Christmas at the Beach Cinema

This Saturday Kent and I took in a matinee at the Beach Cinema in Bradley Beach. It's their 80th anniversary this month and they celebrated by showing White Christmas along with a vintage cartoon and the Three Stooges short, The Three Beers. All for 2 bucks. And real butter on the popcorn.

It was such a nice time. There were a bunch of little kids there and even though they got restless at some parts (White Christmas is about 2 hours long with some extraneous musical and dance numbers to pad it out so it's hard to not get restless), they weren't annoying. Neither were the adults - no talking on cellphones or speaking at a conversational volume.

I wish I could open up a movie house just like the Beach Cinema.

Christmas in our first house

We bought the first Christmas tree for our first house last Sunday from the lot next to our local Applegate Farms (how lucky am I - I got to eat their great ice cream at their Montclair location while I was at college and now they're in Freehold!).

This is my desk in our "library," which is the room in the front of the house. We'll fill it with books some day.



O Tannenbaum!

This just might be true

One of The Onion's most believable articles:

Voice of God found to be Cheney on Intercom

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43189&rss=1

Can I play too?

Today's Salon broadsheet by Lynn Harris describes the current political discussion about abortion; that is, the discussion the menfolk are having. Seems that women aren't even pawns in this game anymore; we're not even on the chess board.

Great.

Podcast alert

For those of you who podcast listen to podcasts, you have got to check out Ritmo Latino. It is awesome!

(Yes, I said "awesome.")


Update
Here's the RSS link.

And here's the homepage although I can't get it to load.

Science rules!

From Reuters:

'Intelligent-design' school board ousted in Penn

By Jon Hurdle Wed Nov 9,12:35 AM ET

DOVER, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Voters on Tuesday ousted a Pennsylvania local school board that promoted an "intelligent-design" alternative to teaching evolution, and elected a new slate of candidates who promised to remove the concept from science classes.

Thank God!

At The Office

Whenever I get stressed out at work from being forced to listen to long, ill-informed conversations about politics, I get the title song to the American version of The Office stuck in my head and I immediately feel calmer.

Maybe it's because The Office is 10 times more deranged than mine. Maybe it makes me feel better knowing that there must be a million offices like mine otherwise how would this stuff wind up on TV.

All I know is, it works.

(Wouldn't it be sad if that's really all I know?)

Attacking cat

Strange multitasks by attacking Roscoe mid-yawn.

Friday copycat blogging

Top: Roscoe
Bottom: Strange

I have the same cats as Atrios except that Strange, my b/w cat, has a black nose where Atrios' b/w cat has a pink nose.

Rome?! You shoulda seen Naples!

I've been reading a thread on dKos about the downfall of American society (so what else is new?). One person cited the ever increasing rudeness of American drivers as evidence of the downfall. Someone else said that rude drivers aren't confined to America and asked if they've ever been in Athens or Rome during rush hour. Then a third person said:

"The main train station in Naples, Italy, was (is?) one of those psychotic traffic circuses. I used to take friends visiting from the states to a small cafe nearby, and we'd watch the fun for hours.

My mother, who is an awful driver, inspired my favorite Italian reaction to drivers that cut them off, went too slow, or generally pissed them off. The poor driver discommoded by Mom's driving would place their hands together in prayer, and look to the sky while gently shaking their hands back and forth.

Here, we just flip people off."

Maybe that's why I didn't take it personally when the Neapolitan train station employees purposely sent us foreigners to the wrong train during the work strike of June 2004.

But when an American driver pisses me off, I take it personally.

I think aggressive American driving would be so much more fun if everybody would do the shaking of the prayer hands thing.

Alternatively, we could do the waving of raised hands with palms inward, thumbs touching middle and ring fingers. It's not just a stereotype - Italians really do that.

English as She is Spoke

Kent gave me this book for Christmas last year and now it's a website. It's an English phrasebook translated from Portuguese to French to English and it's deliciously horrendous.

Mark Riley zinger

So on today's Morning Sedition on Air America, Marc Maron says, to the disbelief of others in the studio, that he'd like to go to Antarctica because of the peace and solitude: "it's so white and quiet."

To which Mark Riley replies, "You can find places like that in Brooklyn."

Yowza!

Maybe Riley should write more material for the show. Something to replace the WiFi 3000 Headline Translator. That bit is pah-ri-tee stale.

This week's Onion

The Onion hits the nail on the head yet again.

I wonder what the Daily Show has been saying. I keep forgetting to watch it.

These days, at least until the journalists went down to LA, sarcasm is the only source of truth I can find.

The Hummer Brigade

Everyone who owns a Hummer or H2 or any big-ass SUV should be called up to the Hummer Brigade to drive down to New Orleans and pick up as many people as they can.

We have the technology...

Exactly, dammit!

