Tuesday, March 30, 2010

I'm close to impressed.


How's that for vaguely non-committal.

Not quite impressed, not entirely UN-impressed....

...the verdict's out on whether I've actually decided to actively appreciate one James Franco or leave him in the "he's no Adrien Brody" camp.

I feel like my little eduphile self should dig the fact that after he finishes his Masters program he's planning on a PhD in English.....

But then I read his short story. The one Esquire was indugent enough to publish....

It's sort of, um.....lame.

I mean, I get that he seems to be trying to emulate a neo-Kerouac style, but he misses the mark. It like he's TRYING too hard to nail a stripped-down, minimalist, "life-is-hard-and-then-you-die" mood but actually he ends up sounding sort of sophomoric and overtly vulgar.

I dunno, maybe it's a work of subtle genius and I'm overlooking how understated he's being in his attempts to beat us over the head with his "life juxtaposed with death" message, but frankly - it's a couple of drunk winners in an old car insulting each other and driving into a wall. Then they lay around and toke up and insult each other some more and we're supposed to be, um....existentially moved by some sort of "not quite obvious" subtext about meaninglessness and feeling alive and what happens when we wave kitchen knives at friends we don't really like.

Or something.

And then in the end his anti-hero narrator ostensibly drives his car into oncoming freeway traffic and we're supposed to be left feeling something.

Sorry, did I spoil that?

Here's the entire story. Decide for yourself, I guess.

But back to that matter of being impressed. He's not an actor I've ever been hugely moved by - neither does he bug me the way, oh, Clive Owen, Gerard Butler or Jude Law bug me....I guess I'm just so generally inspired by weighty academic pursuits that I wanted this bit of intellectual gossip to direct my opinion of the Franco toward the "ooh, aren't you something special!" end of the celebrity spectrum.

So far, I'm still just "meh."

Maybe if he did something else with his hair.....?*










* Yes, there's the cold, hard truth. If he looked like Sam Worthington or was built like Christopher Meloni I'd apparently be dramatically more impressed by all of this. But he looks like James Franco. And to me, he'll forever be the whiny kid in Spiderman. I can't get all effusive over the whiny kid in Spiderman.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

"Wow" is about all I can manage (in a sort of disbelieving, horrified way....)


A few weeks ago I was wandering around Forever21 on a lunch break and happened to observe the, um, shopping equivalent of a roadside car accident. The kind of car accident with lots of flashing lights and emergency vehicles and maybe even an overturned car that makes everyone stop n' gawk at the spectacle.

This girl was trying on all sorts of "tell me she's not planning to wear that out in public" type outfits. Good enough, most of us have put on some sort of trashtastic getup in the privacy of a dressing room just to see what we'd look like if we woke up as Bomshell McGee one morning. Difference: most of us don't go skipping through the store in our painted-on vinyl strech pants in search of our friends looking to show off our camel toe gloriousness.

That said: I couldn't look away. I sort of lurked near the dressing room waiting for Our Lady of the Spandex to spring out wearing the next halloween costume in a long procession of ill-advised, ill-fitting "outfits." She'd spin around in front of the mirrors and ask her friends, "So, is this totally trashy, or is it cute in a kinda 'rocker chick' way?"

If you have to ask............

Anyway - we'll call Jennifer Love Hewitt's foray into, um........."literature" the publishing equivalent of that girl in the dressing room. "The Day I Shot Cupid" is now on the shelves. And just like that vinyl stretch pants girl in the dressing room, well.....it's, um:

Painful.

Heinously awkward.

Hard to tear your eyes from.

Sort of delicious in it's unabashed awfulness.

My new favorite.

Case in point: an editor somewhere allowed the Girl Who Shot Cupid to actually publish the letters "lol" in the middle of a sentence. Yes, she "lol-ed" when she said: "Guys hate to spoon -- they prefer to fork, lol!"

Just let that sit there for a minute.

"......."

No words. There are simply no words.

Voice Publishing has created a monster. Er, no. They've just released the monster. NPR's Linda Holmes tackles it best in her review titled "Ten Things I Read In Jennifer Love Hewitt's Book That Are Not Hallucinations."

In fact, she does it better than I could, so here's the entire text of the article:
Actress Jennifer Love Hewitt, who became famous on the teen drama Party Of Five in the late 1990s, made a lot of people really angry by playing Audrey Hepburn in a TV movie, made many terrible movies, and then found her way to The Ghost Whisperer, has written a book.



Called The Day I Shot Cupid, it is subtitled, "Hello, My Name Is Jennifer Love Hewitt, And I'm A Love-aholic." Yes, this means that her name is on the cover of the book twice. As you can see from the cover, this book is about very serious advice for women about how to be happy. Despite the fact that I feel like I am walking right into a trap set by a publisher who expects this book to sell with an Irony Multiplier of about 8.5, I simply cannot help myself. Here are ten completely awesome things that happen in this book.


1. On page two of the introduction, the word "TRUTH" (in all caps, thusly) is followed by 23 exclamation points. On page three of the introduction, the word "love" is followed by five question marks. Two sentences later, the word "CUPID" is followed by two exclamation points. Three pages into the book -- pages of the introduction, which comes after the preface -- you're already basically reading the late stages of an Internet message-board meltdown.


2. On her own press: "I cannot even tell you how many times I've been reading an article, happy with what they have written, focusing on all the right things, and then, like the clap, it appears: serial dater." It seems to me that there is a very unfortunate and obviously unintentional parallel being drawn here between what causes one thing to "appear" and what causes another thing to "appear."


3. "Guys hate to spoon -- they prefer to fork, lol!"


4. "This is embarrassing and personal, but once a month, since I was twelve years old, I go to my favorite jewelry store and try on my dream ring." She is 31 years old. If this is true, she has made roughly 225 trips to the jewelry store to try on engagement rings. I do not know where to go with this.


5. From the list of 20 Things To Do After A Breakup: "Make out with a stranger (he must be gorgeous or you'll feel worse)."


6. From the list of 10 Things To Do Before A Date: "Spray tan is a must."


7. From the list of "Strikes," where if a guy has three, you forget it: "He keeps saying 'That's so dumb' when you're talking." Oh ... Jennifer Love Hewitt. I'm so sorry that possibly might have happened to you once or twice or I'm assuming you might not have brought it up.


8. "Remember, your body is a temple, not a 7-Eleven."


9. From the list of "What A Man Should Know": "How to pick a diamond," and "To always have a coat for you." A coat for you? Always? He should always have a coat for you? And pick out diamonds? I am beginning to think that Jennifer Love Hewitt and I do not share exactly the same priorities vis-a-vis romantic situations and also who is in charge of choosing and transporting our clothing.


