formerly a fearless temp

.i. adventures in baby-sitting

I cannot stand make-believe games with little kids. They're almost as boring as the conversations I used to have with my co-worker Carol at Evil Acronym Company (Carol used to talk about her dental work a lot), and are more taxing because I am really forced to participate in make-believe games, while I can just nod and smile my way through boring conversations. One cannot nod and smile oneself through a game of hotel with an eight-year-old. But, then again, there are occasional rewards, like the other day, when my cousin Emma very seriously told me that her pretend name was Lucky Windswept, which makes me want to laugh two days after the fact. I mean: Lucky Windswept! And she came up with it IMMEDIATELY, like, didn't even have to think about it. Maybe she'll grow up to be a country singer or romance novelist or something.

Also while baby-sitting, I had to deal with one of Emma's little friends, who really irritated me. I hate it when little kids irritate me. First of all, it's irritating. Second of all, I feel like a louse for being irritated by a child who should have endless promise, potential, etc. But I couldn't help myself with this little girl - she refused to eat her lunch until everyone was seated and then, when I told her I would be a couple of minutes, told me she would use the extra time to pray. Wow, do I sound like a heathen! "The girl had good manners AND she gave thanks to our Lord! What a deadbeat!" But it's not what she said, of course, but how she said it - very Eddie Haskell.

But anyway, what followed made it worth it. Because her little friend prayed, Emma felt the need to pray, and because I'm a mature 25-year-old woman, I succumbed to peer pressure and prayed myself, with a note on the end for the hurricane victims. This caused Emma and her friend to try to one-up each other with stories about natural disasters and hurricanes until Emma started sharing the tale of how her grandfather died in a hurricane. She was halfway through the story when she remembered that her grandfather was also MY grandfather, and so she threw in the, "Oh, it was my grandfather Bud" aside so that I'd think it was her grandfather on her father's side. Only I'm pretty sure that he didn't die in a hurricane either. And I'm positive that his name wasn't Bud - Emma's father comes from a New England super-WASPy family. I don't think Bud is a common family name among such people.

Other highlights from baby-sitting: Huge meltdowny fight between Emma and her little friend, followed by a cheesy talk about feelings between Emma and me related to the meltdowny fight, and Emma still likes my singing, as seen by the fact that she would only eat her chicken nuggets after I sang (if you're wondering about my song choice, I went for a modification of Jingle Bells/Batman smells - I threw in a line or two about chicken nuggets. It was an improv thing, like jazz). I wonder when her ears will mature to the point that she recognizes my voice to be as appalling as it really is.

.ii. buy this boxed set

Is everyone aware that they have released an Astaire/Rogers boxed set? It is truly righteous, and I believe everyone with a passing interest in the films should pick it up, because the features seem to be good and the movies in the box are pretty excellent, with the possible exception of The Barkleys of Broadway, which I saw once and remember not liking that tremendously. But the others! Swing Time! Shall We Dance! Top Hat! Follow the Fleet! GREAT stuff.

I've been meaning to write a big Astaire/Rogers post for about a year and a half, and I'm going to have to let that dream go and just blather on in short spurts in random entries, because the full essay is probably never going to be written. I'll try to do my best short version.

I don't particularly like musicals. I liked Chicago a lot, and I get a kick out of Singing in the Rain, but for the most part, musicals just bore me and make me want to roll my eyes about the ridiculousness. Even later Fred Astaire ones leave me cold - I know The Band Wagon is supposed to be incredibly awesome, and actually earned a spot on TCM's The Essentials, but I had to turn it off forty minutes in because I found it to be (imho) embarrassingly bad. I probably had a more powerful reaction because it wasn't just any musical - it was a musical with Fred Astaire. And I love Fred Astaire! How dare he be in a movie I dislike? It felt like a personal betrayal.

But anyway: Astaire/Rogers. The plots are ridiculous and full of holes, the scripts range from witty to so corny you want to cry, the costumes are for the most part pretty great, there are occasional cringe-worthy moments related to cultural stereotypes, but the dancing - the dancing! It's as incredible as you would imagine, especially in my personal favorite of all the Astaire/Rogers movies I've seen - Swing Time. But it's difficult to talk about dancing - how can you articulate how great Pick Myself Up is as a number? I can't. It's fun, it's fast, it gives you a real idea of what it means to be light on your feet.

