Hate to See You Go, But I Love to Watch You Leave!

Ya'll come back now, ya hear!

In the hopes that some of my Countdown to Halloween visitors may stop by from time to time, figured I'd tell people where they can read more of my stuff!

I'm the movie critic for SFist.com, and post new reviews there every Friday; come on by! This Friday I'll have a review of Doctor Strange, and next Friday I'll have one for Arrival. Here's the archive of all my past reviews and columns.

I also write a column called Ask a San Francisco Native. Have any burning questions you'd like to ask someone who was born, raised, and still lives in San Francisco? Send one my way!

Now Weight a Minute!

I, like many American women, hate the emphasis our culture places on youth and thinness. Of course I do. And yet, in the past year-and-a-half, I've lost over 50 pounds. So how do I reconcile those two things?

Well, because technically, I'm still overweight. According to BMI measurements, I'd need to lose another 10 pounds to be considered a "normal" weight, and that would be at the very top of that "normal" scale. And that's kind of bullshit.

I chose to lose weight because my blood pressure was high, I was getting frequent migraines, and most importantly to me--and probably most shallowly--I couldn't wear the clothes I wanted to because hardly anyone makes cute clothes for fat chicks.

So, I decided to do something about it. But I chose to do it in a way I felt I could handle: Slowly. My goal wasn't to lose 20 pounds in a month. My goal was to lose one pound a week--at the most--until I got to a point I could live with.

Someone I knew had downloaded and successfully used an iPhone app called Lose It!, and since it was free, it sounded like a good way to go. Basically, it's like Weight Watchers, but without the Points system. You are given a daily calorie budget, and you log your foods and your exercise, and try to stay at or below your given daily budget. Since I'm an anal person who loves lists and keeping track of stuff, I took to it easily. It became like a daily game.

And the great thing is, when you start off at as high a weight as I was at, you're actually able eat a lot of food at the beginning. And that was the key thing to me: I didn't want to do anything where I had to cut out certain kinds of foods completely, because that's just not something I can maintain. Instead, I wanted to eat whatever I wanted to eat, just less of it.

Also, when you go from doing no type of exercise to some kind of exercise every day, the pounds kind of drop off. At least at first. (I lost five pounds in the first week and a half.)

When most people ask me about losing weight, they remark that it must have been really hard, and the thing is, it really wasn't. But it didn't happen quickly; it took almost two years. And I think that's the key: When you allow the process to take some time, it becomes a habit, and becomes something that's easier to maintain.

I chose to stop ten pounds shy of my "healthy" weight because that's where my body wanted to stop. Losing more became way too much of a struggle, and I'm at a weight I can be happy with--even if it isn't what's considered an ideal weight by most. My blood pressure is down, and I don't get nearly as many headaches as I used to. And while I can't fit into every outfit I'd like to--the fashion industry is still bullshit on that front--I'm much happier with the clothing choices that are available to me now.

I basically wrote this as a reference for anyone who asks me how I did it. So, for those interested, here's a summation of what worked for me:

Keep track of calories: Once you become aware of how many calories are actually in the foods you eat every day, it can revolutionize the way you eat. It's all just math. (It helps to get a food scale, to weigh things like meat and cheese and figure out portion sizes.)

Try to do some kind of exercise every day: I bought a cheap home stepper machine, and tried to do that every day. At first, I could barely do 15 minutes on the thing; eventually I got up to 45 minutes at a time. The key? I could do it while watching TV. But I also just tried to walk more. I resolved to not wait for any Muni bus more than 10 minutes. If it was longer than that, I'd just start walking. (You'd be surprised how much faster than the bus your feet can be!)

Weigh Yourself a Lot: This seems to be controversial. A lot of people say not to do it more than once a week, because it can be frustrating. But weighing myself almost every day really helped me learn what did and did not work for me. For instance: On more than one occasion on weighing myself after I had gone way under my calorie allotment the day before, I had actually gained weight. Key takeaway: Starving yourself doesn't work.

Drink lots of water: Actually, this might be total bullshit. I don't know if it helps or not, but everyone seems to think this is a major factor, so might as well include it. If you're exercising more, you're probably going to want to drink more water anyway, so it's not exactly hard to do.

Keep some old fat pants: Not because you're ever going to wear them again, but because putting on a pair of your fat pants after you've lost weight and inches feels really, really great, and will mean more than any number on a scale ever will.

