My New Favorite Thing

Okay, so I just came home from my new favorite thing...watching the Windy City Rollers roller derby season opener! In my none too humble opinion, roller derby is the only women's sport worth watching.

For those of you who are not familiar with the sport, here's a little breakdown of how it works. There are 3 basic positions: pivot, blocker and jammer. Two teams play at a time, and there are 5 players on the team: one pivot, three blockers and one jammer. The jammer's job is to skate past all four players on the opposite team, beginning a jam (the period in which points are scored). The first jammer to pass all four players becomes the lead jammer and is able to determine the length of the jam. Each portion of play is 2 minutes long, or until the lead jammer stops play. Depending on how many players the jammer skates past, up to 5 points can be awarded per jam.

This, however, is not easy. The blockers job is to, well, block the opposing jammers and prevent them from passing their players. The pivot also blocks the jammers, but they skate at the front of the defensive pack, serving as the last line of defense against the jammers. There are two main defensive moves, the wall and the take-out. The wall involves the blockers skating close together to prevent the jammer from passing them. The take-out is exactly what it sounds like--the blocker shoves the jammer out of bounds. The blockers also have an offensive move called a whip, where they take their team's jammer by the arm and whip them forward, giving them an extra burst of speed to pass the other team's blockers.

The game consists of two halves (30 minutes long), but, get this: there are two clocks. One clock counts down the amount of time left in the half and the other, the jam clock, counts down the time left in the jam. Since jams don't always last the full 2 minutes, there may be times where the teams assemble to begin a new jam but there are fewer than 2 minutes left on the clock. No worries; the jam clock takes precedence.

The Windy City Rollers are made up of 4 teams: Hell's Belles, The Fury, The Double Crossers and Manic Attackers. Since tonight was our first game, we picked Manic Attackers to root for. Why? Two reasons: their record showed they had never won a game and their captain's name is Beth Amphetamine. Obviously, this is not her real name. The players adopt bad-ass nicknames, like Beth's, or like Ruth Enasia, Belle Diablo, May R. Daley, Karmageddon, Eva Dead, or Psyche O'Sis. And, with us cheering for them, the Manic Attackers won...actually, they crushed the Double Crossers! The only downside to being a Manic Attacker fan is that they wear a turquoise leotard called the Manic Tard.

So, yeah, my new favorite thing is roller derby. Next match: February 20!

Wait, What Idol?

So, I've been watching the American Idol auditions, which aired their last episode this evening. Quite frankly, I could care less about the actual American Idol program...there will never be another Kelly Clarkson. What I do like, though, is seeing the bad auditions, because it's fun for me to see people who sing even worse than I do, and to see them have freakish hissy fits when the judges tell them even though their grandma may have been telling them all their lives that they were the greatest singers known to mankind, they really don't have the slightest bit of talent and were quite honestly inventing their own notes as they went. I know I'm a bad singer, mainly because I can hear myself. Can't these people hear themselves?

This audition round has been a disappointment for me, though, because they've been showing fewer of the bad auditions and the weird auditions...mostly because they're hoping to streamline the process by making sure people like Sex (remember Sex, tried out several times for both American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance) don't turn up hoping to be on television.

Tonight though, they showed auditions from New York and San Juan, Puerto Rico. That's right...they're holding auditions for the next AMERICAN idol in a country that refuses to become a U.S. state and whose inhabitants do not consider themselves to be Americans. Which makes a ton of sense.

Here's the best part: the contestants from Puerto Rico were all made aware that, while they could sing whatever they liked for the auditions (providing that they had prepared at least one song in English), they would be expected to sing only in English on the program. Of the auditions I saw, a lot of the hopefuls sang really well, in Spanish. But then, when it was time for them to offer up their English-language choice, it was a disaster. Their spoken English wasn't strong enough for them to understand what they were singing, and they were concentrating too hard on getting the words right to get the musical part of the singing right.

Of a couple thousand wannabes, nine made it through to Hollywood. Nine. And at least one of those was an American who spoke English with no accent--and the accent was the reason Simon gave for their holding auditions in Puerto Rico!!

Luke Wilson Made Me Cry

Henry Poole Is Here is a crying movie. A sloppy, sobbing, snot pouring from your nose crying movie.

