Cowbell
 

I never understood that. Thankfully, it has not been a part of the Red Sox lexicon this season.

Anne
Staying far away from Fenway, Hyde Square and the college-kid neighborhoods this weekend.

The things you learn on the FB
 

Ted Kazinsky was anorexic?

Cowbell
 

Seems like you guys always have something stupid like this though. This year it's T-shirts that say, "Tell 'em we're comin' and we're bringin' hell with us," or something similarly stupid.

I hear they're going to address the loose policy on facial hair and appearance on the Sox next year. It's about time. Half your guys look like they belong on the Village People.

TM

Gold
 

LOVE her highlights.

argh
 

This is the only acceptable means of wishing me a happy birthday, in case you were wondering.

T-shirts
 

I had a pink-washed photo of the barber from the Andy Griffith Show, with "Pink Floyd" at the bottom. If only people watched more reruns on TV it would have been great, but people kept thinking I liked the band so it got GoodWilled.

http://i24.ebayimg.com/02/i/00/f9/db/35_1.JPG

sort of like this but my whole shirt was pink so it wasn't just the face.

argh
 

Careful, dualit or silex might take you up on that.

Women & Cleaning
 

A lady friend says I need to vacuum, dust and oil furniture more than twice a year. Is there a consensus on how often you should do these things? If you do all that more than twice a year, what's left for spring cleaning?

TM, Slave: Father.
 

I'm guessing that the shit being talked is about to get much better (at least from your perspective).

I have no idea what the hell possessed Pedro. I don't care if you're getting your ass kicked regularly by the same team, you just don't say that.

TM, Slave: Father.
 

The most amazing sports from this weekend was the parlympics. Since I live near Canada, I get CBC. CBC is covering the paralympics extensively. I don't know if its a PC thing, or the Canadians are just that sports crazed. Anyway I saw the amputee high jump this weekend. These guys come hoping up to the bar and sail. They were getting up to 1.7 or .8 meters, which is incredible.
Its a logistic nightmare to do the games because they have different catagories for most events based upon disability. Anyway, if you get a chance to see it really says something about the human spirit or resilience.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2000/20001023/1sport.gif

TM, Slave: Father.
 

I don't really talk a lot of shit to Boston fans. It's always so much more fun to watch them get excited every year and then crash. You never have to say much, anyway (unless they get out of control). A, "Wow, you were this close this year," is usually more painful than any smack-talk.

And I don't understand Pedro either. I don't think he's as beaten as he lets on. I just think he was frustrated. I doubt the Yankees are that far into his head, but I can tell you this: He won't be pitching past the 7th in any game between the two teams for the rest of his life.

TM

So I saw some movies
 

I wrote this earlier for another forum, but since I mentioned I was doing a movie weekend here, I figured I might as well re-post.

Friday night, I went to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Saturday, I saw A Dirty Shame and Shaun of the Dead. The first two were entertaining and amusing, but the last one was divinely inspired. Go see it as soon as you can.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

I'm not Gwennyth Paltrow's biggest fan. I can't really put my finger on it, since I think that she's a fairly good actress, but something about her just bugs me. While I realize that the character was written true to the archtype, this particular actress playing this particular character just irritated me. The plucky, determined reporter who won't let go of the big story and takes stupid risks in order to get a good angle has never been my favorite. Paltrow played the role perfectly well enough to annoy me but appreciate it at the same time. Jude Law was fine in his role. Also prototypical. I thought that Giovanni Ribisi really stole the show, but he wasn't in it for very long. The effects and the feel of the movie were spectacular. My understanding was that it was entirely shot with props and actors, but without sets. Everything else was digitally inserted. They did a beautiful job, and I would recommend seeing the film for that if you're into that sort of thing. I really liked the first thirty minutes or so, but after the main characters went off on a "find our friend" quest, the movie started to drag for me.

