My week in retrospect: The Highs the Lows

Laryngitis. It’s a bitch. Enough said. Primarily because I can’t say anything. All I can do is wheeze and gesticulate my way through a conversation. Telephones are a little more challenging. I did not call in sick. I’m amazed with myself. It would appear I’m growing up. Having said that I did manage to infect 3 people that I know of at work, and at least two outside of work.

Speaking of growing up. It’s my Birthday, or the Happiest Day of My Mothers Life. Hindsight's 20/20 am I right? So I was bitching to Polkadot via text about something, and she made a comment about my birthday creeping up on me. I said it wasn’t so much creeping as it was lying in wait. Which reminds me, the reason I text her was because of this dis-tress-ing piece of information. I was sorting through a mountain of denim, deciding what the most pleasing formation on the table would be. When all of a sudden a glaring long thread nestled smugly betwixt the jeans. I pulled at it and in no time realized it was not a thread, but a strand of my hair. My beautiful long blonde . . . . . . . hang on! I psst’d to my co-worker and in a panicked ear-splitting whisper bleated out the words “BLONDE OR GREY?! . . . . . . . BLONDE OR GREY!?” . . . . . . silence and some inspection took place and the sweet young thing in front of me said matter-of-factly “it's white.”

I could have wrung her lithe 18 year old neck. So ladies and germs, my first grey . . . oh I’m sorry, white hair.

It’s really difficult to convey urgency and anger when the only sound you can make sends dogs into hysterics. I probably should have called in sick Monday. But I couldn’t you see, because it was my contract negotiation meeting. Huzzah! Overall it went well, I am now the proud owner of a slightly revised title: Visual Merchandising and Graphics Manager. This is good news, and I think we all know how often I have good news to share. I do in-fact have more good news, but you’ll all find out about that in about 9 months . . . hardy har har.

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Seriously though. Pregnancy. I could use some 'Mat Leave' and who doesn’t want priority seating on the bus? And lets not forget the joy of bringing life into the worl . . . . never-mind. I can’t even keep a straight face. So back to real life. Prams and strollers on the bus anger me. Take an effing cab. Between the 400lb dude sitting across from me and the mother to my left 5 regular size people have been displaced. Well I mean the bus is disgusting, they deserve to be on it. I don’t. I had a friend who used to say “friends don’t let friends ride public transit” that was a nice thought . . . . before the luster faded and I ended up back on the bus. Naturally, seated next to the wally who barks into his mobile in broken English . . . and fluent Quebecois. I cranked my Jethro Tull and could still hear his grunting over the whine of Ian Anderson. Hate. But fortunately the work week is almost over, and another weekend quietly and mysteriously descends. Anything could happen . . . ? And by anything I mean laundry.

Tune in next time to find out the positive and typically negative effects of three 6 foot blondes let loose in a city over 48 hours.

"The Coast is Toast" - I refuse to take credit for the title.

Review: Volcano - Directed by Mick Jackson.

Not only does this film provide the most bizarre, not to mention feeble romantic pairing since Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovitt, but it delivers never-ending hilarity in the form of human incineration.

Ohmigosh….the earths core has reached a boiling point and like the pent up frustration of an adolescent boy the lava’s got to escape the confines of the planets mantel and crust! Where will the tonnes upon tonnes of molten rock go? LA. That’s where. Flash to 5 burly guys in hard hats and luminescent pinny’s squeezing down a manhole to perform some ‘plot’ dependent work on gas-mains. Let the hilarity and incineration begin.

Amidst violent eruptions on Wiltshire Blvd and a permanent rain of ash, expert: Anne Heche and sceptic: Tommy Lee Jones try to form not only a scientific alliance, but a romantic one. With all the chemistry of a biology lab these two fumble through two hours of lava flows, constant screaming, lessons in racial equality and tolerance for your fellow man (even if he’s a woman).

One and a half hours in, we breath a sigh of relief as LA’s finest (directed by TLJ) stop the painfully slow moving lava. Lava that’s creeping through the city faster than you can say….. speak and define; antidisestablishmentarianism. About two dozen helicopters and about 80 fire trucks saturate the magma with gallons and gallons of water and LA is saved. *cheering*

Right.

Cheering continues until clever Anne Heche realizes it’s not over till it’s daylight and thousands of innocent peoples lives are in peril.

Cue: impossible to execute plan, this time involving a precision building demolition. Now imagine TLJ’s daughter is in the basement of that building. (laugh track)

I won’t ruin it for all y’all by telling you TLJ charges into the demolition zone to save his idiot daughter and some token 4 year old kid. He catapults himself on top of the 2 children in the nick of time. After a tense 3 seconds or so TLJ emerges from the rubble carrying the random kid, with his idiot daughter crawling out behind him….. all three…. unscathed. Random kid looks across the masses of firefighters, doctors, looters, and blue collar workers and poignantly whispers.

“they all look the same”

Pan on ash covered crowd. (pause) 7 gratuitous seconds later the sky opens, and sunbeams dapple the throngs of people. The rain of hope and new beginnings begins to fall heavily. Washing away all traces of ash, reminding us we’re all very different, different is bad, and camaraderie in the face of an urban volcano will never EVER change that.

TLJ and AH exchange useless banter and don’t kiss in the down pour, as much as we want them to. Instead the movie ties up nicely with Anne offering Tommy, his idiot daughter and their golden lab a lift home in her Hummer. Helpfully leaving a slew of fires in Hollywood, mudslides in Malibu and a 2 mile wide bubbling crater smack dab in the middle of Beverly Hills.

John Corbett is in the movie as well, but he appears about as frequently as rational thinking. Twice.


The End