"Consider these teams officially tortured"

You know any article with a headline like that is going to feature Cleveland prominently. Bill Simmons, aka The Sports Guy, from ESPN.com ranks the top 15 most tortured teams in professional sports and wouldn't you know all three of Cleveland's professional teams are on the list, at the No. 10, No. 5, and No. 4 spots. I'll let you guess which team is where, although I'm sure it's kind of a no-brainer. There's probably a valid argument for switching No 5 and No. 4, though. Anyway, I guess at least we continue to win in these types of rankings. Yay us.

Wide awake and philosophical

I'm actually really tired but when I lay down, I can't sleep. My mind is so full of all these projects I'm doing at work... I guess they call that stress. So, I pulled out my laptop and spent nearly an hour wandering the Internet aimlessly, half-heartedly googling old boyfriends and crushes and reading celebrity Twitter feeds. Maybe I should start tweeting? I've debated about it for a long time but since I haven't started yet, I guess that really is my answer, isn't it? I could maybe start by logging in to Facebook more than once a month and updating my status more than once a year. Yes, maybe I should make that a 2010 resolution.

As much as I'm enjoying my new solo living situation, it's turned me into quite a lazy person. I need to change that. There's nothing wrong with calming down my schedule and not being out four nights a week but I shouldn't exchange that for sitting on my couch staring blankly at the television for hours, like I did yesterday and today. Well, last night I actually ran some errands and didn't get home until nearly 9pm, so really it was just today I was uber lazy. And I did go out three nights last week. And the week before that, I spent most of my time after work back at the old place cleaning it. And this Thursday is our next librarian Happy Hour. Come to think of it, maybe I'm not as lazy as I feel. Regardless, I do have a bunch of projects to do around the house that I should perhaps work on while I'm sitting on my couch watching television. And one of those projects is to get the slipcover back on that couch. Ha.

Book review: Open

Open is the autobiography of tennis great Andre Agassi. I'm not sure what my opinion was of Andre when he was in his prime (probably apathy), but after reading his book, I can't stand him. All he does for 90% of the book is whine. He hates tennis. He must tell you 8000 times in his book how much he hates tennis. Okay, I get that at first - his dad pushed him way too hard to basically follow his own dreams, regardless of what Andre wanted. But okay, by age 18, Andre was an adult and had probably a million dollars (or at least way more than a typical teenager with a high school diploma, which Andre does not) so if you hate tennis so much, find something else to do. Or, for the next 18 years while you remained a professional tennis player, you could have gotten out at any time. No one wants to hear your sob story when the biggest problem in your blessed life was your overbearing dad. I just feel like Andre has spent a lot of his life feeling sorry for himself and not making any real effort to change. Well-written but a totally unsympathetic autobiography.

Moved!

It's been just over a week but I didn't get my Internet connection working until today so this is the first time I've been able to officially announce that my move was successful! Yay!

This was the first time I used movers and while it was more money than I wanted to spend, it wasn't all that much more than renting a truck and bribing some friends to help. Plus it went really smoothly. Well, except for the movers temporarily putting the elevator at my old place out of service. That had me worried, since all that was left in the apartment was the big stuff. But it was only temporarily out of service, like 5 minutes. The other worry was that I had paid for the movers for three hours and desperately did not want them to take any longer than that. It took them about 90-100 minutes to load the truck. So I was worried. Luckily, it only took about half that to unload it.

Last week, I spent time trying to unpack and organize the new place while simultaneously trying to get everything out of the old place and get it cleaned. The latter item took much, much longer than I planned, but I'm confident that I should get my entire security deposit back. The former item is a work in progress, of course. I do have just about everything unpacked, but I can't guarantee that everything is in its final resting place. I'm still trying to figure out where the best place to put everything is. Of course that will take time.

In the meantime, I am so psyched about my new place and especially the prospect of having a place all to myself. It's so, so, so fantastic; I don't know why I was waiting so long to ditch the roommate.

I Want One: Cash Cab Trivia

Who doesn't want to go on Cash Cab? All two times I've been in New York City, I hoped to get picked up by the Cash Cab - and one of those times I didn't even take a cab! Anyway, this is the next best thing: Cash Cab Trivia. How fun! (via)

Book review: The Lost Symbol

I'm going to try to write more book and movie reviews in 2010. We'll see.

