Oh Mark Wahlberg…

Since the fam has been out and about doing heavy physical activity in the freakishly warm MN weather, we decided to take it easy today – lunch and a movie.

After a few rounds of Yahtzee this morning, my parents took my brother and I to this place called Papa’s Restaurant and Deli in Minneapolis. My parents are originally from New Jersey and my dad grew up in Philly (we also all lived there for a year from 1988-1989), and Papa’s has a Philly cheesesteak that an outsider would think tasted like a legitimate cheesesteak from Philly. It was pretty good… but it wasn’t *quite* the real deal. But, it’s the closest I’ve had in years, so that counts for something.

When we lived in Philly, we had a cheesesteak place down our block. So good… Every now and again, the Bagel Street Deli at OU would have that same smell and remind me of when I lived in Philly. However, outside of Philly, I have only come across one place that had a Philly Cheesesteak that tastes like ones in Philly, and that was in Washington D.C. at the Capitol City Brewing Company.

Now, a lot of sit down restaurants have some version of a Philly Cheesesteak on the menu. For people who have never been to Philly/eaten a legitimate Philly Cheesesteak, do not be fooled. Go to Philly. Eat a cheesesteak. Trust me.

Also, this Papa’s place had Tastykakes. This is another Philly food memory… although I remember somewhere in Akron had them for a little while and it was a Christmas miracle. Tastykakes are appropriately named and just make me 🙂 because I link them to Philly, and my dad’s (late) parents.

After lunch, my parents took us to see The Other Guys (at my request). I knew my dad and brother would think it was funny, and I love Mark Wahlberg… 🙂

Mark Wahlberg is a great actor. Yep – GREAT. Forget the ridiculously good looks and rap career – the man can act. He was amazing in Boogie Nights and Three Kings. He killed it in I Heart Huckabees (my favorite performance he’s ever done) and was note perfect in The Departed (completely deserved his Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor). And I loved him in Invincible – what a great movie! In The Other Guys, Wahlberg was brilliant… I hope he gets offered more comedy parts because he is fully capable and believable in a comedic role. The way he delivers his lines like “Bob, this is not a good time!” and “I’m a peacock, you gotta let me fly!” is pretty much genius. Props to you, Wahlberg. I also thought his Inside the Actors Studio from a few years ago was really great. Very insightful.

The rest of the day was spent watching the rest of HP3, starting HP4, accidentally napping on my dad’s chair, and playing some more Yahtzee with my mom.

My 5th book came in the mail today, so when my brother leaves on Sunday and I finally get back to school work, I will be ready!

I’m tired, so I will end this… I think if the weather is okay tomorrow, we’re going to go out fishing on the Mississippi River. But for now, I want to read some more of my delightfully gruesome Dexter book 🙂

Have a good one!

PS – One of my favorite SNL sketches is here!!

 

Sunburned even though sunscreen was applied… fail!

I have a feeling I am going to be hurting like whoa tomorrow… after an entire day in the sun playing golf with the family for a really great fundraiser for Wilderness Inquiry, I am super sunburned (I used sunscreen… some sunburning was expected, but not as much as I am right now – blah).

My immediate family members are not golfers, except for my older sister who was actually not playing with us today because she’s in Kansas. However, my parents signed themselves and my brother and i up for this fundraiser for WI, an organization that my dad’s friend Greg runs. We were raising money today (by golfing) in order to get another Voyageur canoe built so that it can be used in WI programs to take people (including underprivileged urban youth) out canoeing and give them the opportunity to spend some time outside in nature. I was lucky enough to grow up in a household that encouraged and had the means to do outdoor recreation (canoeing, fishing, sports, hiking, etc…). But other kids don’t always have that opportunity… so WI is a great way to get kids/people involved!

It was fun golfing, though it was super hot/sunny outside and by the end of our 18 holes we were dragging hard core. I was not great at driving the ball off the tee at the start of each hole, but I was actually really good knocking it up the fairway on subsequent hits. I’m pretty good at putting too, but mostly using the 4-9s and whacking it up the green. My family was the worse foursome of the day… we putted a 93 and I think par for the course was 71. Oh well – we tried!

I didn’t do any thesis work because I was out all day with the family. I did get another book in the mail… turned out it was just an updated book of one I already had. Oh well…

My dog is feeling better!!!! Yukon’s ears were up today and she ate her breakfast this morning and was running as much as she normally does. Her tail was still between her legs, but she was panting and prancing about like her usual self. Her limp is mostly gone too!! I’m glad – I was worried about her yesterday.

I saw online that Jane Lynch is hosting SNL at some point this fall – excellent news! She’s so good on Glee and in the three Christopher Guest movies she’s done (in addition to her work in Role Models, The 40-Year Old Virgin, etc…). I love Jane Lynch – she is comedy gold 🙂

My brother and I watched half of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban tonight… that’s still my favorite HP movie. I hope the 7th one will be even better, but for right now, HP3 all the way!

