Five random things

Ooh ooh, Andrea tagged me to tell 5 random things about myself! I don't really understand what this "tagging" is, but she said she was doing it, and since I am flattered to be included and like to talk about myself, I accept the tagging with gusto.

1. I am currently re-reading the extant Harry Potter books in anticipation of the last one coming out on July 21, and I am totally obsessed, to the point that I am doing things like reading while in the bathroom at work and while I walk to and from the bus, thus causing myself to trip a lot. The experience is making me feel like I'm back in elementary school, when I was always wandering around thinking about Narnia or Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory or Sweet Valley Junior High instead of, say, participating in elementary school. Now I wonder: was this really a mechanism to cope with the ennui of elementary school, as I always assumed, or was it just a natural reaction to reading really engrossing children's books?

2. Probably the reason I wanted to move to DC, both after college and after law school, was that I really liked DC as a kid. In particular, I liked the high ceilings in Union Station and the waterfront and cobblestone-street areas of Georgetown. Now I rarely go to those places. But I still like DC.

3. I am allergic to penecillin, cephlosporin, dairy, pollen, probably cats, and possibly alcohol, but not to poison ivy.

4. During a couple of summers, growing up, I did farm work--detasseling corn, to be precise. However, I feel like I am basically lying when I say that, because (1) I did it purely because I thought it was kind of cool, not out of any need for money, (2) I did it for probably less than a week each summer--it was the kind of thing where you just showed up at the park at 6 a.m. if you wanted to go, and I got tired of it quite rapidly and just quit going, and (3) I was very, very bad at detasseling corn; I definitely caused many, many corn plants to be pollinated by the wrong kind of corn (resulting in bad-seed bastard corn plants!) because I missed a tassel, or ripped it in half instead of pulling it out. So I was really engaged more in "walking through the rows of corn for minimum wage" than in "detasseling corn."

5. In 6th grade I got knocked out of the spelling bee on the first round, which crushed my fragile, obnoxious I'm-the-smartest-kid-in-the-room spirit, and the word I misspelled was "lawyer." (I spelled it "lawer.") Now I am a lawyer. I wonder if that is ironic, but I am not sure because I have been very unsure about the meaning of "irony" since seeing Reality Bites and realizing I could not define it, and thus being unsure whether I do, in fact, know it when I see it.

That was weirdly challenging. I tag Blonde Justice, Mr. 14 Empty Mountain Dew Cans, Laurie "Kitchen Cabinet" Barber, and Jake Mohan. (M, I'd tag you, but Andrea already did it, and I don't know what ill effects might result from double-tagging.)

My Dog Day

For one day last week we had a dog. I came home from work and there she was on the porch, a little hot dog with big eyes and floppy ears, hiding behind a chair. She had me at "I'm a tiny, furry, scared creature who doesn't bark or drool much, and look, I will climb right up into your lap."

The next day we found her owners. I know it was a good thing--the dog's decision to pee in our office while we were at work was a testament to how poorly equipped we are to handle an animal that doesn't go in a litter box, and also our cats would have killed themselves if we'd kept her--but still, as we sat there waiting for owners to come get her, I felt like a pitiful teenaged girl waiting to give up her baby for adoption, and wondering if it was too late to flee the hospital with the kid if the adoptive parents turned out to be meanies.

They were not meanies--in fact, the woman was British, which, what is more reassuring than that?, and they gave us a bottle of champagne which, for all I know, is fancy. I'm sure Maddy (that's her name, it turns out, short for Madison) is better off with them, but still, sigh. A haiku seems in order:

Daschund Madison
My favorite living hot dog
Vist any time!

Paris and the hoosgaw, and George Clooney and organic food

I am not yet sure what I think about the Paris Hilton kerfluffle, but there's no reason that should stop me from blogging about it, right? Here are my possibly internally inconsistent thoughts.

1. If Paris was let out of jail because of some serious medical condition, I am Monica Goodling. (Hint: I'm not.) Dudes get all kinds of hideous diseases and go entirely batshit crazy in jail all the time, and nobody lets them out.

2. At the same time, I did feel kind of sorry for Paris, what with all the crying and looking hideous--nobody wants pictures of that to be plastered all over the Internets.

3. On the other hand, maybe she DOES want pictures of herself bawling all over the internets. It would have been a lot less publicity-garnering to just serve her time rather than paying off the sheriff or whatever she did to try to get out. Also, presumably she could have suppressed the urge to scream and such. Unless she really is flipping out. Who can tell?

