Best-laid plans

...or not. My friend Joy is bravely going where she and her friends have clearly never gone before, and it seems she's experiencing some trepidation about the whole enterprise:

due to lack of cohesive planning, we are going to the forest in a prius. not only are we going to the forest in a prius, we are going to the incorrect forest. is there really a wrong forest? yes. we are going to kings canyon forest instead of sequoia national park. the pepper spray that i ordered through amazon.com has not come. it was supposed to double as potential bear repellent. however, i think the bears are still sleeping so we don't have to worry about that. only about the prius, the miscalculated distance, and the cold cold weather.

Take pictures, Joy. Take lots and lots of pictures. Cuz I have to know how this turns out.

The Beverly Hills Chihuahua Drinking Game

There are some movies out there that are just bad.

There are some movies that make you feel violated just by making you the unwitting viewer of the trailer, be it in the theater before a movie you paid money for or just on the teevee.

There are some movies that inflict such atrocities on you, an innocent victim, and make you so outraged at the film's very existence (never mind that of its trailer--you're a bigger person than the soulless assholes who let that loose upon an unsuspecting public), that you grasp at the straws of humorless jokes in a futile attempt to cope with the degradation of popular culture and general intellect that these films clearly indicate.

There are some people out there who see that, and laugh at it, and add these movies to your Netflix queue just to fuck with you.

Well, we'll see who has the last laugh.

It is this thirst for revenge, and for alcoholic beverages, that led to the epiphany that ANY movie, no matter how abysmal it may be, can be made palatable with the simple addition of arbitrary rules for alcohol consumption while viewing it. And so I bring you The Beverly Hills Chihuahua Drinking Game.

Rule #1: Participants must have a sufficient amount of alcoholic beverage available at all times, such that they can take a drink whenever mandated by subsequent rules.

Rule #2: Whenever a cliche Spanish expression is used (Ay caramba, arriba, yo quiero anything, amigo, etc.) is used, take a drink.

Rule #3: Whenever a character breaks out into song, take a drink.

Rule #4: Whenever a new character is introduced with a totally stereotypical Hispanic accent, take a drink.

Rule #5: Whenever a new character is introduced with a totally stereotypical Hispanic name, take a drink.

Rule #6: Whenever Hispanic culture is grossly misrepresented EVER, take a drink.

Rule #7: Whenever a female character acts like a total idiot and clearly needs some male character to come to her rescue or impart some words of wisdom, take a drink.

Rule #8: Whenever someone learns a lesson, after-school-special style, take a drink.

Rule #9: Whenever someone does NOT learn their lesson, after-school-special style, take a drink.

Rule #10: If at any time a participant finishes their drink, they are obligated to immediately proceed to the kitchen/keg/bar/neighbor's house/nearest wino for a refill, and to take a drink for every incident mentioned above that takes place in their absence upon their return.

Rule #11: There are no penalties for taking a drink when no other rules have prompted such action; after all, you're watching Beverly Hills Chihuahua. We feel any and all drinking that results from exposure to such a travesty of American cinema is completely understandable and justified. (Additionally, you might want to write a letter to your congressman regarding MPAA standards--they certified this film as child-friendly. I'd rather my kids watched Trainspotting.)

DISCLAIMER: I have not actually seen this film as of initial publishing date and cannot ensure that all rules are in fact relevant or will result in the drunken stupor that is necessary to survive the viewing of this film. I am open to suggestions, however, and will make any and all changes I feel necessary in the future to enhance one's viewing experience and take one's mind off the implications of what they are currently seeing, since no one deserves to fully process and understand such a thing. That is why drinking games were invented.

What are you typing into Google? Round 2:

Looking through keyword lists to anecdotally assess overall quality or even just to find bad keywords that need to be filtered out (I can't believe some of this stuff actually goes live) is something I do on a regular basis. And on a regular basis, I come across keywords that educate, amuse, baffle, and disgust me (sadly, most of them are in that last group). But those of the amusement- and bafflement-inducing variety are the silver lining, and you lucky folks have the opportunity to take the good without the bad.

Well, mostly. After my last post about this, Google has indexed my site as being relevant to some rather distasteful queries; namely, any and all misspellings of the word 'vagina'. (I have yet to see any traffic on the correctly-spelled version, which I suppose is just as well.) I find that these have their own brand of comedy:

The Vigina Search Logs:

• very small viginas
• very large viginas
• big brests and big pences and viginas (the one that started it all... thank you, Tom)
  
• picture of vijinas
• big brests (no, it's not vigina-related, but I find it funny nonetheless)
• nice viginas video (this one has actually shown up twice, and I just keep wondering: are videos of vaginas being nice and polite just very hard to come by?)

