Brandi’s Blog

It’s nice having a three day weekend…except when you feel like crap.

An ongoing condition that my doctor tend to blow off as something I just have to deal with has been a real problem for me the past few weeks. This morning I woke up in considerable pain and it never really went away until 1:00 this afternoon. I’ve been taking pain medicine all morning, which makes me drowsy.

So, now I’m tired, still in pain (although considerably less), hungry and I have no energy to do anything. The house is a bit messy and I wanted to make a nice chicken dinner today but I don’t know if I’ll be able to do anything.

Didn’t help much with all the damn squeaking this morning. We have a bit of a rodent problem and although Zoe is trying her best to catch them, they were squeaking at her this morning and she couldn’t get to them.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be better and I’ll be able to get something done. Of course, the next day I have to go back to work but at least I have an extra day to try to get ready for it.

Oh, and more ice on the way. I am so ready for Spring.

The pictures below are random shots of the film. Click the images to see them larger.

I saw the trailer for this film sometime last summer and have wanted to see it ever since. We rented it Thursday night and watched it last night.

Kind of odd, really. I normally hate covers of Beatles songs. I never saw the point of remaking a Beatles song. The one exception that I can think of is Joe Cocker’s With a Little Help from my Friends. It’s just a great arrangement.

Eddie Izzard Sings ‘For the Benefit of Mr. Kite’

But this movie had me intrigued. An entire movie musical made up on nothing but Beatles songs set during the turbulent 1960’s. It sounded like a perfect match and, for the most part, it is.

NYC dances around JoJo as he arrives in NYC to ‘Come Together’

The plot of this movie isn’t highly original. Boy meets girl - boy loses girl to the anti-war movement - boy gets girl back. (Sorry if you think that’s a spoiler, but if you watch the movie you’ll realize it couldn’t end any other way.)

Fortunately, the characters are fleshed out enough and the performances so good that the viewer cares about them despite their familiarity - or perhaps because of it.

Uncle Sam ‘wants’ Max

The blending of the songs and the inventive visuals along with some superb acting and sometimes amazing singing make this a great film experience. If going to theaters weren’t such a pain nowadays, I would have loved to see this on the big screen. However, I know that it would have been ruined by narcissistic humans who can’t stand not being the center of attention for more than 30 minutes at a time.

(I tend to bitch about that a lot - sorry.)

She’s So Heavy

The main character, Jude (Jim Sturgess) is from Liverpool (natch) and even looks quite a bit like a young Paul McCartney. He goes to America in search of his birth father. He achieves this goal but more importantly he finds his best friend in Max (Joe Anderson) and the love of his life in Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), Max’s sister.

Max, Jude and Lucy sing to ‘Dear Prudence’

After moving to New York city, their tight-nit group is filled out with Sadie (Dana Fuchs - whose voice is frakkin’ amazing), Jojo (Martin Luther McCoy) and Prudence (T.V. Carpio).

Along with the music and the obvious names, there are many other nods to the Beatles: Max is once seen fixing a fan with a silver hammer; Prudence meets the gang when she comes through the bathroom window; Jude draws a still life after slicing a green apple in half…you get the idea.

The best name ever for a restaurant

There are several nice cameos that really work in the film - Joe Cocker plays three different characters and sings Come Together (probably the best musical number in the film). Bono plays Mr. Robert and sings I Am the Walrus and Salma Hayek plays the Bang, Bang, Shoot, Shoot nurse in Happiness is a Warm Gun.

My husband’s favorite part of the movie

The film was written and directed by Julie Taymor (Frida) and she did a terrific job. The movie is visually beautiful - even in the non-fantastic scenes - and from what I saw in some of the behind-the-scene footage included on the bonus disc, she really knows how to get the best from her performers.

So, if you like the Beatles, musicals or are interested in America during the 1960’s I suspect you would really like this movie.

JoJo, Sadie and Jude sing ‘All You Need is Love’ while Max looks on

Working from home today.

(At least until the B-I-L shows up with the snowplow)

We didn’t watch Jericho when it originally aired on TV. We don’t have cable and we were trying to limit our TV watching. Besides, it was on network television and chances were that it sucked anyway.