Nosy Nellie

So here's the story: I heard some yelling on the street and looked out the window to see a woman arguing with a cab driver. She seemed to be saying that he was lying about not taking Visa, when it states on the cab door that they do. I couldn't really make out what he was saying, but he was obviously denying that. She called him a "fucking liar" and started to walk away, when the cabbie got out of the cab to confront her.

A guy who was walking his dog came over and tried to get them both to calm down. He suggested the cab driver just move along, and the woman go home. At that point, someone drove up and honked for the cab to get out of the way. (He was blocking the entrance to an alley.)

So he drove up a few feet, put on his blinkers and got back out. At that point, the woman had gone inside her apartment, although I couldn't tell where that was (nor could he). He was kind of just standing on the corner looking dumbfounded when the guy with the dog came back over and started to talk to him.

He said he didn't know who the woman was, but he had come over previously because he was hoping to diffuse a situation before it blew up. And at that point in the conversation he offered the cabbie some money…And that's the part I got on the above video…

Personally, I think it was pretty great of the guy to pay the cabbie. I have a feeling the cabbie wasn't being totally honest about the Visa thing (cabbies are notoriously dickish when credit cards are involved, and will often lie about the "machine being broken" to avoid taking them), but that lady could have handled the situation a whole lot better...

Here's to the kindness of strangers.

Bully For You

The above is a clip from the movie Bully, which opens this weekend, and which you might have heard about because of issues with the MPAA, and how they want to rate the movie R, because of swearing, thus making it harder for the kids who could benefit from the movie to actually see it. (For example: Most schools won't be able to show an R or unrated movie to an entire school without getting permission from each and every parent, and they'll likely see that as more bother than it's worth.)

The clip is actually edited down from how it appears in the movie, (I haven't seen the movie, but saw the extended clip on the "Anderson" show this week), and it's even more maddening in its entirety. That a teacher, (and actually, I think she's an assistant principal), would chastise a bullied kid for being rude to his bully is just...I don't even know what else to call it but totally fucked. (Rate THAT R!)

I don't know if I'll go see the movie, because the clips I saw on TV immediately made me cry. I tear up just thinking about them now. And it makes me glad I don't have kids, because having to deal with the heartbreak of having a bullied kid OR a kid who's a bully would just be too much to bear. And this is coming from someone who was both growing up.

The clip up there strikes a certain note with me because in grammar school, I was bullied by kids and a teacher. And in a way, the stuff with the teacher was worse.

The kid stuff started around the second grade. I don't know why I was singled out. Maybe it was my name; maybe it was because I was bigger than the other kids, who knows. (And while I was big, I would have been considered svelte next to kids the same age these days.) During that grade, a girl decided to get a bunch of her friends together and sing me a song about how none of them wanted to be my friend anymore. I believe it was to be sung to the tune of "Hello, Dolly," but the title was "Goodbye Rain," (clever!). Such an elaborate bit of bullying theater, and if it wasn't such a sick thing, I'd almost commend her for having such creativity at such a young age.

Fortunately, our teacher found out about it, (perhaps someone snitched), and she prevented it from happening. But she didn't prevent the girl from putting the lyrics to the song, all very nicely written out and decorated, in my backpack so I could discover it when I got home.

In another grade I had a "best" friend who would, purely based on her whims, decide day to day whether or not she was going to be nice to me, or, along with her friends, torture me. I never knew if a day was going to be a "Be Nice to Rain Day," or "We Hate Rain Day." On the Hate days, I would be hit, threatened with ass-kickings after school, taunted, or just given the complete silent treatment. Welcome to the birth of my neuroses!

Finally, I eventually got to a grade, fifth, where I didn't seem to have any active bullies, and in fact had a bunch of friends. Unfortunately, my teacher hated me. Now, I will admit I was a bit of a wise-ass and a know-it-all, and was probably annoying as hell. But she was an adult, and a teacher, and really should have been above bullying tactics. Tactics like the time there were class elections, and I was voted class president, but she decided to basically veto that vote, give that position to someone she liked, and demote me to "hall monitor," or some such bullshit.

Or the time the class put on a play, The Wizard of Oz, and we all auditioned, and I wanted to be the Cowardly Lion, and could imitate the crying Bert Lahr does in the movie to a T, but she gave the role to someone else, didn't give me a part at all, and made me a line prompter. Or some such bullshit.

