No Bones About It: Live Free or Die Hard

Top Eleven Reasons Why Live Free or Die Hard was Freakin Bad Ass:

11. It was everything I want in a summer action film: hot, sweaty, fast, with a ripped up shirt and lots of shooting and blowing things up.

10. I don't care how old he is, Bruce Willis is one sexy older man.

9. It's a crack up to see Justin Long's awesomely pre-pubescent patchy facial hair, even though he's almost thirty years old.

8. Bruce Willis is freaking hot.

7. During the previews, a local celebrity (who shall remain unnamed) came on screen and Erin turned to the complete stranger woman next to her and proclaimed, "That guy dry humped my friend!" Pauses when the stranger gives no reaction. "UNWANTINGLY!" As if the fact that our friend was dry humped without invitation gives more shock value to the story. And it does. The point is that every time I see that guy, I think to myself, "Huh. That's the guy who dry humped my friend." And one time I was at the mall when Yanaj grabbed me and pointed, "Isn't that the guy who dry humped your friend?" Yes. Yes it is.

6. I love Bruce Willis.

5. It had the longest list of credited stunt people that I've ever seen in my entire life.

4. Unbelievable action action action, non-stop, from beginning to end, with a few cheap jokes thrown in for good may-sure.

3. Erin kept turning to me and saying, "Bruce Willis is bad ass!", to which I would reply, "FREAKING bad ass!"

2. Filmmakers captured this stunt in only one take.

1. Even Erin liked it. Erin, who confessed at dinner, which followed prom dress shopping (yes, prom dress shopping for yours truly) that she didn't even want to see the new Die Hard movie, but had agreed to come along because I "never" go to see any movies that she wants to see; to which I pointed out that I had gone to a movie of her choosing when we saw Premonition at the dollar theater; to which she pointed out that I had wanted to see Premonition because I love Dr. Christian Troy; to which Yanaj pointed out that his eyebrows and cheek bones are too perfectly sculpted to be natural and that he probably sleeps standing up in a cardboard box because he's an android.

Go see this movie. I know I'll definitely be there again.

New Word Wednesday

Goldfish Paralysis (adj.) : Any situation in which a person freezes with a look of disbelief and bewilderment on his or her face, unable to react to the shocking or unusual event that just took place.

Application: Bone Junior warned her co-worker, Joe, that if he didn't stop calling McBicep "gay", she was going to spit a mouthful of chewed up Goldfish crackers all over his face. Joe instead started referring to McBicep as "bi-curious". Bone Junior calmly shoved a handful of Goldfish into her mouth, lightly chewed them, then approached Joe and blew the chunks all over his face. However, when one of the chunks made a pleasant **tink** sound as it bounced off his glasses, leaving a spittle mark behind, Bone Junior lost her composure and burst out laughing. Unfortunately, this outburst caused her to inadvertantly spit the rest of the Goldfish all over Joe's face. The shocked / disgusted look on Joe's face and his inability to do anything but stare at Bone Junior through Goldfish crumb-dusted glasses could only be described as Goldfish Paralysis.

Because My Real Name is Boring

One of my favorite ways to be socially inappropriate is to purposely mispronounce things. My friend Heather is the best at this game - I'll never forget the time we went to the fancy wedding reception of a mutual friend. Heather, straight faced and stoic, asked the server for the "the chicken parma-gee-ah-nuh with the fetta-sign al-freddo". When the food was brought out, Heather pretended not to understand the server's thick Italian accent, announcing the "Chicken parmaSHAna with fettuCHInee alFRAYdo?" and stared straight ahead before questioning, "Oh! Is that the fetta-sign?"

Heather and I also like to embarrass eachother by giving fake names. One time, she scheduled an eyebrow waxing for us, and told them my name was Hermione. I felt really cool saying, "I have a 9:30 appointment......Hermione."

Yesterday, my socially inappropriate lying / attempt to embarrass a friend backfired on me big time. I went to lunch with my former co-worker, Jen. When asked to give a name for our order, I immediately replied, "Henefir."