10. I really don't want to go into detail about the last one. I will just point you to a video where she explains it. Because ... apparently everyone had already heard about this except for me, so I was the only one completely weirded out by it. It is ... NSFWPOFR (Not Safe For Watching Party Of Five Reruns), to say the least.
Yep. That number 10 item is the much-discussed "bedazzling" of her female parts with swarovski crystals. Whatever makes her feel better. My only question: do ya s'pose she'd feel a little silly if she went to all that effort to get herself all disco-ed out and then ended up going to bed alone? I'd feel silly. Or maybe not. Maybe I'd feel amazing and beautiful and sexy and princess-ee while all by my lonesome, just me and my swarovski bikini zone. Maybe.

Honestly: this book will totally wind up on my Kindle and I'll act like I have no idea how it got there. BUT, in between my bouts of wide-eyed, innocent denial that I actually spent the $9.99 and my secret eagerness to rush off to my lunch break and kill this thing cover-to-cover I do suspect it will be great giggle fuel for party conversations... Must agree with the singular ODDNESS of that #9 item up there that men should know to "always have a coat for you." Um, doesn't she live in LA? And on the long list of things that we women assume men "must know" I really don't think "have a spare coat handy" would even crack the top 500. But that's another discussion for another day.

I don't think Ms Hewitt is actually doing herself any favors with this book, which is actually too bad because I sort of feel like she needs all of the favors she can wrap her pretty little relationship-loving fingers around....she's dangerously close to becoming a caricature of herself, of becoming some sort of pop culture joke. And that would be a waste of that famously good cleavage.
OR, maybe I should just be thankful that I've just gleaned one new piece of Cupid-Slaying Dating Advice from Lil Miss Been-There: always spray tan before a date.
 
I have so overlooked that particular man-winning tactic for, oh, my entire life. Maybe that should come with a little caveat: "Spray tan is a must......UNLESS the date is less than 12 hours after the spraying AND the date takes place in 100-degree temperatures AND you decide white linen pants would be a good idea for the date." Um, unless you want "orange sweat spots" to be your next fashion misstep: skip the spray tan.
 
I'm not necessarily speaking from experience there, but, um....there might have been an emergency trip into a target to buy a cheap dress to change into....might have been.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Power Point can wait; pictures of hot chicks apparently can't.

Yeah, so it's down to crunch time over in "real life" where I'm supposed to be getting ready to present a class at our annual conference (this is actually a huge milestone in my "phone support" universe, because us "phone support" monkeys don't usually get let out of our cages, let alone allowed to hop up on a stage in front of our clients and yap at them for an hour or so about the things they didn't realize their software could do for them). I have hours and hours of hideously tedious Power Pointing that I should be working on.

And then I find a photo gallery of Mila Kunis pictures (related to a really lame "interview" she did for GQ) and all of a sudden capturing those screen shots of our "Unlimited Fiscal Calendar Maintenance" and pasting them into our nice little logo slide templates ceases to seem like a great way to spend my afternoon. Go figure.

See, I love Mila Kunis. In FACT, I'd step out on a limb and say that right now, I love her more than I love Megan Fox. Yes, I use that word "love" to mean "resent that I wasn't born looking just like" more than anything..... anyway, as of today Megan and her great eyebrows were very possibly unseated by Mila and her amazing eye makeup. Uh, yeah - there's probably the main difference between a dude checking out a photo gallery of a a hot chick and Heather oogling the same photo gallery: I can look at her and think, "sweet - her itty bitty shorts are see through...that's hot" with the best of them, but my REAL motivation is scoping the pictures for beauty tips - like, "hmmm - she manages the really heavy black smokey liner without looking like a crack fiend - neat." and "groovy copper highlights....maybe I should try something like that." and "awesome boots. where can I get a pair of cheaper knockoffs?"

And like another favorite of mine, Rachel Bilson, she seems like this dainty little pocket-sized person - like, we could probably share jeans if we were roommates. Right. Yeah........that's the sort of crap I think about while I'm checking out photo galleries of famous good-looking women. Whatever.

Here's the entirety of Dan Fierman's conversation with her, courtesy of GQ (the pictures are here too!):

There are things in this existence that are fair, and there are things that are not. The rules of backgammon are undeniably fair. That Macaulay Culkin gets Mila Kunis is not. It's not just that she looks like an anime cartoon. Or that she's the ultimate guys'-girl, having starred in everything from The Book of Eli to Family Guy. Or that she is the type of comedian that steals every scene she's in, most recently (and perhaps most impressively) as a foulmouthed stripper turned blackmailer who helps ruin Tina Fey and Steve Carell's nice, suburban lives in this month's Date Night. She is all those things, of course. But Mila Kunis also happens to be one of the funniest women we've ever had the good fortune to speak with.
"I love a good dick joke," she says, in a tone usually reserved for topics like Iranian nuclear enrichment or troop levels in Waziristan. "Fart jokes. Poop jokes. They're hilarious. They never get old. But especially not a dick joke." Given that kind of setup, it's impossible not to bring up 2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall, in which Ms. Kunis acted opposite a stark-naked Jason Segel. "Look, I want it on the record, okay?" she says. "It's a nice dick. Well proportioned. Handsome. I have nothing but good things to say about Jason Segel's penis."
Funny? Smart? Generous, too? Jason Segel is welcome to join us in sticking pins in our old Home Alone dolls anytime.

Actually, I think now I have to go find out if she really, truly is still tagging along with Macaulay Culkin. And then I have to find out how unattached Sam Worthington is and convince them they should probably meet, fall in love and make stupidly hot kids together. And then we can put me in "celebrity matchmaking therapy" for actually pondering things like this in my "definitely not free-" time.

For now - back to coming up with a way to visually represent the fact that thanks to new effective date fields our software now allows prior period corrections for projected cost entries. And stuff like that. Spend my evenings thinking about exciting ways to demonstrate the new option to suppress employees' social security numbers when running certified payroll reports.

And ponder even more important things like whether or not to wear the ridiculous Victoria's Secret "Miraculous" bra on presentation day as a nod to the fact that I might be a decently engaging public speaker, but I'll be catapulted into the realm of "unforgettable" if I've got just a hint of some perplexingly excellent cleavage. Hey, our software caters to the construction industry. It's not completely unreasonable to assume the construction projects managers and accountants the country over would appreciate a little something to jazz up the conference classes.

Focus, Heather. Power Point. Job Billing Analysis Report. Worry about your legs in the pencil skirt next month.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Happy St Patty's Day: Let's Break Up.

A little green text in honor of this kid's lucky heritage today (and -- oh yes -- in honor of the fact that the drinking of green beer commences in a wee 6 hours).

