I Need Your Help!

Happy August! No, seriously, it's August. I know that you might think it's May or early June, but it's not. It's August. Summer's almost over bitches.

August is going to be a busy month for me. I'm moving, I've got trips I need to plan, trips I need to take, a charity event to organize, an apartment to paint, doctor's appointments, car issues. I'm tired already.

Speaking of apartment organizing and styling, what do you think of the bookshelf shown in this pic:

I've seen this before and I kind of love it. It's books organized by cover color. Is that too anal?

Don't worry, my complete busyness is not going to detract from my main responsibility of promoting NME. I do need everyone's help, though, in this month's NME resolution. My resolution is to make it warm and sunny outside. I know I'm setting myself up for failure with this one, but seriously. I'd like to not wear my lightweight sweater one of these days. I mean really is something in the 80's too much to ask for?

So, who's with me!! Who will help me achieve success with this month's resolution?

I Can't Make This Stuff Up

A lady showed up for her sentencing yesterday wearing a t-shirt that boldly stated: TALK SHIT, GET HIT! Classy.

What makes this story better is that the tshirt was covering her baby bump.

I Hate Bicyclists

One time a few years back, Grace was living in Seattle and Ro and I decided to pay her a visit. While we were out there, Grace came up with this brilliant idea to visit Bainbridge Island via car ferry. Ro had rented a car and we were going to drive it up onto the car ferry, ship it and ourselves over to Bainbridge, take a leisurely drive, visit a few shops and cafes and then travel back to Seattle for a fancy dinner. It sounds lovely, right? Well, it turned into a royal disaster because of effing bikers.

First of all, the car ferry trip was precarious. We had the luck of the draw and started a new line of cars which meant that our car was the first car parked on the downward part of an incline into the ocean with only an emergency brake and a wooden block under the tires to keep it from rolling right out to sea. At first I didn't know that we could get out of the car and go up to the main deck, so I thought we were going to have to sit in the car staring at death for the half hour ride. Luckily our car made it safely and we drove off the fairy (typo that I'm keeping!) into the beauty that is Bainbridge Island.

Unluckily, there was a huge bike race around the island and there were hundreds of bikers polluting the streets. This meant our leisurely drive turned into a white knuckle scream session. Seriously, the bikers would get into packs of about 40-50 and would surround a car, so that the car could only go as fast as the bikers (which, fyi, isn't as fast as they think it is) and then once there would be a break in the pack and you would think you could get your car around them, they would dart in front of you, causing you to almost hit them and make the rest of the bike pack start yelling at you. It was terrifying.

We finally found this road that had 5 million dollar homes on it and NO BIKERS! It was heaven. And btw, the road was called Toe Jam Rd. Seriously.

Anyways, this weekend, as I was driving the streets of the STP, I noticed many bicyclers and my hatred of them was brought back ten fold. What is it about these assholes that makes them think they rule the road? Is it the brightly colored spandex? My feeling is...I'm in a car, you're on a bike. I win. Get the eff out of my way. When will they learn?

Kilimanjaro Safaris

I will probably have many updates today because I'm supposed to be packing up my apartment. Whenever I have real work to do, I always end up procrastinating and doing other, less helpful things. So, here it goes...another ride review.

The Kilimanjaro Safari ride is at the Animal Kingdom...or the WDW version of a zoo. Only it's more exotic than a zoo because the animals are "free roaming" and they have things like gazelles running amok.

So, you get in this truck and they tell you that your going on a 2 week safari. You ride around the "African veldt" and see things like this:

And sometimes you see this:

It's a baby giraffe! Yay! And if you are really lucky, then you'll see something like this:

It's not the greatest picture, but it's a lion. You almost never see the lions because the lazy bastards sleep all day, but this one was awake and standing...and roaring. Okay, that last part was a lie because he was yawning, but still, I was pretty impressed.

As you can see, this ride brings you up close and personal with the animals. There are hippos, rhinos, zebras, gazelles, these african cattle, lions, alligators, elephants, ostriches AND MORE. It's impressive.