A few other recent queries from searchers who must have been very disappointed in what they found when they came to this site:

Better luck next time:

• bridesmaid cowboy hat
• post-mortem scrabble
• adrienne's pantyhose (sorry, but those haven't been a part of my wardrobe for a loooong time)
• where to buy a real lightsaber
• Bags of Water Really Repel Flies (I've gotten 3 separate clicks on this query from Ask.com, which clearly needs to put some work into its search algorithm)
• typing google into google

And my favorites: the ones that our company actually (inadvertently) purchased ad space on. Here are a few that were recently brought to my attention when an alert employee noticed that we were paying for clicks on the keyword 'pantie wearing woman.' After sorting through a list of eleven thousand keywords containing the substring 'pantie,' and finding no less than 3,500 that were completely unrelated to the retail business (and losing faith in the decency of men everywhere in the process), I found a few that were funny enough to keep me going:

The Pantie Raid:

• grumpy bear panties
• bowling with no panties
• precision interface panties
• lame panties
• future mrs panties
• lady in black bra and panties with a dog
• panties hats
• panties gone wild

And finally: the random shit that people type into search engines never ceases to amaze. The following keywords were all entered into Google or our own website search box at least twice and I found them while scanning some of the output files. It's probably clear that I didn't really make it past the letter d while looking through this (there are two million keywords in each of these files, people), so I'll just list them in alphabetical order here.

Help me, Google, I'm looking for:

• 6 ft animated jason voorhees
• a favor for frank
• a new way of thinking
• a picture of an mp4
• a rocket in my pocket
• a sight for sore eyes
• a soft place to fall
• a trapezoid
• a tribute to the king elvis
• bad stuff
• bong building supplies
• build your own bedroom vanity
• build your own english pub bar
• build yourself a micro wind generator
• building crappie beds
• can a whitening pen work on dentures
• can't breathe
• can't stop the bum rush
• cheapper than dirt
• crazy light up socks
• dominican guys
• draw a picture of a turkey
• find things in picture
• one child per laptop
• robo hamsters

Oh. My. God.

I just bought one of these.

Out and about

I still don't know what people who don't sleep in do with their mornings on the weekend, but I was forced to actually contemplate it this morning: I woke up at 9:30 am, of my own volition, and didn't go back to sleep. (And yesterday I woke up at 7:15, all on my own, a full 20 minutes before my alarm went off. What is the world coming to??)

Fortunately my roommate is an early riser and was able to help me in my time of need. Kind of. Her suggestion was for us to go do The Stairs in Santa Monica. Hating stairs as I do (seriously, I can't even count the number of times I've fallen down stairs), I didn't think this was too awesome a suggestion, but since it's a beautiful day out and seriously what do people who get up in the morning do because I have no idea I couldn't come up with a reason not to go, so I went. And I'm glad I did, because the scenery really is very pretty, and the people there are a really eclectic group. There are hardcore athletes, people there with their trainers, moms who look like they wanted to mix it up and do stairs instead of yoga this time, college kids, and people just there with their friends. People are doing a loop up and down one set of stairs (they kind of look like lemmings), stretching on the grass, doing pushups on the street. My favorite sighting was a group of 5 women all walking along carrying what looked like yoga mats, all different colors but clearly made by the same manufacturer.

After my seven minutes of exercise (one trip up and down each set of stairs), three minutes of situps and fifteen minutes of lying on the ground and staring up at the palm trees, I was starving. And because I am somehow still not tired of Baja Fresh, I hit it up at 11 in the morning to get a bean and cheese burrito. Still in workout clothes. And was gratified to see three other people exactly like me, in workout gear, ordering food at Baja Fresh.

And on my way home, I passed three girls in USC gear, clearly heading to a friend's house to watch the game, all carrying the exact same cup from Starbucks.


This place is so LA. I'm learning to embrace it. Particularly when I just see sunsets like this in passing on the 10 and 405 interchange:

I heart LA part deux

Last night: dinner out at World Cafe on Main Street in Santa Monica, outside on the patio.

Tonight: dinner out at Napa Valley Grille in Westwood, followed by George Gershwin Alone at the Geffen Playhouse.

