Skull Kingdom

How could I forget posting a picture of the place our Orlando hotel was next to?



Skull Kingdom
(no, we didn't go inside)

Happy weekend and Halloween parties everyone! We're going off to Athens tonight to catch Patton Oswalt, Zach Galifianakis, and Elf Power. Have a good 'un!

Take the Cake and Eat Me, Too

An open letter to Sophia Coppola in reaction to her film Marie Antoinette, seen at the Universal Studios Cineplex in Orlando, Florida on October 21, 2006 around 9pm...

Dear Ms. Coppola,

You talentless whore. If your daddy ever lets you make another movie, I will personally hunt him down and kill him... and then you. Or maybe I'll just gouge my own eyes out with a melon baller instead of ever having to sit through another one of your debacles.

Don't get me wrong. I love, love, love Lost in Translation... but I'm beginning to think that rather than that film being an example of your maturing into your own filmmaker after your sophomoric attempt at The Virgin Suicides, I now simply believe that Bill Murray made that film and you were just lucky to have him.

Oh sure, there will proabably be some film snob out there who is going to label your work as "pure genious" and compare it to the likes of such films as Vivre sa Vie (My Life to Live) or L'Avventura. Yeah, you could get away with that with your ending to Lost in Translation, but even Goddard and Antonioni can BORE THE SHIT OUT OF ALMOST EVERYONE!

Puh-lease don't bother pointing to the fact that you were using children of Hollywood "royalty" (like Asia Argento, Jason Schwartzman, Danny Huston, and yourself) to highlight how ridiculous such a lifestyle of the Hollywood elite really is. Is that why you seemed so utterly bored on screen during The Godfather III? Phfft. Whatever.

And never, ever, ever think for a minute that in order to portray a main character's boredom, you need to bore your audience equally with the tedium of the minutia of such uninteresting moments. All I know is that when the montage of pastry porn and shoes hit the screen, I was about to stab someone. I can't even say that you're fit for directing music videos, because I think you've ruined the already overused soundtrack pieces forever.

Don't anyone tell me how the damn thing ends... aside from the history of the real queen, that is... I don't need to know. I walked out about an hour into the blasted thing, but not before I imagined 50 different ways to end that film better than you probably did... and every one of them involved some sort of injury or death to the director... or burning an effigy, at least.

I am done with you, Ms. Coppola. You can just go choke on a montage of pastries, for all I care, because I'll never get that bad taste out of my mouth.

Blech.

Sincerely,

The She-Creature

Always a bridesmaid's date...

So the whole "trip to Orlando" thing came about when D asked if I'd like to be his date to a wedding.

Okay, so although I first said no, because he asked before we'd ever actually met... after we'd spent a week together, I was swayed and asked, "Do you still want a date to that wedding?" Now, really... I gotta tell you, for me to go to a wedding, first of all, full of people I don't know, second of all, AND in a town I've been avoiding for 7 years, well... I must truly like this guy. This is true.

I even got a very fancy beaded outfit for the affair, had a manicure and a pedicure for the first time in my life, did battle with the toiletries police at the airport, and sat on the tarmac in that fancy beaded outfit on a plane full of screaming babies for 2 hours with no air conditioning (the previous summer long-fought battle with my own a/c was training for this moment, apparently). Being that the plane was delayed for so long and I'd been on it for 3.5 hours, my nerves were shot when I got to Orlando... I did get there, about 2 hours later than I was supposed to get there, which cut things really close to the wedding.

Because I was late, and D had gone to the airport already to pick me up when I told him what was happening with the delays, he decided to secure a shuttle pass for me to get to the hotel, because he needed to be there for the mysterious whatever they do before a wedding ceremony.

I arrived at the shuttle depot by about 3:30, where I was told to wait on a bench in the blazing Orlando sun... still in that beautiful black beaded thing. I sat there for 20 minutes before my driver arrived -- a man who moved so slowly and spoke like his tongue was tied in a fancy giftbox bow. He looked at my destination and spouted something that sounded like, "Which Hyatt?" When I said, "It says on the ticket... Grand Cypress." He just rolled his eyes and said again, "Wishighah? Washighah? I saya wha's fah?"

"Are you asking 'what for'?" I asked, and he nodded like I was a retard. So I told him. "For a wedding."

Then he spewed out, "Don't make me barf," in that special language of his, but for all I know, he could have said, "Do you like my scarf?" I figured it was the first one though, by the way he threw his head backwards and then forwards, mimicking a barfing action. Plus, it was hotter than the face of the sun and he wasn't wearing a scarf.

Did I mention he was slow? It took him 15 minutes to load 10 people's pieces of luggage into the van, before he took off at 4:05. The drive took FOREVER and seemed like it would never end. The wedding was starting at 4:30 and I was watching the clock and ever red light that fucker hit... 4:10... 4:15... 4:27... please drop me off first!!!

