It’s so sparkly I’m gonna die!

April 29, 2011 42 Comments read Makeup, Reviews

Sometime in March, Jason revealed that he’d purchased my birthday present “months ago”, in an obvious attempt to torture me with anticipation. Trust me, this sort of thing works on me in spades. And lo, I writhed. But instead of just agonizing, I spent a solid month making guesses. Not necessarily serious guesses because I have a feeling he would not lie to me and say I’d gotten it wrong if I’d guessed it right and I’d feel badly to spoil his surprise, but guesses nonetheless. We were checking out at Fry’s electronics when I said “I know–you got me a unicorn, right?” and his answer changed from “Nope!” to “I…uh, will neither confirm nor deny” and I knew I was onto something. I needled him relentlessly. “You got me a unicorn stand mixer? Where it dips its magic horn into the dough and twirls it into bread?” “…Do those exist?” “God, I hope so.”

So, I wasn’t right about the unicorn stand mixer, but I was right about the unicorn. He got me Clarins 230 for my birthday, a long-discontinued nail polish also known as Unicorn Pee for both its rarity and overall magic sparkly qualities. Supposedly the multichrome pigment used to make it doesn’t exist anymore and can’t be recreated, which makes it highly sought-after and not something I figured I would ever own, because hell, even when I was gainfully employed I was not about to drop that kind of change on a nail polish.

I was so excited when I saw the bottle that I did a little dance and maybe had a little tinkle in my pants. I had offhandedly mentioned the existence of Unicorn Pee forever ago and he searched the internet until he found me a bottle. I wore it this entire week, and every time I looked at my nails, I was reminded of how much I am loved.

In sunlight, the glitter looks like dancing burning embers on the nails. In artificial light, the green flash becomes more apparent. This is over two coats of BUTTER London HRH, a red-toned medium purple with blue and red shimmer.

I wouldn’t say I’ve been missing it, Bob.

April 15, 2011 25 Comments read Reviews, TV

I participate in an online survey program–I like to give my opinion, and I like giving my opinion more so when I am compensated for it. I was sent a survey asking me to watch an episode of a new television program, and for watching it and answering some questions about it, I would be paid ten dollars. Ten dollars!? To watch TV? I’m in!

The show was called “Smothered”, about two sets of grandparents battling over who gets to spend the most time with their granddaughter. As the laugh track chimed in over a joke so stale a decade-old Saltine would be more palatable, I suddenly realized this ten dollars would be very hard-earned. “Very” may not have been an appropriate word. “Excruciatingly” strikes a bit closer to the mark. The show opens on Gillian and Zack, a married couple who have recently had a daughter. Gillian does not seem particularly interested in either her daughter or Zack, and Zack is portrayed as an effeminate, ineffective parent who calls his wife “dude”. (This pronouncement was met with riotous laughter from the no-doubt canned audience.) Gillian’s parents are introduced as down-home good-old Christian country folk, and Zack’s parents are portrayed as upper-crust Jewish socialites who think nothing of long vacations in France. Oh ho ho, everyone! Look, it’s an odd couple! This has never been done before in the history of television! Neither set of grandparents seems to particularly like their own children, but fight over time with the granddaughter, who is essentially ballast. Emotion and personality-free, she could be anything–a doll, a purebred puppy, or even a particularly nice rock. She is a prop intended to demonstrate just how zany and wacky the adults around her are, one set of which sneaks her off to a church to have her christened against her parents’ wishes, and the other set of which had a secret Jewish baby-naming ceremony. There is also a dull sister named Susie who solely exists as a point of universal loathing by all family members. It’s all about scoring points in an attempt to hurt the other set of grandparents, and all of this would be just fine if only it were funny. I can laugh at mean jokes with the best of them, but there was only one joke in the entire episode which made me laugh aloud, an offhand line about serving pork on a Jewish holiday and calling it “Hamukkah”. The rest of the jokes drew rolled eyes and groans, and even an amount of writhing in my seat like a small child, desperately wanting it all to be over so I could get to the survey portion and unleash the seething hatred building within me toward everyone involved in the production of this show. And lo, how my hatred flowed. I hated the music. I hated the characters. I hated the plot. I found them all unrealistic and unrelatable. (There was no option for “I hoped a plane would crash into the set.”) Had I found myself in their unenviable situation, I would have crammed the child back into myself and started phoning around for abortion deals.