Or the time she told the parents of one of my best friends that she shouldn't be allowed to hang out with me anymore because I was a "bad influence." I was NINE. The only thing I was influencing her on was to not like the teacher, which, can you blame me?

Or the time we were on a field trip, and we were all waiting for the bus, many of us students just kind of milling around the teacher, vying for her attention and approval, as young students are wont to do. And some kids were asking her if she thought they were smart enough to get into such and such a school, and she said to each of them, "Yes, oh yes, of course!" And when I asked her she said, "You? No way. Never."

Who do you go to when your teacher is bullying you? Back then, there was nothing I could do. I told my parents, and they had a teacher conference with her--as all parents did, at least once a year--but really, what were they going to say? I know my mom said she came out of the meeting wanting to stick an electrical plug into the teacher's nose, but, alas, she wasn't able to follow through on that.

When I finally got out of her hell class, and moved on to junior high, where it felt like a fresh start, and I could be whoever I wanted to be, well, I did what a lot of bullied kids do: I became a bully.

I was horrible. Just awful. I never hit anyone, or threatened them with violence, but I was a bitch, and cruel, and mean. I'm completely ashamed of it. That I eventually became good friends with most of the girls I bullied is testament to their being superior lifeforms, hands down.

A lot of people who come out of bullying say it made them better people, and who they are today; they came out of it stronger, and that most of the biggest successes in life are the people who were considered weirdos when they were kids.

But that can be minor consolation to a kid who's being bullied in the here and now. I wrote all this stuff down, and am sharing it, because I think it is always helpful to have stories about surviving bullying out there for anyone who might need it. And not to get all, "it gets better," but, it did. By the end of junior high, I was free from bullying--both of and by me. And by the time I got to high school, I didn't give a shit about anything anyone had to say about me, and as a result, no one really said anything about me. In retrospect, high school was a piece of cake, socially, though sometimes I wish my bullying years had been later in life, because I don't think it would have affected my core being as much as it did happening to me so young.

The presence of the Internet and social networking has added a whole new level to bullying, to the point where the only previous respite from school bullying--being able to go home and get the hell away from it, at least for the night--no longer exists.

But the Internet has its counter benefits. Kids can reach out to people who are feeling or felt just like they are, who can tell them that they are great people, and the bullies are complete and total assholes who are going to lose at life. At least kids can get some support outside of their family, because sometimes validation from complete strangers can mean a lot.

Who knows what would have happened if I had been able to post the lyrics to that stupid song on a Tumblr back in the day? And what kind of counteractive song readers might have been able to help me write? And what kind of courage that could have given me for the rest of my school days?

So if, for some completely bizarre reason, there's some bullied kid out there reading this, let me know.

And maybe we can write a song about it...

In With the Old

Yo. Happy New Year (a tad early)!

In many ways 2011 was pretty awesome. Sure, for most of it I was unemployed, (and still am), but because of that unemployment--the longest time I have been without a job since I started working in earnest, mind you, so about 20 years--I was able to do a hell of a lot of nothing, and a hell of a lot of fun stuff. I traveled somewhere different once a month for five months straight; I stayed up until four in the morning, reading, or watching TV, or Internet-lookin', for more nights than I care to admit to. And I basically took a much needed break from IT.

You know what IT is. We all do.

But 2012 is a new year. (And if the Mayans are right, the last year.) I still plan on having tons of fun, but since fun needs funding, I'm going to have to find a new job, and probably pretty damn soon. Wish me luck.

But along with job searching, I'm hoping to do some more writing in 2012, and towards that goal, I am starting up a new blog.

Musty TV will remain the source for all things TV-related, (and Rain-related), but my new venture--Mulling Movies--will be a fond look back at the year 1982, and my birth as a genuine movie dork. Please check it out, add it to whatever you use to keep up on such things, and join in on the discussions therein.

Here's to a terrific New Year!

A Very Happy Birthday to THIS

Just realized today is this here blog's seventh birthday. Seven! I have officially been "blogging" for seven freaking years.

Did you know that seven years ago, Facebook and Flickr barely existed? YouTube was a year away from existing? And Twitter was two years away? Take a look back at my first full month of posts. No pics; no videos; nothing but words words words that really looks more like a Facebook News feed than an actual blog, but whatever!

This blog has gotten less attention over the years, but it's still the only place I can come to when I want to spout off about really stupid stuff, and can't limit it to 140 or 420 characters, and for that, I will always love it.

