Thrown Into The Fire

My current location is Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica. Already overcome by exhaustion, I am sprawled out in my hotel bed watching Titanic in Spanish. A delayed flight and a sprint to make my connection followed by a hectic evening and a 7AM departure to the national park where I find myself now are not conducive to feeling well-rested.

The flight delay in Denver was caused by something I had never even heard of- weight imbalance due to poorly arranged baggage. I knew when I heard that that I would be on a mad dash to catch my connecting flight in Houston to San Jose. I barely had time to order a veggie sub at the airport Subway and bond with the flight attendant ahead of me in line over how neither of us ordered cheese. How emotional.

By the time I landed, exhaustion washed over me like a tidal wave and I nearly forgot to switch on Spanish mode in my mind. It's a good thing I have that language setting available, however, as not many people here speak English, much to my surprise. If you say you do not speak Spanish, they seem to think you will magically understand if they simply speak to you louder.

Once I passed through customs, I was told to look for someone holding a huge yellow flag that I wouldn't be able to miss. Well, somehow I was able to, and it took me a good long time to find my name among the pieces of paper being held up by those hoping to pick them up. I got into the car of my program representative and was off to I had no idea where. The driver handed me a folder with information on my first week and the family I would be staying with as she swerved to avoid a head-on collision and ignored the first of many stop signs.

My family was shocked when I told them I speak Spanish and informed me that hardly any of their host volunteers do. Then I was told to be up by 6:30 and would be off to the Manuel Antonio National Park at 7:10.

More later, just wanted to clam your suspense and end your nail biting. Plus, now Legally Blonde is on in Spanish and I really have to pay attention....

Bionic Matt Damon

The bass of an indiscernible hip hop song thumps in the background as children scamper and wearly-looking adults trudge along in the streets of an overpopulated Los Angeles. That looked about right to me after having spent substantial time in the city of Angeles. The big shock came to me as the year "2154" scrolled across the movie screen. I was under the impression things were already a bit desperate/Apocalyptic there already. A bit later after informing the audience of the setting and time period they made sure to include some robots for good measure.

I understand the draw of a few million dollars, but I still can't help feeling slighted by actors generally opting for quality films when they make the financially-motivated decision to appear in cinematic *ahem* "gems" *ahem* (the ahems indicate sarcasm) like Elysium. The trailer indicated a generic, futuristic Sci-Fi movie offering a bleak outlook of the future of oh-so-doomed humanity with some potentially promising action scenes, aesthetically pleasing cinematography and A-list ish actors (though I can't claim familiarity with the celebrity rating system. I think Jodi Foster and Matt Damon are A list or at least B+ list). 

Alright, quick plot summary: Earth is overpopulated, disease-ridden and unsanitary, so the elite members of the human race create a means of preserving their uppity way of life on a weird, floating wheel-shaped space station called Elysium. Everyone and their drug dealer wants a ticket up there, naturally; one of the major draws being that any ailment suffered by Elysium citizens is cured instantly. It is an attempt at a commentary on society with the rich being selfless, soulless jerks who seldom look in the direction of the poverty and ill-stricken. The first scene is a flashback to young Max (Matt Damon) speaking poor Spanish with a random nun about how one day he wants to get to Elysium with his childhood girlfriend. As adults, childhood-girlfriend chick is a nurse with a dying child. Since Max suffers from radiation poisoning at work and is trying to get to Elysium himself, his lady love uses her sexy Spanish accent and and the fact that he is hot for her to convince him to take them as well. The girl pathetically fails to pull off the cute thing by telling some horrible story to Max in a desperate attempt to invoke some mercy. She is a horrible child actress. Man, I am already sick of typing what I hoped would be a basic summary and there is still an insane amount of plot lines to touch on. 

To get a ticket to Elysium, Max offers to do a favor for a Los Angeles gangster who is basically impossible to understand. To do so, he undergoes an unnecessarily graphic surgery transforming him into a partially-bionic human USB stick. His task is to download the technical code capable of overthrowing Elysium from the brain of some CEO guy. Confused yet? A few poorly coordinated and unnecessary action scenes later, Max gets the information accompanied by a predictable warning from CEO guy that he would regret it. DUN DUN DUN. Being a citizen of Elysium, the death of pretentious CEO guy is not taken lightly by Jodi Foster, the heartless ruler of the utopia. Thus, she sends out her minions, two unwashed assassins flying around in a hover craft. The more evil of the two has metal implanted in his face for no reason and speaks in this accent sounding like a hybrid between South African, cockney English, and maybe a hint of Australian. The tone of his voice resonates far too many decibels higher than would ever allow it to be taken seriously, thus instantly making him a poor casting choice.