And after all this, my time spent watching the show, and my time answering questions about which characters I might like to see more of (none) and which characters I might like to see less of (all), I was informed that the number of survey participants had been reached already and I would not be receiving my ten dollars.

I want my ten dollars. I paid, cast of Smothered. Oh, how I paid.

Your bill is in the mail.

“Oh my god, I killed our baby!”

January 24, 2011 4 Comments read Games, Masticating With Mellzah, Reviews

On Saturday, a group of us went to Benihana’s and then to Gameworks to celebrate Chris’ 30th birthday. Jason and I had gotten to the restaurant a bit earlier than everyone else, as we’d been out at Archie McPhee, picking up a copy of the “Mr. Bacon’s Big Adventure” board game to give to Chris, a former vegetarian. Though our entire party had arrived on time, we didn’t end up being seated until nearly forty-five minutes past our reservation time, at which point I was maybe a little pickled as I’d only eaten toast that day in anticipation of a ridiculous dinner.

Our chef was very nice and told us he’d gone to school in Hawaii. Excuse me, but I believe I’ve found my calling in life: teppenyaki chefdom. But only if I also can attend school in Hawaii.

Stuffed full and swearing that we’d never need to eat again, we walked from the restaurant to Gameworks for the all-important task of shooting dinosaurs, zombies, and robots to prepare for the dinobotbie apocalypse. Each spinosaur I shot down was in tribute to Chris.

While there, we discovered one of the most fun arcade games ever: Deadstorm Pirates. It’s a booth style game which includes two force-feedback gun turrets and a ship’s wheel between them. You play as two pirates with “golden guns”, and when you shoot an object together, their power and speed increases. The story is a typical pirate adventure in that you’re battling for some nebulously-defined treasure–the important part is that you get to shoot hundreds of skeleton pirates who explode into bones and dust in a very satisfying way, a kraken, giant crabs, a giant snake, and a pirate who stole his jaw from a Predator. You also get to shoot down other ships with cannonballs, and I may have cackled with delight upon firing a cannonball every single time. Also, unlike the majority of other arcade games, you can actually beat this game in a reasonable amount of time for a not-insane amount of money. Oh, certainly, it was taking money from us like clockwork, but it didn’t ramp up the difficulty (or, like most shooters: cheapness) to a point where it would have been foolhardy for us to continue putting in money, which is a point that I think most arcade games miss. I won’t keep paying to play if it’s obvious that the game is set up in such a way that I’ll never win.

After we beat Deadstorm Pirates, we played the horseracing game, where you pick which sire and dam you’d like to make a baby, and all of a sudden a stork comes along with a brand new foal for you to name and love and race. Our precious baby was named Jerkface.

We put Jerkface through various training exercises to make her grow big and strong and fast. Unfortunately, one of those exercises was swimming her in a pool to increase her cardiovascular health. The instructions were that we were to reflexively tap a button when a bar moved into a certain area and, ominously, if we did it wrong three times, our horse would drown. That’s a sizeable punishment for error! Once you’ve selected a mode, there isn’t a way to back out and choose something else, so I was committed to do right by our child.

…The bar moved very, very quickly, and each time I missed, we would gasp in horror as Jerkface struggled and her sweet little jerky face went underwater. Upon the third miss, I cried, “Oh my god, I killed our baby!”, and sure enough, they showed the horse spasming and lurching in the pool and slowly, slowly stilling. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

And just like that, she was ready to race. What? I thought we drowned her! I guess in the racing world, drowning is not a permanent thing. All of that grieving, for nothing!

After you’ve finished playing, the game spits out a little card that represents Sarah Jessica Parkeryour horsey child, so you can come back at any time and continue playing instead of having to start anew, presumably up until the time your horse is grey and needs to be shot in its stall because its record is too crummy to justify putting it to stud.

Even though I was the babykiller, somehow I still got custody.