Here's to year eight!

Me and TV

Here's an irony: Ever since I lost my job, I have actually watched less television, not more.

Crazy right?

There are a few reasons for this. One is the fact that sometimes during the week, I actually leave my house and do stuff. (I swear I do!) One would think that when I was working I was also "doing stuff," but the fact is I always had some kind of show playing while I was working, either at home on my TV or at the office on Hulu or the equivalent. Of course, most of the shows I was watching I was "watching." I wasn't devoting my complete attention to them, but treated them more like background music, paying enough attention to follow the plot, if not the intricacies. As such, most of the shows I would choose to watch this way weren't shows I was really invested in, but felt compelled to keep up with just because.

But TV is less of a background thing now, and actually something I make time to sit down and watch, and in doing so, I have become a lot less tolerant of shows that don't offer anything unique or aggressively entertaining. As a result, I have been deleting season passes left and right. Here's a list of shows I've recently given up on:

"The Bachelor"
"Chuck"
"No Ordinary Family"
"Kitchen Nightmares"
"Southland"
"Hellcats"
"Nikita"
"Blue Bloods"

This TV trimming has also resulted in me being a lot less willing to adopt new shows into my schedule. "The Chicago Code" has gotten some really good reviews, but I watched the pilot, and it really didn't give me anything that "Southland" or "Blue Bloods" wasn't giving me, and if I wasn't willing to watch those, I wasn't willing to watch this. Seriously, if you're going to bring a new cop show, or lawyer show, or medical show into the TV landscape, it had better be something incredible. That's why "Off the Map" is off my TiVo, and "Harry's Law" and "Fairly Legal" are in contempt of court. (Sorry.)

But even with these cuts, I still watch a lot of crap. I will admit that. Every night seems to bring me some set of Housewives, and "American Idol" continues its hold. For whatever reason, I still (kind of) watch "V." (Man. I need to stop with that. BUT I WANT TO SEE ALIEN BABIES.) I watch "Glee" just so I can hate it, and lord save me, but I actually kind of think "Mike & Molly" is funny.

The shows I actually look forward to, and will give my complete attention to, are few and far between. I'm glad I didn't give up on "Fringe" when I wanted to, during its first season, because it has become really, really good this year. I fear its Friday night fate. "Parenthood" is another show I could barely tolerate when it first started but has improved immensely. "Community" remains the funniest comedy on TV, and "An Idiot Abroad" is the best travel-related show EVER.

So, me and TV aren't through. Not nearly. But unless I get another job that requires me to sit in front of computer screen for eight hour stretches, I think my TV gluttony has come to an end...

Twentieth Anniversay of My First (Legal) Drink

I think I usually post something on my birthday? Yes? I mean, Facebook shouldn't have all the fun. So, here's something a friend posted on my wall, which might make your head explode...



And my all time favorite bit of birthday torture...

Coming Soon!

This blog may have seemed rather quiet of late, but that's all going to change soon! October is almost here, and as I have done for the past several years, I will be posting daily as part of a great big bloggy Countdown to Halloween. Woo! And: BOO!

How excited am I? I'm Sally-Draper's-going-to-see-the-Beatles excited, that's how excited!

We Interrupt This Vacation to Bring You This Ridiculous Message

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Ha!

HA HA HA!

Bad-Assass

I was not the only person pissed by that Biggest Bad-Ass Award...

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Who's Not Honoring Me Now? - Tonys & MTV Movie Awards
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

I wonder if the dozen or so follow requests I get on Twitter EVERY DAY (seriously, every single day) are just people thinking Korean Pop Sensation Rain has a Twitter feed that's pink and focuses on television. I wonder if he'd give me a million bucks for my account? (Call me, Rain. That's the starting price.) Then he can deal with all the @ messages telling us to fuck off (people complaining about the weather) or telling us they are partying inside us (people saying they are at the Rain nightclub in Vegas). It's tough being an icon.

Time Flies When You're Avoiding the Things You Should Be Doing

I had the week between Christmas and New Year's off, as well as some added days before and after, and it was a break I was looking forward to almost as much as Christmas morning. Of course, I had all kinds of notions about all the stuff I would get done with my time off, like cleaning out closets and bringing stuff to Goodwill and the dump, (is there even a publicly accessible "dump" anymore?), and going on long walks exploring the city. Yeah. None of that happened. Maybe I'll do it all tomorrow, my last day of vacation, but I seriously doubt it, especially if I keep up my vacation sleep routine, which is to fall asleep around 3am and wake up at noon.

