17 January
Right now I am lying in my bed, and typing on my computer at the very same time!! Whoohoo! I love my new laptop!
The one problem is getting used to the little not-mouse thing--an E-Z Point Tracking Device™ or something like that. It's this little green dot the size of a pencil eraser stuck between the "g" and the "h" keys, and you put your finger on it and kind of lean it back and forth.
I'm getting used to it, but it's kind of hard to do. There is a place to plug in a mouse, and I probably will, as a rule, but if I am lying on my bed, surrounded by snoozing cats, using an actual mouse and trying to run it over the duvet or a cat's back would be more difficult than the E-Z Point Tracking Device™.
However, it does make clear one of the things that I found most unrealistic in You've Got Mail, besides them never getting a busy signal and never getting a mailbox full of junk mail, and that was when Tom Hanks was erasing a line of type, he didn't highlight and erase it, but he backspaced along the whole line.
This is because, in using the E-Z Point Tracking Device™, highlighting text takes the precision of splitting the atom.
Or at the very least, playing Jenga.
So yesterday I was supposed to babysit for Cynthia and Fran so that they could go an see a Woody Allen screening at the Museum of Broadcasting.
An old friend of Fran's had died several days before, so he was going to the funeral at 9.30a and then coming home to leave at 1p. At 1.30p, Cynthia came down to tell me that he hadn't come home yet, which meant that he had gone out drinking after the funeral, so they weren't going out after all.
She was really pissed, but it turned out that he had called while she was downstairs talking to me, but she didn't get the message until several hours later, because she didn't check her machine. I ended up babysitting on the ground floor while Cynthia worked out on the third floor.
Not much of a date!
However, I did get a chance to discuss with Molly the whole "posing for pictures" thing.
You see, she was always very natural before the camera, but, as I discovered the other day, someone had gotten to her since the last time I had taken her picture and taught her that a camera pointed in her direction meant "stop whatever you were doing and smile!"
Well, I took the opportunity to take a couple of rolls of Bonnie and Molly while watching them, and the first time Molly did that horrible pose, I told her:
"No, Molls, I'm not taking a picture of you when you do that!"
"Why?"
"Because I don't want pictures of you just smiling, I want pictures of you looking like yourself!"
"Why?"
"Now, it's not that I don't like your smile--you have a beautiful smile, but if you smile and pose, then every picture will look just alike, and I'm not interested in that! Now, most people will want you to smile, so if they tell you to then you do it, but not for me, okay?"
Then, about ten minutes later, she repeated what I had said back to me, as she is wont to do:
"Kymmie, when someone is taking your picture, you don't smile unless they tell you to!"
"Right! We have a deal!"
I'm not letting anyone ruin my best model without a fight, dammit!
Then I went into the city to pick up Nik and go see A Simple Plan.
My God, what a heartbreaking movie. It's really wonderful and really great, and Billy Bob is amazing, and ol' Sam Raimi sure does know how to create an atmosphere of tension and dread, and the script is marvelous, all full of fate and destiny, but it's just so sad.
I wouldn't have missed it for anything, but I never ever want to see it again. It would be too hard to watch while knowing what's going to happen.
Mini-spoiler here, skip if you like:
That scene with Billy Bob and Bill Paxton (also great in a less-showy role) in the car when Billy Bob tells the story about the girl he dated in high school with absolutely no self-pity, and he says "After the month was up, she'd say hi to me in the hall sometimes, she didn't have to do that. It was cool," I practically started sobbing aloud, I was weeping so hard.
Today's horoscope:
Emotions are intense and a confrontation could occur. Be sure your facts are straight before making any accusations. Use humor to defuse the situation.
One year ago today:
When you know that they really couldn't give a tinker's fuck.
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Last Updated Sat 17 January 14:51:09 1999