insomnia haiku

I'm looking forward to his homemade foosball table

I will admit, I cried watching this. Just a little. It's a tad on the long side, so give yourself ten minutes to watch it; but the payoff -- of a boy who builds his own arcade out of cardboard boxes -- is worth it.

All I ever made out of a cardboard box was a "clubhouse" that looked like a cardboard box (with a door in it). And actually I think my dad made it for me, so never mind. If this kid doesn't go to engineering school, it'll be a tragedy.

Now I'm just craving breadsticks.

An 86-year-old columnist for the Grand Forks Herald in North Dakota reviewed the city's new Olive Garden recently, and the review went viral today, mostly because it got picked up in Gawker, which more or less made fun of it. And then people piled on, and the columnist got interviewed -- either ironically or unironically, depending on how you read it -- by the Village Voice and other places, and ultimately this was a pretty big day for the Olive Garden, not to mention Grand Forks, ND. And 86-year-old reporters. (Go, you!)

Now, I suppose I can understand that at first people thought it was satire, because big-city denizens (by which I mean "we") are mean-spirited, pretentious people who think we know better than to eat at Olive Garden. It's certainly true, there is much better Italian food in the world than at Olive Garden. But in a town like Grand Forks, an Olive Garden is a big deal. And I hope we're not all too cynical to remember what that's like.

During my childhood in suburbia, going to someplace like the Olive Garden was a treat. Chain restaurants were the height of fine dining in my hometown, and we ate at home most of the time, so getting to eat out a chain was rare and fun. The waiters at TGI Friday's made me laugh; I couldn't wait for the pie at Marie Callendar's; I still like the Chinese chicken salad and cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory. (We didn't have an Applebee's. We were deprived. But we did have a McDonald's with a statue of a horse in it.) And the Olive Garden -- those breadsticks, my god! Pillowy and dunked in garlic and butter ... I'm sorry, what's not to like?

I don't remember when my tastes changed. But a few years after moving to New York, I ended up at the Olive Garden in Times Square one day, and I looked at the menu and was stunned at how expensive it was. Yes, this was my first reaction -- not that the place was tacky or cheap, but that it was expensive. $16 for pasta? I may as well go someplace good. Then I ate the food, and it was mediocre, which meant that my palate had changed such that I could no longer enjoy the Olive Garden, and I haven't been back in more than a decade.

Side note: If there had been blogs when I'd first moved to New York, I should have done a blog on my eating habits on an editorial assistant's salary. Chains were a lifesaver back then. I have fond memories of the two-piece value meal at KFC and the 99-cent menu at Taco Bell.

But my entire point in writing this post is that in reading the articles and comments around the Olive Garden review, I have discovered that even here in New York City, until 4 pm every day, you can get unlimited soup, salad and breadsticks at Olive Garden for $6.95. I am serious. Here, look. Less than $10 to eat until you're stuffed. And I do remember that the salads were good. Doesn't this make you want to run out and eat at an Olive Garden right now? Nice job, Grand Forks Herald.

"He's coming for the party?"

Um... WTF, Kristen Bell?

I'm not one of those "Veronica Mars" fans who worship at the cult of Kristen Bell, but I do find her funny and appealing. This clip from "Ellen," in which she completely flips the freak out about a sloth coming to her birthday party, is endearing and disturbing and hilarious all at once and I cannot stop watching it. CANNOT. STOP. 

Though I'm worried about her sanity, I'm pretty sure I love her now.

Barry sings Al

I know Barack Obama has taken some lumps recently, so much so that I can't just be all, "I love Obama!" without expecting some backlash in response. But still. He's made mistakes, but I still love the guy. Not just because of his politics -- and let's face it, I don't agree with everything he's been doing -- but because he seems like a decent guy with whom I'd like to have a beer. (Plus he's a hell of a lot easier on the eyes than, say, Gingrich. Think about it, voters.)

My favorite Obama moment was the time he killed a fly during an interview. My second favorite -- currently making a run at passing the fly, and at least tied with the time he appeared on Monday Night Football -- is now this one, in which he busted out with some Al Green at the Apollo Theater. It's not just endearing. That man can SING.

I'd like to propose that in place of some of these ridiculous debates, we instead have an "American Idol"-style sing-off as part of the campaign. Obama's got to be a better singer than Romney or Gingrich, right? (Though come to think of it, with that baby face, Gingrich could have some secret a cappella past.) Who's a better/worse singer, Santorum or Ron Paul?

Esquire magazine already dug up a clip of Romney "singing" for comparison. I think the president should start singing during all his speeches. May I suggest that Barry attempt some Barry White next?

Living in interesting times

Well! I'm packing up my apartment, taking care of various details related to moving, looking for a job, and now there's a hurricane coming. It's possible that I'll have to evacuate -- or that my parents, who are flying in to help me pack, won't be able to make it after all. As the Chinese say, "May you live in interesting times." Interesting they are indeed.

Since my stuff will be in storage for a month, I opened a PO box today. Put that down on my list of "things I've never thought of having to do before." And here's the rub: In order to open -- and, presumably, keep -- a PO box, you have to have, and prove, a physical address. But the whole reason I need a PO box at all is that I won't have a physical address. It's a head-scratcher.

