If you’re in D.C. on this lovely Monday, happy snow day! At the very least, the federal government and my school got a snow delay, and I’ll take it. I woke up this morning around 7 a.m., looked outside, let out a “yippee!,” checked my email, and promptly fell back asleep. I’m impressed, actually…this is a legitimate snow storm. Normally when people are freaking out about snow here in the mid-Atlantic region, I get up on my high Colorado horse and am like “Pssh, you call this sprinkling a snowstorm? In Colorado we put on our swimsuits and call this summer!” (Which, of course, is a huge lie. Colorado is not the frigid tundra that some people think it is.)
Anyway, my morning classes and appointments are cancelled, so hooray! I’m quite happy to snuggle up in my apartment and watch entertaining YouTube videos like this one:
One time, in a real life professional job interview, I actually uttered the words, “List-making is my jam.” REALLY, MALLORY?! You’ll be shocked to hear that I did not get the job.
But list-making really IS my jam, and I probably wouldn’t be capable of getting anything done if not for my beloved lists. For all you haters out there who’ve ever made fun of my ridiculously detailed lists, or of my love for lists in general, know that I am not alone. Leave it to NPR to intelligently analyze my neuroses. In “10 Reasons Why We Love Making Lists,” Linton Weeks makes a list of ten reasons why we all love making lists. (So meta.) For instance:
6. Making lists can help make you famous. Notable list makers include Thomas Jefferson, Peter Mark Roget, Martha Stewart and Benjamin Franklin. “A methodical and wry man,” wrote Franklin biographer Walter Isaacson in Time magazine, “Franklin loved making lists. He made lists of rules for his tradesmen’s club, of synonyms for being drunk, of maxims for matrimonial happiness and of reasons to choose an older woman as a mistress. Most famously, as a young man, he made a list of personal virtues that he determined should define his life.
Though Mr. Weeks failed to mention this, lists are also great for keeping you busy when you’re really, really bored. Just ask my dear friend Amanda, who made lists of all of her high school teachers and all of the people she’d ever hooked up with while bored without a computer at her internship. (These lists, by the way, did not overlap). Maybe list-making should be EVERYONE’S jam.
Yesterday I ushered for a play at the newly renovated Ford’s Theatre (which, according to the website, creepily markets itself as the “House Where Lincoln Died”). The play was called “The Heavens Are Hung in Black,” and was about Lincoln’s life from around when his son Will died until the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. I did a great job as an usher, taking people to the wrong side of the balcony and acting as though I knew all sorts of cool facts about the Theatre. The best part of the experience, though, was that I realized that Abe Lincoln and I are soulmates. We’re basically the same person.
The evidence? He’s awkwardly tall and gangly. So I am. (I don’t have Marfan Syndrome but whatever.) He loves beards, and so do I. In the play, he makes a comment about falling asleep at the theater as I was falling asleep at the theater. He’s a bad dancer. I am too. He loves nightgowns; I’m wearing one right now. He cries a lot, and I totally cry like once a day.
The point is: I would have made a killer Mrs. Lincoln, and it’s simply too bad that Honest Abe and I weren’t around in the same century to have a passionate love affair and very, very tall children.
I haven’t posted in a few years, but tonight was a night of film for me, and I have some things to say:
1. Everyone — and I mean everyone — should find a way to see Mario’s Story. It is one of the most amazing documentaries I have ever seen, and Mario Rocha is indescribably inspiring. I had the great fortune of meeting him tonight and hearing him speak, and I have rarely been so impressed or touched by an individual’s story. Lest you think you’ve had it rough, think of Mario. Here’s the trailer for the documentary:
2. Kate Winslet and Sean Penn…both of you are FUCKING AMAZING.
3. I have been sobbing since around the time that Heath Ledger’s family accepted his award. That was like an hour ago. I think I believe in hormones now.