The husband has a DVD column and will sometimes get review copies. He was sent Season 1 of Jericho and we decided to give it a try. We had heard about the ‘nutty’ campaign of die-hard fans to get a second season so that piqued our interest. Also, I hadn’t known until Chris got the set that it was post-apocalyptic fiction - one of my favorite genres. Besides, Gerald McRaney was in it and a show can’t be all bad if it has Rick Simon in it, right?

So, we watched the first episode…and finished the season in about three days. Damn, but it was good. If I had been watching when it originally aired, I would have sent in some nuts, too. Halfway through the series Skeet Ulrich had been dubbed ‘Super Skeet’ (pronounced Supah Skeet) and we can’t wait to see how he’s going to save the world single-handed.

Tonight, the second season is finally starting. Rumor has it that the episodes they’ve finished will give a sense of completion but will be open-ended enough to continue on with a third season, just in case.

Hopefully ratings will be good and we’ll get a third season, too.

It’s the Year of the Rat again. I’m a rat in Chinese astrology - born in 1972. I don’t know how I feel about it, really.

The last year of the rat was 1996. That was the year that my life changed drastically.

The year started with the murder of my second step-cousin. She had been one of the few people that I honestly liked in my step-father’s family and the world lost a wonderful person when she was killed. I fell into a deep depression that caused me to earn my first ‘F’ and flunk an entire course in college.

However, I got that F because instead of going to class I turned to my friends, who I loved dearly. They took my mind off of it all and I felt happy when I was with them. The only things I cared about were my friends and band.

That summer, after finishing college (almost) I lost my job and had to move back in with my parents which was two hours away. It was the last time I had a group of friends that I ‘hung out’ with on a regular basis. I almost immediately started losing those friends. Looking back, I’m not really sure how many of those people really were my friends. The depression could often be manic and my moods were extremely unpredictable. I wasn’t all that fun to be around and I think some of them might have been humoring me. I don’t really blame them for not wanting to be around me much. I just would have appreciated honestly over patronization.

(patronization…is that a word?)

So, it was a bad time for me between June and July. I had been living on my own or with a roommate all through college and moving back in with my mother and step-father…yeesh.

But, that was also the year that I started working at the Humane Society and I met my best girl-friend Sorina. If I hadn’t had to make that move I would have never met her and that is something I just can not even bear to think about.

I loved that job. It has been the only job that I felt was perfect. My co-workers were great people who cared about what they were doing. Our boss was firm, fair and knew how to have fun. She was able to be our friend and our boss at the same time and she got great work out of her employees.  I enjoyed the actual work and would sometimes come by on my days off just to see people. And if they needed help, I had no problem doing so, even if I wouldn’t get paid for it.

It all crashed and burned about a year later. The Board of Directors ruined it all. God, those women were such over-zealous, micro-managing, over-sensitive, meddling bitches. (Not all of them - but enough to cause problems.) If I got one thing from my mother it’s my ability to hold a grudge and I still haven’t forgiven them for what they did. I swore never to work for any organization that was run by a Board of Directors that consisted of people who never put in one, full honest day’s work at the place they were directing.

So, I still don’t know if the last year of the Rat was good or not. It seems that it balanced out but the extremes in the ups and downs nearly killed me. I don’t know if I can take another year like that.

The past three days, Mutts - which is usually pop-culture free and almost sickeningly sweet - has been making The Big Lebowski references. Yes, I said The Big Lebowski. It’s a great movie but not exactly family fare. Nonetheless, it’s made for some amusing strips:

I can only assume it will continue tomorrow and through Saturday. I never thought I’d ever see Mooch in robe and boxer shorts. Ha!

One of my favorite online strips is XKCD. It often goes over my head - the writer is way too smart for his own good - but it’s always funny (if I get it, anyway) and sometimes downright hilarious.

I always hate surfing around the day after the Superbowl. Nothing but football, football, football. Ugh. I had enough of that sh…crap when I was in school. I hate the sport but I’ve had to sit through every single football game in high school and all home games in college with a few away games thrown in.

In my opinion, the only thing a football field is good for is this: