monday morning ramblings
Aug. 30th, 2004 11:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fearlesstempReporting in from my new temp assignment at the All Irish Law Firm. So far it's going well. A few early notes about the firm:
-By far the easiest firm name to pronounce in my temp travels, which is nice. Complicating factor: Because the firm is All Irish, the names are confusingly interchangeable (Tom, Brendan, and Frank in particular, not to mention the two Mikes).
-Location is SWEET. Downtown, near yummy lunch places, courtyard across the street where I can eat a bag lunch so that lunching it up in car will be unncessary (until the cold weather hits in November). The firm covered my paid parking at a lot a short walk away. Walk is potentially scary, as I have to go under a bridge and past some underground garages, both of which ping on my Lifetime movie-honed Dangerous to Women Radar, but there's decent foot traffic so I don't think it will be too bad.
-Internet access! This is the most important thing of all. I keep randomly commenting in people's LJs for the sheer novelty of being able to. Most of my jobs either deny internet access or leave me so busy that I can't use it, so working here, where my main responsibility is handling the phones, is nice so far.
This weekend I did a lot of nothing in particular, which included two things I enjoy in the moment and immediately after but am not particularly good at: shoe shopping and icon making. My discussion of both of these things will be painfully boring, so spare yourself the torture and skip the next couple of paragraphs.
The first resulted in the purpose of new black work shoes. I've been wearing the same pair of round-toe shoes forever, and every time I wore them, I would see everyone else walking around in pointy-toed shoes while I wore these weird, possibly nunnish round-toed shoes. And so I went out and bought a pair of black narrow square-toed Mary Jane type shoes with a high heel, and then went home and opened a magazine to discover that round toed shoes are apparently all the rage now. Of course! By then I'd become so committed to the cuteness of the new shoes that I couldn't bear the thought of returning them, and so I'm wearing them today. I keep rolling away from my desk to admire them. I would totally hook you guys up with a link to a picture of the shoe, but it is not on the shoe maker's website! Am now concerned that shoe is so behind the times that they have purged it from its website and I will be soundly mocked far and wide.
And onto icon making! It should be noted that I suck at icon making, and the only features at my disposal are those I can find on my Paint program, and so I just find pictures I like and crop and resize. This weekend I went and searched out some of my favorite old movies (Bringing Up Baby, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Meet John Doe, The Lady Eve, and To Have and Have Not) on the web and cropped pictures and now they're all here. The whole objective was to purge my icons and upload new ones, all in black and white but I couldn't let go of Lionel! Or Bucky! Or Grover, who was my first icon on LJ. And JC is totally going to have to come back.
This is why I've never had a cohesive style in fashion, or decorating, or anything, really.
Searching out the icons was fun, though, and made me remember how much I loved those films, the Capra ones in particular. Meet John Doe is a fascinating movie that I'm not sure gets the play it deserves. Mr. Smith had a lot of good stuff in it about corruption in American politics, but Meet John Doe went a lot further, especially in the way it addressed the manipulation of the media by powerful political figures and business interests. It's been a few years since I last watched it, so some of my memories of the film are kind of vague, like the fact that the ending was tacked on after poor test screenings and I don't think Capra really cared for it.
Speaking of media manipulation! There was a great show on the History Channel last night about the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr that I really recommend checking out. Richard Dreyfuss's narration was a bit too dramatic for me (quite a few Shatnerian pauses), and while there are lots of cheesy historical reenactments (mostly of people standing around drinking wine with significant head nodding, or sitting at their desks writing angry letters), they're kind of fun. The story itself is so involving and hard to believe -- as they say at the beginning, it would be as if Dick Cheney and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill faced off in a duel. Crazy stuff!
There was also a lot of interesting stuff about the way elections were run back then, and how the founding fathers talked trash about each other. The latter thing is worth tuning in for in and of itself. So: Check your local listings!
Also this past weekend, I went to see Garden State, which kind of disappointed me. It's been getting great reviews just about everywhere, and I love love LOVE Zack Braff (and Scrubs), but the movie just didn't do it for me. There were some very funny moments, and I thought Natalie Portman was great, but by the end I found myself staring around at the theater thinking: Is it almost over? I never do that! It just seemed kind of obvious, and the dialogue often read like a mediocre TV movie to me.
I actually feel really bad for saying this, because I love him so much, and I know so many people really really loved the movie, but I wanted to get my feelings out there to see if I'm the only one.
I don't know. Maybe I was just in a bad mood?
Mail is here! Time to date stamp.
-By far the easiest firm name to pronounce in my temp travels, which is nice. Complicating factor: Because the firm is All Irish, the names are confusingly interchangeable (Tom, Brendan, and Frank in particular, not to mention the two Mikes).