( a little more detail about the movie's greatness, with potential spoilers )

I totally only realized just now, after putting that exchange in this entry, the significance of the first names of the two characters. Lucky and Penny. Holy crap, I am so not insightful, I should not be allowed to write LJ entries about anything!

.iii. katrina

Thoughts and prayers to everyone affected.

Swing Time, my favorite Astaire/Rogers collaboration, is being featured on The Essentials on Turner Classic Movies this week. They aired it tonight at eight but I'm pretty sure they'll rerun it tomorrow night at six and if you've never seen it, or if you've never seen an Astaire/Rogers movie, I totally recommend checking it out. The icon I'm using is from the first dance number; Roger Ebert says that the appeal of Astaire/Rogers movies is their joy of performance, and I think you can see that even in this tiny 100x100 box.

Check it out! I know musicals are one of those things that people sometiems just don't go for - I tried to watch another TCM-deemed essential movie last month, The Band Wagon, and had to turn it off halfway through - but I really think it's worth watching. It's got the famous Bojangles number! And The Way You Look Tonight!

Great stuff!

There are actually a bunch of things I want to torture you with, including (but not limited to) recent tutoring, my most recent parking ticket, the latest annoying job, how I forgot my wallet today, the generalized self-loathing that accompanies any personal essay, how late my Proactiv is, and my cat's worrying ability to chew on his own collar - but there is not sufficient time for me to ramble on about these things at the moment. I have to go to bed.

I have time for two things!

First, because I am a sucker for memes - Lurkers! Are there lurkers out there? If there are, hi! It would be cool to hear from you, possibly via a comment to this post. Posting anonymously is okay. I swear I'm not scary. I use my cute cat icon to demonstrate my lack of scariness.

[SPEAKING of the cute cat - he totally just crawled into my work bag and sat there for a few minutes, quite content, until it started to tip over veeeeery sloooowly, at which point he did not get out of the bag, but just sat there looking kind of desperate and terrified. I rescued him! Oh, if only I had a digital camera. The cuteness was off the charts. Moving on!]

Second, am I the only person who really disliked Sideways? It has, like, a 95% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and I feel like I must have been shown a different cut of the movie than other people. Or maybe I just have pedestrian taste. I am, for example, kind of looking forward to that ABC Family TV movie starring Ryan Reynolds, who starred in one of my favorite mediocre sitcoms of the recent past, Two Guys and a Girl.

And that is all.

1. It is snowing out today, tons of tiny flakes that won't stick. It kind of looks like God's sifting flour or something. Because of this, everyone in the office is obligated to engage in the following conversation at least three times today:

Person A: Hey, it's snowing.

Person B: I know, can you believe it? It's too early!

Person A: And it's only the beginning.

Person C: Hey, it's snowing.

And so on and so forth.

What do people in the south talk about? I wonder if one could do a study: Is the desire to engage in meaningless, excruciatingly boring and predictable banter about the weather related at all to the severity of the weather changes in a particular region? If I lived in a more temperate place, would there be fewer of these torturous conversations going on by my desk? Or would people's desire to engage in excruciatingly boring and predictable banter about the weather transcend climates?

Something to ponder.

2. Another conversation that recently took place.

Fearless Temp: Holy crap, this transcript cost over a thousand dollars! That's, like -- more than five dollars a page!

Secretary: $6.50, actually.

FT: Wow.

S: I could've been a stenographer. (heavy sigh) I screwed it up. Well, that's what happens when you're a drug addict.

FT: [no idea how to respond]

S: But it wasn't really the drugs, it was the alcohol.

FT: [still at a loss]

S: Just generally screwing up my life.

[Awkward pause, during which I worried that she thought I was judging her, which I wasn't, and so thusly felt the need to say something comforting to create common ground. Something like --

FT: I used to drink a lot. Well, a few times. Okay, twice in college with my friends, but one of those times we got SO drunk that we got naked and ran around the memorial in the middle of campus. That sounds weird -- I mean, it was a thing, people did it before they graduated, it wasn't like we just decided to run around naked for no reason.

-- but did not have to, because a nanosecond before the silence got so awkward Fearless Temp would open her mouth, Secretary shrugged and put on her coat.]

