Product Review: Rite-Aid Brand Tweezers
Cost: $1.99
Weight: About 5 dimes, or two quarters perhaps.
Shape: Traditional metal, joined at one end, free-standing arms at the other, filed to a sharp slope to allow the grasping and pulling of hairs, splinters, etc.
The traditional slanted tip tweezer can be somewhat of a let-down if it isn’t perfectly filed, and these tweezers are pretty close to precision.
They feel good in the hand, a standardized item perhaps, nothing too fancy, but she didn’t want anything fancy. More or less she just wanted something that would work. Some of the things at the store were too expensive. She slid her card, hoping it would work. It did, someone at the bank must not have been paying attention. Pulling them from the packaging she wonders if she could have just stolen them, but that particular store had a lot of foot traffic and a lot of surveillance to go along with it. Given enough time she could have, it’s easy enough to slip items from their packages, but she didn’t feel like quibbling over a few bucks. Time enough for that later on. In the car she finally pulled that chin hair that’d bothered her for days. These were good tweezers. Felt good, in the hand.
Rite-Aid also seems to be running a special, buy one, get another half-off. Pick up some ice cream while you’re there. Prices are steep though, $2.49 for a double scoop. Plan accordingly.
I was not compensated or asked to promote this product.
Drop me in the water
Was at a wedding this weekend. At dinner someone asked who I was there with, when I said no one, they said “You are so brave!” I made my face a cascade of nothingness and said with a bit of confusion I said “Why?” Later on a bottle of champagne was my dancing partner.
Earlier in the evening someone told me that it was better for children to grow up in an orphanage, rather than let them be adopted by gay parents who would teach them about the “alternative” lifestyle.
Kicking and Screaming
It’s movie night, y’all!
Andrew and I will be watching Kicking and Screaming on Netflix Instant watch and gchatting during at 9PST/11pm Kansas City Time. That’s in about 20 minutes. Pour yourself a cold one and join us!
For the observant and devoted.
Seeing Tabloid in a few days, and interviewing Morris in person, most likely. Jinxing it by saying this I’m sure, but any questions?
Nicki Minaj – Super Bass
Deron had never even heard of this song, which made me think maybe other people hadn’t heard of it either! So good. Minaj is one of my favorite lady rappers these days, I just wish she’d rap more than two verses per song. Would love to direct a video like this though. I can probably kareoke this one.
Destruction Party read-through
Cast read-through for Destruction Party, 6/18/11.
(photo credit: Carsten Tice)
The Flaming Lips play Hollywood Forever Cemetery
I just got back from seeing the Flaming Lips play at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. I didn’t have a ticket, but I went and patiently waited and eventually after the show started a sneaky security guard said he’d let me in for the face value of the tickets. I handed him the money and walked through the gate as everyone looked the other way. I felt like reporting him for malfeasance, and I felt terrible about it, but I also wanted to see the band play. Ah, ethics.
Because it was so late, everyone else was at the far side of the enormous cemetery, and I could hear the far off music and began to walk towards it among the towering mausoleums and tombs, graves and headstones. Psychedelic colors from the stage-show filtered through the fog and I started to feel a little panicky, walking quicker and quicker, but I thought to myself “Even if this is all I saw, it was worth the money.” (And then, if I’m being more honest, because it is a constant thought these days; “Aww, this’d be great in a movie.”) How often are you alone in a foggy graveyard with one of the most explosive and visually exhausting spectacles beckoning you on? Well, maybe you live a more exciting life than I do.
Large balloons filled with confetti and money exploded in the crowd, cannons with sparkling flecks of paper burst out, lasers and all manner of neon insanity occurred. They played the entirety of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, several Wizard of Oz songs, some other Flaming Lips hits like Vaseline and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, and finished the night up with Do You Realize? I wanted to cry as he sang:
Do you realize? That everyone you know someday will die?
And instead of saying all of your goodbyes,
let them know you realize that life goes fast,
it’s hard to make the good things last.
but then, I always want to cry when he sings that.
Yacht – Psychic City (Classixx Remix)
I have had this song on repeat for a week. Thanks, Mary Jeys.