Go on this ride many times throughout the day because the animals sort of move around and feed at different times of the day, so it's always a different experience. The best time to go is right away in the morning. They have just released the animals from their nighttime cages and are feeding them, so most of the animals are out and active. By late afternoon, they are usually over the tourist shit and just laying around like the lazy pieces they truly are.

5/5 stars! It's fun for babies and senior citizens.

Movies I'm Excited For

I always get really excited for movies to come out in the theaters. It gives me something to look forward to because I love going to movies! Here's a short list of the movies I can't wait for in the next year and a half (don't judge me on my horrible taste in movies!):

1. 9 (hits theaters 9/9/09) - it's some creep city movie by Tim Burton and it looks just this side of fantastical.
2. Shutter Island (10/2/09) - Two Words: Leonardo DiCaprio. Enough said.
3. The Box (10/30/09) - It's Cameron Diaz and a hot piece as her husband. Frank Langella shows up with a box and says open the box, press a button, you'll become really rich, but someone you don't know will die! It will either be great or terrible. Either way I'm sure I'll love it.
4. New Moon (11/20/09) - The first movie was crap, I hate Kristen Stewart, but I can't look away.
5. SATC 2 (5/28/10) - I admit, it's mostly about the clothes for me. I love watching how they make seriously aging women look relevant and hot just by adding louboutin heels and dior bags.
6. Eclipse (6/30/10) - I said I can't look away.
7. Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, Part 1 (11/19/10) - Splitting the book into two movies is normally something I would frown upon, but in this case, it needed to be done and I'm so excited to pay the money to see how it all turns out!

It's kind of sad that this is all the movies I'm excited for in the next year and a half. Are we still dealing with the writer's strike or is it just crappy filmmaking?

Spaceship Earth

This is Spaceship Earth. It's the main attraction at Epcot Center. I had forgotten that I was reviewing rides at WDW until I saw the news item about Walter Cronkite. I was so sad (and kind of surprised because I thought he died a few years back) because Walter was my favorite narrator of the old school Spaceship Earth ride.

Back in the day, when I made my first pilgrimage to the WDW, the first place my mother took me was Epcot Center. She thought it would be less crowded. We walked in and I saw this giant golf ball in the sky and said, what happens in there? My mother took me by the hand, onto the moving platform and into the rotating cars for a magical journey through time! Seriously, they built a time machine inside a giant golf ball and Walter Cronkite used to narrate it. It was beautiful.

I wikipedia'd this shit to find out what went wrong with the ride. You see, somewhere around 1994, some asshole decided to mess with a good thing and remodel the ride. That would have been fine, except they cut the hotness right out of it! They swapped Walter Cronkite's magical voice for JEREMY IRONS! It was awful. I had a panic attack the next time I went on the ride. But at least then it was still the original ride.

Imagine my horror when this past January I went back to the WDW to find that AT&T no longer sponsors the ride. Now some German company does, and zee Germans ruined the ride! And they have JUDI DENCH narrating it! It's even more awful than Jeremy Irons. Plus, they cut out my favorite scene. There's a place in the ride where there's an ancient Roman street and they say "All roads lead to Rome". Then in the next scene there's destruction because since all roads led to Rome that meant that the riff raff could get in and they did and destroyed the shit out of the city. Anyhow, there was this fog that smelled like rotten feet... I think it was meant to be burning flesh...but it was my favorite. NO LONGER! Zee Germans cut it out. Now you ride through that part and it smells normal, which really takes away from the magics.

So, my review is as follows:

5/5 for the Walter version

3/5 for the Irons version...and

2/5 for the Dame Judi version

I Missed Bastille Day

So, I missed it...missed the French National Holiday that I was going to celebrate by drinking champagne and eating fries at Barbette. Shit. That would have been a good day.

Mostly I missed it because I've been recovering from a sinus infection and sleeping massive amounts because the medicines knock me out. And also because there are many changes in store for my life.

Here's the scoop. I am restless...all the time...and I hate being bored. Basically I get in these ruts and just can't handle it. My body starts twitching and my mind doesn't operate. I usually fix this by going on vacation. But, that's not going to happen anytime soon. So instead I had to make life changes. It's kind of fun because my mind is suddenly operating again and I'm my normal, organized and controlled self!

Now...as for the life changes...Any ideas?