Anyway, I read The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown over my vacation. My book club selected it for our next meeting. I'd read Dan Brown's earlier books (Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code) years ago - for another book club - and remember enjoying the first one but thinking the second one followed the exact same formula. Like those earlier ones and the movies that have been made from them, this was a fast-paced action thriller starring symbologist Robert Langdon, who is brought to Washington, DC, under odd circumstances and finds himself embroiled in a mystery regarding Masonic legends and a box he's been asked to hold onto by his mentor, who is the Director of the Smithsonian or something powerful like that. Beyond being interested in the locale, I did not enjoy the book at all. I felt like it was at least 100 pages too long. Literally, some of the chapters kept saying the same things. Even once the bad guy was caught, there were another like 40 pages before the book ended! Who needs that? Some of the symbology and science (the Director's sister studies Noetic science) was quite interesting but even that seemed to get shoved down your throat in an almost condescending tone. The book almost seemed like an advertisement for Noetic science. And the major "reveal" about the villain was so obvious that I can't imagine that anyone didn't see it coming from a mile away. I'm sure the movie will be much better, as they'll be able to edit out all the crap and make it into a more streamlined story. So my suggestion to all is to wait for the movie!

Happy New Year! Back in DC

Today was my first full day back in Washington, DC. I got back last night about 11pm. It was a relatively easy drive, although it was scary for about an hour in the middle of the hills of Pennsylvania where it was blizzarding a bit. Luckily, it passed over... or I passed through it.

It's been so windy here and my apartment is freezing. The sliding glass door to the balcony in my bedroom basically lets the wind pass right through and although I have had my heater going most of the day, it only gets as warm as about 62 degrees. Brr. That's way too cold for the inside of a house. I can't wait to move next week!

Oh so I knew I was going to forget something at my parents' house, what with making sure I brought everything back that I had brought plus the new stuff I bought and the new Christmas presents, plus the belongings that my parents had been storing that I didn't have room for in the apartment I'm leaving. Anyway, about halfway through my trip, I realized I forgot my new Nintendo Wii console. Oops. That was only by far the biggest present I'd gotten and I forgot it! So now we have to figure out how to get it to me, either by mail or by me buying one and sending the receipt to my parents to return the one there.

Christmas movie review: 2009 Wrap-Up

Well, it's been another season of Christmas movie reviews and below is the wrap-up of all the ratings I gave. I actually have two more movies back home on my Tivo that I might still watch but probably not. With the ones below, I've done 64 Christmas movie reviews since 2006. That's a lot of Christmas movies! I wonder if my ratings have been consistent from year to year...

A+
Christmas in Canaan

A
A Christmas Visitor

A-
Debbie Macomber's Mrs. Miracle
The Ultimate Gift
The Christmas Hope

B+
Surviving Christmas
12 Men of Christmas
Fallen Angel

B
The National Tree
A Diva's Christmas Carol
The Three Gifts
Santa Baby 2: Christmas Maybe
Anne Tyler's Saint Maybe

B-
A Golden Christmas

C
Christmas Town

C-
Thomas Kinkade's Christmas Cottage

Christmas movie review: The Christmas Hope

Rating: A-

New this year on Lifetime, I thought The Christmas Hope was pretty good. It stars Madeleine Stowe and James Remar as a couple who have grown apart after their son's death of two years ago. They are talking about divorcing until they become foster parents to a little girl who loses her single mom just a few days before Christmas. The little girl helps the couple get closer again and helps them both get over their son a little bit. Meanwhile, other small miracles are at work to help them get over their son, too. It's a sweet story of overcoming Christmas pain and renewal and it made me cry, which is always a good thing. It was pretty predictable, but most Christmas movies are. The only reason I rated it an A- and not an A is that The Christmas Visitor, which I watched earlier this month, has most of the same themes and I thought it was slightly better. But this one was still good. I've loved Madeleine Stowe for years and James Remar I only knew from Sex & the City (he was Samantha's older successful businessman boyfriend) but both did a good job. As did Ian Ziering, who had only a small role.