-Location is SWEET. Downtown, near yummy lunch places, courtyard across the street where I can eat a bag lunch so that lunching it up in car will be unncessary (until the cold weather hits in November). The firm covered my paid parking at a lot a short walk away. Walk is potentially scary, as I have to go under a bridge and past some underground garages, both of which ping on my Lifetime movie-honed Dangerous to Women Radar, but there's decent foot traffic so I don't think it will be too bad.
-Internet access! This is the most important thing of all. I keep randomly commenting in people's LJs for the sheer novelty of being able to. Most of my jobs either deny internet access or leave me so busy that I can't use it, so working here, where my main responsibility is handling the phones, is nice so far.
This weekend I did a lot of nothing in particular, which included two things I enjoy in the moment and immediately after but am not particularly good at: shoe shopping and icon making. My discussion of both of these things will be painfully boring, so spare yourself the torture and skip the next couple of paragraphs.
The first resulted in the purpose of new black work shoes. I've been wearing the same pair of round-toe shoes forever, and every time I wore them, I would see everyone else walking around in pointy-toed shoes while I wore these weird, possibly nunnish round-toed shoes. And so I went out and bought a pair of black narrow square-toed Mary Jane type shoes with a high heel, and then went home and opened a magazine to discover that round toed shoes are apparently all the rage now. Of course! By then I'd become so committed to the cuteness of the new shoes that I couldn't bear the thought of returning them, and so I'm wearing them today. I keep rolling away from my desk to admire them. I would totally hook you guys up with a link to a picture of the shoe, but it is not on the shoe maker's website! Am now concerned that shoe is so behind the times that they have purged it from its website and I will be soundly mocked far and wide.
And onto icon making! It should be noted that I suck at icon making, and the only features at my disposal are those I can find on my Paint program, and so I just find pictures I like and crop and resize. This weekend I went and searched out some of my favorite old movies (Bringing Up Baby, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Meet John Doe, The Lady Eve, and To Have and Have Not) on the web and cropped pictures and now they're all here. The whole objective was to purge my icons and upload new ones, all in black and white but I couldn't let go of Lionel! Or Bucky! Or Grover, who was my first icon on LJ. And JC is totally going to have to come back.
This is why I've never had a cohesive style in fashion, or decorating, or anything, really.
Searching out the icons was fun, though, and made me remember how much I loved those films, the Capra ones in particular. Meet John Doe is a fascinating movie that I'm not sure gets the play it deserves. Mr. Smith had a lot of good stuff in it about corruption in American politics, but Meet John Doe went a lot further, especially in the way it addressed the manipulation of the media by powerful political figures and business interests. It's been a few years since I last watched it, so some of my memories of the film are kind of vague, like the fact that the ending was tacked on after poor test screenings and I don't think Capra really cared for it.
Speaking of media manipulation! There was a great show on the History Channel last night about the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr that I really recommend checking out. Richard Dreyfuss's narration was a bit too dramatic for me (quite a few Shatnerian pauses), and while there are lots of cheesy historical reenactments (mostly of people standing around drinking wine with significant head nodding, or sitting at their desks writing angry letters), they're kind of fun. The story itself is so involving and hard to believe -- as they say at the beginning, it would be as if Dick Cheney and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill faced off in a duel. Crazy stuff!
There was also a lot of interesting stuff about the way elections were run back then, and how the founding fathers talked trash about each other. The latter thing is worth tuning in for in and of itself. So: Check your local listings!
Also this past weekend, I went to see Garden State, which kind of disappointed me. It's been getting great reviews just about everywhere, and I love love LOVE Zack Braff (and Scrubs), but the movie just didn't do it for me. There were some very funny moments, and I thought Natalie Portman was great, but by the end I found myself staring around at the theater thinking: Is it almost over? I never do that! It just seemed kind of obvious, and the dialogue often read like a mediocre TV movie to me.
I actually feel really bad for saying this, because I love him so much, and I know so many people really really loved the movie, but I wanted to get my feelings out there to see if I'm the only one.
I don't know. Maybe I was just in a bad mood?
Mail is here! Time to date stamp.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-30 09:10 am (UTC)Do you know what I was obsessed with this weekend? The Gregory Peck day at TCM! (following the Cary Grant day at TCM the day before!) Thanks to my TiVO, I had lovely "Suspicion" (for Cary goodness) and then "Spellbound" (in which Gregory Peck is too beautiful for words) and then "The Paradine Case" - whee! All I needed was "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Roman Holiday" to complete my Gregory Peckapalooza.
I have an unhealthy fascination for old movies, I tell you what.
Also, I watched that History Channel special as well.
I think you and I would probably be good tv buddies in real life, yes.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-30 12:40 pm (UTC)Now I so desperately want to see Roman Holiday. I love the end of that movie.
And isn't To Have and Have Not the best? It was my gateway old movie! For some reason I picked it out of the entire classic movies section of my video store when I was fourteen, and from then on I was hooked.
And yes, clearly we both have excellent taste in film and television! :)