im goin' muddin'!

x men origins: wolverine

today, i went to the movies. i was by myself and im not ashamed of it. i considered smuggling kismet in underneath my jacket but he has a short attention span and i knew it wouldnt end well.

anywho... i thought it was merely ok, standard summer blockbuster fare. it felt to me like the movie didnt really have ambitions to be great, it was settled just to be enjoyable and profitable. they crammed in too many characters, and didnt properly develop many of them. it was sort of like, oh here is a mutant, look what she/he can do! now look over here, another one!  we got tired of that sort of stuff with X Men 3, so im sort of surprised they would try it again.

i also realize that these sorts of comic book movies are based upon a willingness to suspend disbelief, but i must protest when certain improbabilities proliferate. there was simply too much "oh yeah right" for my taste. im willing to believe that people have superhuman abilities or speed or intelligence or strength, but they still need to act like people. iron man last summer was really good in that respect. the first two X Men movies were better in that respect. Batman Begins and the Dark Knight succeed because it basically feels real.

wolverine does have some thrilling moments, and any measure of success it affords comes from its two lead actors, Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber. They are charming and growly and pull the film along despite itself. in casting the female love interest, it looks like they really wanted Evangeline Lilly, but she was too busy with lost so they just found a lookalike. one more thing. ryan reynolds is woefully underused in this movie. he is a scene stealer and is all but mute following a couple snappy lines in the beginning. woeful.

go see it if you would like an excuse to get out of the rain and eat some popcorn, but otherwise go see obsessed or wait for netflix

6 out of 11 biscuits.

what's that you say?

what's that you say, janet napolitano? everyone was overreacting to H1N1? all of this panic-mongering was for naught? it's just the regular flu?

that's what i thought. now stfu.

drive-by art

AT night, it’s bright enough to stop traffic. One minute cars are buzzing along Wilshire Boulevard between Fairfax and La Brea. The next they slow to a crawl, even though the stoplight is green. The attraction? An art installation consisting of some 200 salvaged cast-iron lampposts from the 1920s and ’30s arranged in formation at the new entrance of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Come dusk, the lamps turn on and create a sort of flying carpet of light. (nytimes)

fourth-grader gives condi the business

The questions had been developed beforehand by students with their teachers and had not been screened by Rice. At first, they were innocuous: What was it like growing up in segregated Birmingham, Ala.? What skill did she want to be best known for?

Then Misha Lerner, a student from Bethesda, asked: What did Rice think about the things President Obama's administration was saying about the methods the Bush administration had used to get information from detainees? (washpost)

gossip girl no doubt sneak peek

you know we love gossip girl. and in addition to that, we love no doubt. they reunited on the today show last week and are getting ready for their new tour, but have a detour on tv as an 80s punk band in a flashback on gossip girl tonight!

click here for a sneak peek of their performance on the show.

xoxo

blog sneak attack

Joel: oh condi

i love her

almost as much as tiffany pollard

for many of the same reasons

is that racist?

no no no of course not

Raccoon Edition: How can I prevent infection in myself, my children, or my neighbors?

Hey y'alls. It’s been a while since we spoke directly, but I'm back--and it's not with good news. I've come out of retirement to warn you about RACCOON SWINE. Well, that's kind of a misnomer. It's actually called raccoon roundworm, or Baylisascaris infection, and it is very, very dangerous.
It’s a sick-o sickness and it can be transmitted through a variety of respectful ways, exclusively by raccoon feces. According to the CDC, or Criminally Damaged Communicators, raccoon roundworm, “develops to maturity in the raccoon intestine, where they produce millions of eggs that are passed in the feces. Released eggs take 2-4 weeks to become infective to other animals and humans. The eggs are resistant to most environmental conditions and with adequate moisture, can survive for years.”

One interesting thing you might not know about how raccoon poop is that raccoons especially enjoy establishing “community sites where they repeatedly deposit fresh feces,” commonly referred as latrines. Prime locales include “roofs, decks, unsealed attics, haylofts, forks of trees, fence lines, woodpiles, fallen logs and large rocks.” So, you know, the outside or inside of where you live. Especially telling about these latrines is the color of the feces, which indicates the freshness. “Fresh raccoon feces are dark and moist while old feces may look like dried leaves or debris.”

So the best way to avoid it is to stay away from the raccoon feces you’ve been collecting all these years, avoid the outdoors or ‘their’ habitats, and don’t put your fingers in your mouth.

But enough about that, what does it DO to you? Have you ever felt….unclean? Symptoms include nausea, tiredness, liver enlargement, loss or coordination, disorientation, loss of muscle control, coma, and bLiNdNeSs. Which is the really sad part, because there is now one Brooklyn teenager who can’t see in one eye and a brain-damaged infant. Booo.

Symptoms may take a week or so to develop so start freaking out now.

ctm.

(via m2ts)

deal with it.

4realz.

(via nataliedee)

yall seen this?

the new dallas cowboys stadium? dont miss the fly-through. pew!

(and omg, remember this?)

what is kismet doing?

this is the easter basket where we keep kismets toys when they arent in use. today he tried to climb into the basket and it tumped him over. 

he was bashful following his tumping

team bethenny

“Have you ever seen a building implode? You don’t say anything, you just watch it quietly crumble.” —Bethenny Frankel, on how she kept a straight face during her insane arguments with Kelly Killoren Bensimon on The Real Housewives of New York City

from a fun article about our fave housewife in NYT.

how DARE you

the nytimes needs to watch its mouth or its going to get open hand slapped!

vodka soda 4 life!

speaking of tv shows...

there's a new one premiering on vh1 tonight. it stars one of 2Pz's favorite d-list celebs, tiffany pollard aka new york, of flavor of love and i love new york fame. her new show is called new york goes to work! it promises to be h2d. the premise is this: viewers vote every week on which day-job new york should try out. this week's options are ranch hand, baker, or exterminator. oooohhhhh i hope its exterminator!

tune it at 10pm EST on vh1! but not at the expense of the hills, oc.

speaking of grizzly bearz...

i've been meaning to tell you guys about this new show on ani-pani (animal planet). it's called 'stranger among bears' and it is riveting.

it profiles a crazy old man who built a cabin in the woods of alaska and started feeding bears because he really likes hanging out with them. i know what you're thinking: what a dream come true. but this is actually highly controversial, as feeding bears is illegal and letting bears walk in and around your house and offering them beers could condition them to take the same liberties at any house they come across.

anyway, you dont have to take my word for it. check out a few videos here. i recommend this one and this one. there are 3 hour-long episodes, and i believe the series is over, but you should def set your tivos to catch a re-run.

bearz

remember grizzly bear?

they have an interesting article in nymag. and another here in the new yorker.

only 22 more days until their album veckatimest comes out... heh.

nErD aLeRt!

architects liz diller and ric scofidio recently made time magazine's annual list of the world's 100 most influential people. their recent projects include the highline and lincoln center in nyc and the ICA in boston. congrats, guys! you deserve it!

spotted.

check out this pic of ryan gosling working for a moving company on 7th street in nyc:

Word on the street is he's doing research for a new movie called Blue Valentine in which he plays the part of a mover. (His co-star is Michelle Williams.) So he’s traveling around town with Steinway Movers, lugging furniture and boxes in and out of a big red and yellow truck. (vanishingNY)

beyonce threatz

during a show in rotterdam, beyonce gets a little upset when the lights are not being turned on and off according to her liking. at 0:45 she ad-libs "lights! somebody gettin' fired."

thank you beyonce for showing us all the proper way to threaten someone's job!!!