The Devil Wears Pin-Striped Suits

Note to self: after working all weekend in a haze of work-related angst, do not try to unwind by watching The Devil Wears Prada. From that perspective, instead of being about pretty clothes and a hilarious/terrifying performance by Meryl Streep, it is an hour and a half of awful messages about work/life balance, such as: You must choose between being good at your job and having outside relationships. If you are really dedicated to being successful and impressive at work, you will always wear highly fashionable, very expensive clothes, and also will not eat very much so you can fit into them. You can quit your job, but only once you have proven to your asshole boss that you are awesome at it and that you are quitting because you are too good for it, not just because you want to live a reasonable life outside of work. Wahh.

Post Hunt VICTORY! (Atonement for Peeps Diorama travesty)

MY TEAM WON THE POST HUNT!* Mr. TA and I only decided to participate in this scavenger hunt/brainteaser game last night. I thought I would be useless because I'm crappy at crosswords. But the stars aligned, (and one of our team members had done a similar puzzle race in Miami 6 or 7 times), and we came in first! I even contributed on several of the legs (by knowing that you can send a text message to a 5-digit number, and noticing that R2D2 and C3PO are map coordinates.)

This is now my third major life victory, following the Care Bears coloring contest in 2nd grade (prize: a large Pizza Hut pizza), and the quasi-militaristic drill competition at dance team camp (prize: a ribbon, and Tiger Paws glory). The award here was definitely better ($2000 split six ways!), and it was also probably the only time I will be photographed with one of those huge checks. Yayyyy!! I now officially forgive the Washington Post for the miscarriage of justice that was the Peeps Diorama contest.

*This news is much too awesome to worry about destroying what remains of my moth-eaten fake anonymity.

I am happy to buy you a going-away beer at a non-glittery DC location, Justice Souter

I am happy for Justice Souter that he's retiring so he can go hiking.  I would not mind doing that myself.  But why must the articles about him always say how he dislikes DC's "glittery social scene" as though it's self-evident that that is what DC is all about?  It is certainly possible to live here without constantly going to cocktail parties, appearing on Sunday talk shows, and schmoozing with elected officials.  For example, I have managed to avoid all those things for the last 6 years without even trying very hard.  (Without trying at all.)  (If anybody wants to drag me to a fancy cocktail party, or have me appear on a Sunday talk show, I would probably not object.)  In fact, you can even go hiking in DC.  I have gotten lost in the woods behind my house on more than one occasion.  There are even deer back there! 

Indeed, I have been having a resurgence of DC pride lately.  This is partly because our house has probably lost so much value that we can never leave so we might as well look on the bright side, and partly because we saw State of Play last weekend.  Yes, that's the movie more widely known as The Movie In Which Russell Crowe Lives In Mount Pleasant!  And while parts of the movie had very sketchy DC geography--a girl walks down the street in Adams Morgan and then gets on the metro in Virginia, come now--the Mt. Pleasant parts were right on.  Russell lives above Pfeiffer's Hardware and Heller's Bakery, and they really filmed in that apartment, so you can see the Heller's sign both in the establishing shots and from the inside-the-apartment shots.  And, he meets a shadowy Blackwater-type informant in the bus stop across the street, and it's really the bus stop! 

Anyway, I think Justice Souter might have liked DC better if he'd lived in Mt. Pleasant, is all.  If you are a secret self-Googler and are reading this, Justice, I am happy to have you over for a beer, or meet you at Wonderland or something.

Rage, rage against the announcement of the Peep Diorama semifinalists

The Washington Post has announced the semifinalists of the Peep Diorama contest, and our Peeple Tunnel of Doom is nowhere to be found.

Did they not get the reference? Apparently they did, because a Purple Tunnel of Peeps is semifinalist # 34. Which, no offense to Sarah Cochran of College Park and Peter Rothschild of Washington, but ours has dozens of individual peeps with googly eyeballs, tiny purple tickets, and hand-crotched peep scarves and hats. And tunnel lighting. And a peep on a ladder posting a "PEEP" poster with Obama's Face on a Peep Body. And an entirely separate inauguration scene above the tunnel, featuring a peep-bodied Roberts flubbing the oath for a peep-bodied Obama on a Peepbotron. And the image of the Capitol which they sent to actual purple ticket holders in their consolation package.