Also, I saw that people have been searching for the SNL Cobras vs Panthers sketch on WordPress… please help me try and get this video on the NBC website. I started a Facebook Group, but hardly anyone has joined. Sadness! I guess I know who my friends/SNL fans are…

I am super tired, but want to read some more of my Dexter book before bed. It’s great to read the books after watching two seasons of the show because then I can hear Michael C. Hall’s voice as I read Dexter’s inner monologue. Awesome!! I can’t wait to watch Seasons 3 and 4 soon!!!

Have a good one 🙂

 

I = epic fail right now when it comes to school stuff…

So, once again I didn’t really work on anything related to my thesis proposal today. I did start reading a book that I got in the mail this week about early women filmmakers… so does that *maybe* count for doing any thesis proposal work? Probably not… Ergo, I = epic fail.

I think I am just scared of actually typing out anything involving my research for my thesis proposal because I’m afraid that my research isn’t good enough or thorough enough. Which, I’m sure is a completely ridiculous thought that I should not be having… but I am not uber confident in my paper writing skills (types the girl who just made it through an entire year of graduate journalism school where she wrote lots of little big papers). Writing is not my forte. I can write about movies, and I can write this blog, but the big scholarly papers are daunting. Though my vocabulary is pretty good, my paper is not going to be chock-full-of those big, academic-y, words that just confuse the bajesus out of readers. I am not going to write something that I wouldn’t understand, you know?

BLAH. My goal is to have this ridonkulous thesis proposal written by the end of August to defend in September. My brother is going to be in town all of next week, so I likely won’t make much headway on the paper… but I seem to do all right under pressure. So perhaps creating my own deadline and making my own time crunch will help me in the end. At the end of spring quarter I wrote 19 pages of my 20 page Ethics papers over a holiday weekend… perhaps I can do the same for my thesis proposal. Plus, my outline is details, my notes are pretty good, and I’m actually super interested in my thesis proposal topic whereas I was only “meh” interested in my Ethics paper topic…

What else, what else?

I rewatched Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog today – I love NPH 🙂

I played Yahtzee with my mom, and then later with both my mom and dad… I’m awesome at this game. Probably not something that’ll help me on my resume, but it’s a decent skill to have, at least in my family.

My mom and I also played 5 games of Ping-Pong… and she won every single game. However, my learning curve is like / and not \, so eventually I think I will be better than her. Plus, I can also play equally well with my left hand as I can with my right, so that’s an advantage.

Instead of thesis proposal stuff, I watched last night’s episode of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon because Billy Crudup was on (and I looooooooooooooove Billy Crudup – he’s one of my favorite American actors). Billy Crudup was in the first Broadway play I ever saw (The Pillowman) and I will remember that show forever. Even when I reread the play, I can hear the actors voices in my head and my eyes well up with tears during certain parts. It’s such a powerful show… I hope they *never* make it into a movie.

This evening we watched Tropic Thunder because my parents had never seen it before. As much as I am not a fan of Ben Stiller or Tom Cruise, I still like this movie thanks to Robert Downey Jr. He’s soooooo good as Kirk Lazarus 🙂 He’s also good in the Cobra vs Panthers SNL sketch that I’d like to see put up on the NBC/SNL website…

I also started rewatching Waiting for Guffman. I love Christopher Guest’s movies – Guffman is my second favorite, after A Mighty Wind. (*Note – how friggin’ adorable/awesome is John Michael Higgins in this movie?!)

Right now I’m waiting for the James Franco SNL rerun to start (20 more minutes…). I love James Franco – he was solid both times he hosted SNL. He’s great in dramas (Milk), but I loved him in Pineapple Express!

We also have a Tornado Watch until 1:00 AM. Those who know me best know that I am super afraid of tornados even though I have never been in one. But I have nightmares about them all the time 😦 Here’s hoping we don’t get one!

Some SNL and then sleep… I’m gonna take part in some clean-up effort in my dad’s Park tomorrow, so I needs my sleep!

(*NOTE* I will link out to stuff tomorrow… no time right now to find the kind of clips I like to share 🙂 )

 

Yahtzee, soon to be failed social experiments and serial killers – woot

My mom caught the black lung from my sister…

Okay, so it’s not really the black lung, but my sister had this epically horrible cough before/throughout their entire road trip and now my mom is coughing something awful. We call it the black lung though that is false. But still, I feel bad that my mom isn’t feeling well. Well, she says she feels fine, but we keep telling her to take it easy before she goes gung-ho into doing house chores and whatnot. My mom can’t sit still… I love her, but she needs to get better before she takes on a full work load.

Since my mom was ailing today, it was basically a day full of Yahtzee and Netflix.