Secretary: I'm going to go have a smoke.

FT: Have fun with that!

3. I'm taking the GREs next week (I know, soso late in the year, but what can I say? I'm a poor planner), and have been doing practice tests the last few nights. Horrifying. I think my father is right -- bad TV does rot your brain. It's the only explanation! I used to rock the standardized tests, man, and now I keep coming across words that I remember knowing, but cannot remember now, and find myself resorting to the old, "Hmm...well, there hasn't been a 'D' in a REALLY long time" method of test-taking.

Part of the problem is that I find the tests so boring that I have been doing the practice tests while watching bad TV. Maybe that's it.

4. Speaking of watching TV, on The OC last night, Ryan said, ( spoiler of the minorest sort, which I really don't think reveals anything, but better safe than sorry )

5. There are no words to fully express how excited I am about the new Bridget Jones coming out today. Have plans with Jo to go see it after work, and today when I was flipping through radio stations I came across a radio interview with Colin Firth, which caused me to clap my hands and shriek "OH MY GOD! COLIN FIRTH!" at the top of my lungs, almost swerving into another lane.

Am concerned about shrieking "OH MY GOD! COLIN FIRTH!" in the theater upon his first appearance. Almost as concerned as I am about shrieking "OH MY GOD! MATT DAMON!" should there be an Ocean's 12 preview before the movie (pleasepleaseplease).

And that is all.

Reporting 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. ( a few notes, not very spoilery )

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 )

Mail is here! Time to date stamp.

Ever since I was a little girl, I've tried to be grateful for little things, especially little things that are actually really quite big things if one didn't have them. That's kind of a lie. I don't think I was a little girl at all, more like twelve or thirteen. I say this because I'm pretty sure I got this idea from Oprah -- didn't she have gratitude journals back in the early nineties? I was a new adolescent and very impressionable! Anyway, it scarred me for life.

So I try to be grateful for random things. Like, say, indoor plumbing. Every so often when I'm washing my hands, I think: Isn't this nice? Running water is nice.

And I bask in the awesomeness of the faucet for a bit.

What inevitably follows: a terrible fear of somehow having the indoor plumbing taken away from me (one scenario: parents kicking me out, being forced to live under a bridge, washing hands only in the skeevy Hudson River), and then, after I've worked through that (parents love me, and also, I do their grocery shopping, so I come in handy, too), I start worrying: Sure, I'm appreciating indoor plumbing now, but do I really appreciate it enough? So many people in the world do not have indoor plumbing at all! And what are you doing to help them, Jessica? Nothing! Nothing at all! You sucky awful person!

And then I hate myself for a few minutes. Possibly have an Oreo.

The question is: Is appreciating things overrated? Something to ponder.

I survived my awkward social interaction tonight. Huzzah! Consumed yet another congratulatory Coolata afterwards. This is most definitely NOT a good reward system I'm setting up here, since I'm starting to define anything and everything as Coolata-worthy. Soon I'll be rewarding myself with a Coolata for conditioning my hair or remembering to pluck my eyebrows.

(May actually do it with the eyebrows thing. I do get so forgetful in that department.)

I have been watching Firefly again recently and man, is that an awesome show or what? So awesome.

Oh! You know what else is awesome? Control Room! Oh my goodness, highly recommend this documentary. HIGHLY. If you saw Fahrenheit 9/11, you should see this movie. If you want to see F9/11, you should see this movie. If you didn't see F9/11 because you think Michael Moore is a partisan hack with a chip on his shoulder, you should see this movie. If you didn't see F9/11 because you think Michael Moore is a pansy who didn't really go after the Bush administration the way he should have, then...quite honestly, you probably kind of scare me (even if I am a Democrat). But you, too, should go see this movie!

As Anna said in her LJ – "YOU MUST SEE THIS PHENOMENAL FILM. It has none of the abrasiveness, accusatory nature, or constantly interjected opinions of Fahrenheit 911, instead just showing real people searching for some kind of understanding. Neither side is demonized and it doesn't leave you feeling hopeless. Please see it and bring some friends."

Speaking of Anna! Anna and I had the most fun night ever last night, which she wrote about in her LJ so well that I don't need to describe it here. This is good because my brother is right now about to wrestle the internet connection away from me. And so I'm off!

Why did I just eat a Twix bar? There was no reason for that. I vaguely wanted one but probably could have gone without, but I ate the whole thing in ten minutes and now I feel sick. This brings up an important question: When one is talking about eating one traditional-sized package of Twix candy, is that eating one candy bar or two? Technically I suppose it's two, since there are two bars, but it's only one package so it feels like the two together should count as one candy bar. Hm. Something to ponder.

In other news: I completely forgot about Everwood last night. This came right on the heels of me completely forgetting about Alias on Sunday night. Grr, I say. Grr! I do this all the time, along with my other popular method of self-annoyance: taping shows and then forgetting about them. Or, to be accurate, not so much forgetting about them as forgetting where they are. I have approximately eight billion VCR tapes, which I've accumulated since I was about thirteen, and I have this thing about labeling them: I don't. Or maybe I'll label them once, in a fit of organization, but never again, no matter how many times it's taped over.

It's all because of this completely unjustified faith in my own memory -- I always think I'll remember stuff like, say, last Wednesday's Keen Eddie is on the unlabeled tape on my dresser, while this week's Keen Eddie is on the unlabeled tape on top of my TV, and last Wednesday's ep of The OC is on the tape labeled "ABC Soaps" standing upright next to the VCR. And then I leave the room, and the information vanishes, so that the next time I'm there, I just find myself staring in front of the TV willing the tape with the show I want to watch to snake its way out of the pile, or start glowing, or something.

I must say, in my defense, that it does sometimes work. For example, a few weeks ago when I became fixated on Astaire/Rogers musicals for a week or so, I decided I absolutely positively NEEDED to see the ones I'd taped off of Turner Classic Movies back in high school. I hadn't watched the tape in five years or so, I'd guess, but I knew to go to the back of the pile and pull out the one marked "Beyond the Sea" (it had been originally used to tape that X Files episode about Scully's father), where Follow the Fleet and Swing Time were both found. Also discovered on the tape: an episode from Sunset Beach! OMG, I so totally LOVED that show back in high school, and wow, it was TERRIBLE. The episode I taped was from when they were doing that Poseiden Adventure storyline with the boat flipping over. It was awful. Awful! Naturally, I loved it then and now.

Speaking of awful things I typically love, I went to see the teenie flick ( The Prince and Me )

I just realized that they dropped off the mail I'm supposed to distribute sometime in the past hour or so and I totally didn't realize it, even though the mail drop off place is, you know, ON MY DESK. Must go deliver mail. Fun fun.

1. I seriously spent all day today -- all day! -- contemplating the quickest route to my dry cleaner's, because I had a mess of coats and jackets that had to be dropped off today. The mess included the foolish Christmas gift I gave myself, a new off-white winter coat, which I still LOVE even though its upkeep will likely cause me to go broke, since I am notoriously spill prone. Example: Saturday, out at dinner, I proudly showed my parents the coat-care trick my friend Joanna, the always impeccably turned out, had shown me.

"See!" I said, turning the coat inside out, flipping the lapels in and folding it in half before draping it over my chair. "Now it will stay clean!"

"Ah," my parents said, suitably impressed.

And then I stood up to leave two hours later, put on my coat, and discovered a MASSIVE black grease stain right above my right pocket. How? How did this happen? Did I just not see it before I did the fancy coat flip? Or are stains so powerfully drawn to me that they can break the coat flip shield?

Anyway! So I had this massive grease stain, which Joanna advised me later should have been removed with hairspray but which my mother and I, being dumb about such things, just left alone and stared sadly at before sending it off to the dry cleaner. The dry cleaner closes at six, and I get out of work at five, and the difficult thing was that I knew that I could most definitely make it in that time frame, but there was no clear route from my current office to said dry cleaner's. Instead, there was a multiplicity of routes and I became fixated on figuring out the fastest possible one, taking into account traffic, construction, the direction of the wind, etc.

After hours of careful consideration I, naturally, selected the least efficient route, which took me north and south several times when really all I wanted to do was go east! EAST! I can't express how frustrating this was, to get halfway into a trip and realize that you have taken four separate shortcuts that make NO sense and that all of your clever plotting was for naught.