Both my belief in journalistic integrity and my dream of abandoning the law for a career in peep art are shattered. At least we still have the diorama.

Yoga

I went to yoga at lunch today.  This is a bigger operation than you would think.  Getting ready to go and leaving the office made me feel like one of the guys in this article (which is about solitary confinement, which I could NOT handle and would definitely turn psychotic, as many do apparently).  Not the solitary part, though (my office may not be very social but that comparison would be a touch overboard)--I felt like the guy who escaped from prison, thus precipitating his stay in solitary.  He successfully implemented a very elaborate escape plan:  he stole a manual about the prison's "microwave-detection" security system, studied it for months and then returned it, got someone else to create a diversion in the yard, turned a picnic table on its side to scale the fence, cut through razor wire using a tool he'd fashioned, used his research about the security system to follow an "invisible path" through the lasers or whatever, and presto!  got out, and called a cab. (Someone turned him in a month later.) Likewise, I changed clothes in the corner of my office, resulting in an outfit of yoga pants, boots with no socks (forgot to bring any), a tank top and my wool turtleneck (forgot a sweatshirt), a helmet and a yoga bag, then left rapidly, trying to look normal so no-one would think, Why is she leaving in the middle of the day with a helmet and yoga bag?  (Upon reflection, I was less prepared than the escape guy.) 

Then when I got to yoga I switched drastically into feeling like one of the blank "dolls" in Joss Whedon's new show Dollhouse (which is improving, you should give it a chance).  The "dolls" get implanted with other peoples' personalities for "engagements" like being hot dates or infiltrating religious cults, but when they're not working they live in a blank, personality-less, very Duh state in a kind of spa-like environment, and what do they do all day?  Yoga.  Constant yoga.  They wear yoga clothes, too.  It totally makes sense, that is what you would do if your brain had been wiped clean--in fact, that is the state yoga is sort of supposed to help you achieve, I think.   

Peeple Tunnel of Doom (aka the best frakking peep diorama ever)

My friends and I created a masterpiece for the Washington Post's Peep Diorama contest. It's called the Peeple Tunnel of Doom, after the peeps (ha!) who never got to the inauguration because they were stuck in line in the I-395 tunnel under the Capitol. We made the tunnel with the crazy-eyed peeps wearing hand-crotched scarves and hats, and holding peeple tickets; the trampled peep on the left side; the ceiling lights that actually light up; the exit signs (I made those!); and the peep on a ladder putting up a PEEP poster. Then we went crazy and also made an inauguration scene on the top of the shoebox, complete with a packed Silver Ticket area, a nearly-empty Peeple Ticket area, a Peepbotron with images of Obama and Roberts (and closed-captioning of the flubbed oath), and a picture of the Capitol which is one of the ones they sent to the (human) purple ticketholders to apologize for the whole tunnel of doom thing. The above-ground scene is not meant to be an accurate rendering, but rather the inauguration as the peeps in the tunnel imagined it, in their desperate fever-dream state.

Do you think there's an untapped market for disgruntled lawyers who make DRASTICALLY AWESOME peep dioramas?

This Movie Is Just Not That Into Having a Point

He's Just Not That Into You has the structure of an dialectic between passionate, but very drunk, people: the Realist and the Cynic.

The Realist starts out with a heartfelt tirade about how women are so willing to make excuses for men when they act like assholes, when in fact men are dogs who all just want to sleep with Scarlett Johannsen. The movie demonstrates this point by having its main female characters make cringe-inducing excuses for the assholes in their lives. The adorable GiGi (Ginnifer Goodwin) becomes an adorable quasi-stalker after going out on a single date with a blah real estate agent named Colin (Matt Dillon's brother, I think) who actually likes Scarlett Johannsen, while Beth (Jennifer Anniston), who wants to get married, stays with her boyfriend Neil (Ben Affleck) even though he's made totally clear that he's going to marry her, and Janine (Jennifer Connolly) obsesses over her home renovations while the college boyfriend she forced into marrying her, Ben (Bradley Cooper) lusts after, of course, Scarlett Johnansen. The Realist belches loudly and rests her case.