Ten minutes later, they called out, "HENEFIR? HENEFIR?" and I walked up to the counter to pick up our food. Little did I know that the name had peaked the interest of some other people.

I sat down and was immediately approached by a Sweet Old Lady who said, "Excuse me...Did they say your name was Henefir?"

Bone Junior: Um, yeah.

SOL: Is that your last name?

Meanwhile, Jen is sitting across from me, waiting to see how far I'm going to take this.

Bone Junior: No, it's my first name....it's Spanish for 'Jennifer'. You know, Jennifer, Henefir, Jennifer, Henefir...

By this point, Jen (who is struggling to remain composed) knows I'm going balls out.

SOL: Looks puzzled. Hmmmm. I've never heard that before. My husband has family with the last name Henefir, but I've never heard it as a first name.

Bone Junior: Inner voice saying Shut up! Shut up! Stop talking! Oh, yeah, it's actually Hwa-tay-mall-an. (Guatemalan).

SOL: Still looking puzzled, as clearly I am not Guatemalan. Or maybe she thinks I am Guatemalan but can't figure out why I feel the need to put on my thickest Spanish accent to say "Guatemalan." Hmmm. How interesting...

I just stared right back at Sweet Old Lady, daring her to challenge my claim. Eventually, she meandered off - I don't know if she believed me or just thought I was handicapped. She looked at me the way Nicole looked at me when I was hiding under my desk at work and told her that I was playing Anne Frank. Either way, I think I made my point.

In McBicep news, the D-Town Countdown has officially begun: 14 days. Let the butterflies begin.

In other news, G got some action. Hoo ha for G! Here's hoping that in two weeks, I can proudly say the same.

Don't Judge Me

Sometimes I do things that make me feel retarded for myself. Sometimes I confess these things to a private confidante. Usually I end up publicly revealing these things on my blog, and inviting humiliation. This is one of those things.

Last night, I went to Redbox and rented a movie. I was feeling really tired and it was a thousand degrees outside, plus I've been slipping downward into an ice cream-eating semi-depression, so I wanted to just stay home and graze in the air conditioning. Sounds not too retarded, right? Actually sounds kind of nice and relaxing, right?

Except when I tell you that I rented Primeval. The tagline: "A news team is sent to South Africa to capture and bring home a legendary 25-foot crocodile. Their difficult task turns potentially deadly when a warlord targets them for death."

My favorite critic comments were, "Primeval is a really bad film"; and "Wow, how much does this movie suck."

I know. I know.

The sad thing is, it's not like I was standing there, sizzling in the sun, debating what to get because nothing good was left. I went there with a purpose - I knew what I wanted, and Primeval was it.

I sought out this specific movie for one reason, and one reason alone :

Judge me if you will, but Primeval was everything I needed that night: hot, cheap (actually free with my Redbox.com online code), big, sweaty, and wearing shirts unbuttoned to the stomach.

In all, a perfect Friday night.

Happy Batmanniversary!

This morning I checked my email to find the following poem from Yanaj:

It takes two special people,
To make a loving pair.
There’s a joy just being there with you,
A feeling I love to share.

So best Batmanniversary wishes to you,
Bringing years of joy and fun.
May each film keep getting better,
I think the drooling has just begun.

HAPPY BATMANNIVERSARY

That's right. Today is the day I look forward to all year long: The Batmanniversary / Celebration of All Things Christian Bale.

The Batmanniversary marks the day that we fell in love with Batman Begins - it's cinematic release date of June 14, 2005. I remember it like it was just two years ago.

Yanaj and I were living in Seattle that summer. I had the two issues of Entertainment Weekly from that year with Christian Bale on the cover (I still do) in anticipation of the new Batman, and we'd been counting down the days to it's release. Lit'rally. This movie was such a big deal that I passed on going to the Phillies / Mariners game. That makes it a pretty big deal.

Tuesday night, we went to the midnight show, and I literally sat through the movie with a huge grin on my face. I specifically remember this night because when we got home at 3 AM, I heard a gutteral moan coming from Yanaj's room and I knew she'd seen a spider. I ran into her room, screamed when I saw the spider on the wall, wrapped a blanket around her and helped her flee the scene, slamming the door on our way out. That's what a good friend I am.

So how much did we love the movie?

We got up and went to work the next morning and after work, rather than going home to catch up on sleep or eat dinner or something logical like that, we went straight back to the movie theater and caught the next showing of Batman Begins. That's how much we loved it.

I saw it in the theaters a total of seven times, which currently holds the record for me - and never in the dollar theater, either. What can I say - I'm single and I only have myself to support.
Some people might call this obsession. I call it I'm going to name my first child after Christian Bale. And Rocky.

Celebrating The Batmanniversary really only consists of watching Batman Begins, breaking my diet to eat ice cream sundaes bigger than my head, and talk about how excited we are for The Dark Knight (July 2008).

I realize that I'm opening myself up for ridicule by confessing what a Geek-with-a-capital-G I am when it comes to Christian Bale / Bruce Wayne / Christopher Nolan / the new Batman movies - but check out Heath Ledger as the Joker. Some people think it's too dark, but it just gets me that much more excited for the next installment.

If that picture disturbed you, please to enjoy my favorite ode to Batman:

How I Had a Panic Attack for Real This Time

Last night, my life flashed before my eyes. Lit'rally.

If you know anything about me, you probably know that I have a completely rational fear of spiders. Our old house was completely infested and it was my worst nightmare. Luckily, where I live now isn't nearly as bad - not even close, despite the fact that we live on the side of a mountain, which "apparently", as the supers at work tell me, is crawling with tarantulas. I think they're just messing with me, because I have yet to see one. Or maybe the peace offerings I leave for the tarantulas are actually working, and we maintain a civil ignorance of eachother.

Either way, I haven't seen many spiders in the house. If I do, I simply scream and run out of the room, slamming the door behind me, as per usual. But for the last three sightings, I've actually sucked it up and KILLED the spiders; usually bludgeoning them into the carpet with a baseball bat or beating them into an indiscernable pulp on the wall with my shoe, screaming all the while.

The spiders still disgust me, they still make me gag a little, they still make me pee a little from fright, but at least I'd gotten to the point where I could kill them myself.

But something happened last night that completely undid me. I was unloading $70 worth of Bath & Body Works product (thankyouverymuch, Semi-Annual Sale) and when I moved the bag, I found this resting on my bed:
It was the biggest, grossest spider I've ever seen in the house, and it was On. My. Bed. The next few minutes happened in slow motion as I tried to sort out my thought process.

First, I screamed bloody hell. Then I assessed the situation. In those precious seconds, here's what I realized: I was home alone, I was sans Huge Bald Guy or other large male, and I had to act quickly before the beast scuttled out of sight. If that had happened, rest assured, I would not be sleeping in my bedroom for a long time.

There was no way I was going to hit it with the baseball bat and smush the pulpy carcass into my $300 bedspread. I also had the fear that the spider was so big that it wouldn't die even if I hti it with the baseball bat (yes, this thought seemed rational).

Quickly, options raced through my mind. Call my brother? No time - it could run away by the time he got there. Smash it with the bat? And risk staining my beloved bedspread - not just no, but hell no. Trap it under a bowl? I didn't want to let it out of my sight, and it could chew through the bedspread if it was under the bowl for a long time (again, this thought seemed rational). My only other choice was to start crying, and grab the vacuum cleaner hose extension.

Fast forward ten minutes, when I made the following phone call to my roommate Ylime:

Bone Junior: (Trying to sound extremely bright and happy) Hi!! (sniff sniff) Um, are you coming home soon?

Ylime: Are you okay? You don't sound very good...