I did make it to the dry cleaner's just in time, happily.

2. Over the weekend I forked over $5.95 for a previously viewed copy of Orange County, and I think it may be one of my smartest purchases ever because seriously? I love that movie. LOVE. I may have to go on about it at length in the future, but for now, I will simply say ( orange county stuff )Another Jack Black movie that I heartily recommend: Saving Silverman, which is by no means sweet or warm but is enormously funny, featuring a Neil Diamond cover band consisting of Jack Black, Jason Biggs, and Steve Zahn called Diamonds in the Rough.

3. I've had this mysterious back pain for ages and am considering going to the doctor for it. I am, naturally, convinced that I am dying, because this is the conclusion my mind automatically goes to for every minor health concern. I blame thirtysomething, and their touching telling of Nancy's ovarian cancer, because after watching it at the impressionable age of eleven, I automatically associate lower back pain with ovarian cancer because that was Nancy's symptom! Does anyone else remember this? She kept having these tinges of pain in her back and was all "oh it's nothing" but it WASN'T!

I am, of course, as my mother told me, Talking Crazy, because the pain all started after that nasty spill I took in my driveway a few weeks ago, and I know that's the real source of it all.

4. There is no 4, because it is time for me to go to bed.

I am so completely gambling on the weather right now -- I have, like, no clean clothes to wear tomorrow. Okay, I probably do, but nothing I like, or would particularly want to wear. I fear I will have to traipse down to the cedar closet and start pulling out ensembles from 1994.

Oh my goodness, it's the end of Sense & Sensibility. I must watch.

Ah. That was nice. I'm still recovering from ET, the end of which I caught earlier tonight, completely unexpectedly, and so I was not emotionally prepared! I seriously cried so hard that a person with more pride would have gone and washed her face; I just sat here sniffling, wiped my eyes on the hem of my pajama top, and tossed back a handful of M&Ms.

( ET ending spoilers )

Love that movie.

I really think I had something else to say when I opened this Update Journal window, but I really can't remember any of it now.

Saw two great movies today – the first, The Lion in Winter, was one I've been meaning to see for ages and ages. It was just as great as I'd expected and hoped it would be, the dialogue often so funny and sharp that I had to rewind several scenes to get the full effect. As with nearly all films about the monarchy, past or present (Roman Holiday included), it reminded me how fortunate I am not to be a princess. For instance, through most of The Lion in Winter, the character I identified most with was the hunched-over young son with poor hygiene – not for those oh-so-attractive physical characteristics (though, come to think of it, I do have poor posture – but I do bathe regularly) – but because he had about as much finesse with and understanding of the complex royal dealings within the movie as I do or would. Half the time I had to pause the movie to go over things with my mother ("So, okay, this whole Acquitaine thing? What's the deal there?"), and ended up going up to our mass of outdated Encyclopedias after the movie to get a better background of the events it described.

That said – Katharine Hepburn? So awesome. To be expected, of course, since I knew she won an Oscar for the role and I've always loved her stuff anyway, but oh, must state the obvious, she was so fantastic in this. One of the things I love most about Katharine Hepburn is how she never – in her life or in her roles – seemed to ask for pity. Which is not to say that she was cold, or remote; in fact, it's the opposite to me. She always came across as a person to be respected, as someone who knew who she was and was willing to bear the burden of it, but still human enough to occasionally have moments where she let the weight of loneliness or sadness or pain show, often in spite of herself. Even in her sillier movies, like Bringing Up Baby or Holiday, where she played ridiculous characters (especially in the first), she was always so self-assured about her silliness, so confident and brave about it, that you couldn't help but love her and want to be like her and ache for her when she suffered.

I know, it's all stuff hundreds of people have said before and better about Kate, but there's my contribution.

The second movie I saw just came out in the theaters, so it gets a cut tag – ( Master and Commander )
And holy crap, it's almost 3:30 in the morning. My whole plan was to go to bed early so I would get up early tomorrow and Get Stuff Done because I have a presentation in class Monday night and work is going to be hellacious this week, I just know it. But I have to remember that my new thing is not caring. Wait, that sounds bad. What I mean is: My new thing in life is not stressing, and enjoying things more. How often have I said this? But this time I really mean it!

Bedtime now.