta, you would know that this is a huge change. After a few months of looking in the city, a few failed offers (you would not believe how fast a foreclosure in Morningside will fly off the market!), and a few hour+ discussions, we (read:the fiance) decided to expand our search to the suburbs. Granted, in his line of work (restoring classic cars) we knew we needed a garage and city houses just so rarely offered garages, and if they did they were about a 1/2 car garage, it made sense. So off we went to the bustling OTP 'hoods (outside the perimeter the dorkbomb suburbs, for non-ATLians) in search of a dream home. After only a few weeks (and about 20 houses) we found one we could compromise on (He got a big house in the suburbs with a garage. I got a pool. I win.).

Moving from the city was so weird at first. It was SO dark. And SO quiet. And SO...suburban. Strip malls and minivans everywhere. However, I slowly started to realize the benefits of living in the suburbs. Long gone were the 35 minute drives to the nearest Costco. Gas was about 15 cents cheaper, and there was actually a gas station on my way to work! You could get an awesome pizza delivered in about 45 minutes, not the hour and a half it would normally take in the city! AND I didn't have to go down a loooong hall, down an elevator, and outside to walk my dog. Gradually, I accepted my fate and decided to make the best of it.

However, I started to notice major, daily differences that would affect my life forever...

I am cut off by an Escalade or BMW or minivan DAILY on my way to work. Always one of those three.

 People at the grocery store are just too damn friendly. I miss the hippie grocery store on Ponce and Murder Kroger.

Children come to your door begging for candy! (Oh wait, that might have been Halloween)

Strip malls. Seriously. Everywhere.

Babies. Seriously. Everywhere. Also, stop asking me when I'm having babies, everyone ever. Never. Just to spite you.

Everyone assumes I am married because we bought a house together. We are not married. Yet. But we've been living in sin for 3 years. If one more of my neighbors refers to The Fiance as my husband, I will slap them.

Republican bumper stickers on every car ever. The complete opposite of the city, where almost every car has a bumper sticker supporting a Blue candidate, marriage equality, the environment, the hippie neighborhood in which they live, eating organic, eating local, bicycling, bands no one has ever heard of, breweries, restaurants (Fox Bros., what up!), and every other polarizing subject you can think of.

Malls. I have been in a mall two times in the last 2 years, and have spent no more than about 1 hour, total in malls in those 2 years. There are malls f-ing everywhere in the suburbs. I think I live about 10 minutes from 3 malls.

My house has zero bars. Literally, zero. We had to install an IP router for all of our cell phone calls. Which leads me to...

We have a home phone. No one actually calls us. Only political robocalls. And I use it to order pizza, just to get our money's worth. I've turned it into a game to answer the phone different ways every time. Some day I hope a real person is there and can appreciate my effort.

This is basically my view before I get onto the highway every day. See all the green stuff before you get to the buildings? :(

All in all, I'm adjusting rather well to the suburbs. Especially getting to sleep an extra 10 minutes because I don't have to take my dog outside and don't have to drive 5 minutes to just get out of my parking garage. I'm already petitioning to move back to the city, though. It will happen. Some day. Until then, does anyone need a place to stay in Atlanta? I have about 47 unoccupied rooms in my house of sin I still need to fill up. Let me know. I swear the suburbs aren't that bad.

Awkward Advertising Photos are Awesome

 

Did this lady just get done mutilating a bird? Prizes given to the first person who can explain this ad...

Why I Probably Wouldn't Last More Than a Week in Prison, Despite My Beliefs that I Would

If you've never seen the show Beyond Scared Straight, go watch an episode and then come back. This is a show where they take troubled teens who are already getting involved with the law and try to scare them straight by taking them to prison for the day. And it's awesome. Seriously.

The show always has a few featured teens and they are always the same stereotypes:

• The kid who thinks he's badass, but is really just a big baby and ends up crying
• The kid who hasn't actually been in big trouble or done anything that bad, but has decent parents who are trying to prove a point
• The kid who actually is kind of a badass and vows to change after having someone explains how they will definitely get raped in prison, but ends up going right back to their naughty ways and, usually, in juvenile detention
• The kid who runs with a bad crowd and is just trying to get attention because they have terrible parents

So basically, they traipse these kids through the prison, make them eat prison food, and then listen to prisoners stories about how they got mixed up with a bad crowd to try to straighten them out. It is highly entertaining and will make you never want to go to prison, especially if they have a guy that tells a rape story. Your buttcheeks will clench so fast you won't be able to poop for a week.

Recently, they've had a few episodes that showed women's prisons. I've always thought that because I'm quite a bit larger than the average sized girl (5'10") I would always be ok in prison. I realize that most people probably don't think about their legitimacy if they were ever sent to prison, but these are the kinds of things that run through my head. "Would I be able to survive in prison? Or would I be someone's bitch?" However, after watching a few of these episodes with women's prisons, I quickly realized that I would be eaten alive in a week (unless I quickly learned to crochet like Martha Stewart and befriended everyone with my charm and domesticity) and probably be, like, 5 people's bitch.