Grand Rapids lip-dub video
The entire city of Grand Rapids seems to turn out to lip-dub “The Day The Music Died” all over town. Pretty amazing, I don’t even know how they did this.
She wore a raspberry beret.
I saw Prince last night perform at the L.A. Forum. Mary J. Blige opened for him, and it was something else entirely. They sang a duet of “Nothing Compares 2 U” that was incredible. I wouldn’t say I was a Prince fan before this, but I am now. He played the Forum for 21 days, and made a deal with Ticketmaster so the tickets would be 25 dollars flat, all fees included. Some friends, the Brions, took me as a birthday present.
Then I found this clip on YouTube of Prince appearing on the View.
I can’t explain why I find this so funny, I just do.
I am known.
Yesterday was a wonderful birthday. In addition to the immense and unending generosity and love that you all pour out daily, I was surrounded by friends and drank an enormous amount of champagne. My remarkable friends brought food and cake and gave the best presents. I told him once, awhile ago, about the best kind of ice cream, and he brought me a large bottle of gin and a container of the best kind of ice cream.
Today I had to go to a production meeting and feebly spooned yogurt into my mouth as my chipper producers orchestrated my life for me. I’m going to see Prince in a few hours.
Thank you for being. I am glad to also be.
Gayngs – Last Prom on Earth
In honor of the rapture, one of my favourite songs of the past year:
Stick around for the last two minutes. More about Gayngs here.
Quote out of context
Once, at a hardware store, he stared up at the glittery chandeliers and wept, “I don’t want to be a daddy! I want to be a mommy!”
Destruction Party
As I’ve previously mentioned here and there, I’m making (directing/wrote) a short film. The theme seems simple, but hopefully like all good movies relaying the plot doesn’t sum up the film. Four girls get together for what they think is a dinner party, but is really a destruction party. The girls are encouraged to share secrets or things that make them angry, and when they do they are given breakables to break.
One of my favourite designers, Marke Johnson, talks about splitting life pretty evenly between the “made” and the “found”, so I’m trying to make more. The script still makes me laugh when I read it. It still rings true. Every person who has read it has said nice things about it to the point of embarrassment for me. Hard to say much else about your own work without sounding silly. A lot of people are volunteering their time and energy to help me get this made, and I was hoping to finance most of it myself but there are permits and locations fees and camera rentals and other things that have been carefully budgeted.
Anyway, here’s a link to our Kickstarter if you feel like contributing, but Clusterflock at large has already been hugely supportive in all that I do, so please don’t feel any pressure. I mean that.
If anyone has any questions, about anything really, please let me know.
Bridesmaids is really great.
Old news at this point, but here’s my review.
…The real star of the show is the screenplay. Kristen Wiig and fellow screenwriter Annie Mumalo have done what felt impossible for so long: written a smart, funny, charming film about women that doesn’t manage to simultaneously hate women. So much of the genre seems to rely on the audience collectively eye-rolling and jabbing each other in the ribcage while saying gleefully, “Woman, ammiright?” And Bridesmaids ostensibly seems rife with opportunities to do so. But it doesn’t. Where it might seem obvious to slip into farce and self-hatred it skates away cleanly, making it clear that so many of the problems faced by the characters are because they are people, not because they are women.
“I Just Had Sex”
The jam of the Summer has arrived.
via Ned Hepburn.
Destruction Party
For anyone who couldn’t hear me shyly whispering at Clusterflockstock, this is what I’ve been up to lately. I wrote, and am directing a short film. This is our Kickstarter promo video, link to the Kickstarter coming soon.
(We just wrapped Prodigal, a mini-feature starring Kenneth Branagh yesterday. I was the set-decorator on that one. Workaholics, we’re diving right into this.)
And then we both felt strange.
He asked me slowly if I had been at the corner of Lexington and McCadden last week, in the evening. I said I had, because we were casting in the area. He knew that, he says. I ask why, and he says because he jogged and saw me walking there. I was surprised, I hadn’t seen him! How strange that he had seen me.