This is one that I think slipped under the radar thanks to a low budget, but it's one I think people should know about and should see. The film stars Luke Wilson (my preferred Wilson brother) as Henry Poole, a man who has lost all hope in life and has moved back to the street he grew up on. Although he is unable to buy his childhood home, he moves into a smaller house down the street and finds that, although all he wants is to be left alone to die, his neighbors quickly insert themselves into his life thanks to a stain on his stucco that may or may not be the face of Jesus, which may or may not be crying tears of actual blood, and may or may not be performing miracles.

On one side is Dawn (Radha Mitchell), an exhausted single mother whose daughter Millie (Morgan Lily) hasn't spoken since the day her father left them. Millie is a little creepy, hiding behind fences and recording other people's conversations, but Dawn and Henry quickly form a bond. On the other side is Esperanza (played by Mexican telenovela star Adriana Barraza), who first spots the Jesus face and draws enormous attention to it as a miracle, much to Henry's annoyance. One of the greatest performances in this film is from George Lopez, who, instead of playing the high-strung comedic role he's so well-known for, plays a very calm and quiet priest.

Wilson's eyes are part of what makes the film so sad. There are a lot of shots of him looking into the camera where he looks alternately sad and lost and angry and overwhelmed, but they're done in a way where you don't feel like an actor is staring into a camera, but more like you're seeing a private moment you shouldn't be. But, what really gets you is the music. With the exception of Blur's "Song Number 2," every song in this movie is completely depressing. Seriously, if you can sit through this without crying, you either have no heart or have never felt lost, alone, hopeless, or afraid.

Wrestling Mickey Rourke

I went to see The Wrestler this afternoon, and I totally think everyone should see this movie. It's probably the saddest film I've seen in a long time, but not in a sit down and cry kind of way. And, frankly, I don't think anyone but Mickey Rourke could have been cast as Randy "The Ram" Robinson.

Here's the basic premise: Randy "The Ram" Robinson was the ultimate wrestler of all wrestlers. In his day, he was the greatest, the biggest star, the most popular...kind of like Hulk Hogan. Flash forward to today, and he's completely broke, living alone in a trailer park, his daughter won't speak to him, his only friend is an over-the-hill stripper, he works in a discount grocery store, and he's wrestling in school gymnasiums, American Legion halls and church basements, and making no money. Basically, he's lost absolutely everything, but he's desperately trying to cling to anything that reminds him of his glory days.

And then, he has a heart attack and his doctors tell him he can't wrestle anymore. His dreams are all shattered and he has to face what's left of his life.

Honestly, it's a perfect vehicle for Mickey Rourke, playing a man who's crashed down just about as low as he can go and is looking for any route to a comeback. Since Rourke thanked his dogs during his Golden Globe acceptance speech because sometimes all a man has is his dogs, I'm guessing he knows a little bit about being a man who's lost everyone and everything he's loved in the world. The saddest part of the film is truly how lonely this guy's existence is--I mean, he's still got fans who turn out at these crappy little matches, but there are no people in his life. The Ram doesn't even have a dog. I can't imagine ever being that alone in life, and I don't know if I could survive it.

A word of warning, the film is mostly shot with handi-cams, so it's very, very shaky and, occasionally, nauseating, and the plot moves very very slowly without ever really going anywhere. But overall, the film is really enjoyable, in a heartbreaking way.

Another New Blog!

Well, boys and girls, since being unemployed, I have been watching a whole lot of movies. So many, in fact, that I have rented pretty much every movie I wanted to see and most of the movies I kind of thought might not be awful. Now I'm just grabbing anything off the shelf--although I am still resisting the call of Gay Bed and Breakfast of Doom and Zombie Strippers.

But, when you watch a lot of movies, you will inevitably cross paths with some bad ones. This week, I've watched 3 bad ones already. So, as a service to you all, I have decided to start a new blog letting you know which movies stink and why so you can avoid them. I'm hoping to score enough good karma that more good things, like a job, will come my way.

So, the first entry is up on The Bad Movie Blog, and it features Razzie Award nomination leader, The Love Guru. Bookmark it, folks, because tomorrow I'll be discussing Space, Where Movie Franchises Go to Die, and what happens when a movie is set in a historic period predating the space program. I bet most of you know what movie that will be!

Of Course the Mechanic can't Drive Stick

Okay, so, as if not having a job and not hearing anything back from the interviews I've been on wasn't struggle enough for me, my car is starting to die in ways that cannot be ignored, especially in the maelstrom of a Chicago winter. Today, I rolled my window down and it wouldn't go back up again.

