Tales from La La Land

And, don’t you worry. There’s a blog about the Lush Patrol on its way.

Well, well, well. This week is a big week in the Morris-Ross hous…er, I mean, shack.

Lush No. 1

No, not Rob. The other lush. Longetieg.

And Lush No. 2

Will be descending on Manhattan Beach for the weekend. I should also note that Angie Sit will be staying with us. Although, despite the fact that I searched high and low, I could not find a single lushy picture of ASit. I think the closest she’s been was rosy cheeks.

If you’ve seen the loveshack, you know this is going to be close quarters. I informed Laef that the crew was rolling into town and he promptly tried to divert Longetieg from sleeping in our bed. It could be due to a couple of reasons — Longetieg’s stinky butt or his penchant for yakking everywhere after long night of PBRs and jager bombs. We’ll see how it goes.

Hopefully the post-visit blog will have some stellar pictures and even better stories.

Can’t wait!

Seeing as we all know about my exciting social life down here – Scrabble, Sex and the City Reruns and endless hours in traffic – it should come as no surprise that I watched six movies over the course of the weekend. Some of them were old school and some were very recent. But, all inspired me to drop a note.

In honor of my marathon movie weekend, I would also like to give a shout out to Jason Bellamy’s movie blog, The Cooler.

I’ve known Jason for about eight years and among his biggest passions are movies and writing. He has this amazing project called The Bellamy Awards in which he watches, reviews, writes about and eventually picks “Bellamy Award Winners”. I really can’t do The Bellamy Awards justice in this blog, but it began in 1998. He saw 24 eligible films the first year and it has grown over the years. In 2006 he saw 86 movies and wrote about every single one! He nominates his favorites and has little envelopes that you get to open to see who he picked. Again, I’m not doing this thing justice whatsover, but he’ll gladly email you the pdf version of it so you can enjoy it. (jasonbellamy@yahoo.com).

His blog won’t have anything to do with The Bellamy Awards, but it’s a fun site to talk about movies in a passionate way.

So, on to my weekend escapades.

On Friday I watched 16 Candles. What can you really say about it? It’s a classic. Jake Ryan is so dreamy. Anthony Michael Hall is so clean and sober. It’s a little piece of candy anytime it’s on.

Saturday I was on a roll. I watched Beautiful Girls while Laef was at work. He thinks it’s creepy because Natalie Portman is young, but she acts flirty. But, I love this movie. And, I don’t see the Natalie Portman storyline as creepy. It’s much more than that. And, it’s a lot more emotional than physical.

And besides, look at Natalie Portman now.

So anyhow, that prompted me to watch Garden State. This is seriously one of my top movies of all time. Zach Braff can be somewhat annoying to me nowadays, but when Garden State came out, he was still fairly under the radar and I gave him a lot of props for writing the movie. I know for some people there’s not enough going on or it’s kind of a downer, but I enjoy Braff’s character’s growth from beginning to end. And Portman as his guide leads to one of those perfectly gift-wrapped endings. What can I say? I’m a sucker for tortured souls who find love in the end (see my love for Secretary).

After that, American Beauty was on HBO. I’ve watched this movie several times, but was drawn in by Annett Benning’s performance. I really can’t get over how perfectly she and Kevin Spacey play their roles. I love when she says, “Joyless? I am not joyless. There happens to be alotta ’bout me that you don’t know Mr. Smarty pants.” She says it so kickass! Not such a tidy ending, but happy if you look at it from a strange perspective.

We watched Last King of Scotland on Saturday night. It was really good. I wasn’t totally excited about watching it, but was then sucked in and pleasantly surprised. Great performances and the fact that it’s based on a true story, made it educational and more interesting.

I’m sort of lying. The sixth movie is 3:10 to Yuma. I only made it half way through. But was really enjoying the story. The last movie I watched with Christian Bale was American Psycho. Which is creepy, but enjoyable. Plus his body is a 10 in that movie.