Hm, you've got something on your face, buddy...

Here's where I leave you sitting on the edge of your seats with bated breath: do the deserving impoverished overthrow the cold-hearted elites and earn a spot on Elysium? Hm, so hard to predict...

Hippie Towns

Just like competitive brothers arguing about who has the best athletic skills and the girlfriend more closely resembling Miranda Kerr, hippie towns similarly try to one-up each other. Growing up in Boulder, Colorado, I constantly felt my resident city took the cake as far as havens for free lovin' hippies dancing in their hemp skirts with flowers in their hair. Then I drove through Ward for the first time and realized my error when I stopped in the grocery/knitting store. 

Whole Foods and other markets whose shelves house the latest hard-to-pronounce health fad sprout up in Boulder like Raid-resistant weeds. Seaweed and tofu replace mashed potatoes and pork as main staples in meals, causing children to consider this the norm of all families. When a health magazine publishes an article touting the benefits of kombucha, Boulder eagerly snatches up the product. Yet little did I know, Vashon Island in Washington State overshadowed Boulder’s lifestyle with a vegan leather shroud imported from Nepal.

As I enjoy personifying places in addition to inanimate objects, I am going to take that direction with this post. I imagine some sort of “hippie town debate” where Vashon Island, Boulder and Nederland go up against each other to determine who is truly the most hippie-friendly, gluten-free, vegan, Earth loving, animal loving town and who best sweeps their pretentious attitude under the rug. Boulder, oozing confidence, steps up to the podium and announces that its markets stock seven different brands of locally-sourced Kombucha, causing Vashon to snicker in its seat and retort that it has Kombucha on TAP at its local coffee shop where bluegrass musicians congregate on the front porch for daily jam sessions. Nederland, silent until this point, stands up and, bearing a smug expression, reminds the audience of its yearly Frozen Dead Guy festival. Boulder, feeling slighted and defensive after losing the Kombucha argument, quickly retorts that it is home to Pearl Street, a haven for an eclectic collection of street performers like contortionists and dijerido players.  Then chaos insues- a messy squabble breaks out amongst the towns and cities, indiscernible shouts of who has the most vegan restaurants per capita and who does the most to educate its citizens and visitors about seal clubbing and the uptick in glacial melt echo throughout the hall. The mediator is forced to intervene in a futile attempt to calm the riled up participants. The judges deem them all immature and unfit to participate in the rest of the competition. Vashon, Boulder, and Nederland sulk off in opposing directions, each muttering to themselves as they exit. 

When You Mess With the Barista...

...you get whole milk in the skim milk latte you just ordered. There are many individuals whose main goal in life appears to be to infuriate baristas at any cost. I am convinced there is a meet-up group out there whose sole intention is to discuss new ways to piss off customer service workers. Well, pin a rose on your nose, cynical customers, because it is working.

Generally, my mild temperament at work kicks into action whenever someone takes their lack-of-caffeine-induced anger out on me. This approach seems ironic, seeing as how I am the one with the power to make their drink caffeinated or otherwise. If you hassle your cocaine dealer, he's going to give you powdered sugar.

One day, my calm, cool and collected persona stepped out for its lunch break at the worst possible moment. A particular customer who I'll call Marsha for the sake of her undeserved anonymity, graces us with her presence most mornings and always orders a medium, skim-milk latte with either Stevia she keeps in her purse or our Splenda on the oh-so-unfortunate days she forgets it. Sometimes she teeters on the edge of bearable and aneurism-inducing. On one hand, she generally gives a tip, albeit a small one, but every little bit helps bolster our barely-over-minimum-wage pay. For this reason, she never rubbed me the wrong way too intensely until one particular day. The day when my dear friend Ability to Calm Down was, as previously mentioned, taking a 10.

Actually, Marsha cranked up my stress levels to the "danger, you are going to die young from stress-related heart failure" zone once before. She came in, barked her order at me, and informed me that she needed me to put three packets of Splenda in her non-fat latte as she forgot her Stevia. As I went to reach for the Splenda, I noticed we were out, and proceeded to check in the storage room. No luck, meaning we would need to venture out too the broken down van in the parking lot to check in the backup storage for it. I asked my co-worker if he knew of any Splenda in the van and he said he doubted it would be there since the back room lacked it. He decided to go check the van anyhow. In the mean time, I told Marsha in my best fake apologetic voice that all signs pointed to no Splenda. She took this news in a way that would only seem appropriate if I told her she had terminal pancreatic cancer with only two weeks to live.