After watching a few woodworking shows on PBS, I finished an episode of Dexter that I started last night. Then we began Yahtzee … over the course of the day, I’m sure my mom and I played probably 20 rounds. Not all at once, mind you, but throughout the day…

During this first chunk of Yahtzee time, I tried to explain to my mom about the upcoming Avengers movie. See, I was wearing my Marvel comic t-shirt again… the one that has a bunch of characters on it. And I was pointing out the people who I knew were going to be in the Avengers movie and what their backstories are. Now, I don’t read comic books, but I have seen enough comic book movies and read up a bit about the characters in the Avengers movie to know a bit about them or at least who was playing them. Then, unrelated to the Avengers movie, I was telling her about the Green Hornet and Green Lantern movies. A fan of Seth Rogen and Ryan Reynolds, I will see both movies…

I was never into comic books, but somehow comic book characters and super heroes have always been a part of my life. There are plenty of pictures of me wearing Batman, Robin, or Super Man pajamas when I was a little girl. I totally have Batman, The Incredible Hulk, Super Man, and my Marvel characters shirts. Even now as I’m typing this, I have my Batman Buddy next to me (Iron Man Buddy has been temporarily retired to the chair across the room – I just found that a thread on his foot came unraveled and I don’t want the stuffing to come out. He’ll be fine… he’s chillaxin’ with Yoda Buddy…). I guess I just like a little bit of the fantastic every now and again.

Anyway…

Besides Yahtzee this morning, I brought the rest of my stuff that my parents brought with them from Kansas in from the garage. My room is a hot mess, but I will work on rearranging some more stuff soon. I did unpack my faux roses which make me smile. I’m not awesome at keeping real plants alive (though I haven’t killed any of my mom and dad’s plants yet!), but I do love having flowers around. So, my blue and pink roses are pretty perfect in my situation… plus who doesn’t love roses?

During lunch, we watched the SNL Best of Dana Carvey. I hadn’t seen some of the sketches, so I really enjoyed seeing Massive Head Wound Harry 🙂 After lunch, I went to my room to watch last night’s episode of Jimmy Fallon since Paul Rudd was on. I love Paul Rudd and his ridiculous shorts suit. After that, I did some banking and car insurance stuff and then decided to start a social experiment on Facebook.

See, one of my favorite SNL sketches of all time – Cobras vs. Panthers – is not available to watch anywhere online. It used to be on youtube, but was taken down due to copyright issues. So, I started a group to see if we could somehow get enough people in the group to show support of getting this video clip on the NBC/SNL website. If a Facebook group could get Betty White to host the show, surely a group could get a video clip online, right?

This is also a social experiment to see how few of my hundreds of Facebook friends would join the group and spread the word… I know it’s not an awesome cause or anything, but it really shows who is willing to click “join” and who is not. Not to say that this will show me who my real friends are or anything, but I know I’m not important in the grand scheme of things. But I sincerely would like that video on the website, so this isn’t all in vain. If we can’t watch it on youtube, then please provide us a copyrighted way to watch it legally.

After my feeble attempts to start a movement, I went back upstairs to play some more Yahtzee with my mom. Part way through the match, I asked her when she was free to go see Rock of Ages with me… and then I bought our tickets! It’s amazing… there was over $30 in fees for two tickets that were only $25.50 apiece. WTF, Ticketmaster?!

Anyway, my mom and I are seeing Rock of Ages – I can’t wait to see Constantine Maroulis on stage!!!!!! I’m already giggling like a school girl – this is going to be epic 🙂

I got a phone call from my brother, then my mom got a call from my sister… ah, siblings.

I let the dogs out and then cleaned up the front yard a bit so my parents wouldn’t have to. My mom and I played some more Yahtzee throughout dinner (we use two sets of dice so I don’t have to touch her germy ones… and we have Purell in the kitchen and living room. No black lung for me… yet). We added a sixth dice apiece and took the best five out of six after the final roll. It didn’t change the game much, so I don’t think we’ll be doing that again.

We called it quits and watched some Bones (Season 3 Episode 1) and then a couple episodes of Dexter. I think my mom is hooked now! She keeps saying that Dexter (the character) is creepy and weird. I completely dig that – Michael C. Hall, you are brilliant. (And did you know he was on Broadway? … Love it!)

I have no idea what’s going on tomorrow. I should probably work on school work as it’s August and that means there is about a month and change before OU’s fall quarter starts! I still need to contact my advisor to see if I need to be registered for the quarter in which I plan on defending my thesis proposal (which I haven’t written yet…). Oy vay

 

Trying to get SNL Cobras vs. Panthers video clip onto the NBC website – please help!!!

So, I’m trying a little social experiment to see if I can use Facebook to get the SNL Cobras vs. Panthers video clip onto the NBC website. The clip used to be available on youtube but was taken down for copyright reasons. If we can’t watch the clip on youtube, then surely NBC can put it up on their website, right?

Please join my new Facebook group to help my entertainment-based cause 🙂

Edit 6/8/11 – So, the original post for this was AGES ago… and by now, you can actually see this clip on Netflix instants stream during the episode that this is from. I’m gonna delete I deleted that facebook group I started (if I can figure out how to do that), because, like, no one joined anyway (well, 39 people did… so thank you to those people who supported my cause). Experiment = failure (and success) at the same time.