The Romantic cannot bear this, however; she feels that the Realist is being not only one-sided, but fairly sexist. Swaying slightly, she stands up, forgets to mention the sexism issue, and gives a rousing, if incoherent, speech about how if women are fooling themselves into thinking there's a chance with some asshole, at least they're maintaining hope rather than being cynical and treating the opposite sex like objects, man. On the movie plane, Gigi delivers this speech to Alex (not sure who this actor is), the bartender who had been channeling the Realist by explaining how if a man wants to see a woman he'll make it happen and is thus rejecting Gigi.

The Realist cracks another beer and counters that, yeah, but still men are definitely dogs because they definitely all want to sleep with Scarlett Johannsen, because she has boobs the size of planets and acts so vapid she seems to be sedated. Whaddaya say to that, huh, Romantic? Ben sleeps with Scarlett. Then, in order to really make the Realist's point, he tells his wife that he slept with someone but that he doesn't want to get a divorce, but then he starts to get it on with Scarlett again, in his office, then sticks her in the closet when his wife arrives to try to save their marriage, and then gets it on with his wife instead while Scarlett hides. Scarlett wears Little Bo Peep-type dresses and undergarmets in order to emphasize her planet-boobs, and acts vapid to the point of being sexily comatose.

The Romantic makes huge dismissive gestures with her arms and raises her voice to make her point: Yeah, planet-boobs, etc., OK but Scarlett is hurt in this scenario too, what with the hiding in the closet! And, it's just not realistic to think that women will stand for this kind of crap forever! Whereupon Scarlett huffs out of the closet, Beth breaks up with Neil because he won't marry her, Janine throws out Ben for being a lying sack of shit, and Gigi moves on from Alex.

The Romantic isn't done yet, though. Pounding her fist on the table and knocking her drink over for emphasis, she says that true love really does exist! Sometimes men who have seemed like assholes really just needed that one special woman to unlock their inner teddy bear, just like in the movies! The Realist tries to interrupt--Scarlett Johannsen! Perpetuating unrealistic--but she is no match for the Romantic's sheer volume. In a whirlwind, Beth and Neil get back together and he reverses course on his heretofore consistently held no-marriage philosophy; Janine kicks Ben out but she still believes in love and is starting to date again; and Alex, the cool cynic, realizes that he's head-over-heels in lurve with Gigi. Swept up in it all, some peripheral characters--Connor the real-estate agent and Drew Barrymore, who has been hanging out around the edges of the movie, get together, and Scarlett Johnannsen goes to India on a yoga retreat (good riddance)!

The Realist gives up and goes to the bathroom, and the Romantic declares victory, ends the movie, and passes out on the couch.

Late-breaking revelation re: The Real World

I was watching The Real World this week, and had a mind-blowing revelation.  They haven't changed the tagline since the show aired in 1992 (either that or they've come back around to it because now it has retro charm):   

This is the true story
of seven strangers
picked to live in a house
and have their lives taped
Find out what happens
when people stop being polite
and start getting real

"Stop being polite and start getting real"?*   Let's diagram it: 

Real = not polite
Not polite = rude 
Thus, Rude = Real

I only just realized that The Real World may have originated the false dichotomy that has turned society* into a bunch of assholes. 

*Also weird because nobody has started off by being polite on that show since Season 1--now they get to the house, strip naked and get in the hot tub, and introduce themselves to the other roommates with racial epithets.

**By "society" I mean "the people who are cast in reality TV shows."

You should really watch Battlestar Galactica

I am mulling over the reasons for the infrequency of my blogging, and when I come to any conclusions I will share them with you.  (I'm sure the problem is contained in that very sentence, actually, but I still can't put my finger on it.) 

But in the meantime, a public service announcement:  You absolutely must watch Battlestar Galactica.  In case you haven't seen it, it's a post-apocolyptic outer-space show about the remnant of humanity left over after humanoid-looking robots, the Cylons, nuke their planets.  So it's not super cheerful, but it's got some of the best storytelling and acting out there, especially Mary McDonnell (the mom in Donnie Darko), as the totally relatable and also terrifyingly unitary-executivish President, who may also be the prophesied "dying leader" fated to bring her people to a new home, and Edward James Olmos as the gruff, possibly alcoholic Admiral-with-a-heart-of-gold.  Right now the last half-dozen or so episodes are airing, and I'm pretty sure they're going to reveal the actual fate of humanity.  Which, again, I'm not promising it will be cheerful, but at least we'll know what we're in for. 

Resolutions

2008

Last year my only publicly-announced New Year's resolution was to be better at Scrabble.  I think I did pretty well at that--I played Scrabbulous on Facebook avidly for awhile, and transitioned from the basic "try to find a place for this cool word" system into the more advanced "look at where the high-letter squares are and see what I can play there" approach.  My passion for the game dwindled a little after a few months, at which time I switched to Scramble (Facebook's version of Boggle), which is less time-consuming because each round only lasts 3 minutes.  I think I'm improving on that, too, and it's a word game so it's close enough.  So, I will check this one off.

I know I made some other resolutions last year, but I recall only vaguely what they were.  Well, one was to be more confident and speak up more at work, and I think I accomplished that in one fell swoop the other week when I quasi-yelled back at the senior partner when he was yelling and swearing at me.  (That is a story for a work-related blog, which this definitely is not.  I don't like my job but I don't want to be one of those lame "I got fired for blogging" news items.) 

2009

So, to introduce a higher level of accountability, this year I will set forth my resolutions so that I remember what they are.  Drum roll...

1.  New job.  Need need need new job.  Must get new job.  New job!! 
2.  More regular exercise.  This may entail joining a gym, I gather.
3.  Clean out my filing cabinets, and the storage areas in the basement.
4.  Get stuff around the house fixed.  (This one is almost done already--we have hired someone to start doing stuff starting possibly Friday.  25% done!) 

Not particularly exciting or original, but whaddareyagonnado.  Happy New Year!

Tripp

Why is Bristol Palin, new mama to baby Tripp, sticking with her mom's pattern of naming boy babies one-syllable words starting with "Tr" that are English words but not traditional human-being names?  Unlike Track and Trig, whose meanings (running fast, triangle-related math) are positive, or at least tough, "Tripp" connotes falling down because you forgot to tie your shoelaces.  However, overall I think it's not a bad name--it's unique without being annoying to pronounce, and in a world where Aidan and Jayden are the #1 and #2 baby boy names, that is saying a lot.  Congrats, Bristol.

My hometown, swank-ified

For Christmas I went back to Grinnell, where nothing ever changes that much.

But it had changed! And I'm not talking about the old Wal-Mart closing and a bigger Wal-Mart opening (which also happened). The heart (or maybe the liver, or the appendix) of the town had changed: the bar went upscale. It wasn't actually called The Bar, it was The Pub (The Bar was the old name of the other bar a few blocks away.) The Pub was a basement with a concrete floor, and the bathrooms had plywood doors that didn't really latch. My ex-boyfriend almost got beat up there because he ignored the nuances of the rules about reserving the pool table by putting quarters on the edge. I hadn't been there for awhile, but never considered the possibility that it wasn't still there.

But the last night we were in town, we went out to eat at the fancy new restaurant--a New Orleans-themed one, with attractive lighting and some over-$20-entrees. After dinner we went downstairs to have a drink at the adjunct bar. It had low, leather-esque sofas and a martini menu. I don't think I ever would have realized that it was the former Pub unless someone had told me. In fact, the layout was exactly the same. (More to the point, it was in the same location.) It wasn't just the carpet, the paint, and the non-plywood bathroom doors that threw me--I just would never have considered the possibility that The Pub would have gotten all pimped out.

I'm a little confused as to what this all means. Is it a sign that Grinnell's self-conscious attempt to reposition its downtown as a tourist attraction is going well? An example of the general fancy-fication of the United States? (You can also get stinky cheeses in Grinnell now.) A reminder that nothing stays exactly the same? Has getting rusty at blogging made me start to write like Carrie Bradshaw?