"Ex-CUSE me?!" she barked with a not-so-subtle tone of rage causing customers to turn, "can you explain exactly how one RUNS OUT of Splenda?!"

"Well, everyone used it and someone forgot to order more." I thought that response was self-explanatory, but what do I know.

At that moment, my co-worker emerged through the door with a box of Splenda. Now it was his turn to be harassed. She instructed him to open them himself and put them in the latte for her. It took all of my willpower to resist the temptation to ask her if her fingers didn't work in addition to her brain. Shockingly, this is not even the worst of my interactions with her. The last left me beaten and broken emotionally, and no longer willing to acknowledge or serve her when she comes in.

When shifts start out with a customer like Marsha, the mood recovery process is longer in duration than the rehabilitation from serious open heart surgery. I politely greeted her, she barked her order at me and informed me that she now has her own jar of Stevia powder labeled with her name next to our espresso machine (so she can leave her "charming" mark on the place). I wrote her order on the cup and swiped her credit card. I have never been so terrified of the word DECLINED written menacingly on a screen. I desperately swiped it again as a list of horrible things I would rather do than inform her that her card was declined raced through my mind. Give myself a paper cut and dip it in lemon juice. Spend four hours standing in Death Valley in July wearing a Parka. There it was again. DECLINED.

"I'm really sorry..." I said timidly, bracing for her reaction, "but it says your card is declined..."

"WHAT? There's money in there. You're wrong. Run it again."

I swiped it two more times and it finally worked. I told her our machine can be "finicky" which just egged on her verbal abuse.

"Finicky?! Don't mess with people on Friday mornings. Seriously, that's not acceptable!" And with that she stormed off and I took a few attempts at deep, calming breaths which did nothing to calm my frazzled nerves.

Thankfully my coworker making her drink overheard the interaction and gave her whole milk. I feel an overwhelming inclination to dump her Stevia jar and fill it with refined white. Maybe on my last day. 

Books Straight out of the Dryer

If literature could be compared to the some kind of fluff, Something Borrowed is the kind of fluff you pick off your clothes after removing them from the dryer. Or the kind of fluffy fur on Pomeranians. You look at it, touch it, feel and relish the fuzziness, and then instantly forget it. But what better way to hack down and murder stress demons than by spreading apart the covers of Something Borrowed and allowing the juicy plot line of a love triangle where a girl is sleeping with her best friend's fiancee ooze out over the pages you are trying to hide behind The Wall Street Journal since you are reading in public. Wow that sentence's length far exceeded what is appropriate.

At a certain point in any reader's life, they are bound to get sick of serious Russian novels (don't worry, I'm not doing any Tolstoy bashing here) and classic literature forced upon them in high school, as those genres are much less apt to mercilessly remove stress, often doing just the opposite. Of course, classic literature comprises an immensely important place in society in my oh-so-humble opinion, but novels like Something Borrowed are, though perhaps to a lesser degree, vital.

I remember well the day I watched Something Borrowed, the film based on the book, in case you couldn't use your keen sense of reasoning to figure that one out. It seems every time I am on a transcontinental flight lasting the lifetime of certain insects, cosmic forces come together to plot against me by making all of my inflight movie options the one-star crap that should have gone straight to DVD if it didn't already. Yes, I am insinuating that the film version of Something Borrowed is not a high-quality film about to skyrocket to the top of any critic's must-see list. It falls neatly into the same category of entertaining but forgettable. Yes, that is officially a category. Back to the point, I ended up watching Something Borrowed en route from Spain to Denver. I figured I'd at least improve my language skills while the melted cheddar-cheesy plot rotted my brain by changing the language to Spanish.

For those of you who haven't seen the movie or read the book, here's a brief synopsis: Rachel and Darcy, best friends from their early youth, find their friendship jeopardized when Rachel sleeps with Darcy's fiancee, Dex. And then, OMG, Rachel and Dex actually fall in LOVE! Oh woe is me. Should she continue to be Darcy's right hand woman or follow her heart? Oh the dilemmas... sounds like an episode of Maury Povich. Who doesn't love a good love triangle? Or love rhombus in this case (they are much more interesting than love squares), since one of Dexter's friends is hot for Rachel. Woah, plot twist!!

Total besties!!!!

Totally in love!?

Or....are they??

People who should read this book are shameless women looking for a stress-free, quick, entertaining and comical read and who aren't afraid to attract a couple of looks from strangers questioning their IQ. Seriously, I wish I could have snapped a photo of the way people's faces scrunched up in disapproval when I showed them what I was reading. In all frankness, I can't think of a single man who would enjoy reading Something Borrowed, but I've been wrong before. And yes, I admit shamelessly that I will be reading the sequel. I bet you can guess the title... Something Blue. Seriously.

