Bad 70's movies... or was I dreaming?

When I was younger I used to watch a lot of TV. I would come home after school and turn on the set and whatever was on, I'd watch. Mostly it was cartoons (Tom and Jerry was a personal fave, but Battle of the Planets was the best EVER - I always wished I was Princess) but sometimes it would be a stupid horror or sci-fi movie (probably on a very fledgling HBO, which was not 24 hours back then). Only problem was, I would come in at the middle or the end and never see what the name of the movie was. Being scary-type movies, parts would stick in my head and show up in my dreams, until it got to the point where I wasn't actually sure if it had been a real movie or just random neurons firing in my sleep. But for years, several of those movies have 'haunted' me and very rarely am I able to find out what the movie was called.

Many times I have brought up one particular show to my mother, and she always said she didn't remember it. The movie in question had something to do with time travelling, or warping between planets, and it had Roddy McDowall and the boy from "Escape to Witch Mountain" in it. (For some reason, my brain has also connected "Fly Like an Eagle" by the Steve Miller Band with this movie, but I always had a tendancy to have the radio on ALL the time, so that's probably what did that, the same way that certain songs will make me think of Barbie shoes or Nancy Drew books.) Anyway, I KNEW that I was not making it up. So for years and years I've come back to this memory, trying to figure out where it came from. Thanks to the wonder of the internet, I finally did. It was actually a TV series from the late 70's called "The Fantastic Journey". My mother still doesn't remember ever watching it, but it was exactly the type of thing she would have watched.

I'm having much less luck with a couple of horror movies I remember watching. I know one of them is a real something, because I've found someone else on the internet asking about the same thing - unless we had the same dream as children, and that's too freaky to even consider. :) The part I remember goes like this: there's a nice boat, a yacht maybe. And a woman. And a dead guy in a freezer, impaled on a swordfish. And another dead guy tacked up on the mast. I think maybe something to do with the Bermuda Triangle or some other kind of supernatural-demonic thing. Don't remember how it ended, but I remember watching this at my babysitter's house one afternoon. The other movie had kids in it - a girl either hangs her friend from a tree, or somehow causes the friend to be hung, and also there's a scene with a lady in a graveyard (the hung girl's mother?) being scared by a child who's obviously not supposed to be there. I also remember watching one about killer bees that attack people, and they finally trap the bees in a stadium (the Houston Astrodome??) and turn the AC on full blast which either freezes them to death or at least makes them inactive (maybe they were going to suck them all up and kill them or something). If anybody happens to know what the heck any of these movies are called, PLEASE please tell me and put me out of my misery.

I did a lot of sneaking down the hallway after I was supposed to be in bed, and my mother would be watching a scary movie that I wasn't supposed to watch. But of course I'd crouch down at the top of the stairwell, which was behind the couch, and peek my head out so I could see the screen but nobody could see me. I watched parts of "C.H.U.D.", "Killer Clowns" and "Pirahna" that way, and possibly "Halloween" (which I will not link, because, well, duh.)

Funny thing is, I HATE horror movies now. Gee, I wonder why?

2,880 minutes of my life... gone!

I just totally wasted another weekend. I would have got more accomplished had I been asleep the entire time. If I wasn't sitting around holding my head in my hands, I was anesthetising myself with the computer, or trying to ignore the basket of laundry that needs to be folded which has been sitting in the office for oh, 3 or 4 days now. I also did some random wandering around the house, stopping in the doorways of rooms and standing there like some tragic ghost woman who's stuck in limbo and doesn't know which way to go to get to the light.

I have about 60 things that I need to do. Do I want to do any of them? No. Are they particularly painful things? No. If I didn't have to go to work today, I have the feeling that I could totally waste today also.

I think I am being too hard on myself. I did some stuff. I followed the cat around the yard while he checked out all the 'cat news' on the bushes. He doesn't get out much. (Well, he gets out more than he's supposed to... but that's different.) I also ordered pizza online Saturday night. Woo hoo! Last night I actually cooked, but it was just stupid boring spaghetti.

It's very scary to realize that I was basically brain-dead for almost an entire weekend. I can't get that back. I am not inspired... I have no goals for life... I have no ideas what I would be doing if I had any. I don't think I'm depressed, just lazy? Oh well. It'll pass. It's happened before, it'll happen again. Where's Jimmy Buffett when you need him?

On a happier note, I had a nice time Friday night. Went to a fabulous Japanese restaurant with a good friend of mine (who in the future will be referred to as K), grossed her out by eating unagi (which is bbq eel sushi, for the uninitiated), and ate way too much hibachi chicken. Then we met up with Friends #2 and #3 and visited a couple of bars downtown. Drank half of a horrid rum-and-coke at the first place, which was in one of those Victorian-era stores that are really long and narrow and have the cool tin-punched ceilings. We got maybe five feet inside the door before Friend #2 bumped into a very drunk guy she knew and we all kind of stopped. I felt like a piece of plaque in an artery, clogging up the flow of drunk people stumbling towards the bathroom. We didn't stay there too long.