And how about I toss out a roundup of the latest celebrity breakups (rumoured or otherwise). Sweet. How about after that I link to an article that suggests most of us "lose our sense of self" following a breakup. Excellent. How about I take that one step further and laugh in the face of "most of us" by launching into a completely self-righteous tirade about reclaiming my sense of self after shedding the heavy husk of a dead relationship. How about that?

Sounds like a plan.

First up: initial whisperings that something is quite wrong with the Sandy Bullock/Jesse James union are surfacing. She's cancelling premiers, he's rumored to be "preparing a statement," there are pictures of trashy "other women" popping up on the webernet, things like that. My take: the rumours are always true. Also: as a chick, your relationship is pretty much cursed the second you touch that best actress Oscar statue. Charlize Theron, Hilary Swank, Reese Witherspoon, Kate Winslet - they all lost their men when they won their Academy Awards. Their careers also rather tanked, but eh, collateral.

Speaking of Kate Winslet: Sam Mendes may or may not have stepped out on her with that Uptight Brunette From Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The one that DIDN'T want to get on the plane with or sleep with or fall in love with Javier Bardem but ended up doing all 3 AND getting shot in the hand all to a beautiful flamenco guitar soundtrack. Yep - that girl. And Kate may or may not be attempting to take comfort in Leo's arms (naturally. that's a boring, predictably place to take comfort. She should have done something unpredictable and hooked up with John Mayer).  Actually, this could be a mighty crowded love triangle there, what with his supermodel girlfriend in the way and what not.

Speaking of John Mayer. If he's bored, Britney's back on the market. She and her agent/boyfriend Jason TraSomethingOrOther are no more. That guy sort of looks like what would happen if Tori Spelling's husband Dean Something got together and had a kid with Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson and that kid went prematurely grey. Anyway - apparently this is no big surprise, apparently their boring relationship has been rocky for awhile, it happens.

Oh - and Tori Spelling's husband? His name's apparently Dean McDermott and he's also apparently "trapped" in his "crisis marriage" with Tori. Yep. We'll call today "Black Patty's Day" because apparently famous (er, ok, to be fair, Tori and Dean are sort of Faux-Famous) couples are ditching each other en masse today. Hot day on the gossip blogs. Or, it's like a breakup bandwagon. "So and so is getting covered on Dlisted AND Perez Hilton and I totally feel unimportant right now - babe, let's break up for the day, k?!"

Along those lines - Reggie Bush and Kim Kardashian (my least-favorite of all our hot-bodied socialites with their own fragrance product line) have also hopped on that breakup bandwagon "for real." Whatever. Don't care about these guys. The gossip blog message board people: they care. Read lots of "keep ya chin up kim, u totally deserve better!" comments. Consider my eyes rolled.

Also consider me slightly bummed that J-Love and J-Kenn broke up after a year of sneer-inspiring cuteness. I sort of had high hopes for those guys. They seemed so unlikely it almost had to work. My guess: it was a brother-sisterly chemistry that couldn't really sustain 'em for the long haul. Lifelong companionship after the initial honeymoon sparks fade: necessary. Sparks fading too quickly and leaving you with a goofy roommate for the rest of your life: less necessary. I suspect they fell into the latter camp. Anyway, now she's taking her inclinations toward serial monogamy to the streets once again to track down her other half.

According to some psychology students at Northwestern University, these now "plus-oneless" celebs will struggle with a diminished sense of self. Here's a quote:


"Couples often share friends, do the same things in their free time, and talk about the future. They say things like, "We like traveling," and finish each other’s sentences. The more committed they are to one another, the harder it is for them to distinguish their individual differences, the researchers describe in the February issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin"

Hmmm.

Maybe.

My better guess for this scenario (though who am I to contradict PhD candidates): in most breakups, we've got a dumper and a dumpee. Sure, we all dream of being in the sort of open, communicative relationship where troubles are discussed before they're simmered over, where arguments don't happen because good conversations DO, where everyone's on the same page about the future, sunshine, puppies, rainbows, that sort of thing - but it doesn't always happen that way. So we've got a dumpee that's left with a less clear sense of self (a "who am I without them????" kind of crisis) and a dumper that probably feels like they've just gotten a new lease on reality. A re-attachment to themselves. A clearer, brighter, cleaner view of their own identity, gloriously separate and apart from the ties that bound.

Having your world turned upside down isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sometime upside down sends necessary blood to your brain. Knocks you out of your previous love funk. Sets you straight. Insert cliche of choice. If "...we know that relationships change the way we think about ourselves," according to lead author Erica Slotter then being on the other side of that particular relationship hurdle could open us up to thinking about ourselves from a more empowered angle.

So, spurned celebrites: toss back a Guiness or three and celebrate your new sense of self. Or start a club. Sort of like a book club....or a sorority. Then write a screenplay about it, produce it, direct it, star in it and win another round of Academy Awards. In a movie about Academy Award winners and their lonely hearts and diminished identities. Just make sure you cast Sam Worthington in it. He's really, ridiculously good-looking. Stupid, inarticulate and boring, maybe: but hideously, insanely good-looking. Here's a slideshow of him from Details magazine. Because I can.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Things famous mistresses shouldn't do - Round one: GQ Interviews

Let's play pretend for a minute.

Let's pretend we're a famous guy's bit-on-the-side. Let's pretend we get knocked up, pretend the baby belongs to someone else, pretend we accept a stack of hush money, pretend we eventually watch our famous guy's entire career deteriorate and his marriage implode before we finally own up our kid's paternity and come clean about everything.

Feelin it?

Ok. NOW, what do we -- as the famous guy's bit-on-the-side -- pretend to do next?

If you said "get almost naked, roll around in our infamous progeny's bed and blab to GQ, dummy!"....um, you're really good at this game.

You must have played pretend with me as a kid.

Yeah, remember all of those times we played "Simon & Simon" and I always made you be the Gerald McRaney "Rick Simon" character because I totally wanted to be the Jameson Parker "AJ Simon" character who wore "suits and ties?" Yep, that was fun. Just like it was fun when we played pretend "Little House on the Prairie" and I made you "feed the chickens" by sprinkling an entire box of Cap'n Crunch all over the living room carpet? That was fun, too.

So, now that we're pretending to be the John Edwards paramour also known as Rielle Hunter and we've got our GQ interview all lined up and our photographer on site and we've taken our pants off and grabbed our kid to use as an unfortunate prop, what do you suppose we pretend to talk about?

If you said we'd talk about the reasons Elizabeth Edwards is to blame for her husband's infidelity you'd also be right! And after we're through pretending to gush about our first night with the Politician We'd Never Want to Emasculate, and after we're through waxing awkwardly philosophical about our culturally unsafe lifestyle and after we're through giggling about our spiritual connection with Jeff Goldblum THEN we'd pitch a fit about how horrible those pictures were that we allowed to have taken of ourselves.