In order to sidestep the issue, I dumbly handed the guy my lease and kept my mouth shut. After all, I do live here... right now. He nodded, handed the lease back to me, and a few minutes later gave me the keys to my very own PO box. And I thought, whew! I pulled a fast one on a federal employee just there. (I'm just kidding, I didn't think that. Much.)

I'll be couch-surfing for the month of September. This will also be "interesting." I'm a notorious over-packer, so the concept of living out of a single suitcase for a month is daunting, to say the least. As usual, I play out all these scenarios in my head regarding the kinds of clothes I might need, and I pack things like, a pair of sneakers, a fancy black dress, four skirts and a short-sleeved jacket (all of those things are in the suitcase right now), which means that I will be making some perilous fashion choices all month, or else not wearing any of it except for the same t-shirt and pair of jeans every day, all the while pining for the polka-dotted dress and flip-flops I packed in a box I'll never be able to find again. I would make a terrible nomad. Check that: I will make a terrible nomad.

Well, I don't really have much else to say right now (I gave in to temptation on the way back from the post office and let myself eat Popeye's for dinner, and ate it at the "wow I really am old" hour of 5:50 pm, which means I have felt disgusting and regretful for the last several hours yet am now screamingly hungry), but I did want to write something here, just for the hell of it. And now I have.

I will leave you with some of my favorite things from around the Interwebs recently:

Ryan Gosling Breaks Up Street Fight. Yet one more contribution to the increasingly solid body of evidence that Ryan Gosling is, in fact, the man. 

Say Something Nice. My favorite: "Hey, you with the umbrella! I like it! It's pretty!" A close second favorite: the little Asian kid. I won't spoil it for you by telling you what he says.

Craziest Beard Ever. What really makes this video is the yelling offscreen. "OH MY GOD, A BEARD DOOR!"

The Daily Show: The Poor's Free Ride Is Over. This went viral, so you may have seen it already. Jon Stewart is on fire here. "That's the problem with poor people. They still have some of their skin." Make sure to get to the 4:30 mark... I'll admit I did get jealous of "poor" people when I saw that 25% have a dishwasher. I don't have a dishwasher. They are so lucky.

Anderson Cooper Gets the Giggles. A week old by now. Already a classic. I love Anderson Cooper. In fact, if I could make one news anchor my new best friend -- Anderson Cooper or Brian Williams -- I'd have a tough call to make.

Pictures of Recent East Coast Earthquake Devastation -- here and here. The first link practically gave me a fit of Anderson Cooper giggles, and I realize from the time stamp that the picture may not even be from this week's quake, but it's funny all the same.

I did feel the earthquake, and since we never get them here, my first thought was that my building was falling down, or (more likely) I was experiencing vertigo. I got up because I figured if there was something wrong with me, maybe walking around would help me shake it off. I then listened for clues from people outside, but I seem to live in a nighborhood of nonchalant Brooklynites, because there were no shouts, no sounds of distress -- and by the time I thought it might be an earthquake and vacillated between ducking under the table or bracing myself in the doorway, it was over. (I picked the doorway, only to realize later that standing in the doorway is so 20 years ago, and I should have gone under the table instead. This is what happens when you leave California and don't get earthquake refreshers.)

I watched New York 1 and CNN for the next couple of hours, and I know it's a cliche to mock East Coasters for their/our reaction to the quake, but I found the news coverage faintly ridiculous. Yes, I get that if you've never lived through an earthquake before, it can be scary. But, as a Californian, I've certainly felt worse (most notably the 1989 quake that halted the World Series), and while this one was alarming, no one died. No one was even injured that I can tell. All those people running outside in a panic? Faux pas!

The anchor on New York 1 kept telling viewers how terrified she'd been. Ma'am, I appreciate your suffering, but after the tenth use of the word "terrifying," you may want to keep that to yourself. Or pick a new word. And watching Hour 2 on CNN with Wolf Blitzer in DC interviewing his second straight "Dude at Train Station Who Felt the Quake" ("Where were you? What did you feel?) was a little too much for me, and I had to turn the TV off.

That's why the most amusing things I saw in the aftermath of the quake were tweets like "We will rebuild" -- linking to a picture of a recycling container tipped against a wall. We East Coasters are self-important wimps... but at least we have a ball making fun of ourselves.

Take a dress. Add pockets.

As I said last time, I've gotten a little overly fixated on looking at wedding dresses. I'm pretty sure I'm more into this search than the bride is.

Well, another friend of mine is also getting married soon -- weddings are in the air! -- and she hasn't started looking for a dress, either. Her only stipulation is that the dress has to have pockets. I think that's kind of awesome, because I love dresses with pockets. A wedding dress with pockets? BONUS.

I guess I must be more bored than I thought, because at work today I mentioned this whole dress-with-pockets thing to some coworkers, and they got all excited, and one of them suggested I start a Tumblr.

So I did. I present to you: One Hand in My Pocket, your one (among many) source for dresses with pockets. Like kangaroos, but prettier.