Second place was a lot more open. They actually had two guys checking IDs at the door - not two lines, one line with two guys. Like the first guy couldn't be trusted so they had this second guy to check his work. Being St. Pat's day, there was a lot of green and stupid variations of "I'm Irish" on T-shirts and buttons. (If you're really Irish, you don't need a T-shirt to tell everyone.) Friend #2 scored us some free shots - she can talk to anyone, I'm slightly jealous. :) We also met a leprauchan. Seriously - kinda short guy, red hair, green outfit and a TOP HAT. It was scary. The bartender made me something fruity that was quite delicious but I have no clue what was in it.

I'm looking forward to this Friday when I will be going out again, this time with my other good friend who moved to Ala-BAMA! (think Forrest Gump) and I haven't seen for several months. (She will be known as J in subsequent posts). A good time will be had by all, and I will wear my new pants that make my butt look good. :)

And the moral of the story is...

I just got home from a night out bar-hopping with my friends, and my face is numb. Is that bad??

Never blog when you've been drinking... it took me 5 minutes to write these two stupid sentences. :) I keep putting my fingers on the wrong home keys and type stuff like "O kist ghpt jpe frp, tjpe[omg ,e", which makes perfect sense to me at this moment but of course looks like gibberish to anybody else who might read it. And then I have to find the delete key and erase it and type it all over again, while poking at my chin with one finger to see if I can feel anything yet.

I'm going to sleep now.

Daniel V. and Clutter

Ah, there's Daniel... I'm not sure what it is about him that makes me so interested. Makes me think a bit of Ringo Starr in his younger days (probably the hair/nose combination). Just seems to have the whole deal - personality, cuteness, good taste in clothes. Oh well, he'll make some lucky person happy someday. :) If I'd known him in college he would have been the kind of guy I'd be good friends with (not date - well, okay, MAYBE date).

Anyway, enough about Dan. I'm drowning in papers here. Everything I do seems to require a ton of paper. Right now my desk contains: a cardboard box of drawings to go through, 3 sketch books, a sudoku grid, 2 scratch pads, a spiral notebook, applications for death certificates (I'm into genealogy, don't think I mentioned that before) that I need to fill out and mail, 2 envelopes containing filled-out applications to mail, a totally full in-box of stuff that I'll probably end up pitching, a bunch of mail I got this weekend, and 4 magazines that I need to go through and cut things out of, thus creating even more paper. And this is just the top of it! I won't even go into the drawers and cabinets. And the recycling box under my desk is pushing critical mass also. No matter how often I clear this stuff out, it always seems to be right back at the same level the next day. I think the papers are actually alive and plotting against me.

But don't anybody touch it! I know RIGHT where EVERYTHING is. It's a system. It's pathetic, but it's mine.

Reality TV

I don't watch a lot of television, but it seems that most shows I watch end up being reality TV. A lot of it is stupid (I'm not interesting in seeing C- and D-list "celebrities" doing ordinary stuff, re: "The Simple Life", "Newlyweds", "Hogan Family", "Growing Up Gotti", etc.) and I don't go for the athletic-type shows either (re: "Survivor", "Amazing Race"), although those are much more worthy of being on television. I watched an episode of "Skating With Celebrities" (I love ice skating) and about 5 minutes of "Dancing with the Stars" (I'd love to learn ballroom dancing but I have no partner, so I'll guess I can watch celebrities do it instead. A better show for amateur dancing is "Ballroom Bootcamp", IMO.) I am NOT into "American Idol" at all, though.

I much prefer the reality shows where ordinary people do creative or inspiring things. My first venture into reality TV was VH1's show "Bands on the Run" a few years ago, about four unsigned bands travelling around the US playing gigs to win a recording contract. I fell into it by accident: I was flipping through the channels and saw the name of my hometown on the screen (the bands were playing here), so I kept watching and got obsessed. (The winner of the show, Flickerstick from Dallas TX, ended up becoming a favorite band of mine. Check them out sometime!) Last year I got hooked on "The Biggest Loser" when I stumbled across a marathon of the entire season. Made me feel guilty for sitting there on my couch for 4 hours watching them bust their asses and making such an incredible effort to change their lives. I admire that.

But my new fave is definately "Project Runway". I didn't watch the first season, and I missed the first few episodes of this season, but again it was an accidental flip to Bravo. I love watching these talented designers and the group dynamic they had - what personalities! And I admit - I have a big crush on Daniel Vosovic. I'd definately wear his designs. And he's so darn cute!! I also got into the internet following, reading all the blogs (Blogging Project Runway especially) and the Bravo boards each week. Now that it's all over, I'm kind of let down... having a withdrawl I guess, searching Google for anything new, and looking at Daniel V's website hoping he'll tell me where I can buy one of his dresses. *sigh* I'll probably write more about PR, but this is enough for now!

Quiet one, she says?? :)

Greetings and Salutations!

Welcome to my blog. I have a lot of random thoughts that I sometimes need to exorcise so I can sleep. :) You'll probably question my title after a while, but this is the role I fill in my group of friends. You know, every group of good friends has its various characters - the flirt, the bitch, the fashion-plate, the basket case (oh, wait, that's the Breakfast Club, sorry)... I'm the quiet one. It used to bother me, but I've learned to use it to my advantage. Besides, give me a few tropical drinks and my volume goes up a bit! Anyway, I hope you enjoy my randomness, and if not, I don't want to hear about it.