He did, thank god.

I raced into the hotel with my luggage in tow (not the hotel that we were staying at though) and had to check it with the bellhops... and luckily, the ceremony was running late. Apparently the photographer was waiting on the sun, which had decided to finally hide behind clouds once my black-beaded ass was finally out from under it.

So there I was... alone... at a complete stranger's wedding. Dean was up in the bride's room with the other bridesmaids... yes, remember, this is MY boyfriend we're talking about... so he's not a groomsman, he's a bridesmaid. This was an endless source of amusement for other members of the wedding party... everyone but Dean, of course.

One of the actual groomsmen escorted me to my seat and asked which side... "Bride, I suppose... but I don't know either of them, so if you need filler, I'll take either side."

"How do you know the bride then?" he asked, totally perplexed.

"I don't. I'm the date of one of the bridesmaids."

At that point he stopped in his tracks and just looked at me like, "Ah ha."

"It's not as weird as that. My date is the GUY bridesmaid... you know, D."

The groomsman finally resumed our walk and didn't really talk to me much after that, except to say that he thought D was just filling out the brides' side, since there were like 7 groomsmen and only 2 bridesmaids. That was odd too... aren't those things usually balanced?

Anyway, it was a beautiful and swelteringly hot ceremony. The Hyatt Grand Cypress really is grand... a Shangri-la compared to the nightmare that D had experienced the day before. In his relief of seeing the difference, he made sure to send me another cell phone photo when he arrived at his destination:



When I was finally able to catch up with him, it was during the pre-reception drink-up session, where I was finally able to get a hug for my horrible day and learn how D was feeling.

"Like a member of the mafia," he said. The pinstriped penguin suit didn't help.

The reception was filled with lots of dancing, of course, and assloads of bad music... like every song used in The Wedding Crashers was used without the slightest hint of kitsch factor or irony. Truly amazing to behold, I tell ya.

I was trying to get cute shots of the happy couple and this adorable baby girl who was swaying back and forth to the music... when suddenly a hand came out of nowhere and a voice said, "Put the camera down. Put the camera down. You're dancing with me."

Next thing I knew, D was sweeping me away to the crowded dance floor for the slow dance portion of the night. While we were on the floor, the husband of one of the other bridesmaids decided to snap a picture of us with my abandoned camera.



Notice those orange streaks? That's not my crappy camera... those are passion's flames. Tsssssssss! Listen to that sizzle! Either that, or it shows that weddings are actually pure hell for two dating divorcees.

Anxiety Loves Company

I have got to blog this, because it's too good to keep to myself.

On Wednesday night, I was on the phone with my boyfriend as he was driving down to Orlando for the wedding that he would be part of and I would be attending on Friday. Since it was getting rather late (close to midnight) and he had plenty of time the next day to continue the drive before the rehearsal fun began, he decided to stop over in a hotel for the night.

Without telling me where he was, he just happened to pick Lake City, Florida... which also just happens to be where all of my ex-in-laws live. For those who don't know, Lake City grew out of basically just a truck stop along the way between Orlando and Atlanta. Somehow over the last decade or so, Lake City realized that it could cash in on more than just trucker pit-stoppage and several hotels and restaurants sprung up right around the interstate to reap some coins from road-weary vacationers.

Another little side note that I should add right about here is that my guy just happens to be, in many ways, the male me. Murphy's Law follows him around just as much as it follows me, which has endeared us to one another in a way that other people might find only mildly amusing.

This exit, you see, was not his first choice. No. His first choice was a few miles back and much less populated. He wondered aloud whether it was a good idea to check into a place where only one car seemed to be parked... something about the movie Hotel Hell came up... but then he saw the "VACANCY" neon sign lit up and deemed it quaint... that is, until I said, "Oh, just like in Psycho." That was all he needed to hear and he was turning his car around and driving to the next exit... which, as I've already stated, just happened to be Lake City.

Figuring "What could go wrong with Holiday Inn," probably because it was a name brand (unlike Psycho), he checked in and prepared himself for a restful night in a sleepy North Florida town. Trying not to spook him, I didn't bring up all the "sleepy town" horror movies that were popping into my head at that moment. He continued to talk to me as he opened the door to his "executive suite" and then, suddenly, he went completely silent. After a few seconds, he spoke again, but nothing above a whisper.

"Sherri, I'm in someone's apartment. I can't sleep here. This is someone's apartment!"

"What are you talking about? It's a Holiday Inn... a hotel, not an apartment," I tried to assure him, though I was thoroughly confused at that point.

"No no no no no no. THIS is an apartment. It has three rooms, but almost no furniture. This one room, it has only a coffee maker alone on a stand against one wall. And this other room has two small chairs with a window looking in on the ironing board in this other little room. I can't sleep here. This is too creepy."