Inauguration anxiety

I am worried that inauguration weekend = New Year's Eve, in the following ways:

1.  It will be cold.
2.  There will be huge crowds everywhere. 
3.  There will be big parties, but I will not go to them, as they will be really expensive and, I suspect, possibly lame/depressing, like the New Year's Eve party Sally is at at the end of When Harry Met Sally, before Harry arrives, but still I may feel left out because I am not going to them. 
4.  Bars will probably charge a cover, and will be very crowded.
5.  Everybody knows it is supposed to be festive and celebratory, but all those expectations may collapse in on themselves, as happens to Gary Sinise's character in Forrest Gump, when he's sitting at the bar at New Year's Eve with confetti falling on him looking like he might cry.  I suppose in this case what one would be crying about would be, How long until I get disillusioned with Obama?  What if he can't fix the economy after all?  Gulp. 

But!  On the other hand, as my friends who may come to DC for inauguration* pointed out, we did spend New Year's Eve 2001-2002 in Chicago, with sub-zero temperatures, with about 15 people, many of whom got the flu, sleeping in 2 rooms in a Day's Inn, which had insane heaters we could not turn off, forcing us to open the window to counteract the heaters, resulting in alternating gale-force hot-and-cold drafts wafting across all the feverish, testy people.  And we're still friends! 


*I hope you guys do come!  I'm sure it will be fun! 

Sigh, Joe Jonas

Over the last 3 years (!) of this blog's existence, I have noticed myself slowly moving away from writing about celebrity "news."  This is largely because the celebrities in whom I am interested are getting older (sigh!) and their antics are thus either less antic-y and more boring (Katie Holmes, Angelina Jolie), or juts as antic-y but more depressing (Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan).  There are younger celebrities whose antics still hit that sweet spot of preposterous and amusing, but!  I increasingly have no idea who they are.

Take Joe Jonas.  People.com tells me that he wrote a masterpiece of a public, passive-aggressive, confessional missive, sort of to his fans, but really to his ex-girlfriend, Taylor Swift: 

Several things I will state with all my heart ... I never cheated on a girlfriend. It might make someone feel better to assume or imply I have been unfaithful but it is simply not true. Maybe there were reasons for a breakup. Maybe the heart moved on. Perhaps feelings changed. I am truly saddened that anything would potentially cause you to think less of me.

Ahhh, the lack of proper nouns!  The "maybe"s!  The vague, veiled barbs stated with "all my heart!"  It's a masterpiece . . . but who the hell are Joe Jonas and Taylor Swift?  My lizard brain tells me they are singers of some sort, but that pretty minimal information to get excited about.  

Yo

I apparently did not post on my blog a single time in October.  Christ!  So as to get the juices flowing, here is an eclectic assortment of updates:

1.  Obama won!  Which you probably know.  At first I felt like perhaps we were in the last season of Roseanne, where they win the lottery, and then in the finale it is revealed that this was all the daydream of a depressed and still poor Roseanne.  But it seems to be lasting!  So I am very happy about that!

2.  We went to Italy in October, and that was really awesome.  Italy, among other things, has a lot more ads for tourist destinations than we do here--or at least the BBC and CNN International do.  Based on those ads alone, I would like to go to India ("Incredible India"), Greece (no slogan, just smiling people), Malaysia ("Truly Asia"), and Croatia ("The Mediterranean as it Once Was").  The ads for Macedonia were kind of janky, so it's not at the top of my list, but if the recession continues maybe it would be a good cheap option.

3.  Speaking of the recession, I am happy to see that the fashion world seems to have foreshadowed it by making the big new look for fall . . . patterned tights.  About the cheapest thing you can possibly buy.  I got some cute ones at Target for $12 this weekend.

4.  I saw Role Models last weekend and it was GREAT.   Yes, it's another "men will be boys until forced to grow up on pain of incarceration" kind of tale, but it's a well-done version of that.  Also, the kid who I found annoying as McLovin' in Superbad was awesome as a very sincere, painfully awkward and younger-seeming kid into Life Action Role Play (LAIRE, I think) in this movie.

That is all.

thirtysomething

It was last Saturday afternoon.  I thought to myself, I've gotten a lot done today:  I went to yoga, got some stuff at Whole Foods, got a pedicure, met with a financial planner, and saw our friend A's baby. 

 

Holy.  Crap.  Would it be humanly possible for me to fit more yuppie activities into one 24-hour period?  Only if I had done some recreational drugs or renovated something.  So, yes.  I am a yuppie.  Not that they use that word anymore, but there it is.

