a belated valentine to the man in my life

aka, keith olbermann.

[a man so patriotic, the flag doesn't give him a boner, it IS his boner.]

oh, keith. the days have been so long as of late; i haven't been sleeping well, i'm stuck in LA without travel for at least another month, my dog recently squatted and peed on my bathroom rug while i was standing 2 feet away which tells me he was sleepwalking at the time and dreaming not just about being outside, but about being a girl. i keep getting sick and writer's blocked, buzzo keeps getting weirder and harder to clean up after. i'm fed up with nyquil, with my crappy cooking, with the dolor of my day to day. but at least at the end of the day, as the blue cloud lifts and i prepare another shitty dinner, i know that you'll be there for me. in my tivo. and we will make dinner and recover from cold medicine and hate bill o'reilly as one.

you're like jon stewart, but you don't mug, and you have to be taller, and you don't have a bunch of disappointing correspondents (unless you count the guy who made the "pimped" chelsea clinton comment, and i admit, i also don't like how flirty you seem to get with rachel maddow, who has a semi-gay haircut but since i've taken to cutting my own bangs/am one pair of jean shorts away from looking like the og early 90s not-blonde indigo girl, who am i to judge, but still, you better just pretend she's gay because if catch you making eyes at her one more time i'm gonna cut a bitch.)

[baby, it's cool, i'll go get you some of those trader joe's choco-pretzel balls you like to help you relax. and notice i didn't "shush" you, because that shit won't fly with my girl. bitch, i know your life. now, let's play oddball.]

let's break this down simply; danny was a character on sports night, and if his dream dude status weren't proof enough of his being completely fictional, danny actor josh charles' current run as he-nightmare on "in treatment" (a show that's about as amusing as watching flashing christmas lights if those lights were assholes) really hammers home that there could be no danny in real life. all hope is not lost, however, because, as we all know, sports night was based on sports center, a show i've never watched (when not trapped on jet blue during baseball season), but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that if casey and dan had real life counter parts, they were dan patrick and yourself. you, with your references to mystery science theater and your take charge "special comments" and your ability to talk to pat buchanan without puking your face and soiling your always-stylish tie. and, unlike danny, you wrote a book when you 14, plus you've been on the simpsons, nevermind that i could spend a whole weekend just lounging around in your eyebrows.

[let's also ignore your whole weirdness with my girl hilz ("which hillary is it today"? the one who's reacting to a statement in context. sometimes she's placid, sometimes she's working people up at a rally, sometimes she's pissed at an obama press release...it's not like she's for the war one day and a socialist the next, i mean, really babe), although let me say this to all the hillary haters out there-- please don't tell me you don't like her because you think she's too political, because that's about 8 shades of stupid. she's a politician. she's supposed to look for compromise on issues, find a middle ground, see policy from all sides. that's like people who resent doctors for being know-it-alls; if you want someone ill-informed in charge of your health, go for it, but me, i'll go for the one who knows it all, thank you very much. i voted in nh for the lady who did right by the state of new york, who's never been found guilty in any of those bullshitty cattle futures/whitewater/whatever investigations, and who can truly get shit done. and if it comes to it, i'll vote for the skinny rookie dude who talks like a preacher, but when it takes him 2 years to get anything done and we've lost the house and the senate, expect an i told you so. but not you keith, because you'll already know. you're just that smart. i bet you could murder chris matthews and not get caught, sayin.]

long story short, happy valentine's day keith. we spent it as we do most evenings; sharing our shitty dinner, discussing the primaries, disliking le rove. i hope i make your best persons list, because when i'm with you, i'm truly closer to fine.

mini review round-up: michael clayton / kate nash "made of bricks" / blackberry 8830(?)

no images until further notice. my connection is slow, and my will is weak.