I was trying not to laugh at this point, as well as not at all picturing what he was talking about, offering suggestions to make it better, but none were working. Finally, he says:

"I'm going to send you some pictures."

So he hung up with me and I waited... after about 15 minutes, the pictures started coming in, and I could not stop laughing from the very first one. Because not only did the rooms look EXACTLY as he described them, the pictures also had this eerie fog to them, due to his camera phone. By the time he called me back to exclaim, "See," I was laughing too hard to stop. Here's what I saw:















The reason I was laughing so hard, was because I was thinking about why there was so few pieces of furniture. Of course, the real reason is that it's Lake City, Florida... and to those folks on a redneck's shoestring budget, that probably looks like a classy executive suite. To me, however, it looked like it was called "the executive suite" because one time some road-weary executive stayed there and was hacked up into a million pieces while he slept. The other thing I was imagining was that there used to be much more furniture in there, but at night, some of the pieces come alive and they've been eating all the other furniture there.

I didn't say any of this to my boyfriend, because he was already freaked enough as it was. I know him well enough to know that even though the rooms looked empty in those photos above, he was imagining all kinds of scary shit hidden in there... so my mind raced to those images too. Here's my little rendition of what his fears might resemble:













I didn't share these thoughts with him until the next day, of course. He did stay all night, but he never slept... he kept the tv on and every light on in the place, but there was no way that sleep ever happened.

I love that I've now got someone else's neuroses to blog about along with my own crazy shit. I've been worried that if I ever found happiness, I would sacrifice my anxious and/or angsty blog material... but little did I know that I'd find a whole new motherload!

This Mortified Coil

My life is one big blooper reel... full of the outtakes that you'd see at the end of a movie... only that IS the movie. Case in point:

I'm dating someone again. Yes, it's true. I also have a job, that is also true. And these two wonderous new finds just happen to overlap, but not in any kind of icky way. All of this is grand perfection... hooray for me!

But this is my life, so there's gotta be a laugh coming, right?

About an hour or so ago, my new boss/boyfriend had just arrived at his parents' place in New York for a week-long visit, and he decided to show them, along with one of his brothers, our trip to the Georgia Aquarium in my Flickr photos. That's all well and good, and many "oohs" and "ahs" filled the room. If it had stopped there, it wouldn't be my life.

Instead, he decided to show them my gallery of self-portraits on Flickr as well, so that they could get a better view of me. And rather than just clicking the thumbnails here or there, he decided to utilize the "view as slideshow" option for some reason. By about the 4th photo in the group, he realized that he'd made a gigantic error. There, frozen for all to see in an extended delay of a slideshow, made slower by a tedious dial-up connection, was an "art" picture of... wait for it... my bare breasts.

Okay, so they weren't completely exposed, but they were exposed enough and in such a way that, even though there was artfulness to the image, no one... I repeat, NO ONE... would want their boyfriends' (or their bosses') parents to see. Nevermind the fact that the brother was there... I can handle a brother seeing that, but not the parents!

So he called me, giggling as he told me the story, but all I had to hear was, "So I decided to show my parents your photos on Flickr..." and I instantly launched into, "Oh... no. No. No. No, no, nonono. NO. NONONONONONO. Oh God, oh God, oh God, NO!" I knew immediately where this was going.

He proceeded to tell me the details of the moment, while laughing profusely, and the story only got worse. With the picture frozen there on the monitor, refusing to advance, the room fell into a dead silence as he tried to block the image with his hands, followed shortly by his parents clearing the room entirely, and his brother muttering something about "not being able to sleep for weeks now," or something of that nature.

(Don't try to go looking for the photo now, friends. That ship has sailed. The site is completely rated G now. I ran straight to the computer and I made sure of that.)

Earlier today, while discussing our trip to Orlando in 2 weeks for a friend's wedding, he asked if I'd ever been to NYC... and hearing that I hadn't, he said, "Then that will be our next trip." After hearing this story of his tonight, however, I had to say, "You know what this means, don't you? It means that I can never show my face in New York now... or at least not in the Bronx, and definitely not around your family."

What will likely happen --because this is my life I'm talking about-- is that I'll end up married to him and hearing this story told and retold, forever and ever... and I'll live, of course, mortified ever after. That's why I'm writing it out here now, so I can get accustomed to the telling of the tale. And when the movie of my life is made, I promise you this scene will make it to the big screen. You heard it here first.

Gainful

I started a new job today, something that is not only rewarding for the present, but also appears to have a far greater payoff down the road. In a moment that is not too typical of me, I'm not going to give any further details (don't want to jinx a good thing!), except to say that it's not some cruddy office 9-5 sacrifice that would leave me empty at the end of a day, thank God. This opportunity is actually creative, in my field, and has me working for someone very talented. Yay! I get to be productive again!