When you're in the suburbs and it's raining and you're terribly bored, it sometimes seems like a good idea to go to the movies. The magic of Hollywood will amuse and enrapture you, and you will have two or three fewer hours to try desperately to fill. Such was the thinking when I went to see the latest Planet of the Apes movie last weekend:
our scene opens on L and G slouched on the couch in a coma of inactivity
TV: Planet of the Apes! Watch It! This is a preview voiceover!
G: You think?
L: Eh...
The preview shows what looks like a gorilla punching a horse
L: Yeah, I'd watch that.
Showing posts with label BAD DECISIONS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BAD DECISIONS. Show all posts
Friday, August 19, 2011
Friday, July 1, 2011
That's funny - you don't LOOK like your picture on the Internet
I don't often buy things online. Mostly, this is because I'm cheap, and I simply do not buy things anywhere, ever, unless they are edible.
Time and the cruel streets of New York had other plans, though. My shoes - trusty since freshman year of college - had gotten so hole-y that my students were beginning to think I was a secret hobo who lived under my desk. And goodness knows you can't trust a secret desk hobo to teach proper sonnet explication.
Time and the cruel streets of New York had other plans, though. My shoes - trusty since freshman year of college - had gotten so hole-y that my students were beginning to think I was a secret hobo who lived under my desk. And goodness knows you can't trust a secret desk hobo to teach proper sonnet explication.
Monday, January 17, 2011
A Very Special Winter PSA
thelaurenbell crawls from her deep, dank hibernation space to tell you this: please, dear people, cut those stitches that hold the tails of your coats together. Your coat tails are not an extra sleeve, or a wee little headhole for small-headed people who enjoy wearing their coats upside down. They are not a special breathing apparatus hole for when you do that thing where one person sits on another’s shoulders wearing a long coat and they pretend to be one, unusually tall, unusually lumpy person.
No, no, no.
They are tails. They are meant to waggle free in the breeze, like the flowing tail of a fine stallion. They cannot be restrained! To restrain your tail is to restrain your SOUL.
Also, it makes you look dumb.
New Yorkers like to think that they look extra-super-wicked-cool at all times. New York, I tell you this once, and I tell you now: you cannot look extra-super-wicked-cool when your bottoms are unnaturally constrained by stitched-together jacket hems. You look like The Penguin, and he is not even plain old unhyphenated cool.
This nonsense has so distressed me lately, I've started entertaining elaborate fantasies of carrying around tiny (non-threatening!) scissors and just...snipsnip - solving everyone's little rear-binding issues. I would be like a superhero - a modern-day Batman solving this most modern, most pressing of problems, de-Peguinizing people withe the tiniest flick of my leather-gloved wrist. People would greet me with "hurrahs" and tears of joy. This is what goes on in my mind.
But NO! Let us not go there. You must not let the figments of thelaurenbell's overactive imagination come to life and run ramshackle over your fabled streets. New York, you are better than this. You should not NEED a vigilante of tail freedoms. You should be able to handle this yourself. Do not make me be that person with the nail scissors, stalking people's bottoms on the subway (see exhibit a - and please note that I painstakingly wrote those true-to-life sound effects backwards for your benefit, dear readers).
This concludes your very special winter PSA.
No, no, no.
They are tails. They are meant to waggle free in the breeze, like the flowing tail of a fine stallion. They cannot be restrained! To restrain your tail is to restrain your SOUL.
Also, it makes you look dumb.
New Yorkers like to think that they look extra-super-wicked-cool at all times. New York, I tell you this once, and I tell you now: you cannot look extra-super-wicked-cool when your bottoms are unnaturally constrained by stitched-together jacket hems. You look like The Penguin, and he is not even plain old unhyphenated cool.
This nonsense has so distressed me lately, I've started entertaining elaborate fantasies of carrying around tiny (non-threatening!) scissors and just...snipsnip - solving everyone's little rear-binding issues. I would be like a superhero - a modern-day Batman solving this most modern, most pressing of problems, de-Peguinizing people withe the tiniest flick of my leather-gloved wrist. People would greet me with "hurrahs" and tears of joy. This is what goes on in my mind.
But NO! Let us not go there. You must not let the figments of thelaurenbell's overactive imagination come to life and run ramshackle over your fabled streets. New York, you are better than this. You should not NEED a vigilante of tail freedoms. You should be able to handle this yourself. Do not make me be that person with the nail scissors, stalking people's bottoms on the subway (see exhibit a - and please note that I painstakingly wrote those true-to-life sound effects backwards for your benefit, dear readers).
This concludes your very special winter PSA.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Because LeBron needs one more person to write about him
I don't know anything about basketball. Nor do I care anything about Cleveland, but still, something - perhaps the collective rage-gasm that is shaking all of non-Miami America, rattling their bones and forcing them to extreme quotation marks usage? - makes me want to understand this whole LeBron James thingamajig (and by that, I mean, garble out a ridiculous metaphor that I thought up in the shower).
So it's like this: LeBron might be good at basketball or whatever, but I don't think people are really all that mad about that. Other people are good at basketball too -- but those other people are not from Cleveland.
It's like if the Empire State Building suddenly said, "You know, New York has been great and all, but I think I can be on more postcards if I move to St. Louis, with the Arch. Archie and I have known each other for a while, and I think, together, we can get into more tourist photos and movie backgrounds than I can by myself here in the Big Apple."
New Yorkers would be all, "Hellllll no!" And not because the Empire State Building is the freakin' awesomest building around (we don't even have a giant gorilla hanging off the top, as so often happened in the good old days), but just because it's OURS. We built it, it got famous here; we even trained it to light up in appropriate colors for different city events. What did St. Louis ever do?