I was in a parking garage, but, because of the holiday, there was no one there. And when I called the emergency number, no one answered. And then I called AAA, who doesn't cover that kind of roadside emergency. So I called J, and after much struggling and arguing over who was listening and who wasn't doing what they thought they were doing, we got it kind of closed, but it was still a little open. Like you could stick your hand in the car, and since the problem started with someone trying to break into my car in the first place, this isn't acceptable. At this point, I had no other choice but to take it to a garage.

So I call first, since it's a holiday and I don't want to turn up and find that it's closed. So I call, they're open, and I head on over. The guy comes out to take my car, so I get out, and he looks in the car and says, "Oh, is it a stick? I don't really drive stick." What kind of mechanic doesn't know how to drive a manual transmission?? Anyway, I pull into the garage, they take the door apart and tell me that it's just a quick fix and they'll get it done in no time, and it won't be that expensive. Great!

Half an hour later, the guy comes out and tells me he's very sorry, but they thought they had the part they needed, but the one they had was broken, so they were going to have to buy one from another garage. I said okay and asked how long it was going to take, and I'm assured it won't be that long because the other garage is nearby. Unfortunately, they were just going to charge me for the part originally, but now that they have to buy the part, they'll have to charge me for the part and the labor, but it will only be a little more.

Apparently, the part was in West Virginia and they walked there to get it because FOUR HOURS LATER, I asked how much longer it was going to be, and they tell me the guy just got back and it'll only be another ten minutes or so, then I will be all set.

In ten minutes they come back out and tell me that they installed the part, but I will have to come back, because they didn't notice until they were done putting the window back in that another part was broken, and they have to order the other part. I ask how long it will take to get it in, days, weeks, whatever, and they tell me I can come back whenever and they'll just send someone to the garage where they got the other part.

So I go out to the garage part to get my car. The guy opens the door, shows me my window and explains why I need the other part. Now, my window tinting is pretty dark, so when I close the door I immediately notice there's a border around the whole window that's lighter. The damn window is still just as open as it was when I brought it in!!

So I get out of the car and point this out to the guy and he says that the reason it's not staying in place is because of the broken part, but he will call them now and get it over there so that they can put it right in when I come by the next day. In the meantime, I need to have someone hold the window in place while I shut the door from inside the car.

Luckily, the part tomorrow will only cost me $5, but still. If they try to charge me for labor, I am going to take out my wrath on their sunrooves display!

New Big Love Season Does Not Disappoint

Whoo-HOO! The third season of Big Love opened with a bang! Let's see...

Well, at the end of last season, Roman Grant was being arrested for transporting women and underage girls across state lines for the purpose of polygamous marriage. Barb announced to the people across the street that she, Margene, Nicki and Bill were all married to one another in order to prevent Margene from being a surrogate for the neighbor's child. Alby Grant had installed himself as the leader at the Juniper Creek compound in Roman's absence--all while trying to kill his own father. Bill and Don Embry purchased Weber Gaming, a video poker company willing to deal with polygamists. Bill was also struggling with his feelings for Ana in the face of Barb's refusal to even consider a fourth wife.

As this season opens, Roman is awaiting trial for rape, after it is revealed that the women he transported were only transported to state lines, got out of the car to walk across them, and then were picked up on the other side. Alby meets a man for sex in a public restroom, only to have the man try to kill him. Nicki has taken a job in order to pay for the debts she has incurred, and Margene had her baby, a little girl!

But the big news is, as ever, the marriage. With a neighborhood block party looming, Bill's family finds that Nicki is being ostracized by the people on their street because they suspect she is Roman Grant's daughter. Then Bill and Barb's daughter Tansy comes home and tells them the neighbors won't let her play with their sons anymore because she's a "bad influence." Although the people Barb told about them deny having said anything, they suspect the street knows about their four-person marriage.

At the same time, however, Barb is struggling with her own secret: her cancer might have come back! Spurred by this information, Barb goes to see Ana, who, despite his best efforts Bill continues to see (although he refuses to have sex with her outside of marriage). She tells Ana that if she wants to continue to see Bill, she will have to also date Barb, Nicki and Margene as their prospective fourth wife. But Bill doesn't know! And Barb doesn't tell anyone why she's had a change of heart!

