Carved us some pumpkins we did! Well I carved mine, Laurel took more of a supervisory role and outsourced the work to an Asian workforce. (She told Wade what to do). I think the results are awesome! But we did it a little early, so I don’t know if they’ll make it to Halloween night.
(I also admit that wade carved the little pumpkin too)
Later!
Oh Man! I was totally supposed to write about this the other day when it was fresh in my mind. It’s kind of hard to remember to do these things when there’s no encentives. I think I’ll just give a list of things I can remember about the event.
And now other thoughts…
The real cool thing about the event was just being around regular people that are trying to make an impact on the environment. I’ve been saying to Laurel that environmentalism needs a makeover. Hippies in veggie oil powered VW busses have been saying it for years and it isn’t working, they need a PR makeover. It needs to be cool! If you can get the rich yuppies to buy it then the rest will follow. Why do we want Mercedes and Designer Handbags? Because celebrities and rich people have them and we don’t (also they’re well made and cool looking).
So what’s my great idea really? Envy! That’s right Envy, the new tool of the environmentalist. I’m telling you this is the way to go. If you can get the people in McLean, Virginia to buy $30,000 golden Buddha yard art that also is a rain water collection cistern that will automatically water the yard without using the public water supply then later when they’re popular you can introduce lower price versions to the general public. I want to make the H3 of environmental systems. I want to trick people into living green.
Later!
I’ve been drinking tea more at the office. This is partly because I’ve gotten tired of paying 2 bucks for a cup of Starbucks and also because the coffee they make in the office tastes like they made it with pinto beans instead of coffee. Usually I have the regular Lipton tea (there’s a big box of it in the cabinet) but sometimes I find some other kind to try. Today I found a straggler, a single bag of Echinacea Tea that someone must have cleaned out of their desk. I’m no stranger to eating or drinking things that other people have discarded so I thought it would be OK.
At first smell I could tell that something was going to be different about this cup. It had a weird smell of pine or maybe mint. It could have been the mint I was eating… but I wasn’t sure. I let the bag soak for a few minutes to make sure I was getting the full experience. When I finally did drink the tea… it was weird. But not in weird enough for me to stop drinking it, plus I was really tired and needed something. It was like I dipped a mint/pine air freshner into the cup along with the teabag.
I was going to quit drinking it when it hit me. It wasn’t like when you finally wake up after a cup of coffee, it was this weird ‘out there’ feeling. I think it was my chakra opening up, or maybe my third eye, this is yogi tea after all. It was a really pleasant experience. It made drinking this awful liquid worth it. This might be because of the tea, but I did find it in a cabinet at work, so it might have been there for years absorbing all the spiritual energy from hundreds of disgruntled HUD workers.
3/5 Schus
Apparently I’m pretty bad about judging what celebrities my friends look like. I still think that in a certain light Laurel looks like Katherine Heigl(Who, judging by her google search, is the cover model for ‘Holding Your Own Boobs Magazine’) But I get it all the time, “you know who you look like?”. Well it’s time to put them to the test. Here are the comparisons that I’ve heard… good or bad
Thomas Jane – I think Crystal was the one who thought I looked like this guy. I think it’s a pretty good comparison, butt-chin (check), big nose (check). Plus he’s played Mickey Mantle and The Punisher, so you can’t go wrong there.
Carey Elwes – There was a bartender at Carlos O’Kelley’s that always told me I looked like Wesley from ‘The Princess Bride’. I kind of see it, especially in this photo. Not a bad life being the Dread Pirate Roberts, if you can get it.
Kid Rock – Some girl at the Vienna Starbucks told me I looked like Kid Rock. It was early on a Saturday Morning and I hadn’t had a haircut in about 5 months… and I was wearing a hat. I guess? But Laurel seems to think I should have taken it as an insult. What-ev
Will Ferrell – I forget who the person that told me this one was? But I don’t really see it. I actually think he looks more like my friend Peter? But I did grow a mustache a few years ago because I liked ‘Anchor Man’ so much.
Zack Braff – Laurel thinks this one is a lock. I think maybe if you leave out his nose. Much of my power comes from my big nose. It’s a proven fact. I can’t really find many other faults in this one. Maybe I do look like him.
Ben Roethlisberger – source-Little old lady at the 7-11. plus somebody else that I’ve forgotten. I do have the same stats as Big Ben, 6’5″ 135lbs, I’m sure he’s a little bit more in shape than I am… and I can’t throw a football to save my life.
I went to see the film “Across The Universe” on Saturday. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s the new musical by Julie Taymor, famous for bringing “The Lion King” to Broadway. I am not a professional critic by any means, some people have said that I like everything. But I’d say that I can find something to enjoy in every movie. This movie is good, great actually. But it does have it’s flaws.
First, it’s a little disconnected, it’s like they listened to the catalog of The Beatles songs and found every one that had a name in it, or any ones that were about events of the time and tried to hear a story in them when they were in a certain order. Which isn’t that crazy of an idea, apparently. Also they seem to leave the details up to the songs to fill in, the places in between musical numbers are a little flat. They’re just killing time with exposition while they wait for the music to start up again. In that sense it seems less like a full film than a sequence of music videos.
Secondly, I wasn’t a huge Beatles fan going into it, but I have to say that I have a new found interest in the music. The film uses modernized covers of the songs that I really liked (I got the soundtrack). Everyone always tells me what revolutionary music the Beatles were, but when I hear it on the radio I just think it sounds like every other 1960’s song that I’ve heard. (could be a problem with radio, not the beatles) The versions featured here do I good job of spicing up some of the more traditional songs. I think tonight I’ll do a bit more listening to the original versions too.
Even though the songs are great I think that they’re missing something without the visuals in the film. Not that they don’t stand up on their own, it’s just that they’re tied in my head to the awesome images that the director used. One scene has army recruits in their military issue boxer shorts struggling to carry a 30 foot statue of liberty across a miniature Vietnam while gunfire and explosions happen all around (all while either ‘Helter Skelter’ or ‘Come Together’ is playing, I can’t remember?) I would love for them to adapt this into a live broadway show, I would be there opening night… well maybe not opening night, I’m not rich.
4/5 Schus