In this day and age, why can't computers be used by the masses like cars are? Yes, you still need to take the car to the mechanic to really fix it (unless you have all the special diagnostic equipment) but at least they give you airbags and seatbelts in case of an accident!

Regender bender

Here's a neat thing Misbehaving.net alerts us to: Regender - it changes the gender pronoun in a Webpage. Male pronouns get changed to female, proper male names get changed to female, and vice versa.

The translation of the Google News front page is kind of funny: "Florida Braces for Yet Another Hurricane as Katrina Strengthens" translates to "Floyd Braces for Yet Another Hurricane as Karl Strengthens."

As a sidenote, I used to think that it didn't matter if I had to read texts that only used male pronouns, but one of the books I read for my thesis only used female pronouns and I found that it did matter. I was so not used to seeing female pronouns used exclusively that I felt proud seeing them in that book as if womenkind had made some huge leap or something. As if we were finally let in on the conversation.

another cool Google map gadget

In my search for motivation to exercise (I pretty much broke my habit when I started writing my thesis a year ago), I came across WalkJogRun.net. It's a pedometer/route planner that uses Google maps.

Go go Google gadgets!

Another interesting discovery - I checked to see if Google satellite maps show topography and I found out that you can't zoom all the way in on Scranton, PA. Hmmm...

(Disclaimer: I own a little over 5 shares of Google. Not much, but I earned enough off of it to give me spending money for Christmas.)

First night

We camped out overnight at the house on Saturday. We ate pizza outside on our patio that evening and slept on the floor on a small, lumpy futon. I woke up to a slight backache - it was great! I'm not sure when we can move over the extra bed, but we'll have to wait until my Mom's truck is available for us to borrow.

The night was cool enough so that we could sleep with the windows open and the ceiling fan going. Around midnight, I heard some whispering outside and thought that people were trying to break into our seemingly vacant house to have a party. My homeowner's instincts are already sharp.

Turns out they were sneaking into the house across the street; the sound just carried. Seemed like one of the teenagers or 20-somethings lived there or knew the owners and that the owners were away. As soon as the emptiness of the house was verified, they swiftly moved from car to house, bottles clinking along the way.

That doesn't worry me - it's a typical suburban happening. What worries me is all items we'll have to buy to get the house and garden running smoothly. But that's just first-time homebuyer's anxiety I'm sure.

Keys are ours

Ok, so we didn't eat pizza on the bare floor (I was exhausted from the heat) but we did hang out long enough to drink a few swigs of champagne and poke around.

Now we have to buy a garden hose or else our beautiful garden will shrivel up and die.

Our House

Here's our house, which we'll be closing on at 11:30!

I've been a nervous wreck making sure I get all the necessary paperwork, but it'll be worth it once we go back tonight and have a picnic dinner on the floor of our empty dining room.

iSpy on iTrippers

I made up a new game for my 50-minute commute from work: listening in on other people's iPod broadcasts.

I stumbled upon this a few weeks ago. I have an iTrip for my iPod, which broadcasts the sound from my iPod onto nearby FM radios. Like Mr. Microphone, only it works. It's a great, wireless way for me to listen to my iPod in my car.

One day, when I turned off my iPod but was still tuned to the iTrip station, someone else's iPod was playing on my radio. A tricked-out hatchback was playing rap. A few days later, an 18-wheeler was playing a redone Al Green or Kool and the Gang song.

Today I decided to tune my radio to the iTrip station on purpose, to see what I could pick up and how long it would take me to do so. While I was going north on the route 9 bridge in Sayreville tonight, a guido car speeding by in the left lane was playing guido music. Later as I turned off of route 1 towards my apartment, I was treated to a talk about the SS Mississippi from the mini van behind me.

Sure, you have to sit through 10 or 15 minutes of static until you pick something up, but if you don't get the least bit giddy when you do, I'll eat my own head!

What is it about bald guys driving convertibles?

9 out of 10 guys I see driving a convertible are bald or balding.

Does the wind cause the balding or is it just that bald/balding guys get convertibles to regain what they think is their lost virility?

There's nothing like hanging out on the corner of a local bar in South Philly drinking a Coors or Miller Light and watching the cops drive by.

Reserved the Date!

Our wedding date will be March 18, 2006. At least it will be once the reception place deposits our check.

I feel like I'm at the top of a roller coaster at the second when the train feels like it's moving foward but hasn't yet.

Now I have to find a dress - saw an Art Deco-like Jessica McClintock dress that got me thinking about having an Art Deco-type wedding. But without kitchy accessories like posters or pictures of movie stars. Don't want it to look Disneyfied.

This rant hones in on most of the reasons why I want to open a second-run movie theater in Asbury Park.

Also, I'd love to be able to kick people out of my theater for holding full conversations with each other or on cell phones during the movie. And no yelling out comments as if you're doing MST3000!

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