Exhibit A: Diabla




This might be the scariest bitch I've ever seen ever. Her name is Diabla for God's sake!!! This women would eat me alive, both literally and figuratively. Diabla is the reason I would never make it in prison. Well, the primary reason.

Other reasons I wouldn't last longer than a week in prison include:

• I have never been in a physical fight in my life
• I stopped lifting weights about 6 months ago, although it would definitely be something I could pick back up in the joint
• I have never been involved in illegal activities, except for the time that my friends and I broke into a "cult" in high school and had a truck chase us back down a scary driveway after we knocked on the big garage door thing that was just randomly coming out of a huge hill...allegedly.
• I am extremely uncoordinated.
• I would probably be malnourished and frail due to not eating prison food because I'm weird about germs and stuff
• I am not in a gang

This is just the tip of the iceberg, but you get where I'm going with this. Basically what I'm saying is that in my mind, I would be the queen of the jailyard, but in reality, I would get my ass kicked so fast it wouldn't even be entertaining to watch. I think my only defense would be my razor sharp wit, but I think even that would be reduced due to the malnourishment.

I'm really going to do my best to not end up in prison, but you better start plotting how you're going to break me out now, because there's now way I'll last. I'm just way too much of a pussy.

What's Your Number?: Anna Faris, yet again, singlehandedly saves a movie

 It's time for yet another installment of "I'm Too Lazy to Write a New Post, but Have Some Random Garbage on Another Blog to Share with You!". This installment is brought to you by "What's Your Number?", a cute film that came out last fall starring Anna Faris that was actually totally watchable! I'd guess that by now it's OnDemand or at Redbox or maybe even just on HBO, so you can check it out on the cheap!



If you love Anna Faris like I love Anna Faris, you will love "What's Your Number?" When previews first started showing about this one, I was skeptical. Then I re-watched "The House Bunny" and remembered that Anna Faris can singlehandedly carry a very average movie and decided to give her newest one a shot. And I was not let down.

For the ladies: Anna Faris combines the difficult task of being hilarious and being a girl. She doesn't take herself too seriously and seems like someone I would actually want to hang out with (unlike some actresses *cough*Gwyneth Paltrow*cough*JenniferAniston*Cough*). This attitude carries over wonderfully into every character she portrays and keeps even dull movies interesting. And, for the slutty ladies, she'll make you feel like you're not that big of a whore.

For the guys: She's in her underwear for a good portion of the movie.

The premise of this movie is based on a "study" done on how your number of sexual partners relates to your ability to get married. According to the "study" if you've slept with 20 or more guys, you have a 96% chance of never getting married and dying a lonely, slutty cat lady. They don't exactly say the cat lady thing, but we all know if you end up alone, you end up a crazy cat lady. Ally (Anna Faris's character) realizes she's slept with 19 guys and has to keep her legs shut until she finds the man of her dreams, number 20, so she can ensure he's the guy she'll marry and she doesn't go over the magic number.

Unfortunately, tequila is involved and the pact with herself (and everyone else in the bar) doesn't last long. Joel McHale (of The Soup fame) makes a quick appearance in the movie as Ally's boss and nails it. You'll never look at someone smelling their hand the same again!

Once hitting that magic 20, Ally decides she has to go back and revisit every guy she's slept with so she can ensure she'll still get hitched some day. As you can imagine, there are hilarious scenes with her former lovers that will literally make you LOL. Can you imagine if you went back through all of yours??? Exactly. Her perfect comedic timing and unforgettable facial expressions truly made this movie. Colin (played by the ever sexy Chris Evans, who happens to be shirtless often in this film) is Ally's slutty male neighbor helping her along in her quest. You pretty much figure out what's going to happen in the first 25 minutes of the movie, but it's funny enough to keep you guessing and Anna Faris shows her butt enough that guys will stay entertained as well.

Little one liners are peppered throughout (my personal favorite: "He has terrible taste in fonts" I mean, seriously, wtf does that even mean?) to make you chuckle.

I have to point out that Rotten Tomatoes says this movie is terrible. Luckily, they've gotten it terribly wrong. The movie is funny, engaging, and cute. Great movie for a girls night out with some cocktails before (and after, who are we kidding) or for a date night with that special guy you're trying to convince you have good taste in movies.

An Actual Conversation with My Sister (and also why I shouldn't have babies)

The following is an actual conversation between my sister and I after I saw photos of a friend's newborn baby on Facebook...with a LOT of hair. (Please keep in mind that this was a gchat, in case it seems like someone is a little *ahem* slow.)

me:  isn't it weird that babies are born with hair?

like, you have hair growing INSIDE of you!?

and fingernails and shit?

creeps me out

 

 Liz:  they have fingernails, too

 

 me:  exactly

and penises

 

 Liz:  dude

they're little people

 

me:  you could have a penis growing inside of you

 

 Liz:  what do you think they'd look like/have

also true

 

 me:  I don't even know

the whole thing creeps me out

The Lost Boys: A review from the perspective of someone who saw this movie for the first time as an adult

Yeah, this is another copied movie review from my other blog because I'm super lazy, get over it. I don't have a real excuse for being so lazy, but I DO have a staph infection in my leg from a spa! Seriously. More to come on that...

