Tag: Humor

Drama, Family, Humor, Money, Office, University, Work

Wealth And Consequence

“Not for all the money in the world would I let any children of mine develop into Pendletons!”
– Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs

Dear un-named child of an extremely generous university alumni: I am very grateful for your father’s contributions and service.  I am sure that the whole school thanks him for his patronage.  You, on the other hand, are not your father and are not entitled to his privileges.  He has given us a lifetime of service and hard work, you have give us a series of debilitating migraines because of your rude, unbelievable behavior.  I do not care how much money another person has donated, you are an insufferable ass and no amount of money will make you less responsible for your actions.

Wealth doth not a gentleman make.

I got home yesterday absolutely burning with rage after dealing with this boy. 
“If,” I snarled at J., “we ever become as successful as we hope, we are donating everything to PBS and cancer research.  I’ll be damned before I see any of our family act like that!  The things I wish I could have said!”
“You don’t have to take apart every jerk that you deal with you know.”
“But I want to.  It would make the world a better place!”

If I be waspish best beware my sting!

I come from some WASP stock myself, but if I ever behaved the way this kid does, my parents would gleefully disown me!

Family, Food, History, Home, Humor, Life

My Love-to-Hate Affair With Mac & Cheese

“At least she’s eating better things than macaroni and cheese.”
– Heidi Klum

Translation of fragment: "Mac and Cheese is food fit for dogs. And Gauls. Go Rome!"

Throughout my life my mother has been in school, in some capacity or another.  When I was about three or four, she had to leave Dad and I for a few weeks to finish up something or other with one of her degrees (I misremember which.  Which isn’t me being a bad daughter, it’s her having one in Asian Studies, one in American History, and now another in Classical Studies from Cambridge because she decided to learn Greek and Latin.  In other words, my mother is exceptionally awesome).  Time has blurred the details a bit but as I recall, this was an absolute highlight of my short life because Dad and I subsisted on mainly pizza.

I didn’t realize this during the Great Pizza Blitz, but it turned out that my Dad hated cooking.  Really hated it.  He encouraged my Mum to go to school, continue her education throughout her life, and work if she wanted, but by golly the one thing he wanted was dinner to be on the table, because left up to him, dinner would come grudgingly from a frozen package.

So, a few years down the road when she decided to teach for a semester or two at a local university, I thought the Pizza Affair would be reborn.  I was sadly, terrifyingly mistaken.

This is NOT food.

Mac and Cheese.  From a box.  Every night.  Some days even for lunch.  Sometimes we varied it up with chunks of hotdog, but mostly not.  Again, I’m sure both time and horror have worked their magic on me and the vile orange sludge was not as prolific as I remember, but it sure seemed like it at the time.  When my mother’s teaching finished, I refused to eat another disgusting, processed bite, and I’ve never touched it since.  Once when shopping J. picked up a box for himself on days when I’d be at school late or he needed a lunch, I had to swallow escaping bile.

However, watching Food Network the other day, I saw a recipe for ‘Grown Up Mac And Cheese’ and thought suddenly to myself, “That doesn’t look so bad.”  It sounded pretentious enough that I could assure myself that it would be as un-Kraft-like as possible, but looked really easy to make.  So, on Sunday I girded my loins and made Mac and Cheese for the first time in years.

And you know what?  It was pretty darned tasty!

**I’ll still never make the packaged stuff again.  My children will not be subjected to this powdered cheese monstrosity, except to survive the Zombie Apocalypse.  And even then, I might choose death.

Fabulous, Fashion, Humor

Dressing Up/Dressing Down

“Fashion is like the id.  It makes you desire things you shouldn’t.”
– Bob Morris

Well well, it was the night of Marchesa, Armani Prive,  and Elie Saab!  There were some good, some bad, and some ugly.  Metallics, ruffles blush/nude/pale colors, thigh-high slits, and jeweled shoulder accents gave a good showing and though perhaps not as daring as last year, I was still impressed.  Heck, even Kristen Stewart cleaned up!

The Good

Vera Farmiga  and Sandra Bullock in Marchesa.  Bullock gets top marks for classy hair and the pop of red lips.

Elizabeth Banks and Demi Moore in Versace.  Banks is better here though both are on point with the ruffles, gray is an undervauled color in my opinion.

The fabulous Meryl Streep in Chris March and Kristen Stewart (surprisingly washed and coiffed) in Monique Lhullier.

Anna Kendrick and Rachel McAdams in Elie Saab.  Kendrick’s isn’t the best of the best, but she’s on point and the blush goes good with the dark hair.  McAdams was my favorite dress of the night.  Way to rock a print at the Oscars, only you and Maggie did it and both pulled it off.  Ah, Elie Saab, my love affair with you continues…

Queen Latifa in Mischka Badgley, showing how you’re supposed to dress luscious curves: right color, right accents.  Carey Mulligan in Prada, doing another cut-away-in-the-front dress.  Works!