A Dirty Shame

A dirty confession: I might be developing another one of my unaccountable crushes (the list includes Seann William Scott and Sam Rockwell): Johnny Knoxville. As with the others, I'm not sure how it happened, but whatever. Anyhow, I really liked this movie. Tracy Ulmann plays Sylvia, a woman who denies sex to her husband Vaughn, played by Chris Isaak, because "the sun is up" early in the movie. Their daughter Caprice (Selma Blair) is under house arrest for having broken the local obscenity law three times. The charges are related to the fact she's had her breasts enlarged to basketball level size and she dances at the local strip bar under the name Ursula Utters. Sylvia gets hit in the head, and her perception about sex changes entirely. Ray Ray (Knoxville) witnesses her accident, and he explains to her that the concussion has caused her to become a sex addict. Ray Ray is on a quest to find a completely new sex act, and he thinks that Sylvia can help him find it. Sylvia discovers that she's not the only sex addict in the community, and the movie is sort of a commentary on how sex is dirty and crass and pretty much all around us, and that's perfectly ok, even though there's a school of thought that actively tries to suppress it. I loved it, laughed a lot, and I thought it was a lot of fun. It would have been my favorite movie of the weekend, if I hadn't gone to the next door screen to see

Shaun of the Dead

Oh. My. God. I can't remember laughing this much in a movie in a very long time. The tag line sort of gives you an idea: A romantic comedy. With zombies. The director calls it rom zom com. Shaun is 29, working in a dead end job, and living with some friends from college. One, Pete, is sort of moved on to adultness and wants to drag Shaun with him. The other, Ed, is sort of exactly where he was in college: pretty much useless. Of course, Shaun loves him, probably in an effort to hold on to his youth and partially because Ed really does need someone to keep everyone else from kicking his ass. Shaun's girlfriend, Liz, doesn't really appreciate Shaun's total lack of responsibility, his inability to change, and his aimlessness, and so when he makes yet another blunder in moving the relationship forward, she breaks up with him. Recovering from the hangover of the post-breakup saucing, it takes Shaun awhile to notice that zombies are taking over, but when he does, he and Ed develop a plan to rescue Shaun's mom, rescue his ex-, and race like hell to the Winchester Pub, where they'd be safe.

The above doesn't even begin to cover how hysterical this movie is. Watching Shaun and Ed argue over which LPs to use to decapitate the slow moving, but nonetheless persistant zombies is probably one of the high moments in cinematic comedy ever. And the movie is full of such scenes. At times, it's hard to differentiate zombies from non-zombies. My standard of comedy is A Fish Called Wanda, which is a movie where I'm laughing pretty much from start to finish. I think that Shaun of the Dead meets this standard.

I Heart Rhett Miller
 

Went to go see the Old 97s at 9:30 Club last night. I'd seen Rhett Miller (band frontman) on his solo tour for "the Instigator" but this was my first time catching the Old 97s together. What an amazing show. Rhett kept up the most energized and happy performance I'd seen out of any live band in ages. Made me wish I'd dragged my ass out earlier to see them on previous tours. If they are coming to your town, BUY TICKETS AND GO.

That is all.

Sofas
 

What do people think of this sofa?:

http://www.ligne-roset-usa.com/produ...e-gauche-2.jpg

Does anyone prefer leather? Is there some type of Scotch-Guard or whatever that you can put on couches to keep dirty little fingers from staining it up? Do people have recs for other couches or sites or stores to share?

TM

Sofas
 

(1) Leather sofas are tops.
(2) best thing you can do it clean it and condition it regularly...the real key is to not let your girlfriend/wife con you into buying anything as light as what you posted in the picture. A nice leather will look better once it's been a little lived in.
(3) THE BEST (I AM NOT KIDDING) leather sofas are made by an Italian manufacturer "Gamma" they'll set you back 4-5k, but with their superior craftsmanship, they look like a 12k sofa. We just got a beutiful Gamma sofa from a shop in Del. that looks like a baseball glove and had an interior decorator tell us she sells that sofa to customers for 14k...we bought it from some art dealer with random furniture in his store for about 4900, i think (i wasn't paying).