OK, enough of my crappy movie ramble. Go to Jason’s site.

I’m not claiming to be on the up and up with this post. I realize it’s been floating around for a couple of weeks, but if you haven’t seen it, it’s a must-watch. I go back and forth with Sarah Silverman. Sometimes she’s funny, sometimes she kind of annoys me. But what I love about this video is how much Matt Damon owns it. It’s awesome.

So, Bobbi and Art made a trip down south. It’s the first time my mom has seen the Manhattan Beach pad and the first time Art has been back since helping us move in. The day he helped us move in, he vowed he wouldn’t be back because the 405 completely shattered him. But, he sucked it up and they decided to come stay with us for a night.

The last time we went to visit my parents was at Christmas. So, I haven’t seen them since. I never really chronicled our time as two couples hitting the town, so here’s a recap:

We arrived Thursday, Dec. 22 at 2:30 a.m.

On Friday morning we were at the Buena Vista saloon by noon. That’s been Art’s hangout two decades (probably more) and I wanted to pay my respects to the Rennies of Art’s world. Laef and I aren’t exactly used to hammering beers at this hour (I prefer a Mimosa), but we rallied, played darts and met Art’s peeps.

Later that night my mom invited us to a cocktail party at her friend Susie’s. My siblings have questioned me as to why I would subject myself to this. I mean, we were the youngest people in the house by 40 years. But, I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older that a parent’s greatest accomplishment is their children and when they have a chance to show that said children actually exist, one should show up. Meaning, I did it for my momma. Not that she should be excited to flaunt child No. 3, but she is. Also, my mom exaggerates quite a bit and tends to make certain things up, so I’m always excited to hear what I’m doing.

Blue Hair No. 1: “Your mom says that you are anchoring the leading news program at Fox in LA.”

Me: “Well… I mean…Well, I … well, yep. That’s right, I work at Fox.

Blue Hair No. 2: “That Laef sure is a looker. Your mom said he plays college basketball.”

Me: “Um, yeah, well…Um…Yeah, he’s cute. um…yeah, he works at a college.”

So, the night went something like that and then my mom decided to take us to the country club bar. Now, I was skeptical from the beginning, but she assured me that the median age at the club is now 45.7. Well, it was 7:30. Which equates to 4:30 p.m. at Dennies. The median age at that hour is 73.4.

My mother proceeded to dance her ass off to karoke before feeling up one of her friends. One of her girl friends. I guess I am my mothers daughter.

On Saturday, I went to get my hair done in downtown Sacramento and that took three hours. Which means I left Laef alone with Art. They played cribbage. By the time I got home, Laef was 84. But, he was beating Art and enjoying his time. Then they started playing for money and suddenly Laef wasn’t winning. I knew something was fishy, but wanted to believe that Laef was really winning. Now I’m pretty sure Art sharked him and took our roll of quarters. If you know Laef, then you know losing 50 cents is like losing 50 dollars. He does not enjoy it.

By Sunday, the rest of the family started rolling in and I believe I chronicled that in a family Christmas blog.

Fast forward to last night. I haven’t seen them since Christmas so it was good to catch up and hear all of my mother’s political views. It was also good trying to teach her to use a Mac without a mouse and how to do the dishes without a dishwasher. She was not a fan.

Art made huge artichokes and a tri tip so Laef and I were super pumped for a good home-cooked meal that neither one of us had to make.

Art and Laef then played cards until bed time and my mom read her book. Just like old times.

Ladies,
I recently purchased some Spanx. If you have not already jumped on this bandwagon, you should do so immediately. This shit works. And really well.

http://www.spanx.com/pls/enetrixp/!stmenu_template.main?complex_id_in=477024.479040..479040.cat

If only I had been the one to invent them. She’s a gagillionare ten times over. If you are uncertain about dropping $35 on something no one will actually see, try dresses on without spanx and try them on with spanx. You will be sold! Without ever doing one sit up you will look much more fit.

Happy Friday!