4. The children of Slumdog could win Oscars for sheer adorableness. New category, Academy?
Greetings, earthlings. After the most exciting Saturday night ever (I ate half a block of cheese, apple slices, 3 pickles, a piece of pizza, BBQ chips, and a bowl of chili. Don’t act like you’re not impressed.), I find myself slothing on the couch of fellow blogger Mal and dear friend Ms. Potter. Naturally, I have been catching up on all the interesting news that I missed whilst stuffing my face with high sodium foods. Here we go:
*Michael Phelps smoked a bong, oh my! AND THERE IS PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE! I’m not surprised. He swims fast but in his spare time, he likes to move slooooooooooow. Here’s the best quote from the story:
“He looked just as natural with a bong in his hands as he does swimming in the pool. He was the gold medal winner of bong hits. Michael ended up getting a little paranoid, though, because before too long he looked like he was nervous and ran out of the place.”
Haha. Five bucks the kid who said this quote was stoned out of his mind and giggled for hours after saying “the gold medal winner of bong hits”. Here’s the picture.
Whoopsies! But in all honesty, this guy takes six drug tests a day, I hardly think he’s a pothead.
*Lisa Loeb got mawwwwwwwied! She married Roey Hershkovitz, a teevee producer. You can read the cute NYT announcement here. Oddly enough, there’s no mention of her E! show, “#1 Single”, which chronicled her miserable dating life and her never-ending, desperate quest to get married. Funny they didn’t mention it. Eek. Here’s a video of her actual number one single, “Stay”. LOVE THAT SONG. It’s so 7th grade angsty. But congrats to LL and her man!
* If you watched the inauguration, you saw Aretha Franklin and her [insert adjective of choice] hat. Her hat is historic enough on its own, apparently, because the Smithsonian Museum has requested it.
“I am considering it. It would be hard to part with my chapeau since it was such a crowning moment in history,” says the Queen of Soul. “I would like to smile every time I look back at it and remember what a great moment it was in American and African-American history. Ten cheers for President Obama.”
And then she went on about being a natural woman and all that jazz. What do you think about her hat?
So no SERIOUS news, just things I find interesante (that’s Spanish for “interesting” FYI). I need to go eat sodium free foods. I’ll post more exciting things later, I promise. Happy Superbowl Sunday! GO CARDINALS! Honestly, I don’t care, but I’m rooting for them because running back Tim Hightower is a RICHMOND SPIDER.
HEBRON, Ind. — Police say a northern Indiana woman who wasn’t invited to her sister’s wedding reception showed up anyway and attacked the bride, pulling out clumps of her hair.
Twenty-three-year-old Annmarie Bricker of Valparaiso faces a misdemeanor battery charge for last Friday’s attack outside a Porter County home.
The Porter County Sheriff’s Department says a friend was hosting a reception for Nicholas Landry and Lori Kappes — Bricker’s sister — when Bricker attacked Kappes on the front porch.
Police say that after the attack, Kappes had smeared makeup and clumps of hair missing from her head but sought no medical treatment.
Bricker told police she arrived at the home to confront her sister and parents and “just wanted to talk” about family problems. She says she never touched her sister.
She “just wanted to talk”? HA! Liar, liar, pants on fire!
I sense a Lifetime movie script in the works. Toss in a stripper, a pregnancy, and we’ve got ourselves a nice little Sunday afternoon. Maybe Kate Hudson is available?
Remember that Iraqi reporter who threw his fancy footwear at the (former!) leader of the free world’s head? Ahh yes, Muntazer al-Zaidi! That silly prankster!
Now, as you could have gathered from my liberal bleeding heart wimpy sappy Obama obsessed blog, I wasn’t W’s biggest fan. But, to quote Austin Powers (and I will NEVER EVER quote it again, by the way. I promise.), “Who throws a shoe? Honestly?!”
To commemorate the Muntazernator’s horrible aim (or W.’s cat-like reflexes, which no doubt are a result of his frequent cat naps), the Iraqis in Sadaam Hussein’s hometown, Tikrit, have unveiled a six-foot statue of a shoe. Cool?