The Bad

Amanda Seyfried and Jennifer Lopez’s stylists obviously aren’t BFFs, otherwise they might have warned one another that their clients would both be rocking Armani Prive in basically the same material.  This is purely fabric dislike on my part.  And though Lopez gets points for daring, I’m still not loving the bunch on her hip.  In Seyfried’s case, the color washes her out.

In Gabourey Sidibe’s case, I wanted to like her gown, after all it’s another Marchesa and a fantastic color but I really dislike the applique florals.  They bring down the dress for me, to a crazy nursing home belle.  If she had stuck with just this gorgeous draped blue fabric with just the sparkles on her wrist and ears it would have been classed up.  Charlize Theron, in Dior, was bad.  No one should have a perverted Miss America sash groping you.  Period.

Anika Noni Rose in (didn’t catch the designer) and Zoe Saldana in Givenchy.  Both these girls had the same problem: their bejeweled bustiers made an appearance.  The bottom of Saldana’s gown is interesting, but I’m going to have to give both of these a thumbs down.

The Ugly

Diane Kruger and Sara Jessica Parker both bombed in Chanel (impossible, you say?  This is Chanel after all.  Yes).  There were good elements in both gowns, but neither translated on the wearers, I thought.  The first is Eliza Doolittle Goes to the Races, and the second is a sack. 

Congratulations, Mariah Carey, you managed to make Valentino look bad.  The proportions here are just all wrong.  And, Miley sweetie, better than last year but you join Saldana with underwear as outerwear for a top.  And you’re tiny but you looked so cinched in you might as well have been wearing Spanx.  Keep trying, you’re getting there.

And the dress I wanted to take home for myself (I don’t think I could pull off the McAdams dress, unfortunately, but this one would more than compensate): Penelope Cruz’s Donna Karan.

Thoughts?  Compare to last year, what do you think?  

 

Fabulous, Fashion, Humor, Movies

And the Award Goes To…

“That’s a bingo!  …Is that the way you say it?  ‘That’s a bingo?'”
“You just say bingo.”
“Ah!  Bingo!  How fun!  But I digress.  Where were we?”
– Inglorious Basterds

Today has been a lovely Sunday, it’s sunny and gorgeous outside, you can smell Spring in the air in spite of the snow on the mountains, J. and I made a to-die-for mac and cheese recipe that had pretentious enough ingredients to make it seem much more difficult than it actually was, and I’m whipping up cookies (plus snacking on kettlecorn as I dash back and forth between the kitchen and the red-carpet interviews, my dedication is being tested…).

I’ll be doing my annual Oscar dress review tomorrow, but let me just say this now:

If Christoph Waltz doesn’t win best supporting actor, I shall be extremely vexed.  And if Avatar wins Best Picture I will lose all faith in Hollywood.  J. wants The Cove to win best documentary.  I want the fabulous Carey Mulligan or divine Sandra Bullock to win best actress but Helen Miren (aka The Queen), the precious Gabourey Sidibe, and the goddess that is Meryl Streep will give them stiff competition.  I think Mo’nique will win best supporting actress (indeed that seems to be the real story of this Oscar Award Season).  I pick Up for best animated feature, The Young Victoria for costume design (might be wistful thinking, I wouldn’t mind Coco Avant Chanel either again based on personal prejudice for Chanel and Audrey Tautou), I pick Katheryn Bigelow for best director for The Hurt Locker (go women!).  The Hurt Locker seems to be the frontrunner for Best Picture.  And I can’t pick a best actor, I’d love to see Morgan Freeman win in this category after a career of famous supporting rolls, and who doesn’t have a soft spot for Mr. Darcy…er…Colin Firth.  And again, not to harp, but GO CHRISTOPH WALTZ!

Any last minute pics out there?  Raging debate?  Big bets?  Do share!

Remember this scene? Better than that whole "plot" of Avatar's.
Family, Humor, Husband, Marriage, PBS

Viewers Like You. Thank You.

“So Amanda stays with Darcy and Elizabeth stays in the modern world?  Why does she want to do that?”
“Birth control, indoor plumbing, and women’s rights?”
– J. and C.

Whether against his will or not, J. is slowly getting dragged into my PBS obsession, and it’s been fun to watch.

Pictured: a post-modernist moment. You may close your mouth now.

For someone who dislikes Jane Austen pretty strongly, he liked Lost In Austen quite a bit (granted, we both loved Pride and Prejudice and Zombies).  He laughed just as loud as me when the main character asked Mr. Darcy to take a dip in his pond so she could enjoy a Colin Firth-esque “post-modernist moment.”  He found the fact that Caroline Bingley was a lesbian hilarious, liked that Wickham was a good guy after all, and that Jane and Charles run off to America together.  One Sunday night he called back to where I was in the office and reminded me that Masterpiece was on in a half hour and asked if there would be another LIA installment.