Nicki's job, which she claimed was at a county office, actually turns out to be working for the lawyers prosecuting her father. She is replacing another woman from the compound who had been working in the office. And, she's gotten the job using Margene's identity with a driver's license her mother made for her.

Ana is not willing to contemplate marrying Bill and his wives, and, after Bill finally gives in and has sex with her, he comes home and tells his family their relationship is over.

Refusing to bow to the pressure from their neighbors (and a toilet paper attack on Nicki's house), Bill, Barb, Margene and their children go to the block party, where the neighbors awkwardly annoy them. Nicki works on her roof, some of the neighborhood children steal her ladder, trapping her up there. This puts Nicki in a position to overhear everything when the neighbor who refused to allow Tansy to play with her kids comes to tell Barb she caught them together again--and that the bad influence she referred to is that she was charging her sons 50 cents a minute to look at pornographic magazines!

Meanwhile, knowing that the Hendricks are inactive in the LDS church, a neighbor corners Ben and tries to encourage him to rejoin the church and go on a mission. Bill, overhearing it, gets angry and begins shouting with the man in the street. As he is on the verge of outing their family, Nicki proclaims from her rooftop that she is, in fact, Roman Grant's daughter, but lies and says she condemns everything the Juniper Creek community stands for, that she spent her life trying to escape, and that Bill, Barb and Margene were the first people to ever show her any kindness and she treasures them as friends--and nothing more.

The mood on the street lightens for a moment. Phew! But then, Ana shows up and announces that she's there, and she's ready to pursue the relationship on their terms!

How is that for excitement!! And all packed in a single hour!! This is going to be a great season! And Bill Paxton hasn't even shown his wang yet!

Oh, Boy!

The man on the left has been sentenced to 15 months in prison for "gratuitous violence." That is, he falsely imprisoned a male escort, handcuffing him to the wall in his London apartment. Apparently, this was a drug-fueled incident, and the man pictured claims that he only handcuffed the escort because he suspected the escort had tampered with his computer. I'm sure this panicked him, as he is incredibly famous.

Just in case you don't recognize him, the man is George O'Dowd--better known as Boy George.

What happened to our little Karma Chameleon? How did he become a doughy, balding middle aged man?

There's something truly awful about seeing the people we adored in their prime when they've fallen on harder times. And why is it so much worse for some than others? Paul McCartney still looks pretty much the same, as does Mick Jagger. Others, however, don't fare as well. Sometimes, they just turn out to be really weird looking.

For example: Here's a picture of Pete Burns from Dead or Alive:


Never the most masculine looking man in the room. But here's what Pete looks like today:


I wish I were kidding about that. He is, though, actually still a man, at least from the neck down.

They're Back!

After more than a year's wait, Big Love is back! Or, rather, it will be on January 18 at 9 p.m. Yay!

I love this show. No, I'm not a fan of polygamy, nor am I a Mormon (although, from what I read, were I a Mormon I would be somehow obligated to dislike this show, whether I'd ever seen it or not). What I'm interested in is how it portrays relationships.

The Henrickson family, Bill and his wives Barb, Nicki and Margene, have a very complicated plural marriage (and in season three, it looks like they might add a fourth wife), but it's based on the love and respect all four of the adults have for one another. It presents a very interesting perspective on the relationships between husbands and wives, and between women who regard one another as friends and sisters. What's also interesting is the way their relationships were all forged of their own free will, rather than forced upon them by someone else.

Of course, the show also presents polygamy in the way most of us are used to seeing it: abusive constructions arranged by a charismatic cult leader who considers himself a community's link to god and salvation. Bill and Nicki were both raised inside one of these communities and still have ties to this community (Nicki being the daughter of the community's current prophet/leader, and Bill's mother and brother still living there), so there is ample opportunity to see how people are taken advantage of, women are joined to men they don't care about, power struggles are played out, how women are joined as sisterwives despite the fact that they hate one another, and how a 70-something year old man feels himself entitled to a 12-year-old bride.

The best part of Big Love, however, is that it doesn't preach or take any sort of position on the issue of polygamy. It shows how it can be done well, and how it can be disastrous.

New episode, January 18. Be there. Or stay tuned and I'll tell you all about it!