You're reading WHAT??

A Bug's Life: Behind the Scenes

Pixar's A Bug's Life filled my innocent childhood mind with the naive notion that bugs lived a charmed life and were amiable, beautiful and diverse beings on this earth. Disney's Earth segment on insects, however, revealed the dark, behind-the-scenes reality.

Lies!

By the end of the torturous episode, I couldn't decide which would be the worst insect life to live. I concluded that it all depends what gender you are as that seems to be the driving force behind whether or not your life sucks. Unless you are a Dawson's bee, in which case neither males nor females seem to escape a horrendous fate. More on that shortly.

The first charming segment of the nature special focused on a certain subspecies of walking stick insect, which was one of the most charming characters from A Bug's Life. In reality, however, they are more like the deadbeat dads appearing on the Maury Povich show. To reach a female and get their reproduction on, male stick bugs must scale tree trunks and take on enemy male challengers on the way by fighting to the death. The winner gets it on with the female at the top of the tree and then throws her off of the trunk to her death at the base of the tree. Real nice end to a date, and a great reward for putting out. Keep your knickers on next time, female stick bug.

In the case of the Japanese red beetle, motherhood is synonymous with Hell. Mothers have a whole brood of brats who are the epitome of picky. They will only eat the juice of a perfectly ripe, extremely rare exotic fruit, so their mother ventures out, probes each fruit she encounters to determine its ripeness, and then brings it back to her ungrateful offspring. If she takes too long, the babies literally ditch her and go hang out with a different mommy bug. Once they are old enough to leave the roost, they kill their mother/foster mother and eat her. You can't beat the attitude out of those little nightmares with Super Nanny.

These kids should really be put up for adoption

The worst for both genders, as previously mentioned, is most likely a life as a Dawson's bees. The males literally wait to gang rape the females that hatch underground as she first emerges from the earth. Such a picturesque first vision of the world- a bunch of nasty men ready to de-flower you. As they clamor to tackle the lady bee, the men fight to the death to the point where they completely kill each other off and only one alpha male remains. In their squabbles, they even dismember some emerging females by accident. As Oprah, the narrator says, the female bees become "collateral damage." Seems a little darker than Pixar led me to believe as a child...

Retreat, female Dawson's bee!!

No Need to Turn on the A/C

Unless you've seen Gilmore Girls, you're likely to equate Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Stewart in their one-dimmensional acting ability. Even while delivering a half-vampire baby which I assume hurts with or without an epidural, Stewart's face is a blank slate. I think Hell may freeze over the day Kristen Stewart expresses something other than nonchalance. I will be completely floored, as I'm sure will anyone used to the crude McCarthy using her weight to her comedic advantage if they watch her portrayal of Sookie St. James in Gilmore Girls. Sookie is a vivacious, generous, goofy and bubbly. And then there is Mullins, McCarthy's character in her latest flick, The Heat.

If you've seen Bridesmaids, The Hangover III (if you have, I'm really sorry), Identity Theif (also sorry) you are already well-acquainted with this character. Personally, the "haha she is overweight" thing never really did it for me. Her appeal in my mind stems from her little known ability to embrace varying roles. And as for Sandra Bullock... I've stopped having any expectations about her performances. I'm not sure how she agreed to partake in both The Blind Side and All About Steve within the same year. Maybe she owed a favor to the mob of horrible Hollywood films (you know, the angry Italians actively trying to ruin acting careers). Anyway, this role seemed somewhat beneath her, but she did an average job and looks really hot for her age.

This being a movie review, a summary must be in order. Okay, here goes:
Agent Ashburn (Bullock) is a snarky, over-confident FBI agent sent to Boston to work on a case regarding a drug dealer. She is forced to work with Mullins (McCarthy), the crude Boston cop who, to put it lightly, curses like a sailor. Naturally, they don't get along, but Ashburn is jonseing for a promotion and her only means of acquiring it is by showing she can work well with Mullins (I think you need a map to follow that reasoning). So they fight, and they catch the drug dealer guy, and then through all the turmoil become best friends. How utterly predictable.

Let's see if we meet all of the requirements to dub this a crude comedy with female leads:
-Fart jokes: check
-Excessive use of the F word: check
-An ongoing joke about McCarthy's weight: check, check, check
-Random, extremely unnecessary bloody scene: check
-Complete and utter failed attempt at a serious emotional scene where the characters bond: check

Also fun fact: Melissa McCarthy and Jenny McCarthy are cousins. Seriously.