Sex and the City

SPOILER ALERT I'M NOT KIDDING I'VE BEEN DRINKING VODKA AND LEMONADE THROUGHOUT THE MOVIE WHICH IS A LONG MOVIE SO THIS IS A REAL SPOILER, NOT THAT YOU COULDN'T SEE IT FROM THE PREVIEWS

I just came from watching Sex & the City the Movie, and while for the most part it was awesome, I HATED that Carrie ended up with Big in the end. Here is a man (fictional, I know, but whatevs) who runs away from his wedding to Carrie because he has some kind of metaphysical crisis about whether the whole marriage thing is really about their relationship or about the wedding, and this is not a 20-year old boy but a 50 something year old man who has been married twice before, and this is not soon after they have met but after they've been together 10 years, and the message she needs to learn is not that he is an overgrown manchild asshole who will never relate to her in an honest way, like her friends do, but that she can game him into marrying her if only she plays it cool and doesn't invite too many people to the wedding? And is not too excited about the wedding dress? WTF, dude, WTF.

90% of the movie is about the friendships among the women, and is awesome, because that is the real fairy-tale part of the whole series--the idea that you will always have lunch with your girlfriends--work, geography, children, and everything be damned. So the Happy Ending, the idea that Carrie has to end up with Big just because he has always been The Hard To Get One is Just.Stupid. and not necessary to the plot.

You should totally see the movie anyway, though. If one of my friends' hearts is (godforbid) broken it is my fondest hope that we will all be able to accompany her on a healing, margarita-filled trip to Mexico. Please to take notes, people.

Starbucks ignorance

I have been a terrible blogger, so I will ease back into the habit with a poorly-developed thought:  is it possible that my deliberate ignorance about how to order at Starbucks is actually obnoxious?  I have long found it bizarre that people will order a "Venti skinny vanilla nonfat mocha latte, no water, extra foam" or something, all at once like it's one word they learned at Starbucks indoctrination camp.  So, in what I have I think subconsciously considered an effort to show I am not a Starbucks cyborg, I tend to say "Tea," and then they ask, "What size?" and I say "Medium," and they say "What kind?" and I say "Green."  But I realized the other day that this is just a PIA for the person who has to ask me all those questions, and I am probably smart enough to figure out what all the appropriate words are and say them at the same time. 

Diet Coke breakup haiku

I went to the dentist for a second opinion after my the last guy used an alleged "tooth-density measurer" (bearing a suspicious resemblance to the buzzing mechanism you use when playing Operation) to tell me I needed seven (7!) fillings.

Well, the new guy said I need seven (7) fillings. He looked at my X-rays (whose old-school technology I trust) and said, "You drink a lot of soda. It's rotting your teeth. You have to stop."

Yes, I drink a lot of soda. OK, Mr. Confident-Sounding Dentist, I will stop. But not without lamenting my loss with haiku:

Caffeinated fizz
Perfect bagel companion
Light of my morning

O Carbonation,
Why must you be acidic
And thus rot my teeth?

First candy, now this
I will not give up TV
So don't even ask

Unsweetened iced tea,
Maybe you could fill the void
Left by Diet Coke

Who am I kidding
Nothing compares to D.C.
Adieu, sweet beverage

Iron Man is too relevant to be escapist

I found Iron Man really uncomfortable to watch, despite Robert Downey Jr., not because of the standard preposterous superhero-movie ridiculousness, but because of the war. Parts of the movie are set in Afghanistan, and it perfectly captured the American-movie portrayal of war, which, I think, means it also perfectly captured the American understanding of actual war.

Meaning: you can identify the bad guys because they are always glowering with narrowed eyes and half-shadowed faces, or else yelling angrily in foreign languages, and they have darker skin than the not-bad-guy foreigners.

Also: if the bad guys are in possession of a boatload of American-made weapons, it's not because the United States supplied them arms in the '80s when we considered them "freedom fighters"; instead it means that [SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT] some other bad guy sold them to them in a super-nefarious scheme whose revelation will be a shock, shock! to our hero, because even when he was just a soulless playboy millionaire weapons dealer he certainly never sold weapons to bad guys, because he loved his country.

And: if the bad guys are attacking innocent civilians in a village somewhere, it is all over the American news because this happens so rarely, and our hero will set it right.

And of course: our hero will be able to set it right because of advanced American military technology, which allows him to identify and take out the bad guys with pinpoint accuracy while leaving the innocent civilians unharmed and grateful.

I didn't even have enough energy leftover to get indignant about Gwyneth Paltrow being Robert Downey Jr.'s lovelorn, chaste, not-a-hottie-until-she-takes-her-hair-out-of-the-bun assistant. Sigh.