The Guys the Cast of The Pickup Artist Want to Be

VH1 has launched its newest reality show, Tool Academy. The premise of the show is that it turns utter douchebags into perfect gentlemen at the request of their girlfriends. The men were tricked into appearing on the show, as they were told they would be competing for the title of Mr. Awesome.

Okay, anyone who's willing to compete for the title of Mr. Awesome is highly likely to be a tool. And, as you can see from the photo, these guys definitely look like tools with their over-spiked hair and fake-bake tans. And with names like MEGA and jobs including being a stripper and spending the money his girlfriend's baby-daddy is sending her for child support, you know these guys are tools.

But, watching the show, I didn't know who was more in need of help, the douchebag guys or their pathetic, self-esteem-free girlfriends. These girls put up with their boyfriends' ridiculous behavior, allow themselves to be cheated on, yelled at, put down and treated poorly, and some of them have been doing it for years. Every one of them knows in their hearts that these guys deserve to get dumped hard, and yet they've brought them on television to change them.

Okay, girls, listen up. You can't change another human being. If your guy is a tool, he will always be a tool. The only thing that ever makes a man mend his ways is when a woman he truly cares about will not put up with his crap. And not one girl on the show is the sort of girl who's going to make them do that--because if they were, the guys would have already changed.

So there we have it. As though The Pickup Artist, Flavor of Love, and Rock of Love weren't enough, now a show that is putting men on display as complete idiots is making women look completely pathetic and stupid. Good job, VH1.

Sometimes, You Just Feel That Way

Two Miles, Y'All!

Who crossed the two mile mark on her "jog" at the gym this morning? Me!!

Okay, so it's not a real jog because I did it on the elliptical trainer and I couldn't actually run for 2 miles on a surface or on the treadmill, but it's still a big accomplishment for me. And it only took me 22 minutes to get through. My lungs are only a little burny.

So what should the next goal be? I think that, by next Friday, I want to get my time on the elliptical up to 30 minutes. I think once I can get up to the 30 minute mark consistently, I can start working in some actual running on the treadmill.

The bad news, though, is that the harder I work out, the hungrier I am. This makes sense, since, after all, I'm burning up calories my body is used to having stored around my middle, and I'm trying not to replace them (i.e., create a "calorie deficit" to cause weight loss, not to starve myself...although it pretty much amounts to the same thing, I guess), but it's very unpleasant being hungry. And being hungry makes me cranky. I'm just hoping it that, in the near future, my body figures out that it's not going to get any extra food, so it might as well look elsewhere for nutrients. Like my chins.

Great Big Huge Loser

I watched the season premier of The Biggest Loser last night. Nothing makes a fat person trying to lose weight feel better than watching even fatter people losing weight. This is apparently a landmark season because it has the oldest contestant ever, the youngest contestant ever, the heaviest contestant ever, and the heaviest female contestant ever. This is also the first season I've ever sat down to watch.

I'm actually watching it because when I was at the gym the other day, there was a TBL marathon and the show turns out to actually be kind of interesting. And, since I myself am trying to lose weight (fairly unsuccessfully thus far) I thought it might be helpful to see other people going through it.

So, last week, after going to the gym for 5 days and working on portion control (good food is expensive, and I'm still trying to get by on the $300 a week I make on unemployment), I lost 5 pounds. Yay me!

So I watch the show, and the first episode takes in the first week that the contestants are in the program, ending with a weigh in and elimination (of contestants, not of additional calories via vomiting or pooping). I'm feeling good about my 5 pound loss, but I also know that healthy weight loss is 2-3 pounds per week. My feel-goods, however, were quickly squashed when the people on the show get on the scale and are losing double digits worth of weight. The biggest loss for the first week of the program was like 35 pounds. 35 pounds!! I'd be almost done if I'd lost 35 pounds last week!

Granted, these people are all a lot heavier than I am. All of them are over 250 pounds, some of them are over 400 pounds; I'm still weighing in at well less than 200 pounds (but I'm keeping the number to myself). So they have a lot more weight to lose. But seriously, a 35 pound weight loss in a single week...that's like having a baby, and I promise you, the man who lost it, didn't have a baby, unless something about biology is different.

Now I have to wonder what they're doing to these people. Are they making them work out for 12 hours a day? Are they feeding them nothing but lettuce and water? How can any human being naturally drop 35 pounds in a single week and not have some kind of unhealthy reaction to that?