*michael clayton
in an effort to write something spoiler-free, i'll just say this; this movie hinges a great deal on a character who's bipolar, and i always have mixed feelings about movies that "use" mental illness because they tend to get it pretty wrong. the worst offenders are those movies with women characters who are total borderlines but we're supposed to believe they're actually just free spirits misunderstood by everyone but the one solid man who can save their broken, wayward she-souls (see: eternal sunshine of the meow meow meow, most of the mid-career movies of drew barrymore or angelina jolie, etc).

it's like when your dude friends tell you, "oh, i met this girl at a bar, she's totally fun and crazy, she danced on a stool like a ballerina and tried to eat a foosball with her eye and then blew me next to a deli atm while making a withdrawal at the same time and i think i'm in love," and you say, "sounds like she's actually crazy and probably dangerous," and dude calls you a boring old person until a week later when said girl has sent him to the hospital for stitches because he was looking the counter girl at pita grill in the eye and he's wondering why all women are so nuts when it's really just the women he likes who happen to actually be nuts.

long story short, writers often use crazy as a cheat that they can bend to do whatever the story demands, having a character do wacky things under the umbrella of bipolar disorder that are actually completely uncharacteristic of the disease. (or, to be slightly more cohesive to the thoughts above, to write off crazy altogether as just being "free spirited," because mental illness is just this mystery made up disease and it's time to quit stalling as you make your journey across the bridge away from xenu etc). so this character has a change of heart as he stops taking his meds, and maybe it's realistic, although it's more likely to me that a manic person'd try to fuck everyone in sight, write the great american novel, and eat the world's best pie instead of find his moral center, but whatever.

so for everyone else who doesn't share my pet peeve, enjoys 70's-y cop/justice movies, and wants to fuck george clooney or loves someone who does, then sure, see this movie. for those who are also wary of crazy on film, "michael clayton" won't really offend. and it won't make you not want to fuck george clooney.

*kate nash "made of bricks"
what is it with me and british music lately? i think it has to do with the fact that this past year has been all about driving and running (more like jogging, or really the "anchorman"-ian yogging, but whatever), two things i never did in nyc, and two things that require a very specific soundtrack. i can take the train listening to "black sheep boy," but can i push my fat ass up a mountain to it? not so much. i can barely stay awake in traffic to the album's second half. but i've listened to "our earthly pleasures" on the trail so many times i could time it to specific curves. and i don't care if kate nash is supposed to be lily allen lite, her record is a lot more fun and i think it's solely responsible for taking my speed from "embarrassing" to "arthritic."

emma's friend barbara hates this record because she thinks kate nash's lyrics are like director's commentary on her boring cute life, like, "i woke up this morning and ate an apple and took the subway and buildings are tall and i like boys la la la." and while those are not real lyrics, "and she was wearing a skirt and he thought she looked nice and yeah she didn't really care about anything else cuz she only wanted him to think that she looked nice and he did," are. but it all redeems itself with the chorus (and this is the same song, "birds"), when the he explains his feelings to the she, both of them being, from i can tell, the world's most adorable chavs; "yeah birds can fly so high and they can shit on your head, yeah they can almost fly into your eye and make you feel so scared, but when you look at them, and you see that they're beautiful, that's how i feel about you." some would puke. moi, even though this is a lower tempo number, i make with the moving of ass.

the more uptempo songs are obviously better movement material, but fun's fun, and fun's a motivator, and that i don't get from all that low tempo integrity shit that's domestically made. so viva kate nash and her stream of consciousness fake-cockney musings. here's to making the transition together from "arthritic" to "possible palsy."

*blackberry whatever
i got a fancypants phone/ass computer (that's the pocket it lives in, i'm not being dirty) because my contract made it cheap to get, and i only bring it up here because i wonder-- does anybody with a phone like this get a genuine ampersand? does anyone else care about the lack of ampersand? 'cause i think i care. the iphone probably has one since it has everything else but verizon it seems, and since no other carrier works in my state of residence (except us cellular, which only works in the woods, essentially) (which is why you've never heard of it), i'm stuck. and i'm forced to use a plus sign, which is ironic, given how negative i've been feeling lately. or really just unmotivated to do anything but sleep + yog. crazy!