 

Which got me thinking, now that we've finished the Wire, maybe our next TV-on-DVD obsession should be thirtysomething.  Watching other yuppies navigate this decade might give me a heads-up, I think.  Only to find out that thirtysomething is NOT AVAILABLE on DVD!  Talk about a market breakdown.  How are we to learn from history if we can't easily watch fictionalized versions of it on the boob tube? 

 

Sarah Palin's accent

Among all the other fears I have about what will happen to the world if the bad guys win the election, I must now add the risk that Minnesota accents will begin to seem sinister rather than adorable.  Please god no!  I love me some MinnesOtans and their cute-talking ways!  But I feel it happening already--Tina Fey's "I can see Alaska from my hOuse" echos in my brain like a harbinger of the end times. 

Sarah Palin

I can't believe I haven't posted anything about Sarah Palin, since I think about her approximately 22 hours a day.  Of course, I can't remember most of those ingeniously clever and biting insights right this second, so I will just share with you the few that are floating about at the top of my brain right now:

1.  According to the NYT, the woman did not tell her own children or parents that she was pregnant with Trig until her third trimester, and even then she told her aides a week before she told her own kids, and then she didn't tell them he had Down Syndrome ever--Willow, the 14-year-old, noticed for herself after he was born.  Who hides information like this from their own children?  A crazy person, is who.

2.  So far she is playing both sides of the woman angle to great effect--talking about her kids/PTA/hockey-mom self as though that qualifies her to be VP, and then also accusing anyone who criticizes her (and the media in general, because they might criticize her) of being sexist and/or mean for picking on her poor girlish self.  This is a sticky minefield of quicksand for a man to wade into, so WHERE IS HILLARY to call her out on this crap?  WHERE OH WHERE? 

3.  I had better donate some money to Obama now. 

Brokeback biker

As I may have told you via a somewhat hysterical email last week, Mr. T&A got into a bad bike accident the weekend before last and broke three vertebrae in his back.  He's going to be fine, but it was a very terrifying (for me) and painful (for him) experience.  I should probably write a longer account of the whole thing at some point if only because he can't remember anything for a period of several days and would like to hear the whole story, but that won't be much fun.  So, I will just note a couple of things that have occurred since the accident which I find both funny and heartening, in that they involve Mr. T&A acting very much like himself: 

 

Act I

 

In the hospital, the day after the accident

 

Mr. T&A:  I need to go to the bathroom.

Nurse:  OK, but you can't stand up yet, you'll have to use a bedpan. 

Mr. T&A:  That's OK, I don't have to go to the bathroom. 

 

Act II

 

In the hospital, two days after the accident

 

Mr. T&A (on his Blackberry, which was the second thing he requested after underpants, to coworker):   Hey, i'm not at work because i had a big accident on my bike and am in the hospital.  How're things?

 

Act III

 

At home, after returning from hospital, middle of the night

 

Mr. T&A:  Mike Tyson really beat me up.

Me (thinking this is a good joke):  Hehe, yeah he did.

Mr. T&A:  Wasn't I sleeping in the other room?

Me:  No, your mom's in there.

Mr. T&A:  But didn't I first encounter Mike Tyson in there?

Me:  You didn't really get into a fight with Mike Tyson, you had a bike accident.

Mr. T&A:  But didn't I at least have a Mike Tyson action figure at some point? 

 

 

Glad you're doing OK, sweetpea. 

Non-chart: August edition

In:  Lesbian love liberating Lindsay
Five Minutes Ago:  Shady shenanigans shaming Shia
Out:  Crazy Cruise controlling Katie

In:  Side tables
Five Minutes Ago:  Shelving
Out:  Cupboards

In:   Political irony
Five Minutes Ago:  Humorous irony
Out:  The death of irony

The Hill's 50 Most Beautiful is baaaaack! And it's hot.

Yahh, The Hill 50 Most Beautiful People issue is out!

As per usual, it's a awesome smorgasbord of (L to R) legitimately beautiful people (helloooo, Elizabeth Kucinich!), that special class of politically enthusiastic youngsters known as "skinterns," and totally unintentional hilarity (Otto Mucklo, Republican, 34, single, likes that women find his motorcycle "dangerous"? You don't say.)