But in an attempt to convince myself I did SOMETHING with all my free time, I'm going to go through the days and write down what I did.

This could be embarrassing.

Saturday December 26th
Put away my Christmas presents, and watched the first half of "Dexter" season 4.

Sunday December 27th
Went to see "The Road" and ate Korean barbecue.

Monday December 28th
Tried to teach myself how to use my new sewing machine, and after an hour trying to figure out how to get the bobbin thread to rise up, called my seamstress aunt, who came over and proceeded to show me I had forgotten to thread the needle. It's a sewing machine! I thought such archaic things as "threading needles" would be taken care of by the machine! Alas, not my machine. But after that, I was sewing away. Which is to say, just sewing a bunch of scrap material together to get a feel for the machine.

Also, watched more of "Dexter."

Tuesday December 29th
Went to see "Avatar" with two cousins and an aunt. Aimed to go to a 2:30pm showing, but it was sold out by the time we got there (I guess a lot of people ARE out of work), so we had to wait until 4pm to see it. In between we ate lunch and played video games in the arcade. The movie? Meh. The story was nothing I hadn't seen before, and the visuals were not enough to make up for the predictability of the plot. Also, it cost me 45 bucks to see it, since I was treating my cousins to the show, and we missed the bargain matinee prices. And I can think of very few movies that are worth 45 dollars to see.

Wednesday December 30th
Went to the library and got some books about sewing, and also bought some spools of thread so I don't have to use blue thread to sew everything.

Sewed all the holes in all my coat and jacket pockets with my new machine. Sloppy, but a hell of a lost faster than doing it by hand; also: more fun!

Watched "Extract," which I got from Netflix (it wasn't very good), and finished watching "Dexter" season four. Realized I had been spoiled about the ending, which was annoying, but ultimately, didn't really care.

Thursday December 31st
Watched a Netflix DVD, a horror movie called "Carriers," as well as the first "Thin Man" on TCM, and some of the sequel, "After the Thin Man," before going out to the Summer Place with Dan and Michele to celebrate New Year's. Once there, ate way too many chicken wings, and salami and cheese, and mini quiches, which were given out gratis by the bar. Love that place!

Came home around 1:30am and watched an episode of "Law and Order: Criminal Intent" before falling asleep. (Actually, I've been doing that every night, thanks to the glory of TiVo, and the lack of new episodes of anything else on TV over the break.)

Friday January 1st
Got up very late, and spent the day watching the special edition of "Watchmen" that's almost three-and-a-half-hours long. The main difference is it incorporates the animated "Tales of the Black Freighter" into the movie, and includes more scenes centered around the newstand. I think the movie works fine without the "Black Freighter" stuff, but it was nice seeing this version as well. It certainly made the entire movie feel more episodic and like a series of comic books.

I also went to my parents' place for my mom's fabulous blackeyed peas, and then came home and de-decorated my house and my tree, but held off on the actual tree removal...

Saturday January 2nd
Didn't leave the apartment all day. It was great. Watched "The Age of Innocence," which I got for Christmas, and "Angels and Demons," which I got from Netflix. One was really good, and one was really bad. You guess which.

Sunday January 3rd
Finally kicked my tree to the curb, which was a massive pain in the ass. The "tree removal bag" that came with it was a little too small, so it didn't prevent the tree from dropping needles all over my apartment, and my apartment building stairwell. Which meant a lot of sweeping. But after much cleaning and rearranging, I finally have my apartment back. I think that's the only good thing about the holidays ending: getting back some much-needed space.

Helped Dan and Michele take some photos for their next Christmas cards, but won't tell you what the photos are of, lest I spoil the surprise.

I also did some grocery shopping and ate a turkey Reuben at Max's Opera Cafe. And then came home, cleaned some more, and did some stuff for work I put off until the last minute.

So, certainly not the most exciting of vacations, but I can say I really, really appreciated the break from work and worry, and am really, really dreading its return.

SOOOUP!

I've been sick. It started Wednesday night, and probably reached its peak yesterday, when my cough turned into something I might hear from my neighbors, and I managed to sleep away most of the day because I didn't have the energy to do much else.

I think the worst has passed, but I want to assure you that I did NOT take this whole thing like a man....