Anyway - excerpts from the article are here if we'd like to stop pretending, bite the bullet, and suffer through some of the most self-indulgent blather I've read since John Mayer last opened his mouth (heh. heh. heh). And yes, if I were here, I'd be embarassed of those pictures, too. You know what else I'd be embarassed about: the fact that I rambled on and on and on about Johnny Haircut's marriage, and the factually inaccurate information all over the webernet about us, and our Oprah issues and our excellently magnetic chemistry with Johnny Haircut, then finally answer the question "How do you describe your relationship with John Edwards right now?" with the answer: Private.

Riiiiiiiight.

The relationship is private, but our daughter's bedroom is open territory. The relationship is private, but our opinion on the DOA nature of Johnny's multi-decade marriage is great meat for the discussion grinder. The relationship is private, but the sex tape discussion......you get the picture. She's not helping herself, basically.

And, as I'm always a sucker for the giggle-value of the comments people leave on articles like these, I found a host of people eager and willing to break out their worst "typing with high blood pressure" grammar in righteous condemnation. They're worth a read. All 40 or so of them. Apparently Americans hate The Other Woman.

If the rest of American was playing pretend, the Famous Guy's bit-on-the-side would burn forever in a fiery hell along with the rest of the world's classless home-wreckers. Frankly, I think the response she gets to her stupid interview is fiery hell enough. Let the woman live underneath the public's disgusted gaze.

You know, alone on that loathesome cul de sac next door to John Mayer.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

yes, but would the movie be 24 hours long?

Wow. Don't think I so much as MOVED last night. Fell asleep around 11, woke up in the same sort of crooked position about 7 hours later when the Blackberry startled me awake with "Boombastic." Flipping great song to wake up to. But I wondered where the entire night went. Felt a little robbed, frankly. Didn't remember any good dreams and didn't get the luxury of the 2:27-ish "wake up, look at clock, fall back asleep" gig that always delights me.

Speaking of delightful: sitting here at my desk with my coffee and my chocolate donut cruising through photo galleries of celebrities working out. Next up: galleries of celebrities eating. Balance my guilt. At least the guilt over the sedentary, donut-eating lifestyle. Not sure how to balance my guilt over the fact that I woke up from the unmoving night's sleep and decided to put on flowered stretch pants. It seemed like a "good" idea at the time. Sort of like the seriously ratty ponytail and old school sorority sweatshirt seemed like a good idea. And the giant baseball ringer tee (which, as I look at it now, has a sort of dingy hem that's making me feel all sorts of redneck). And the naked, unpainted toenails. And the "I think I'm allergic to my concealer, therefore I won't cover up those freaky-lookin zits on my chin" complexion. Bottom line: having a seriously hot day (which is not helped by looking at pictures of fit celebrities in their cool Under Armour gear and Gucci athletic shoes...).

You know who doesn't have the luxury of sleeping, waking up to an alarm clock, eating donuts, working out, or looking at pictures of people working out (unless they're terrorist people)?

Jack Bauer.

HOWEVER - that's about to change.

Rumor has it the eighth season of "24" will be its last.

Apparently it's getting too expensive and ratings are dropping. Was bound to happen. They'd never really top the whole "breaking into the White House via underground tunnel" lunacy anyway on the "what were the writers thinking?!?!?!?" scale.

So that means Jack Bauer will finally have all sorts of time to do everything from take a bubble bath to become a master of that Wii Sports Resort fencing game to whipping up some tasty Semi-Homemade treats he snagged off of Sandra Lee's website (which he can snack on while sitting in front of a beautiful "tablescape" he tossed together by cutting pretty shapes out of construction paper).

Neato.

He can treat himself to a nice bottle of Malbec.

He can hike around Yellowstone, maybe book a cruise around some Greek Islands.

Take in a Garth show in Vegas, babysit the little ankle-biters Chloe and Kim knocked out over the course of the last few seasons.

Spend a Sunday on the couch in his underwear watching NASCAR (er, is that just me that loves those Sundays?)

OR, he can appear in a feature film.

Yep. "24" producers are tossing around the idea of a film to keep them rollin in the "WHERE! IS! THE! NUCLEAR! WARHEAD!" dough.

I think it's a lame idea.

Sort of like X-Files movies were a lame idea. And the Sex & The City movies were a lame idea. And the Simpsons movie. And the And the Full House movie. Wait...there wasn't a Full House movie? There totally should have been. It could have been the DJ Tanner wedding episode, but drawn out with lots of funny, hapless "Uncle Joey and Jesse help DJ shop for wedding dress" scenes and a great Bob Saget toast at the reception. And Kimmy. They could have brought back DJ's obnoxious friend Kimmy. We could have had great flashback sequences and a catchy credits song written by, uh, Katy Perry. Man...I miss "Wake Up San Francisco."

And I completely can't stop shoving these neat M&M "Speck-Tacular" giant chocolate eggs in my mouth. Wow. They're huge. And so tasty. And speckled. Brightly colored and speckled. I'm totally stuffed but it's absolutely not keeping me from diving into the desk drawer for another handful. Mmm. So much for steering clear of sugar today. Donut. M&M's. Sheesh.

Anyway, the 24 movie wouldn't work. Unless it was 24 hours long (which actually might be a cool entertainment concept....) they'd end up ruining the entire franchise because "24: The Movie" when not in real-time, would just be another terrorist-ee action flick with sort of trite, recycled villains and a revolving Oval Office door that spits out various suits with entitlement complexes.

Therefore, to prevent this sort of unnecessary, shark-jumping, money-grubbing, rehashing of well-traveled material, the conclusion of this season must -- clearly -- end with the Death of Jack Bauer. I know, 24 consiracy theorists would never lay that one to rest, and sure, die-hard loyalists would probably never enjoy an uninterrupted night of sleep again, but at least it would guarantee we wouldn't be subjected to "24: The Next 24 Hours" or "24: Return to CTU" or "24: In the Eye of the Hurricane" or "24: Disarmed" every two or three years.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

because I hate to be predictable....