I know whenever I go to the gym, my body panics a little, and I only work out for about an hour and a half. It's like my body thinks, "Ahhhh!! Calories being burned!! Save the nutrients!! Save the nutrients!!" and then it starts grabbing nutrients and calories from anywhere I've been storing them (like around my waist). And then, I poop, presumably because of the desperate grab for stored nutrients. Could this guy have lost 35 pounds through a similar nutrient-panic? Try not to think about a 35 pound poop.

Ridin' the Ho Bus

A fight involving beer throwing and a choke-out.

Girls making out.

A Penthouse pet and a retired porn star.

An acid-soaked Christina Aguilera (during her dirrty phase) wanna-be.

One girl taking shots from another girl's vagina.

Nope, we're not talking about last Saturday night at my house. We're talking about the first episode of Rock of Love Bus with Bret Michaels.

Just in case this is less obvious than my new favorite song, "Chimpanzee Ridin' on a Segway," the aim of this show is for Bret Michaels to find love, only this time, instead of being in a house, the girls are on tour with Bret, riding on buses around the country.

Oh, holy lord. Each season, the girls get trashier than the girls on the season before, and this is season three. When the Penthouse pet and the retired porn star are two of the classiest ones on the bus, you know we're scraping the bottom of the barrel. And in this version, the girls are not living in a mansion, but are divided between two tour buses. Two moving tour buses, with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide and no where to get away from the crazy Brazilian who's had an entire bottle of tequila.

Here's an example of how classy these girls are, just in case the notes above didn't clue you in: One girl, who works as a DJ, wrote a rap for Bret. Except, instead of memorizing it, she brought the words with her. And it appears that she was working on them while at the free clinic, because the lyrics were on the back of informational sheets about Genital Herpes and Gonorrhea. (Okay, this is also the wanna be and the shot taker noted above, but she got kicked off the show tonight, so I won't get to judge her mercilessly again.) Her parents must be proud.

I'm excited about this season. I think there's going to be drama a-plenty, as well as more opportunities to watch these clueless skanks humiliate themselves without realizing it. Yay!

Chimpanzee Riding on a Segway

This is fairly self explanatory. And it's my new favorite song.

The Laws of Ghost Town

Last night I watched the movie Ghost Town, starring the very, very funny Ricky Gervais, Tea Leoni and Greg Kinnear. The premise of the film is that Dr. Bertram Pincus, DDS, (Ricky Gervais) died for approximately 7 minutes during a routine colonoscopy and now he can see ghosts. Frank (Kinnear) is dead and is looking for Dr. Pincus to help him move on. Frank thinks that the reason he's earthbound is because he is supposed to stop his widow Gwen's (Leoni) impending marriage. However, he wasn't exactly the model husband when he was alive, and on the day he died his wife discovered that he was looking to buy an apartment for his mistress.

Although Dr. Pincus hates living people, and dead ones even more, he agrees to help Frank only because Frank promises to make the rest of the dead people leave him alone if they can stop the wedding. Predictably, they stop the wedding and Dr. Pincus falls in love with Gwen.

But wait! Frank hasn't crossed over yet! The film is actually working on the premise that ghosts are not trapped because they have unfinished business, but because the living have unfinished business with them. Frank is trapped because Gwen is still angry with him for not only cheating on her, but for dying before she had a chance to confront him and find out why it wasn't enough for him that she loved him. Aww...

The movie is extremely funny, if a little predictable. But, it's a romantic comedy, and by all estimations romantic comedies are predictable. Ricky Gervais is probably one of the funniest men alive today (and the reason that if you've seen the original British version of The Office, Steve Carrell's sad pale imitation will not satisfy). Tea Leoni is incredibly funny, and Greg Kinnear is outstanding.

Here's my one problem with it: When I watched the special features, they noted that one of the biggest challenges was the laws of ghosting. Ghosts cannot speak to the living, they cannot interact with things in the living world (like picking things up), they wear the clothes they died in (which makes me hope I don't die today) and they can walk through things. They gave Greg Kinnear one prop, a BlackBerry he had in his hand when he died, but he even notes at one point that Dr. Pincus is a sadist for leaving the newspaper open to a cell phone ad all day, emphasizing that he is helpless to move things in the living world.