I have no doubt this one will go the way of the last Tumblr I started (it's still hanging out there, a little lonely -- lonelier than this blog, and that's saying something), but this one was kind of fun for the entire 60 minutes I devoted to it. If you have any pictures of dresses with pockets you'd like to upload to the Tumblr, I'd be happy to give you access, or post it myself. Just ask.

Because who doesn't love dresses with pockets? Communists, that's who.

This week's video obsessions: teenagers singing about dreams, and a silly old bear

I don't listen to the radio anymore, so I have no idea about today's popular music. (I couldn't identify a Justin Bieber song if my life depended on it.) The only way I ever hear this stuff is if it's on a TV show -- like Glee, a show that, if I'm being honest, is pretty silly and not particularly good 85 percent of the time. But I love musicals and singing, so I tune in faithfully every week.

Anyway, after last week's episode I'm obsessed with this song "Teenage Dream." Which was apparently already kind of a popular hit by someone named "Katy Perry" (just kidding, I know who Katy Perry is, though I have zero idea what songs she sings -- YES I AM OLD), but of course I had never heard it before. And now I can't get the damn thing out of my head, except sung not by Katy Perry but by fresh-faced prep school boys who rather remind me of the men's a cappella group I loved in college. (The term "groupie" would not have been inappropriate here.)

The fist-pumping in the scene may be a little much, but otherwise -- for whatever reason -- I very much dig this.

 

And speaking of obsessions, I didn't expect much when I heard there was a new Winnie the Pooh trailer out, as Pooh was never one of my favorite characters. But something about this trailer just hits me right in the soft spot of what someone might call a heart. I think it's the fact that they got the original guy to do Pooh's voice, or perhaps it's the song, which naturally I can't identify (though this one, I had heard before). Whatever it is, please watch this. You'll be surprised at how lovely it is.

This man needs his own reality show

I have to admit I haven't been following the New York gubernatorial campaign too closely, but I must say, I'm almost tempted to vote for this guy. The rent IS too damn high. Maybe the Pants on the Ground guy can write him a theme song?

 

 

And now, something non-apartment-related for a change (also, completely awesome)

Up until this past week, whenever I thought of Dolph Lundgren, I thought solely of his line in Rocky IV: "I must break you." Other than that, really, nothing. I'm not a huge fan of action movies, so I knew little else about the man.

But no more. Based on the surprise (to some of us, anyway) success of The Expendables, we had our assistant put together this article about Dolph Lundgren and how he's a modern Renaissance man. It's kind of amazing. He's kind of amazing. Did you know he went to MIT? I did not.  

And then there's this video of Lundgren singing "A Little Less Conversation" in Sweden's Eurovision Song Contest qualifying competition. (Bonus: It gives me yet one more reason for me to love Anthony Lane's New Yorker piece on the song contest, because it provided the context as to exactly what this is.)

Please, for the love of Elvis, do yourself a favor and watch this immediately. I dare say Dolph gives us a better "Come on, come on!" than Marky Mark ever did. And he breaks stuff! And grunts! AND DANCES. Dolph Lundgren, I bow down to you.

PS Read the article, too. Our assistant really outdid himself. I love that actual burglars ran from Dolph in terror.

Monkeys are funny and cute ... So is Paul Rudd.

I will admit that I've been so busy at work, I don't have much time to surf the Interwebs or, really, pay any attention to the outside world. I didn't even learn about Prop. 8 being struck down (yay!) until I got home from work today. Monkeys could take over the Internet and I probably wouldn't know.

Still, I do work on the Web, and stuff comes up. So here are my favorite recent things from the World of the Web:

Paul Rudd DJs a 1992 Bat Mitzvah - Yellow jacket! That hair! Air guitar! Yellow jaaaaacket! I am so glad that I'm not famous, or otherwise photos of me with my perm would show up on Perez Hilton. I still can't believe that back in the '80s I actually said to someone, "I'm so glad that compared to other decades, the clothes we wear are so normal." Were the early '90s worse? You be the judge.

Paul Rudd: Bat Mitzvah DJ from Jewish Forward on Vimeo.

In a similar vein, there's also a Tina Fey Mutual Savings Bank commercial you may have seen going around, but it doesn't entertain me as much, probably because I don't have quite as much of a crush on Tina Fey as I do on Paul Rudd.

But speaking of crushes ... Joseph Gordon-Levitt heckles paparazzi. By god, this is goooood. For one thing, he sounds as if he's having a ball, even as the photographers are being total assholes to him. For another, the photographers go from calling him names to bickering with each other and kind of hitting on him. Must-watch, especially if you, as I, are smitten with the JGL.

Lastly: I cannot get over this picture of a monkey saving a puppy's life.  Monkeys are not only funny, but they're also heroic. And they love dogs! (Note: According to the comments on that page, this is actually an old picture. But I don't care; it's still amazing.)

Oh, and speaking of dogs, one last picture: my new dog-niece, Josie (a pug), alongside my dog-nephew Tonka (Boston terrier). All I want for Christmas is a picture of them with my actual nephew, and I will put it on a t-shirt and wear it to bed every night.