No Oscar re-cap from my previously Academy Award-preoccupied self. Takes too much energy. It's Tuesday and I'm a day too late for that to even feel relevant. Therefore -- I'm falling back on an old classic (though am running admittedly short on cute little quips today, it's one of THOSE days) - here's another edition of:

People Having Worse Tuesdays Than I

1 - Brad Paisley
The Once-Future-Father-of-Heather's-Babies took a nasty spill during an encore number in Charleston, SC this weekend. Irony: it was during the song "Alcohol." Looks like he tripped and fell headfirst over his fancy guitar. Went down like he meant it. Apparently he's "very sore" with some serious bruises, but otherwise alive and kickin. No broken ribs (though to watch him fall, seriously looks like he would have more likely splashed Brad Paisley brains all over the stage...) Hmmm.....too bad that whole "you look a lot like Kimberly Williams" sentiment from years past isn't quite strong enough these days for me to swap places with her undetected. You know, so I could, um *cough - play nurse - cough*




2 - The rest of the body attached to The Breasts known as Christina Hendricks
I can't quite figure this out. Christina Hendrick's breasts were invited to the Elton John Oscar After-Party. Sweet. They decide that the rest of her body may come along and should wear the fashion equivalent of "Morticia Adams as a Cake Topper." And this morning she wakes up to pictures of herself all over the greater celebrity gossip website world with a huge "what was she thinking" caption beneath them all. On the flip side: her hair looked great. On the flip-flip side, for a woman who says she's tired of everyone making such a big fuss over her figure....she doesn't dress herself like a woman tired of the attention...and talking about your fancy body (whatever the ultimate goal) still draws a hell of a lot of attention to your fancy body. So really, I hope the body attached to The Breasts known as Christina Hendricks had a fantastic time on Sunday night, because she's starting the week with all sorts of jokes about that dress (jokes nearly as incredulous as the "is-she-or-isn't-she-wearing-grey-hosiery?!" debate).

Red carpet at the 18th Annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Award Party at Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, California on March 7, 2010. Pictured here is actress Christina Hendricks Fame Pictures, Inc


He brought this bad day on himself. He decided to date Miley Cyrus. Er, no, wait - I don't think there was any deciding about it. I have a feeling Miley sets her sights on something and a vast, cash-driven (though I'm sure highly dedictated) army of Miley Minions launches into action to "secure the target" and make sure their Queen wants for nothing. So really: this Liam guy was snared before he even knew what hit him. HOWEVER, I think it does the young buck no good to be lumped in with Her Majesty when she says this of her latest Man Toy: "I think we're both deeper than normal people—what they think and how they feel. He's very grateful for what he has, but he doesn't let it go to his head. I'm like that too." What's a guy to do after a comparison like that? He starts looking for another word to describe "depth," that's what. Because it's tantamount to libel, really, to be lumped in with The Miley when she starts making grandiose statments about self-actualization. Poor guy. He just got Super Lame by association. And I had NO idea who that guy was in the first place.


5 - Jessica Simpson
So, it always blows to realize "he's just not that into you." BUT I'd bet it blows that much harder if you find out he's just not that into you via gossip websites or People magazine or whisperings that he's hooked up with someone taller and ridiculously better-looking than you.  Er, I guess particularly when he's not that tall or good looking himself (although he managed to make the "usually-a-bad-idea" soul patch thing look, I suppose, sort of OK). The girl in question is Jessica Simpson. The guy in question is, of course, Jeremy Renner. And apparently the fact that we all heard that they "flirted and swapped digits" was patently untrue. And the taller, better-looking woman with whom he's rumored to have had a post-Oscar hookup was none other than Charlize Theron. And that's a tough break. Would rather be me than Jess today. No girl wants to be the one that lost the man  (even the man that never was, even the man that was only rumored to have happened) to Charlize, if only because it's one of those "well obviously" situations. As in, "well obviously the man will pick Charlize." As in "well obviously Jess never stood a chance." As in "well obviously, the guy would have to be out of his mind - no contest." Et cetera. I never want to be on the soggy end of a "well obviously" situation.
HOLLYWOOD - MARCH 07: Actor Jeremy Renner arrives at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards held at the Kodak Theatre on March 7, 2010 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images)

So then - by comparison: a word to the "Telephone-Support-Hotline-Dialing-Tool-In-All-Of-Us:"

If you have to call a telephone support line AND you happen to be having a particularly bad day AND you happen to have something of a mouth on you AND you happen to be unable to control that mouth when your computer gives you problems, THEN consider this: it's not any more pleasant for those of us on the receiving end of that phone call, Mr RepeatedUseofSonofaBitch. It shouldn't be my job to...uh....temper your temper. And it lacks professionalism. If you MUST toss around the JeeeesusEffingChrist references while you're on the phone with us, have the grace to say, "Uh, sorry 'bout that" after each and every one. Otherwise I'll be very tempted to just Hang the Eff Up On You, blame it on a bad connection and run off to the little girls' room afterward so that you get a DIFFERENT "support agent" when you call back.

HOWEVER: would rather be my weary phone-answering self than Jessica Simpson or Liam Hemsworth or the rest of the body attached to The Breasts known as Christina Hendricks or poor lil Brad Paisley. Today, anyway.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Oooh - what's better than flying coach? Flying coach with a television crew filming the flight attendants....

About a year ago I was on a little commuter flight between Phoenix and Bakersfield. Tiny plane, maybe eighteen rows, I ended up in the very back row by the "lavatory" and the cabin attendants' jump seat. Turns out the flight attendant sitting back in that seat (a few inches from me) was a talkative single mom that pulled me out of the David Baldacci I was finally getting a chance to read by saying "I wish my daughter had some good influences like you!"

My first thought: huh?

My second thought: I'm sure even serial killers have read a book or two.

My third thought: Great - have to make small talk.

"How old is your daughter?"

"Sixteen She's a...handful."

"Wow, you don't look old enough to have a sixteen year old!"

"Thank you! How old are you?"

I get this a lot. I look young. Sometimes looking young can also mean you look out-of-context....when buying beer, when heading into an "R-rated movie" (not kidding. they ask to see my ID), when on a date with a guy who looks his age, uh, when minding your own business on a plane reading a book? Things like that. I don't mind, I'm not so young that I can't appreciate the "you look like a high school kid" reaction. Anyway - told her I was 28. She acted shocked in return, we complimented each others' nails, made some nice "girl talk" for awhile, she alluded to the fact that she had her own "Mr Big" in Phoenix that would wine and dine her when she came through town, I wondered whether or not her daughter was a "handful" because her mom was off flying around the country getting wined and dined by suburban business guys in every city serviced by a United connector....kept that to myself.

Anyway - then I asked how long she'd been a flight attendant.

"6 months."

Oh. Hmm. So THAT'S why she's stuck in the jumpseat of a late night, mid-week commuter flight for "Mesa Airlines" on her way to Bakersfield.

"Do you enjoy it so far?"

She looked around rather "nervously" for a second, leaned in and said "Hate it. So many other catty flight attendants. You have to have seniority to get the good flights, so the women try to sabotage each other to get ahead. Last week, some b*tch told management that I left my plane dirty after the flight. My planes are always spotless. She just wanted to make me look bad so she would get the better routes. Tons of competition and backstabbing. It's awful."