As the title suggests, I recently saw "The Lost Boys" for the first time. I noted to The Boyfriend that I was in the mood to watch a scary movie since it's finally October. We had just gotten a new Logitech Revue that allows you to stream movies straight to your TV (we'd been linking the Mac up until now, due to our lack of video game consoles, and it was a mess) and I was antsy to try it out! After striking out with Netflix, we turned to Crackle.com with whom the Revue has an agreement and were able to choose from a few totally free options. "The Lost Boys" won as The Boyfriend expressed his disgust that I had not yet seen it. I was assured that this movie was plenty scary and I would love it as much as everyone else does.

Now, I'm a lover of classic 80's movies as much as the next guy and really had high hopes for this one; I was surprisingly disappointed. 

I have a feeling most people already know how the movie goes, so I'll keep the synopsis short. A family (mom and two sons) move to California to live with the kooky old grandpa who is fond of taxidermied animals and the ladies. On their way into town, the boys see "Murder Capital of America" grafittied on the back of a billboard. Scary, right!? They pretty much immediately head to the boardwalk to meet some ladies and check out the scene. Mike, the big brother, sees some broad with a perm and decides to stalk her. He ends up getting mixed up with the wrong crowd, eats some maggots, drinks some blood, and becomes a vampire. The movie progresses at a decent pace from here, but with little character development and lots of vampire type activities. At the end of the movie, you find out who the Head Vamp is and yada, yada, yada, everyone is happy.

This probably would've scared the shit out of me when I was 8.

To me, it was amazing that people had been tolerating vampires for years in this community and no one, until Corey Haim, thought to seek out the Head Vamp and kill him/her. Or maybe they had thought of it, but nobody actually did it. Seeing this movie for the first time as an adult is a terrible idea. I'm sure everyone has wonderful memories of this movie, but it just didn't do it for adult me.

Maybe it's the recent vampire obsession, maybe it's the fact that I read the "info" on the movie before we watched it, or maybe it's because the movie isn't that well written, but I pretty much figured out the plot within the first 10 minutes of the movie. According to The Boyfriend, I wasn't supposed to know that they were vampires and I wasn't supposed to realize so soon that the brother "Mike" was turning into one. Unfortunately, living in 2011 pretty much ruined the surprise.

After all the hype surrounding this movie, I was really expecting something great that would stand the test of time. I'm sure that as a child, which most people I know were when this movie came out, it was very
scary. I'm also sure that if I had been 11, I would've thought Corey Haim was the cats pajamas. Sadly, I know how "The Corey Haim Story" ends and saw him on "Celebrity Rehab", so any illusions were dismissed at the door.

Probably would've thought Corey Haim was hot when I was 8, too.

If you watched this movie as a kid, and haven't seen it since, don't watch it again! It will ruin your wonderful memories. If you're presently an adult and haven't ever seen it, only watch it if you have young children you want to scare. You're bound to re-evaluate everyone's opinion about everything who has told you it's awesome. Sorry, but it's not. The only awesome thing was the dog.

MCAT Study Guides: The Epitome of Comedy

I'm kind of the "loser" in my family. My older sister is an attorney and my younger sister is going to be a doctor (and not like, she's pre-med, but has no actual chance of becoming a doctor, like she's practically a genius and will probably become a brain surgeon or something). I'm just a lowly sales professional (although an awesome one!). However, after hearing the horror stories from my older sister about studying for the LSATs and the Bar and just studying in school in general, and now hearing my younger sister talk about studying for the MCAT and how hard she studies in school, I definitely feel justified in my decision to "just" be a business major and "just" be a sales professional. I had horrible study skills and never would've made it in post-graduate studies (one of the misfortunes of being intellectually gifted I suppose...TERRIBLE study skills even when you actually need them)!

So my younger sister is now studying for the MCAT and obviously quite serious about it, so she's using a Kaplan brand study guide to help prepare. Apparently, Kaplan thinks they're awesome and hilarious and decide to incorporate comments like this into their books (this nugget of awesome came from a physics study guide...booooorrriinnnggg):
"Frankly, dropping balls isn't all that exciting. Imagine how much more thrilling it would be to encounter a falling cat or a turkey sandwich or, better yet, a falling cat eating a turkey sandwich. Now that would be something."

I noted to my sister that while physics is extremely boring to me, I would actually LOVE to see a falling cat eating a turkey sandwich. So I present you with, "Mr. Giggles Falling Whilst Eating a Turkey Sandwich".

 

Like I mentioned, I'm not much of a studier and only liked the "college" part of school (that is to say, the going out with my girlfriends and drinking too many red bull vodkas and wearing outfits that I would never wear in front of my mother), so I'll never be a doctor or a lawyer, but I'm a hell of a creative artist! So I decided, as a gift to my book strapped sister, I would illustrate her boring ass book. And I have to say, I think my drawing came out AWESOME! I can't wait for more excerpt so I can illustrate those, too. And don't worry, I'll share.