He asked if I had seen him, and if I had looked down to avoid talking to him. The idea that I would be capable of such a thing seemed incomprehensible to me. I told him the truth, I said No, of course not! I was wearing heels and looked down at the ground to concentrate on not falling over, because I am clumsy and am terrified of tripping. He was worried I had seen him and avoided him, or that I would think he was following me, so he jogged away without saying anything.
Made, pt 3.
A small casting room in a casting studio in Hollywood. 30 or so girls per day, (Update: culled from over 1,000 submissions.) Three hours in a row, three days of casting and one day of call backs, next week. Girls come in, hand the casting director their headshot/resume stapled together. I smile encouragingly and try to say something nice about their shoes. They all tell me where they bought their shoes, and it helps a little bit. A few girls are incredible. Some people make my mind wander. They all try, and I feel for them. I can’t imagine being an actor, given 2 minutes to impress a host of people you don’t know, who can’t know who you are.
Watching 18 people in a row do a scene about my dying grandmother was more internally upsetting than I had anticipated. As was the scene I wrote about the boy who never loved me in college. As was the scene about how vastly different the lives are of the girls I went to school with. I watch these girls be me, to me. I wonder if they are a lot like me, as they talk. Is she as sad as I felt? Does she understand? I hardly can decide before we have to move on, but it’s okay, all on film, all ready to be seen again, a steady stream of possible me’s, to talk to the three other me’s in the movie, to be directed by me. It seems silly to feign ignorance of process at this point, but I had no idea.
I laugh at my own jokes, every time. It’s funny to me, every time. I turn to the line producer and ask her when it’ll stop being funny. I sound like a jerk.
Am I dessert? — For Deron
In light of recent conversations.
(I think I may have emailed this to you a while ago, but I wanted the class to see it.)
The Talk
This is mostly for Cindy, but it’s for everyone too. Julia Sweeney’s 8 year old daughter started asking questions about sex, and Sweeney soon found herself answering endless questions. Long but good, via the Hairpin.
Bill Callahan – Apocalypse
Bill Callahan’s new album came out on April 5th. It’s good.
(Click on the image to buy or listen to tracks)
‘Bill Callahan’s fourteenth album Apocalypse is the best he’s sounded in a while, though even the worst Smog or Bill Callahan album the album is still better than most people’s best. Apocalypse clocks in at seven songs, and just over forty minutes. With one strange and obvious misstep, the mystical and ridiculous Free’s, the rest of the album is driven and resounding. The stripped-down songs drift one into the other until you’ve reached the end, and while there’s little except the song ‘America’ or ‘Riding for the Feeling’ that stands as singularly strong or memorable as songs on his other albums, the overall impression is a good one.’
Here’s a long thing I wrote for the Hairpin about him and women that they ended up not being able to use after all. So you get it.
Made, pt. 2
Location locked, Editor hired, Production Designer and Props master hired, budgets set. Are you emailing her? Should I? Shoot dates firmed up, Sidney Lumet’s book ‘Making Movies’ read. Are we shooting on the 7D or on two RED cameras? I’m not sure, about that, let me get back to you. No, you have enough to do, let’s farm that out. Casting breakdowns were sent out through a casting agency, in about an hour or so we’d already received 400 submissions.
Look!
Zazie dans le metro is coming to Criterion, finally!
Louis Malle is quickly becoming a favourite and I will likely get this one as a review copy. All is right with the world.
Bill Callahan Tour Dates!
Launchpad, Albuquerque, NM, 14 June 2011
Rhythm Room, Phoenix, AZ, 15 June 2011
Troubadour, Los Angeles, CA, 16 June 2011
SoHo, Santa Barbara, CA, 17 June 2011
The Independent, San Francisco, CA, 18 June 2011
Henry Miller Library, Big Sur, CA, 19 June 2011
Neumo’s, Seattle, WA, 22 June 2011
Hi Dive, Denver, CO, 27 June 2011
Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis, MN, 1 July 2011
Lincoln Hall, Chicago, IL, 3 July 2011
Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, 8 July 2011
Brighton Music Hall, Boston, MA, 10 July 2011
Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY, 11 July 2011
Bowery Ballroom, New York, NY, 12 July 2011
(via)