Aha.

And the veil fell from my Oblivious Airline Passenger eyes and I realized that flight attendants fight office politics just like the rest of us. The additional bummer to having your coworkers try to submarine you is that you're locked in a tank with them 30,000 feet in the air and have a cabin full of demanding, ungrateful, uncomfortable passengers to content with - politely - in addition.

SO - that's the long way of getting around to the fact that the CW is debuting a show called "Fly Girls" this month that will attempt to pull the wool back over our Oblivious Airline Passenger eyes and convince us that - yes! - the life of a flight attendant IS, in fact, still a glamourous one while we follow some hot Virgin America girls around the friendly skies. They're young. They're sexy. They're getting as many business cards and dinner invitations as you think they are. They love their jobs. They love the air travel industry. The love the red carpet. Um. Yes. And I pity the fools on their flights with the cameras and the film crews and the mess that inevitably accompanies "reality" programming.

But it's actually probably a great Jersey Shore-esque way to get people excited about "enjoying the ride" between point A and B (as one Fly Girl puts it) thanks to Virgin's  "fleet-wide Wi-Fi, touchpad food and drink ordering, seat-to-seat e-chats." Given the option of Southwest or VA or Jet Blue, I have a feeling more of us would opt for the Virgin America if there's a chance we'll bump into a television personality. Why not? Flying can be a pain - add some quirky "celebrity exposure" and it might make that trip between Seattle and LA a little more fun.

The surprising bit, after reading USA Today's spotlight on the show, was that the girls involved actually didn't completely repulse me. Granted, the story was obviously edited for appeal, but the Fly Girls actually managed to sound reasonably, well....likeable. Fascinating. Apparently VA has a nominal advertising budget, so they figure this is one way to get some additional exposure. Not a bad idea, actually.....sure, we'll still get to watch the girls snip at each other, "Hills"-style behind the scenes at their LA crashpad - but fabricated conflict is the entire point of "reality" programming. And don't we all love to watch hot chicks roll their eyes at each other and pause dramatically ahead of a commercial break?

I know I do.

So, hey, how about a network puts together a show about the "underbelly of the customer support industry" and makes me the "face of the people behind the headset." I'd be down. And the entire country would watch and say, "that chick looks like she's 17."

Yep - and judging from the number of "thanks, hon!" comments I get every day, I must SOUND like I'm about 17, too.

Hey, maybe John Mayer could make a cameo.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Er, no - a mediocre southern accent should not an Oscar win.

I don't know who this Dave White MSNBC contributor is, but I think he's taken a few too many sips from The Blind Side's peroxide bottle.

At least that's the only explanation I can come up with for why he'd call Sandra Bullock the predictable Best Actress Oscar winner this year.

Really?

Because last time I checked, sporting a new hair color and a southern accent ought not a Best Actress make. Not that the academy voters can't be duly swayed by the fact that she did have a rockin body and glorious "Southern Suburban Ladies Who Lunch" wardrobe throughout, but if we're evaluating on that basis, please - hand the award to Carey Mulligan - her hair underwent as much of an education as her character. And her eyeliner was so precise.

I wasn't planning to commit my own Oscar picks to posterity....HOWEVER, since I've seen MOST of them this year, I may as well weigh in, since I can't simply let this Dave White guy project unchallenged. Because he's wrong. For now. Until Sunday proves otherwise, either way.

So - armed with my dog-eared Oscar Ballot (yes, I carry it around with me for a month and check off each movie as I see it. Whatever, it's my Big Television Event of the Year), here's how I'm calling it (my picks italicized):

Leading Actor:

Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart
George Clooney - Up in the Air
Colin Firth - A Single Man
Morgan Freeman - Invictus
Jeremy Renner - The Hurt Locker

How come? Fine, the Dave White guy and I agree on this for the same reason. It's sort of a "body of work" award. The Academy's turn to say, "Jeff, we like ya bud. You were almost as good as a drunk country singer as you were in Iron Man. In fact, we liked watching you get all wound up over your badass super powers right before Tony Stark wiped you off the planet so much that we thought this would be a nice retrospective honor. And you made one awesome hippy in The Men Who Stare at Goats. But honestly - even with the beer belly and the sweat stains and the whiskey breath, you were actually...um....sexy in the Crazy Heart. Like, we'd probably have slept with you, too." On that point, the Academy and I agree.

Why not Clooney? Because he played himself. He was "George Clooney Showing Up In A Suit to Fire You." He was endlessly likeable, but - let's be honest- it's George Clooney playing a likeable guy. It's not acting.

But come on, what about Colin Firth? The movie was great. And it was great BECAUSE of Colin Firth, but it wasn't great because of Colin Firth's acting. It was great because of the art direction and cinematography that focused on Colin Firth. Now Julianne Moore - she should have been nominated.

Sure, but Jeremy Renner's hot - shouldn't he win? Heather says, "nope. give him a few years and a biopic about addiction or a great gay kiss and he might stand a chance.

Kiddo, you're leaving out Morgan Freeman! Correct. Haven't seen that one. Can't weigh in.

Supporting Actor:

Matt Damon - Invictus
Woody Harrelson - The Messenger
Christopher Plummer's Beard - The Last Station
Stanley Tucci - The Lovely Bones
Christopher Waltz - Inglourious Basterds

How come? The Academy likes charming villains. Or even complely vile villains. Villainy wins Oscars. And that entire milk-drinking with Poor Man's Liev Schreiber scene in the beginning was so spooky and well-played and VILLAINOUS and he did such a comprehensive job of killing Diane Kruger's character, and he was so smug about all of it - it's the Academy's way of saying, "Chris, man, we'd totally take a baseball bat to the head for you. You make a great evil guy. Now pull up your hair - show us the swastika scar....please?!"

Yes, but doesn't Captain VonTrapp deserve a win? Yes, he absolutely does. And he and his beard made one incredibly....BRITISH Tolstoy. But I suspect he won't win because his role absolutely wouldn't have existed without the amazing chemistry he managed alongside the ever-luminous Helen Mirren. She was as much responsible for how lovable Tolstoy VonTrapp felt in the end. So, "body of work" award aside, I suspect he and his beard will be bested by vile villainy this year.

So that MSNBC guy got it right about Stanley Tucci? I think so. The amazing thing about his Julie and Julie performance was that you actually ended up being sort of attracted to him right along with Julia Childs - and that's pretty amazing, right? So why nominate him for the Lovely Bones, a movie no one saw? Why not let him ride Meryl Streep's coattails with the warm, fuzzy nomination and actually stand a winning chance? Good question, academy. Why not? I'll leave it at that and not dig into the fact that he's actually right up my alley - bald, with plenty of hair on his chest. Lo, the day has arrived: Heather has a crush on That Guy From The Devil Wears Prada.