And where do they get off luring it away when they already have the Arch? Is old Empy going to light up in Cardinals colors now? CARDINALS? UGH.
St. Louis will get theirs in the end, though. In a Team Edward/Team Jacob-style schism, the city will be rent asunder by the dueling preferences of its fans:
"Put the ESB on its OWN postcard!"
"Put the Arch on top of the ESB!"
"No, put the ESB under the Arch!"
"Isn't that the same thing?"
"Whatever! We're angry, midwestern townsfolk!"
Bitterness will develop between Empy and Archie, as each wonders who is truly better loved by his home city. ESB will consider returning home - only to discover that a new, combination PinkBerry/statue of Jay-Z and Mike Bloomberg shaking hands has been built in its old space. ESB will become despondent, sinking a good 10 or 20 stories into the damp mud of the Mississippi River. St. Louis will be blamed for the demise of a once-promising young building. New York will sell a whole mess of PinkBerry in commemorative Jay-Z cups. The world will turn black for three days and three nights, and then everyone will forget this ever happened.
So it's like this: LeBron might be good at basketball or whatever, but I don't think people are really all that mad about that. Other people are good at basketball too -- but those other people are not from Cleveland.
It's like if the Empire State Building suddenly said, "You know, New York has been great and all, but I think I can be on more postcards if I move to St. Louis, with the Arch. Archie and I have known each other for a while, and I think, together, we can get into more tourist photos and movie backgrounds than I can by myself here in the Big Apple."
New Yorkers would be all, "Hellllll no!" And not because the Empire State Building is the freakin' awesomest building around (we don't even have a giant gorilla hanging off the top, as so often happened in the good old days), but just because it's OURS. We built it, it got famous here; we even trained it to light up in appropriate colors for different city events. What did St. Louis ever do?
And where do they get off luring it away when they already have the Arch? Is old Empy going to light up in Cardinals colors now? CARDINALS? UGH.
St. Louis will get theirs in the end, though. In a Team Edward/Team Jacob-style schism, the city will be rent asunder by the dueling preferences of its fans:
"Put the ESB on its OWN postcard!"
"Put the Arch on top of the ESB!"
"No, put the ESB under the Arch!"
"Isn't that the same thing?"
"Whatever! We're angry, midwestern townsfolk!"
Bitterness will develop between Empy and Archie, as each wonders who is truly better loved by his home city. ESB will consider returning home - only to discover that a new, combination PinkBerry/statue of Jay-Z and Mike Bloomberg shaking hands has been built in its old space. ESB will become despondent, sinking a good 10 or 20 stories into the damp mud of the Mississippi River. St. Louis will be blamed for the demise of a once-promising young building. New York will sell a whole mess of PinkBerry in commemorative Jay-Z cups. The world will turn black for three days and three nights, and then everyone will forget this ever happened.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
I don't understand people
Sometimes, I question people's judgment.
And by "people" I don't just mean those that I know personally (though, when Gerard thinks eating a hotdog at 10:00 at night after having had a stomachache all day, I do question him because, really, hotdog = opposite of TUMS); I mean "all people, everywhere - particularly strangers and groups of strangers who don't really care what I think."
Just the other day, I spent many minutes of my precious, personal zone-out time on the subway wondering why anyone would choose to carry a messenger bag with the naked silhouette of a woman prominently displayed on its front. More specifically, I wondered why a person who was not 14 years old (the age where your desire to be in proximity to a naked woman and the likelihood of that actually happening are totally opposite) would even own such a thing, and why that person would carry it IN PUBLIC - in front of the children and the nuns and the actual ladies who are sometimes naked but probably don't look like that.
Hint, dude: having a naked lady on your bag does not act as some sort of homing signal for other naked ladies. It's not like a peer pressure thing, wherein I see your naked bag lady and think, "Man, that lady looks comfortable and awesome, perhaps I should get naked, too." No. No.
Poor misguided man. You are not physically repulsive (though, even without the naked lady bag, you do have questionable facial hair). Surely you can find an actual, flesh-and-blood, sometimes-naked lady to keep you company. You can't carry her naked through the streets, as you do with your current ladyfriend, but I think everyone - you, me...and no one else really matters here - will be much happier if you leave your ridiculous carryall choices at home.
And by "people" I don't just mean those that I know personally (though, when Gerard thinks eating a hotdog at 10:00 at night after having had a stomachache all day, I do question him because, really, hotdog = opposite of TUMS); I mean "all people, everywhere - particularly strangers and groups of strangers who don't really care what I think."
Just the other day, I spent many minutes of my precious, personal zone-out time on the subway wondering why anyone would choose to carry a messenger bag with the naked silhouette of a woman prominently displayed on its front. More specifically, I wondered why a person who was not 14 years old (the age where your desire to be in proximity to a naked woman and the likelihood of that actually happening are totally opposite) would even own such a thing, and why that person would carry it IN PUBLIC - in front of the children and the nuns and the actual ladies who are sometimes naked but probably don't look like that.
Hint, dude: having a naked lady on your bag does not act as some sort of homing signal for other naked ladies. It's not like a peer pressure thing, wherein I see your naked bag lady and think, "Man, that lady looks comfortable and awesome, perhaps I should get naked, too." No. No.
Poor misguided man. You are not physically repulsive (though, even without the naked lady bag, you do have questionable facial hair). Surely you can find an actual, flesh-and-blood, sometimes-naked lady to keep you company. You can't carry her naked through the streets, as you do with your current ladyfriend, but I think everyone - you, me...and no one else really matters here - will be much happier if you leave your ridiculous carryall choices at home.
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