Now that is CLASSY. One and a half tons of pure class with a tree sticking out of it. Just in case you are dumb like me and can’t read Arabic, the inscription says “Muntazer: fasting until the sword breaks its fast with blood; silent until our mouths speak the truth.”
Ah, now that is poetry.
Muntazer, by the way, is in jail. He is facing charges of assaulting a visiting head of state.
And please note about the title of this post, I KNOW that you can’t hear a shoe around the world. I’m only making a nerdy historical reference to “the shot heard round the world”. It’s a line from a poem written by Emerson about the start of the Revolutionary War. WOOO LIBERAL ARTS!
Having been accused of only seeing things as a Democrat, I’d just like to announce that I transcended party lines today (take THAT, Mike.) and voted for a Republican. This was a very serious and thoughtful vote that I took, and I stand by my decision. I voted for Republican Congressman Aaron Schock as the hottest Congressional Freshman.
The choices?
Glenn Nye of Virginia, Aaron Schock of Illinois, Jim Himes of Connecticut, Tom Perriello of Virginia, and Jared Polis of Colorado. Nye has solid good looks, and Himes is pretty foxy. But Aaron Schock? RAWR. Very, very…pretty.
See?
And he’s only 27. True story, he’s the first member of Congress to be born in the 80s. Thanks, Huffpo, for the factoid.
I’m back. I’ve come back from an unsuccessful foray into the real world (read: no place to live or a job…but I might have found a place to live. But still no job. That should be interesting. That’s another post.) and I’m back to the la la land of blogging where I can do what I love and pretend I’m getting paid! (Barack, could we speed up that fixing the economy business? I know it’s not going to happen overnight…but I need it to get better so people want to hire me.)
So. Much. To. Talk. About. So we have a new president. AWESOME. (If you don’t want to read one more freaking word about inauguration then just skip to the next paragraph.) Yours truly was there in the throws of things. I got to spend some quality time with Jessica Alba and her husband, Cash Warren. Cash, by the way, was much nicer than she was and not nearly as much of a jerk as Perez Hilton makes him out to be. If I had taken a picture with Jessica, I would have posted it, but I was trying to keep my cool and pretend like I didn’t care that she was a celebrity. Maybe it worked but it was a HUGE mistake on my part, because now I have no actual evidence. Whatev. Barack’s speech was perfect. It was HOPEy, CHANGEy, alluded to our new style of diplomacy, and presented a strong national image and showed he was not going to mess around. RAWR. I made it to a couple balls, but never got to see B and Meesh dance. Wahhh. We arrived just as Biden did, so they wouldn’t let us in. They were going to let us in between Joe and Barack, but guess what. They didn’t. I stood in the cold for forty minutes waiting. You know what made it better though? Walking in and James Taylor was playing. Niiiiiiiiiice. Okay, that’s all I’m going to say about the great inaug. Nope it’s not. I would wear everything Michelle Obama wears. Foxy. Hell, I’d wear Sasha and Malia’s clothes too. Too cute. ENOUGH! ENOUGH.
Barack is going to sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act today. It will now be law that women deserve the same pay as men. I cannot believe it took this long. If you want to read the stories that prove we need this legislation, read this NYT op-ed. Hooray!
In other great news, PETA is still batty. I meant to blog about them wanting to change the word “fish” to “sea kittens” but I didn’t. So get over it. Hopefully, you know about that anyway. If you don’t, here’s the deal. Fish have feelings, etc. So when you eat fish, they want you to feel bad about it. Like REALLY REALLY bad. They think the best way to do this is to change the name of fish to sea kittens. I am not making that up. But that’s not even what I am talking about. PETA has a vegetable sex ad that got denied for a Superbowl slot. Vegetable sex. Yeah, I said it and yeah, I know you pervs want to watch it:
Wowie. Thank you, PETA, for grossing me out AND making me feel bad about myself at the same time. And I’d like to see their sources for their information. How do they KNOW that vegetarians have better sex?
Okay, I’m off to stalk le internets and find more goodness for you to enjoy while you work. And I do not work. Really, this is community service. Right, Mom and Dad?
six words to change the world. 