But this year I noticed a strange similarity among many of the subjects. The 50 Most Beautiful are converging towards two ideals of Hot for DC which, unfortunately, are Paris Hilton and the Terminator.
The classic Paris Hilton: the fake blonde hair, the body turned at a three-quarters angle, the boob stuck out, one foot in front of the other, the hand on hip. And the 50 Most Beautiful:
The women afflicted by The Paris are either a relatively diverse lot or indistinguishable, depending on your point of view. Here we have (L to R): The second most beautiful person, Brecke "The Girl Next Door" Latham, 28, Republican, who says she'd date a Democrat. Briana Bilbray, 25, who is on the Republican Central Committee of San Diego County. Kristina "The Southern Belle" Spiegel, 27, Democrat, who says she might like to run for office, or maybe be a diplomat, and can't remember what her favorite movies are. Kristie Muchnok, 26, Democrat, a member of the Washington Wizards dance team, who lists her dating status as "ready to mingle." Jenny Harp, 23, Democrat, who lives with 6 other sorority girls in Columbia Heights in a house they call "The Mantionette." Elizabeth Murray, 23, Republican, who (bringing the Paris thing full circle) allegedly looks like Nicole Richie.

(I also note that whereas last year I thought I could tell the political party from the picture, this year either my GOP-dar is off or everybody on the Hill has started to look Republican. Godspeed, Obama.)

And the men! The model:

Terminators: The square jaw, the direct stare, the blank/angry/vaguely constipated affect. And the 50 Most Beautiful:
Our little Ts are as follows: Aaron Gardner, 26, Republican, lurves his cat, looking for a "career-driven" woman. Andrew Noyes, 28, "Declined to specify" his party affiliation (!), lurves his dog. Rich Guerard, 23, Independent (works for Lieberman), former model. Steve Ellis, 38, lobbyist, no party listed, maried to a doctor.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and make a prediction of the future of the Beautiful for DC look. In an era of biracial presidential candidates and human/Cylon hybrids (on TV, yes--but in the future we will not distinguish between "reality" and "TV"), it's almost inevitable: a combination of Paris and the Terminator. Parisinator, if you will. Or Terminhilton. T.P.?
The future is here, and it has a three-quarters angle to the camera, a pronounced jaw, an intense gaze, and its hands on its hips. You heard it here first!

I love/hate Blame Monica Goodling Week

My obsession with Monica Goodling, which had been in remission for the last year, has come roaring back with the release of the Justice Department Office of the Inspector General's report, which is even named after her: "An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring by Monica Goodling and Other Staff in the Office of the Attorney General."

It seems that when Monica told Congress she "crossed the line" by taking political considerations into account in hiring career employees, she meant, "I asked the line to give me five reasons why President Bush reminds it of Jesus, and it could only come up with two, plus I wasn't convinced the line was totally 'straight,' if you know what I mean, so I smashed it with a cross-shaped anvil, weighted it down with a filing cabinet containing the applications of experienced prosecutors whose spouses had made donations to Democratic candidates, and threw it in the Potomac."

The report reveals all kinds of deep, dark, delicious illegalities which were previously only hinted at by that crazy-eyed, feathered-haired exterior. She asked candidates "What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him"! She made a note that an applicant was conservative on "god, guns + gays"! She got a woman fired because she heard she was a lesbian! She did the following search on LexisNexis!:

[First name of a candidate]! and pre/2 [last name of a candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or controvers! or racis! or fraud! or investigat! or bankrupt! or layoff! or downsiz! or PNTR or NAFTA or outsourc! or indict! or enron or kerry or iraq or wmd! or arrest! or intox! or fired or sex! or racis! or intox! or slur! or arrest! or fired or controvers! or abortion! or gay! or homosexual! or gun! or firearm!

Too awesome that "sex!" is in there twice.

But at the same time, I am a little disturbed by how much fun it is to pin this whole thing on La Goodling. The idea that it's all her fault means that either (1) the Justice Department and the White House agreed to put one 30ish-year-old lawyer with a J.D. from Jesus U in charge of hiring everybody in the DOJ, didn't give her any instructions, and then never checked to see how she was doing it, or (2) she was doing exactly what she was told to do. Neither one is all that heartening, but I fear that the joy of dissing her Lexis search (spotted owl or florida recount! hehe!) is going to prevent us all from figuring out that it's probably #2.