Both meals were absolutely delicious, and George Gershwin Alone was fantastic. The music was wonderful, and the venue so small and the acoustics so good that you could actually hear people wanting to sing along to 'Someone to Watch Over Me'... and restraining themselves. Like a collective bated breath. And then at the end we all did get to sing along--the performer took requests for favorite Gershwin songs and played them all, recruiting soloists from the audience and prompting us with the words and when to sing, and the music just swelled all around, with so much energy.

Definitely nights to remember.

I heart LA

Every so often I have one of those days in LA that make me really love living here. I spent a gorgeous Sunday afternoon last December visiting the Getty Villa for the first time, seeing a fantastic Magritte exhibit at LACMA, and going to my first Laker game (awesome seats courtesy of my job, for Christmas). There have been other great experiences this summer, too: a night at the Hollywood Bowl, listening to John Williams conduct some of his best-known film scores (and watching a whole troupe of lightsabers wag along to anything from Star Wars); a pub crawl in Hermosa Beach; a bike ride along the beach to Marina Del Rey. Great experiences that I couldn't have had, had I lived anywhere else.

This weekend was one of those weekends, too. Saturday I biked the 20 blocks to the beach and met a coworker and his family there--I'd forgotten how much fun the beach could be. Grownups just have the wrong idea. Left to myself I lie as still as possible, listening to music on my iPod, and every so often I decide I've gotten hot enough that I need a dip in the ocean to cool off. So I tiptoe into the water, eventually get myself completely submerged, spend another minute or two out there (cuz it takes a lot of work to get in past your knees and not feel cold anymore), and come right back to my towel, where I lie down on my other side. Repeat.

But with kids, the ocean is an experience: not a single wave escapes your notice, because to people that are only two and a half feet tall, even the ones that barely hit my knees are a triumph for them to withstand. We go into the water, then back out, then back in again, and back out again. Finally we persuade them to come back to the towels, where everyone rests for maybe five minutes before someone has to go to the bathroom, which means a hike back across the sand to the bathrooms (ew) and, thankfully, the showers (yay!). Then back to the towels, where it's time to, obviously, build mountains out of piles of sand, name them, and then destroy them all. And then back into the water. I'd spent four hours at the beach, and my friends five, by the time we finally decided to head back up the cliffs to El Cholo for some mexican and margaritas (mmm, cheese enchiladas...). I can't remember the last time I was that tired, or had had such a satisfactory time getting that way. I tried to follow the day up with a trip to Hollywood Forever for a screening of His Girl Friday that night, but by the time I got there, they'd closed the parking lot and I had to just head back home. Probably just as well--I doubt I'd have been able to stay awake through the movie. I came home, watched Philadelphia Story (which I first saw at Hollywood Forever last summer), and was asleep by midnight.

Jump to today at 11:30 (yes, after eleven and a half glorious hours of sleep), when I realize that I'm too sunburnt to make good on the beach plans I'd made with another friend of mine and decided to cast around for other ideas of stuff we can do together. And hit upon the idea of going to the newly-reopened Griffith Observatory. I was able to get us reservations for today, so we drove over around 5 (I spent most of my afternoon doing stuff for work, trying to redeem it by accomplishing it on my laptop on the outdoor patio at Coffee Bean) and caught the shuttle up at 6. It was a great day for going up: not a cloud to be seen, warm, breezy. And the view up there is one of the most amazing in all of LA. We were too far inland and it was too hazy to see the ocean, but we had an unsurpassed view of the Hollywood sign and the hills around it, and all the way to downtown in the other direction. We wandered around the observatory and into one of the new exhibits, where we saw a film on the history of the observatory and learned that it was named after one Griffith J. Griffith (which my friend and I found to be unaccountably funny) and got more facts on its renovation, which was actually pretty impressive: all the underground exhition space is new and had to be dug out from under the existing structure, which necessitated them putting the entire foundation on hydraulic lifts and raising it so they could dig under. To look now, you can't tell such a thing ever even took place.

We came out of the history film to find the sun was in the middle of setting, which made waiting in line for the planetarium show a lot more enjoyable, as everyone was outside on the west side of the building. The planetarium show was really good as well, if a bit cheesy (there was a woman narrating it live who seemed to have an appreciation for the melodramatic). By the time we got out of that, it was dark, and the moon was rising--full moon, too. Our last stop there was the big telescope, where anyone can go in free of charge and have a look, which is pretty cool. It was trained on Jupiter and its moons, and one of the astronomers there was lecturing on the climates of the different moons, and space missions, and other related facts, and taking questions from the people waiting in line. Altogether a really cool experience--I recommend a trip up there to anyone.

And the icing on the cake: our night ended with burgers from In-N-Out.

I heart LA.