Bone Junior: Um, yeah, I'm okay. I know how silly this is going to sound, its just that (starts crying audibly) I came home and there was this huge spider on my bed, and I didn't know what to do and it was the biggest one I've ever seen in real life, and it just really freaked me out and no one was home and I was all alone, and there was no one I could call to come kill it for me and I couldn't even get near it! I was shaking and sweating and I finally sucked it up in the vacuum hose, and then I saw that it was still alive in the tank! It was crawling back up the sides of the tank, Em!! It was still alive in there!! And it really shook me up because I always suck spiders up into the vacuum and I thought they died when you did that; I truly believed that they died, I clung to that hope, but its still alive! I was sitting there, yelling at the spider, 'Why won't you just DIE!!' and smacking the side of the tank, and it would fall into the debris and just start crawling up again! And so now its trapped in the vacuum, but I can't leave the vacuum in the house, Em, I just can't, because I'll be thinking about how its crawling back into the hose and it will make a web in there and lay eggs and then baby spiders will get all over me next time I use the vacuum, and I just can't kill it, so do you think your brother could come over and empty the tank for me??

(Takes a deep breath to attempt composure) I know how pathetic this sounds; I mean, I'm twenty-five years old (starts sobbing) I'm all alone, Em! I saw the spider and I screamed, and there was no one to help me. I have no one to kill my spiders and I just felt so alone. There was no guy around to help me and I was just sitting there, crying and thinking about how McBicep is two-thousand miles away and I miss him, and my sister is three-thousand miles away and I miss her, and I miss Baby Owen, and I miss my dog, and everyone is on vacation, and I'm all alone out here, and I don't have a guy to help me fix things or kill the bugs for me, and how am I ever going to be able to kill spiders by myself? I'm going to die alone and no one will ever be there to help me kill spiders...."

Ylime assured me that her brother would come over and empty the tank and that I was not going to die alone. She also told me that I wasn't crazy; that I was probably just PMSsing and I'd look back and laugh about this later.

Sometimes a girl just needs to hear that she's not crazy, no matter how crazy she sounds.

I Dream of Juneyah

Has one of your friends ever said to you, "You were in my dream last night!"? I used to think it was funny to hear about their wacky dreams about me, until I started to notice a disturbing trend.

About three years ago...

Nicole: I had the craziest dream about you!

Bone Junior: Oh really?

Nicole: Yeah. I dreamed that I woke up on the morning of my wedding, and you'd cut off all my hair during the night. It was so crazy!

Bone Junior: (Mouth open, stunned silence). That's not crazy, that's horrible!! You know I would never do that to you, right?



About six months ago...

Ylime: You were in my dream last night!

Bone Junior: (Laughs nervously). Oh really? What was it about?

Ylime: I dreamt that I was running away from you because you were trying to murder me.

Bone Junior: (Mouth open, horrified silence). Oh. My. Gosh. You know I would never do that to you, right?




About two days ago...via email.

Andi Curb Your Passion: Did I tell you about my dream about you? Oh my gosh, it was so funny.

It was a weird patchwork of scenes. I came to visit you at work, and you had a new job, but you wouldn't tell me what it was. Everyone was just laid back, sitting around not doing anything. For some reason, you told me I was training to do your job, but I didn't know what that was.

Then this guy walks in with this big restaurant tray, with about 7 sandwiches on it. It was your job to eat roast beef sandwiches, pick the best one, and give your review on it. You picked this one, and then held up this Hormel package of deli meat and started rambling off some commercial.

Then you disappeared and I was sitting there alone, and heard music outside. I looked out this huge window and there was a floating float. Like a parade float, floating in the sky. There were big TVs on the side of it, and a marching band walking around the outside of it. Somehow it landed and attached to the second floor of the building I was in, and I got on.

You were inside, playing a French Horn with a bunch of Asian kids, wearing this really ghetto-fabulous sunglasses. Then I went outside, because all the Asian kids were talking in jibberish, and I went to find you again, because you disappeared, again.

When I got out to the outside of the float, there was a boxing tournament going on, but it wasn't real people. It was a HUGE one of those boxing games where it looks like the 2 plastic robots- when one punches the other, the head goes up. But they were playing "Rocky" on the TVs that were all around the outside of the float.

So that's it. Do you like roast beef? It was really vivid. And really strange.

...............

I can't decide what's my favorite part about Andi's dream - the roast beef sandwich tasting job, the ghetto-fabulous sunglasses, or "Rocky" playing on the side of the the float. I'm just glad I wasn't killing or otherwise maiming anyone in this dream.

I'm interested to hear any and all dream interpretations...