Where am I?

The phenomenon of neighborhoods with existing names getting new, sexier (or less dangerously-connotated) names seems to have taken over DC to the extent that I have no idea where I am. Like, I was just trying to use Yelp to come up with places to eat lunch that were near a Blue/Orange line metro stop downtown. My theory was that I would search in the relevant neighborhoods--Downtown, Metro Center, Farragut, K Street. . . but none of those neighborhoods exist in Yelp. I tried to think of synonyms--Lafayette Square? White House? Nope. The neighborhood list is littered with names I am pretty sure are in other cities, or perhaps are retirement communities: West End, NoMa, Ivy City, Gateway. Can I rename my neighborhood WeTargetNoPark? (West of the Target, North of Park Road, of course.) (Just kidding, Mount Pleasant, I wouldn't do that to you. Even if you do sound totally like a retirement community.)

Dr. Horrible

If you haven't watched Dr. Horrible, you must do so. It's a "sing-along blog"--basically a direct-to-internet musical written and directed by Joss Whedon, about an evil superhero, played by Neil Patrick Harris (aka Doogie H., aka Himself in Harold & Kumar), and his nemesis, Captain Hammer, played by Nathan Fillion (of Firefly, Serenity, and Buffy). Go, watch it now. Go!

The 8th Circuit shows us how to get out of anything

This news is stale by now, but the insights flowing from it have just begun.

The other week the 8th Circuit ruled that a South Dakota law requiring doctors to tell women seeking an abortion that abortion "terminates the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being," didn't require forced ideological speech, because the law also defined "human being" as "an individual living member of the species Homo sapiens, including the unborn human being during the entire embryonic and fetal ages from fertilization to full gestation."

So, once you factored in the definition, the "human being" statement was not ideological, but just a scientific fact (or a tautology): if you abort your fetus, you will be aborting a human fetus. What doctor could argue with that, right?

This reasoning can be applied to all kinds of situations in which the normal meanings of words present can leave you in a sticky spot. So:

-"I always finish my work on time." (True where "on time" is defined to mean "when I get it done.")
-"I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy." (Where "the sheriff" means "the sheriff and another guy, perhaps the deputy.")
-"No, I haven't read spoilers to find out who the 7th through 12th Cylons are." (Where "haven't" means "am not admitting to.")

Very handy. Thanks, wise judges.

Non-chart!

It contains few words, and thus much wisdom. (Right?)

In: Dark and stormy

Five minutes ago: Blue Moon

Out: Tequila sunrise

In: Cylons

Five minutes ago: Blackberries

Out: Hal

In: Absentmindedness

Five minutes ago: Procrastination

Out: Incompetence

Best use of exclamation point in my in-box today

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Self-pity party!

I am holding a huge, blowout self-pity party. You're invited! But you might not want to come. I mean, so far nobody else has shown up--it's just been me, alone, in my office, for days and days, including most of the weekend. Unless somebody else stopped by while I was taking a break, like to go home and have anxiety dreams (seemingly about having forgotten to send invitations or decide where people should sit at my wedding, but really about not finishing my brief in time) and to apply for new jobs (which I am also behind on). The cab driver who took me home last night joined in my party for a bit--he guessed immediately that I was a lawyer, and said if I was leaving work at 12:30 I must be either that or a consultant. So that was nice, or something.

Appreciation

When I have a cold, I often promise myself that when I can breathe normally again I will appreciate breathing more. But alas, when the cold goes away I just start to take my non-snot-filled nose for granted.

I am now thinking the same thing about the hourly billing system. If I got a job in which I didn't have to bill, would I take joy every day in the fact that I didn't have to write down "9:35-10:23--draft initial disclosures"? Or would I just quickly go back to taking the delicious freedom for granted?

One thing I do consistently appreciate, I think, is air conditioning--but that's because when you're all hot and you come into an air-conditioned place, the contrast makes you appreciate it. Does that mean I'd have to spend part of each day billing my time, or breathing through my mouth, in order to appreciate it when I got to stop? That doesn't seem like a reasonable plan.

Anyhoo, happy Friday, and if you don't have to bill your time, try to spend a few minutes (maybe up to 0.1 hours!) appreciating your good fortune.

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.