She heard you, J.. Beware.

And when Dorcas Lane (of Lark Rise to Candleford fame) stated she doesn’t like to judge people, to the face of the man she’s refused to marry for having a scandalous, mistress-mongering past, and said man snaps back, “You’ve never had a problem with sitting in judgement before.  Good-day,” … it was incredibly satisfying to hear my red-blooded, football/basketball loving, hamburger devouring, man’s man, all-American husband cry, “Oh no he didn’t!  Burn!”

I’m sure he’d like me to reciprocate by learning to love basketball and Sports Center, but I’m not quite there yet.  I’ll work on it.

Books, Friends, Humor

“O, that I had but followed the arts!”

“Thereby hangs a tale.”
– William Shakespeare

Long ago, when J. was still a bachelor (side note, we’ve been officially together for two years now…weird) he lived with Scotticus, Cakes, Bear, Jaime, and Jazz.  They’re still very much around in our lives.  I affectionately refer to them as the Other Women when J. goes off to play basketball, get hamburgers, and generally boy about. 

One of my favorite memories of Jazz was one day hanging out at their flat.  I had glanced around and discovered that they had made a home entertainment system supported almost entirely by books.  I was remarking on a tome of Shakespeare upholding a television speaker when Jazz explained the reasoning.
“Girls will come over, see all these thick books everywhere, and think we’re all really intellectual.”
“Not if you’re using them as furniture, dear,” I replied laughingly.

To be a paper weight, or not be a paper weight, that is the question.

However, while making a V-day present craft for Marie (sidenote the second: Marie, beloved, would you send me a picture so I can brag shamelessly about it?) I noticed that the canvas had bowed annoyingly in the middle.  And the only thing I could think of that would be heavy enough to fix it, were Shakespeare and a dictionary.

Apologies, Jazz.  I now suspect you of secret genius.

Family, Humor, Husband, Marriage

Money Honey

“Are you buying lunch, or am I?”
“I will.”
“Thanks.  Oh!  You also need to write me a check to replace the savings we used for car repairs.  Wow…I sound like a gold-digger.”
“You are a gold-digger.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“You’re expensive.”
“I am not!”
“Well, someday, you will be expensive, so someday you will be a gold-digger.”
“No I won’t, I’ll be a trophy wife.  They aren’t the same thing at all.”
– C. and J.

Gold-digger!  The nerve of him!

Fabulous, Fashion, Humor, Movies

Fabulous, Darling

“Fashion is what one wears oneself.  Unfashionable, is what other people wear.”
– An Ideal Husband

I’ve been following both the New York and London Fashion Weeks, and last night I celebrated both by renting The September Issue and drooling over the beautiful spreads.  I’ve been resisting the desire to wear large sunglasses indoors and limit my smiling to almost unseeable bursts of rare approval ever since. 

And for those who love fashion and also have a sense of humor, here’s a website for you to check out.  Enjoy!

Books, Drama, Fun, Humor, University

Creative. Writing (Pt. II)
“All writers are copycats, unless they’re bad writers.  Then they’re plagiarists.”
– My writing professor 
 
 A sample of my writing classes offerings from last night. 
You called?

1) The Unintended Romance:  one person turned in a piece that had a paragraph including the words “the sun delicately kissing her skin,” “white teeth flashed in his olive-skinned face,” and “thick muscles and strong torso flexed as he picked her up.” 

The teacher asked us all to review it and determine what was wrong with the paragraph.  Some people said that some alliteration threw them off, other said it was an imagery technique.  I said it sounded more like ripped-bodices-and-heaving-bosoms writing than what she was going for (a murder mystery).  It’s good she and I get along because half of the class gasped/blushed and murmured things like, “Oh dear!” while she burst out laughing.

This seems...oddly familiar...?

2)  Teen Angst:  Another girl (a rather rude one who has to have the last word in every group review we do, and likes to toss her editing experience in people’s teeth) turned in a piece that took place in a high school science class between a completely uninteresting girl and a boy acting strangely and awkwardly, seeming tormented by a secret pain.  My pal (the bodice ripper) piped up immediately and said one word: “Twilight?”

The whole room dissolved into hysterics and debate.  Some people tittered quietly to themselves while one or two started roaring about how amazing the Twilight series was and everyone else wouldn’t know great literature if it smacked them in the face!  Others countered that it was adolescent fiction and no more, while some snapped that young adult writers have produced some first-rate literature, though not Twilight they hurried to say.  The writer was mortified, while our teacher seemed secretly delighted.