Leading Actress

Sandra Bullock - The Blind Side
Helen Mirren - The Last Station
Carey Mulligan - An Education
Gabourey Sidibe - Precious
Meryl Streep - Julie & Julia

How come? The astoundingly commanding screen presence of such a young woman is enough to warrant my pick for Carey Mulligan, to mention nothing of how powerfully expressive her face can be. She acts without acting (er, I mean that in a less George Clooney way than it sounds). To me, we weren't watching a twenty-something actress playing the part of a tortured, articulate, repressed teenage girl - she WAS a repressed teenage girl - from the way she rolled her eyes to the way she tolerated her parents to the way she let herself be swept away by the mysterious older man and his flower bouquets. She was amazing and subtle and magnetizing and beautiful and vulnerable and infinitely easy to relate to.....it was an incredible movie, made so incredible by Carey Mulligan - yes, the camera loves her, but we could have shot the thing on our cell phone video recorders and she still would have been as compelling.

Really? You think she'll beat out all of those heavy hitter AND Sandra Bullock-as-a-blonde? Yep, I do. Meryl and Helen have had a few good years recently, and they'll continue to have more good years, but they cancel each other out in this case - they were both good - they both tackled historic characters in period pieces with quirky husbands and fun costumes. And, fine, I know the Academy is looking for some way to reward Sandra Bullock for simply being beloved. This feels very much like Julia Roberts' Erin Brockovich nomination - take another real character, give her a great bra and some fun shoes and some basically family-friendly adversity and - boom - box office sweetheart becomes a "serious actress." But come on - every time Sandra's character experienced anything emotional, she fled the room and slammed the door. We never had to see her attempting more than just an earnest expression and some hair flips. It just wasn't Oscar-caliber acting in a year with a lot of more serious performances.

Supporting Actress

Penelope Cruz - Nine
Vera Farmiga - Up in the Air
Maggie Gyllenhaal - Crazy Heart
Anna Kendrick - Up in the Air
Mo'Nique - Precious

How come? Because anything that was so unequivocally, grotesquely horrific to watch really is a work of art - and an amazing cinematic feat - and none of the other ladies nominated come anywhere near her on this. She brought a monster to life and absolutely stole the screen. The scene where she throws the TV down the stairs after her own grandchild? Yikes. The two ladies from Up in the Air cancel each other out (though of the two, my vote would absolutely go to Anna Kendrick, she nailed that uptight place that lives between professionally confident and personally insecure with really effortless finesse. Smart and socially awkward: I live inside of that more often than not and she really made the character feel authentic, not forced).

What's that, you can't figure out why Penelope was nominated, either? Correct. Were we short on female supporting roles this year? If that's the case, Academy, you should have remembered Julianne Moore in A Single Man or Sari Lennick from A Serious Man or Paula Patton from Precious. Come on, Academy - stop being a sucker for the Penelope every time she teases her hair. It's sexy, yes. And yes, the musical number where she's in nearly nothing, wrapped up in a rope, turning around and bending over was totally hot. But not "Oscar-hot." Just "freeze-frame in Blu Ray hot."

But you loved Maggie in Crazy Heart - don't think she can pull it off? In a year where Mo'Nique wasn't nominated, I'd hand it to Maggie - but this is not that year.

Best Picture

Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

How come? Wellll - if I could write in an extra, I'd nominate Crazy Heart. Not sure why it didn't snag a nomination - it was a gorgeously moving movie. But of the nominated ten, it WAS a tough call - unlike last year where I suffered through The Reader and wanted to burn my eyes out during most of Benjamin Button, I was bummed when the credits rolled on all of these (OK, with the exception of Avatar - as of the moment I type this, I haven't watched it yet. Intend to fix that by Sunday afternoon and maybe I'll revise this - but at this point, haven't watched it.....). Up in the Air was terrific, if not a little lightweight. A Serious Man was standard Coen Bro fair - clever, inventive, obscurely circumspect, endlessly endearing - and visually striking. Great script (actually, very Wes Anderson in style and tone now that I think about it). The Hurt Locker managed to say a lot between explosions and gun shots (cereal aisle scene, naturally). Up had that talking dog with the helium voice, nuff said. Even Inglourious Basterds had its moments (though I'm patently Anti-Tarrantino, so I have to admit bias there).

Yeah, yeah, yeah, make your point: why An Education? Because it was the only one of the 10 that made me want to press "rewind" and start all over from the beginning the second it ended. I wanted to experience it all over again - wanted to watch the character transformation from mild-mannered school girl to wise old soul from start to finish again. And it was a beautiful glimpse of conservative London in the 60's and the almost quaintly patriarchal ideas that dictated that it was perfectly fine to spend lots of money to ship your daughter off to Oxford as long as the ultimate goal was to find her a good Oxford husband - I loved that when the girl challenged the system she'd grown up inside of and eventually rebelled against it she attacked the status quo from a rational, intellectual platform rather than from a whiny, vindictive place. It was beautiful and subtle and hypnotic. And it was my favorite.

So there we have it. I'll be happy as a clam no matter how the show goes down as long as Avatar doesn't snag the picture win and Sandra Bullock doesn't get awarded with an Oscar simply for being likable. I'll be setting up camp before hand to make fun of the hair, dresses, and awkward red carpet interviews, admiring how thin and svelte and fit they all look while I shove chocolate and cheese and wine and ice cream down my throat. Mmmmm.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

The CDC says "go ahead and live together." While you're at it, make sure they're Hot.


Two things.

First: apparently romantic cohabitation does, in fact, lead to marriage more often than not (we can thank the CDC and their report on "Marriage and Cohabitation in the United States," for that bit of domestic wisdom). Doesn't matter whether the cohabintants' parents were married or divorced or whether they planned to marry when they moved in together. Either way, more domestic partnerships are becoming marriages. And nothing says "living on the edge" like my decision not to. Cohabitate that is. Story to follow.

Second: Date a "hot" person. This MSNBC article explains why. They'll make you look more attractive by association. I love studies like this. Just like I loved that study on "optimal female proportions" and its drug-like effect on men's brains. This time some evolutionary biologists at UC Davis would like to let you know you'll be considered more attractive if you're partnered up with a likewise attractive person. Because as humans, we like attractive people. But we like them even better en masse. One hot chick is good. But a hot chick standing next to a particularly good lookin dude is apparently that much more desireable.

