What?

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What? I'm not sure how I am supposed to feel about this. I..Umm..Ok, first, how do Natalie and Rashida know each other? That seems weird. Also, well, I'm not sure I even need to say it, but puppies? How are puppies going to help? Don't they cost a lot of money? But hey, Natalie is smart so if she says so, I'll believe her! And third, what?

Thriller

I am doing it...I am going to learn the Thriller dance tomorrow in the park across the street from my apartment. No, I'm not going to be a crazy person and take my boombox into the park and my old parachute pants and Michael Jackson glove and try to teach myself. There is an organization called Thrilltheworld.com that hosts some kind of random, all over the world webcast massive thriller dance party which is coming up next Saturday. So tomorrow is one of the practices that above said organization is holding in my area. I have read that it takes 2-3 practices to really learn the dance so I don't think I will be able to participate in the also above said Thriller day next Saturday but with this practice immediately across the street from me, I would be a moron not to go right? So tomorrow from 11-3 pst I will be doing my best to learn the dance so I can be as good as Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30. Love it.

On a side note, I always wanted a pair of parachute pants and when I finally convinced my parents that if I didn't get a pair, I would never be cool, I could never find a pair that fit me. I tried on every possible size to no avail. So, ergo, I was never cool and I'm still trying to get there to this day.

So I have been totally MIA for awhile and I have not a one single good excuse other than this one: I have been trying to turn my life around! It's so vague that it makes a good excuse. But honestly, I have been trying to go out more and see things, and on top of that, I joined a gym. This is the first "real" gym I have joined since I would guess about 1999 when my mom and I would meet at the Women's Wellness Center In Winston-Salem ridiculously early in the morning and we would always go because neither of us wanted to be the one to not show up. And I say "real" gym because I was a member of the YWCA, not the M, but the W, for about a year but that is less a gym and more a room with six pieces of equipment and an over the hill gym rat named Riff. Everything has been going great so far at my new gym. I got all signed up, I went for my first workout, checked out the layout (trying to look like I knew what I was doing, of course) and then things started to fall apart on my second visit. I had a great cardio workout and I got onto the treadmill to cool down, and in the middle of my cooling down, in which I was jogging remarkably slow, I don't think there is a speed for what I was doing, I somehow threw out my back. I am getting so old that I can no longer walk on a treadmill without fear of a muscle pulling or my arthritic hip giving out. Ok, I don't have an arthritic hip, that I know of at least, but I feel really breakable when injuries occur for no reason. I was not even trying to do something crazy, like lift weights (trust me, that is crazy for me, I am a weakling). So now I will have to put my new fitness plan on hold until I heal, which is really lame because I just paid for the gym and I was just getting motivated!

Then the other thing I have been doing is trying to go out more and see things. I am finally making a little bit of extra money, or at least I know I can pay my rent every month so I have a chance to see things. I have been to roller derby, which I highly recommend to everyone I have ever met ever, I went to an LA Galaxy game, my first professional MLS game, I went to Universal Studios and rode the Simpsons ride and had a margarita, just to name a few things. Oh the margarita was not my first margarita but my first at universal studios. I can see how that could be confusing! So, these are the reasons I have been away! I hope you understand.

My Left Foot

So I have this big book of "off-Hollywood" films that I purchased at a used bookstore for i think four whole dollars. It has about six hundred or so movies listed in it, some mainstream, some truly bizarre and obscure but all interesting. When I first got the book, I brought it to work and went through and, like the uber nerd that I am, checked off all the movies that I have seen, or at least the ones that I remember seeing. My goal is to have every single one of those movies checked off by the end of the year. It's going to be tough. As "hip" as I think I am when it comes to watching movies, I have seen comparatively few in relation to the number that exist in the world but still more than most people I know but still not enough!

Last night I watched My Left Foot which I have been meaning to and should have watched sometime within the last twenty years. Yes, it came out in 1989 (or 88 Im not entirely sure and too lazy to look it up but I do know where to get the information thank you). I could not really tell you anything wrong with this movie. It was an incredible journey, the kind of journey that filmmakers should want to take you on but so often fail. Jim Sheridan did not fail to take me on that journey. Daniel Day Lewis won, and deservedly so, the Oscar for best actor. He blows me away every time. He is not acting. He has transformed into the person he is supposed to be portraying. The behind the scenes documentary told me that Day-Lewis did not come out of character the entire shoot, he would eat his meals in the wheelchair, even asking people to feed him. I cannot even fathom that kind of commitment although I do truly appreciate it when I see it on the screen.

SO, I can check this one off the list now. Twenty years later, but I'm glad I did not wait a moment longer! Next on the list (I think I will stick with M's and Daniel Day Lewis) is My Beautiful Laundrette, a Stephen Frears film.