Those are my deep thoughts for today.

Other than: I really want to see Ocean's 13. I lurve me some George Clooney. Brad Pitt, I could kind of take or leave--if you look at hime closely, he has a weirdly huge head, and is not really aging well, whereas George is like a hotter Humphrey Bogart and will only get better with wrinkles.

I feel slightly guilty that I much more likely to go see huge blockbustery movies when they first open than I am to see small movies ever (i.e.: I saw Spider-Man 3 and Knocked Up on opening day, but still have not seen The Namesake, Waitress, or even Hot Fuzz). But what are you gonna do--I like the opening-day excitement. It's kind of like how I just read The Omnivoire's Dilemma and know that we should do more shopping at the farmer's market so as to not contribute to the doomedness of the world, but we're having a BBQ this weekend and will probably do most of our shopping at CostCo. Kind of like, I suppose, how I should be following the immigration bill or some such like today, but instead am updating Google News every 5 minutes for info about Paris. As my brother often used to say, quoting, I believe, Bart Simpson: You ask me, I blame society.

From the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue's Lips to God's Ears

Realizing that here it is June and I have not yet received my "state"* tax refund from the D.C. Tax Man, I called said Man's Customer Service Number to ask where it is.  The Man's helpful Customer Service Agent told me I should get it in 5-7 days, and I asked why it had taken so long. 

He said:  "It looks like the computer just went crazy, ma'am." 

I love me some D.C. Tax Man. 


*The whole crappy "All The Taxes, None of the Congressional Representation" thing continues apace.

I Heart Leslie Mann

I saw Knocked Up on Friday, and as the reviews say, it's spectacular, nay, miraculous. In the course of telling the story of how Katherine Heigl got drunk, put on beer-goggles, did the deed with Seth Rogen, got preggers, decided to have the baby, made it work with said schlubby babydaddy, and gave birth in an extremely realistic, terrifying, and very touching scene, it will make you laugh, cry, wish you were a stoner geek, wish you were a beautiful Type-A television personality, plan to have a baby as soon as possible, swear off sex forever, decide Seth Rogen is the beautiful love child of Will Ferrell and Tina Fey, and respect Ryan Seacrest.

But mostly it gave me a new love: Leslie Mann. She plays Katherine Heigl's unhappily married sister, and she is a revelation. (The picture at left is from The 40 Year Old Virgin, wherein she also stole scenes as the drunk girl who puked on Steve Carrell). She's beautiful in that blond, small, delicate-featured, fake-looking way, like Holly Madison, Hugh Hefner's main girlfriend (who is also bizarrely fascinating in that she's fairly smart and the whole thing seems beneath her, but she seems to really believe she's in love with Hugh, not that I watch Girls Next Door or whatever, you know, I hear things), and has a teeny little high-pitched girl voice like Joey Lauren Adam's, but she's as funny as Julianne Moore in Big Lebowski and Sarah Silverman in whatever rolled into one. The hilarity is slaps you in the face even more pleasingly coming from such a Barbie-looking person.

Possibly the best scene in the movie is when Leslie and a very pregnant Katherine Heigl get shot down by the cute-girl-assessing bouncer at a club, and Leslie unleashes a long, profane tirade at him which she then winds down into "Doorman. DOORMAN!! Doorman. Doorman! DOORMAN! doorman." The bouncer takes her aside and tells her it's all true, that he can't stand the stress of judging people based on their looks, and that the reason he can't her in is because she's old as shit,* but even so she's totally fine and he would tap that ass if he could. As he pays her this thoroughly obscene compliment, her face relaxes into a look of pure, beatific joy, and I want to pee my pants.

The fact that Leslie is the wife of director Judd Apatow and that their two kids are also in the movie, and are also hilarious, is about enough to turn my actress crush into a full-blown stalkerfest for the whole family. (There they are, minus the littler girl, who they presumably left at home because they are also responsible like Mother Theresa and observe bedtimes.) Holy God, how can they muster the energy to dress themselves, given how much time they must spend rolling on the floor, quaking with laughter at each others' uproariousness, and/or gazing into a mirror and drooling over their unparalleled cuteness?


*IMDB says she's five years older than me, so if she's old as shit, I'm at least old as a fart. But if that means I can be more like Leslie Mann, I'm OK with it.