Is it just me or has St. Patrick’s Day become a month-long affair? I’m not complaining, it just means more Guiness to drink and music to jig to, but it’s kind of like when your 2nd grade teacher decorates the entire classroom and wants to milk it before putting up “spring” a.k.a. Easter decorations.

Except now it seems to be the result of post-college kids with no spring break to go on* with lots of pent-up energy and unspoilt livers.

Last week was the Irish Walk and tomorrow’s Shamrockfest. And it’s still a week ’til the actual day of corned beef and roasted potatoes.

And sticking with the green theme, TWO WEEKS ‘TIL TMNT!

*I know far too many people taking spring break trips anyway to not include this asterisk

Now when you lose your phone, you don’t have to lose all your contacts.  Verizon was originally charging $2 a month for this service, but now as long as you have an online account with them they’ll waive the fee (make sure to check your next bill).

I don’t know if this is old news or not, because I haven’t paid my cellphone bill in three months.  Ouch…too many texts…

The most annoying-when-she-wants-to-be character on The Office, now that Andy’s gone, has got to be Kelly.  She’s also my sister-in-law’s favorite character.  And guess what?  She has a blog.  It’s actually pretty funny, and its superficiality is right there in the title for you:

Things I’ve Bought that I Love 

Reasons she doesn’t like using Macs:

And I don’t understand all the millions of icons on my desktop. There is literally an icon of two faces smiling at me and I have no fucking idea what it does. I clicked on something last week and all of a sudden i was like creating and making a home movie or some shit like that.

Rules for buying clothes at thrift stores:

Holes are okay. Underpaid tailors in drycleaners can sew/hem/adjust anything for ten bucks. It’s worth it. However, if something has a wee moth bite and you think you can sew it up and have yourself some nice cashmere on the cheap, you are wrong. Dead wrong. Microscopic beasties are living in that hole and they will have babies on all of your other clothes which will soon have holes as well. Also, steer clear of stains in the crotch area. Other stains are on a case-by-case basis (i.e. can you use bleach? Does it look like somebody died? What kind of death?). A musty odor is not necessarily a bad thing. It just needs a little hot wash and Febreeze. BO on the other hand, may never go away completely. But if the item is awesome, buy it anyway. We’re all human. Smells keep us real.

Pan’s Labyrinth

Heard good things and going to see this tonight…looks incredible.

New goal: Pack every weekend with as many fun things as this one somehow came up with.

Thurs. night – Man-date to Pan’s Labirynth

Fri. night – Dan’s Cafe w/ listserv

Saturday – U St. graphic design gallery

Saturday night – “camping” in Boonsboro

Sunday – museums with CK & Co.

Sunday night – Patriots v. Colts

The Pipettes – Pull Shapes

Catchiest song of all time?

ps3 vs wii

I saw this last week and it was amazing. The director, Alfonso Cuaron, is the guy who did Y Tu Mama Tambien (the first movie with subtitles I really liked) and Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban (the first really good Harry Potter movie).

Slate calls it the movie of the millennium, because…it’s about our millennium:

Though it’s set in the London of 2027, Cuarón’s film isn’t some high-tech, futuristic fantasy. It takes place in a grimly familiar location: the hell we are currently making for ourselves.

The scariest thing about the movie was its plausibility. That, and the amazing camera angles and scenes shot like the cinematic clips interspersed throughout video games (specifically Half Life 2) that completely reset your expectations of how action flows:

The sound and production design lay the groundwork for a convincing dystopia, but it’s Cuarón’s daring, fluid camera that brings this terrible world to life.

But it’s emotionally powerful too. We take for granted the hope for the future that children provide, especially when you’re not around them for months on end, but this film reminds us how important they are to our nature. There’s one scene where raw humanity momentarily overcomes the din of battle that will stir anyone alive. I agree that Christmas day was an appropriate release date:

Children of Men is a modern-day nativity story that’s far more moving and even, in its way, reverent than the current film by that name.

This is definitely one of those movies that leaves you wanting an epilogue, and maybe also a prequel and sequel, but while Cuaron creates such rich worlds he also respects the audience enough to leave things open-ended.

I clearly can’t write movie reviews, so go see it.

Oh, and bonus points for using one of the most tragically beautiful songs I have ever heard, Sigur Ros’ Hoppipolla, in the trailer:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=cwsgkurfCjE

It’s a Festivus miracle!