It gets a little confusing when they start comparing male and female responses to attractive people perceived to be in a relationship with another attractive person. BUT, the article gave a good example using guppies. I used to be the proud mother of something like 120 guppies. They really do nothing but eat and breed.  It's great. SO - in general, female guppies prefer to mate with brightly colored male guppies. HOWEVER - all bets are off if other ladies in the tank show a dull male guppy some love. All of a sudden the dull guppy starts looking better by association. Works the same way for people, too.

My one digression would be to mention that in my guppy-farm experience, the female guppy never had the benefit of choice. From the time she learned to flap her little guppy fins, she was knocked up (probably thanks to her little guppy brother, or dad, or cousin, but that's neither here nor there......except that I really did hope to create a new breed of hideously malformed guppy with like, seven eyes and extra fins and teeth and stuff....but that never happened. dang.). She never had a chance to mate based on preference. But anyway - enough about guppies.

The real question is "sure, Heather, but what does this tell us about John Mayer?"

Kidding.

Kidding.

Bottom line: this study pretty much explains that "King of Queens" show.

Kevin James, thank your lucky stars that Leah Remini is hotter than you, it's the only explanation for the fact that you're even indulged as a sitcom personality to begin with. It's got to be the explanation for how George Costanza managed to get dates. I'm even calling it the explanation for how Charlie Sheen ever gets laid (to speak nothing of married). Or David Spade. People find them more attractive based on the attractiveness of the ladies they're associated with. Also means you should think about finding a good-looking friend of the opposite sex to play "wingperson" when you're out and about. You'll become Hot By Association. That can only help. You'll entice someone based on how well you look alongside hot friend and live happily ever after.

Oh, and that "ever after" will probably involve moving in together - which, apparently most of the time - leads to marriage.

Heh. I so nailed that transition.

Yep - MSNBC summarizes that CDC report "Marriage and Cohabitation in the United States," by suggesting "that more people than ever are living together without being married. And...marriage itself is doing just fine, thanks. Contrary to past dogma, the study also shows that there is no longer a meaningful divorce gap between those who live together first and those who didn’t."

Sweet. Good for us for figuring out how to roll a successful domestic partnership into a successful marriage. And fantastic that those couples chosing to share a medicine cabinet before walking down the aisle are no less likely to stay married than those who maintain separate toothbrush holders until matrimony.

I've been on both sides of this particular divide. HOWEVER - call me old-fashioned, but the next time I end up in a "significant relationship" where the moving-in-together conversation comes up, I'm firmly in the "I'll keep my own shower curtain, thanks" camp. If special guy wants the honor of having my credit card offers and Victoria's Secret catalogues intermingled with his credit card offers and Bed Bath & Beyond coupons I'd like a band of gold involved.

Really.

Well, actually, you'd better be in it for the legal long haul or the sight of my shoe collection alone will send you running for your safe, manly place. Like under the hood of your car. Or it would take a brave, brave man to stare into the depths of my stackable rubbermaid makeup bins and not think "I've made a terrible, terrible mistake" anyway. And that coat closet? Yes, I do wear ALL of those. Regularly.

But it's more than that.

It feels like a de facto cop-out when couples (one cited in this article, actually) say they "needed to get to know the person before a lifetime commitment.”

Sure. Makes sense. We hear that all the time.

I'll just play devil's advocate for a minute: what precisely about sharing a driveway means you know each other any better than couples who drive home at the end of the night? Is there something about shoving your clothes in adjacent closets that automatically invites you any more deeply into someone's soul? Or that taking turns cleaning the SAME toilet (instead of your separate, respective toilets) means you're any more prepared to grow old together? If someone doesn't wash their dishes, sheets, or shower tile frequently, it's not going to take a USPS change-of-address form to clue you into that if you know each other well enough to consider swapping vows. And slapping the same snooze button for a few years before you decide to make it legal doesn't mean you're necessarily better-prepared for the social, political or emotional implications of becoming a legal union when the knot's finally tied.

I could take that even further and say: people have stayed successfully married for 40, 50, 60 or more years without having any idea how to fold each other's socks or where they kept their spare trash bags ahead of time. People have raised perfectly functional families even when Mom and Dad didn't set up house until they got hitched. Yes, it's true - cohabitation has not always played the "marriage training wheels" role it plays today.

Let's spin this another way - when you're in the throes of a relationship that's headed in the "hey, let's live happily ever after" direction, you're spending most of your waking hours together anyway (er, that's been my experience from two different relationships that have come to the Diamond Ring crossroads). Meaning you know that he's got an idiosyncratic way of loading the dishwasher (the plates will never get clean if they're jammed so close together, but hey, he'll figure it out eventually...).

He knows that you're terrible about taking out your trash and that you leave the tags torn off of new clothes on the floor more often than not.

You know that he snores in front of the TV, he knows that you never learned how to blow your nose.

You know that he takes an inordinant amount of time grooming his fingernails (but nice that he bothers), he knows that you hit the snooze button 27 times before you finally get up.

You  know the first thing he does when he walks through the door is head into the kitchen and stand in front of the fridge without eating anything. He knows that you let the week's newspapers accumulate all over the house, unread, then finally cart them out to recycling muttering how you need to "cancel your subscription" but somehow never do.

You know he goes stir crazy if he's indoors on sunny days and has trouble falling asleep when there's a full moon. He knows you fall asleep inside of 4 minutes as long as you're laying down.

And none of this required officially living under the same roof. It's absolutely possible to "get to know" someone intimately without necessarily taking up his cupboard space with all of your wine glasses or letting him eat up garage space with his bikes, snowboards, air compressor, whatever. You have your magnetic fridge poetry and he has his Men's Health magazines in the bathroom.

I've stood on both sides of this aisle.

I've accepted two marriage proposals in my life.

Actually followed through and married one of them.

Am divorced from one of them.

Lived with one of them before hand, lived separately from the other before hand. I won't mention which one ended which way, just that it doesn't seem to make a bit of difference in terms of how prepared you are to live happily ever after - cohabitation or no cohabitation.

So, we'll leave me to my own little independent household until such a time as I might be fortunate enough to find someone special to really (actually, truly!)  grow old and grey and golden alongside. Because at that point, the combining of our respective lives (and all of the stuff and bad habits and quirks that go along with) will feel particularly special. A wedding will be more than an expensive excuse to get all of our friends together for a badass party, it will actually be the moment we start our very own new thing from our two separate single things.

And really, the article mentioned that couples that move in together and eventually decide to get married are no more or no less likely to remain married than those that take the big plunge "blindly." So that means I'm not missing out by not moving in.....

Just means I have my own close space that much longer. And we can have the Big, Serious Discussion about exactly WHAT we're going to do with all of my shoes from a strictly "theoretical" perspective ("theoretical" meaning "you can make your suggestions, but every last one of those shoes stays with me. Period.").