I have no problem with the ghost laws. However, what I do have a problem with is that the ghosts in the film sit on the furniture. If you are unable to pick things up or grasp things, if you walk through walls, and if anything you come in contact with goes right through you, how can you sit on the couch?

E is for Ellen Exercisin'

So, since I have no job and nothing else to do with my days, I've been going to the gym every morning. I've been, I guess the word would be "jogging" on the elliptical machine. At this point, I'm on there for 20 minutes and am running about 1.65 miles every day. My lungs are a little burny, but I'm hoping that by the end of next week I'll be able to do 2 miles. Or die trying.

My gym, though, is kind of weird. First of all, no one works there. There used to be a guy there named Popped Collar McGee, but he was always in the tanning booth--the man had skin the color and texture of a basketball--and he has been missing from the gym for several months. And it's really small, so if there's three or more people there, it feels really crowded.

Today I got a little later start than I wanted to, so there were a bunch of people there when I got there, running along on the treadmills. The ellipticals were all free, so I hopped on the machine, put in all my settings and then found something on the T.V. to watch while I "jogged." The built-in T.V. is sort of a lifesaver for me, because I can zone out paying attention to some show and before I know it the machine is beeping at me that I'm done.

I also like the ellipticals because they're up against the west wall, and the whole gym faces to the east, so no one is watching me exercise. I, however, had full view of someone running on the treadmill in front of me. I am usually paying attention to the T.V. and not to the people in front of me, but this guy clearly forgot that there were other people in the gym and went a little crazy.

First, he started boxing the air. This is pretty normal; I see people doing this all the time, sometimes with little weights. But, then he started barking. Like, legit barking (HARF! HARF-HARF!) with every punch. Then, instead of punching, he started chopping at the air and making sharp yipping sounds that I can only assume would be karate noises (hai! yah! heayah!). I was trying so hard not to laugh that I lost my rhythm and nearly fell of the elliptical!

What could have possibly possessed this guy to start shouting while he ran? The punching and the chopping is odd enough, but when you add in the noise, it gets a little disruptive to people who are trying to concentrate on their workouts. And, surprisingly enough, a workout requires a good deal of concentration.

So that's how they did it

Last night, between noisy neighbors and an unfortunate acoustic proximity to Downtown Chicago, I ended up being awake to see in the new year. Since I had to be awake anyway, I decided to watch The Duchess, starring Kiera Knightley. I had actually been really interested in seeing this film because I had read the book, and I was wondering how they would convert the biography of such a pathetic woman into a feature film with a likeable main character.

Well, here's how they did it: They focused on only one highly sensational element and elided everything else.

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, was a political force in her day: a leading representative of the Whig party, a major supporter of American independence, and a close friend of Marie Antoinette. She was also completely without self esteem, addicted to drugs, alcohol and gambling, and died with the approximate equivalent of over $6 million in debt. Her best friends were her sister, Harriet, and Lady Elizabeth Foster, her husband's mistress and eventual wife, with whom the Duke and Duchess lived in a menage a trois for many many years.

The film, however, depicts her as approximately as politically powerful as Paris Hilton, offers one scene in which she is gambling (which she did nearly every night of her life for many years), one scene in which she is strung out (but, because the next scene makes reference to a new pregnancy, it's easy to be confused as to what the real problem in the scene had been), and her sister is entirely left out of the film.

Most startlingly, however, is the fact that the film shows a major blow-up between the Duke and Duchess where the Duchess demands he send Lady Elizabeth away. This is a very reasonable scene to assume would have happened to our 21st century values, but the Duchess's own letters to her family actually indicate that the opposite was true. The Duchess loved Lady Elizabeth like a sister and encouraged the relationship between her husband and her friend, and refused to allow her family to disparage her friend or criticize their arrangement.

Overall, the film is really well done and interesting, but only if you have no familiarity with the characters' actual lives or stories. It's always very difficult for me to see a film based on something I know about because I want the film to be faithful to the story. Faithfulness, however, isn't always the most interesting approach to a story, which makes it difficult to translate to the screen, which leaves me disappointed. But, the sets and the costumes are beautiful, including the crazy wigs the women wore (which would mean they would have had necks like wrestlers from holding them up). Ralph Fiennes is kind of disappointing in the film, since he plays the Duke so awkwardly.

So, if you like period costume dramas and don't know anything about the characters see the film. If you do know the characters, though, be prepared to be disappointed by the film's disregard for historical fact.