in an alternative universe, born in the first world

I Will Possess Your Heart by Death Cab for Cutie. Album: Narrow Stairs (2008)

A waif wandering the globe restlessly, eyes wide, haunted & taking in everything, face framed by arty bangs swept aside casually way to many times, hair tousled enough to be eccentric, and a rock band of of nerds serenading me with similes about "a book elegantly bound" from a giant meat freezer: this succinctly portrays my fantasy life.

As a matter of fact this may unwittingly be my life right now.

Add butt-loads of crap, errands for ice water & pain meds, constant assignments by married coworkers to CMV and almost every isolation case--for no other reason than I'm single & therefore (by their implication) have not much at stake--and the burning varicose veins, life unfolds like Urban Outfitter vignettes elegantly bound, love.

Killing Time Until The Season Premiere of Mad Men

House of Cards by Radiohead. Album: In Rainbows (2007)

Sorry fellas but Camden, NJ is just a tad too far from my side of the East Coast for one grrl to drive alone to. The area around Tweeter according to my Googling sure ain't no Columbia, MD. Please consider stopping by the BW area next time or maybe if you decide to extend your north American leg.

out-culture vulture

Click on title to know why then read on.

Well bless my bulgur and call me UNDRA queen. This third world progeny is hoisting the overtaking dirty finger at the New York literati for being slow to have caught on the show that is her "Freudian death wish," as Pete Campbell would put it. I may just be getting as cocky as the show's period chauvinists. My sister, Melissa, & I have dissected the disturbing deja vu Mad Men can incite from our sibling psyches despite that we have not really known that we both are obsessed with it until we get to reunite and catch up in my Vegas hotel room (yes, my life is never tawdry) which was kinda apropos (had to use the word. Hah! Take that Dan Kois and Lane Brown). Like Andy Garcia in the baby carriage-down-the-train-station-steps in the Untouchables she shoots, "Doesn't it remind you of old BISCOM?" I still have to turn our eldest sib, who has a namesake in the show btw, into a convert. Give in to the pomade, girdles and claustrophobia, sistah! As I am a Miranda (according to a Facebook app) in the SATC universe, I definitely am a Peggy (complete with irrational attraction to brainy, irascible jerks in the workplace) in this alternate thread.

The series plods but not in a bad critique kind of way but much like the eerie, poignant strains of an impending (symbolic?) suicide permeated by the music of the opening credits. We just sit back and watch the countdown of lives imploding in an era at the cusp of radical change. We tsk-tsk at the archaic standards of couthness and perceptions as much as we inwardly wish ourselves back into that world.

Personally, the lead character, Don Draper, is both the tip of this iceberg and the cherry on top. Jon Hamm is hot damn! I have not even bothered to mull on his Golden Globe-winning, Emmy-nominated performance. His Draper though is an antithesis but somehow reminds me of my father as I've seen him as a girl growing up. It's the immaculately combed hair, the white t-shirts, perspiring over a playhouse on a hot day, a hand laying on his sleeping daughter's forehead as he piles on the blankets after coming late from work and the scent of pomade, after-shave & nicotine that came with the strong, implacable air that both lead, awed and cowered lesser men. Ala FPJ.

Anyways, back to the middle finger. Even New York Times & Vanity Fair are in the bandwagon that dollies through the office of Sterling Cooper. Hmmm? So can you blame my cockiness? Perhaps I am just the product of my roots? As the saying goes, "Guina pala kag guina piko ang kwarta!"  and of course the immortal, "Indi kami tikalon!" To the literati, go figure that out.

Click here for Season Two teaser.

P.S. Thank you J. Harvey, you lovable, snarky Boston bear and the old Socialite Life site.

this made me cry first thing in the morning while watching the today show and damn you david gregory you prematurely grey giant

This picture is from the UK Daily Mail article. Click on title or link for the YouTube clip (please feel welcome to mute out Whitney) that got featured in Today, made Meridith cry & Gregory ruin the moment. Nevertheless, my diggings about Christian drew out memories as a little girl watching this movie in our Paglaum living room about lion cubs which might have been Born Free. Fuckin' traumatized me. Like that Dumbo movie when they were all mean to Dumbo and locked away his mom who was just being protective and in Aristocats with the kittens & that conniving butler. Bastards. I didn't get to watch Bambi until I was probably over 18 for a reason. Those Wonderful World of Disney specials with the movie clips gave me a spoiler heads up, thank God.

"And here we go..."

Click on link for The Dark Knight's box-office news.

This pretty much encapsulates why I wanted to kick myself for not booking at Fandango for the midnight screenings in advance specially in the face of "artsy" Starbucks-cashier-girl-taking-my-latte-order gloating through her piercings that she had hers a week before. TEN THEATERS at the AMC Lowes ALL SOLD OUT. I thought my blue state suburban corner in the East Coast would be immune to an albeit foreseen phenomenon rampaging the major cities of this country. Damn it.

Anyway, I did get to watch it at 10AM. Bright & early (for me). Front & center. Close enough to count Ledger's pores. Enough to get slobbered by his Joker as he licked his gashed maw and even taste the salt & metal of sweat and blood from a wound that never scabbed over. To get totaled by an exploding truck in trajectory. To snigger at nurse Joker sharing a hairstyle curl for curl & the exact shade of red with someone I work with. Enough to feel the loss of him rubbed into the psyche.

I need to sleep. Maybe I can think up a better written review. 

And fuck you Dr. Zahiri. (Totally unrelated, btw). 

CONSIDER MY ASS LOCKED INTO THAT THEATRE SEAT

I am having one major geek-out right now right now after happening upon this clip during my somewhat pointless wanderings into Perez Hilton but WTF. The sound is atrocious. The video quality is shotgun. But 10 seconds into this 5-minute clip of the opening scene of Dark Knight I have found myself trying to stop the spontaneous drool from spilling out of my awestruck maw onto my long-suffering Mac's keyboard while declaring, "Oh my God, I so have got to see this movie!!!!"

Heath Ledger is officially a deity and with SO MUCH LOVE, as the Joker, is one crazy motherfucker. My heart aches. My soul cries. Hope you're happy surfing heaven's Bondi, mate!

Click on link to movie website. Now, lemme go to Fandango. Or maybe I can harass the nice people at the Maryland Science Center if they're showing this on IMAX.