Belated Birthday Kitteh Is Belated

Since July just kind of raced by, I totally forgot to mark the birthday of this here blog. Five years old on July 31st, to be exact. Here's a link to my first day of blogging, before there was YouTube, or Facebook, or Flickr, or Twitter, or anything else that makes the Internet the supreme time-suck it is today.

Five years! Back then I was still putting out my weekly Musty TV email, and this here blog was the only other public resource for my ranting. Of course, my ranting has since spread to several other sites, and I'm still occasionally amazed by that fact.

But this will always be my first and favorite online baby.

CORRECTION!

In my "April Round-Up," I stated I didn't buy any shoes. This is, in actuality, not true. In fact, I bought TWO PAIRS!

They were both bought online from Target, for cheap (I think they were both 50% off at the time), which is probably why I forgot about them. And one of the pairs I doubt I'll ever actually wear, as they are a lot taller and unwieldy that I thought they'd be. They're also pretty freaky looking. To wit.

The other pair I only wore once as the one time I did wear them, I ended up tripping on a sidewalk, which resulted in this lovely bit of black-and-blue toeness. Probably not the shoes' fault, although they weren't as comfortable as one would think looking at them.

*Phew* So glad I cleared THAT up!

Tori Lives!

As some of you know, I went through a trauma with my kitteh, Tori, this week. For those who don't, the story is thus: Tori is an old lady. She's either 18 or 19, the math always screws me up. (I got her in February of 1991, but she was about four months old when I adopted her so....she'll be 19 around November. There. That wasn't so hard!) About three years ago, I was sure she was a goner as she had developed kidney disease, which required a change in diet and injecting her with subcutaneous fluids every other day. Miraculously, all that seemed to help, and she's been going strong ever since.

Around the end of last year, a small lump she's had for many years suddenly started growing. A needle biopsy was done, and the results pretty much proved she has mammary cancer. Because of her age, I decided to just let the lump be, as I didn't want to risk putting her under anesthesia to have it removed, and figured she's only got a few more years left, as long as the tumor wasn't bothering her, just let her be.

Unfortunately, the tumor started to...explode. It just kept growing, and bursting her skin, bleeding, and eventually, despite my cleaning it every day, began to get infected. So the choice then became, letting it grow until it was so big and gross and painful that it became a total bother to her, and putting her down for that, or risking having it removed completely.

So I opted for removal. I didn't really think I had a choice, really. It just wasn't fair to leave something so uncomfortable on her belly like that. Because of her age, anesthesia was a risk, but I thought that losing her on the table trying to make her feel better would be a better thing than having to make the choice to put her down because she was feeling awful. Luckily, the pre-surgery tests--blood work, chest x-ray--showed no issues, and the vet felt she would get through the surgery OK.

And she did!

Of course, she's not totally out of the woods yet. There can still be post-surgery complications, but she seems to be doing well, albeit trying to manage her way around the apartment while wearing a plastic Cone of Tragedy. (What makes it even more tragic is she's losing her sight as well, so there's just no way she can avoid bumping into everything around her.)

For the record, she had her surgery at the Nob Hill Cat Clinic, where I've been taking her for many, many years, and they did a great job. I'd recommend the place highly to anyone with a cat. Especially if you live in the Nob Hill/Polk Street/Tendernob area.

I'm so glad to have my old lady roommate back. I think I'll put on my new, gigantic hat, sit next to my Elizabethan-collared friend, and talk about MUUUUUSIC.

Well of Course We Talk. Don't Everybody?

This week's Tube Tops is now up on the SFGate Culture Blog!

Don't forget to check out my new blog for even more exciting insight into my lame awesome life!

Happy Bird-day To Me!

Party Hearty With Bacardi!

It's my birthday this weekend, and if everything goes as planned, the celebration will look a lot like New Year's did!


I can't wait!

Wide Is the New Thin

Man, HTML is a pain in the ass. It took me an hour, but I finally figured out how to minimize the wasted space on the right and left of this blog so that I can stop shrinking the size of videos I post on here.

Sort of. This is as wide as I can seem to get the posting column to be before the sidebar disappears to the bottom of the page, below all the posts. And I'm sure I broke something that will only show up weeks from now when I try to add a LOLCat picture in a post or something, but whatever. That's all the HTML configuring I can take for now.

So, to inaugurate my new wide capabilities, here is my (and probably everybody's) favorite moment from last night's "Top Chef."