Christmas movie review: Anne Tyler's Saint Maybe

Rating: B

This one was difficult to rate. Saint Maybe is originally from 1998 and always airs this time of year but I'm not sure I'd really call it a Christmas movie. We just happen to check up on the characters around Christmas a few times. Jeffrey Nordling and Mary Louise Parker star as a couple who meet and marry quickly and then seem to immediately have some problems. At least Jeffrey's brother, Ian, thinks so and babysits a lot. After one particular time of babysitting that Ian was not happy about, he says some things to his brother that cause him to drive into a tree. And die. Yes, depressing. Not too long after that, Mary Louise Parker's widow character overdoses and dies, too. Yes, I swear, the first part of the movie had people dying left and right. Well, Mary Louise had two kids from a previous relationship plus a baby that may or may not have been Jeffrey's and now suddenly, the three kids are orphans. Ian feels increasingly guilty and after consulting with a pastor, decides to drop out of school and help raise the children. Which seems to go swimmingly as we then check in with the family like 20 years later and Ian has turned into this near-saint of a person who has basically put his life on hold for these children. Out of nowhere, the kids decide they need to marry him off and just as out of nowhere, they hire a person to come in and organize their house and Ian falls in love with her and they plan to marry. So it wraps up happily ever after. It's semi-interesting in that it shows how one or two events can totally alter the course of one's life but the story just skipped too much in between for my liking. I don't even really understand the title, except that the one daughter says this in passing about Ian right near the end of the film. I'm guessing the book on which it was based tells a much more complete story and I might be interested in reading that someday but, as far as the movie is concerned, it's not really something I have any desire to see again.

Hmm, an interesting sidenote... I looked up the actor who played Ian because he really is the main character and his name is Tom McCarthy. While he's done some acting, he also seems to be a writer and director. He wrote the story of Up, as well as wrote and directed The Visitor and The Station Agent, all three of which are really good and unique stories. So color me impressed.

Christmas movie review: Fallen Angel

Rating: B+

I feel like I'm being harder on movies this year but I'll give Fallen Angel, from 2003, a B+. I think this one originally aired on CBS as a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie but since then, it's aired regularly on The Hallmark Channel around Christmas. It stars Gary Sinise and Joely Richardson, which automatically moves it up slightly on the rating scale, as two people who knew each other when they were very young children and reconnect like 30 years later after a traumatic event in their childhood caused both children to move away from the small town where they'd been living. Gary's character returns after his father dies and although he had separated himself from his father, he finds out a little of what made him tick once he returns to sort out his affairs. Similarly, Joely's character decides to visit the small town after all these years, but doesn't even remember that she'd been there before, and meets up with Gary's character. The two of them learn about themselves and their fathers and overall, it's a story of forgiveness and learning, I guess. It's definitely well-acted but I do feel that some of the back story is needlessly convoluted. Plus, Gary's character seems to be all about reconciling Joely's character with her father but doesn't seem all that regretful that he never got to reconcile with his own father. I guess his actions show regret, but I'm not entirely convinced. It's definitely one of those "open your heart and learn a lesson around Christmastime" kind of stories.

Christmas movie review: Santa Baby 2

Rating: B

I was a big fan of the first Santa Baby movie, if you recall, back in 2006 when I first started writing my Christmas reviews. This year they made a sequel, Santa Baby 2: Christmas Maybe, and I was not as impressed. Jenny McCarthy was as enjoyable as before and Dean McDermott played her boyfriend and did a fine job. Unfortunately, neither even seemed to be in the movie all that much. The main character was a villainess ex-elf who tried to manipulate the elves into doing what she wanted and to sabotage Santa and Jenny's character. I found her really grating to the point that I was annoyed whenever she was on the screen. Which was a lot. I really would have liked to see more Jenny & Dean and wish they would have come up with a different storyline. Or at least a different actress.

Christmas movie review: Christmas in Canaan

Rating: A+

Christmas in Canaan was by far the best of the new crop this year. It aired on Hallmark and tells the story of a young white boy and young black boy who became friends in 1964. It starts off with the two boys fighting on a school bus when the black boy knows the capital of New York and the white boy feels stupid. When the white boy's dad worries that his son is turning into a bigot, he decides the best way to punish his son is to force him to spend time with the other boy and hope they become friends. Genius plan, for sure. Of course, it doesn't work at first but eventually the two boys form a lifelong friendship and that story is played out for the rest of the movie, through deaths and hardships and ultimately, success. It's not your traditional Christmas movie because much of it takes place outside the holiday season but it's a great story of growth and learning and sharing. It's really touching and incredibly well-acted. I was really impressed by Billy Ray Cyrus, who plays the dad. I just assumed he wasn't a good actor but I guess I've never seen him do so before.

Christmas movie review: The Three Gifts

Rating: B

The Three Gifts was totally predictable. It wasn't bad but I'm not particularly eager to watch it year after year, either. Dean Cain stars as the nephew of a woman who runs an orphanage and she seems to think it would be a good idea for him and his wife (who cannot have children of their own) to watch over three orphan boys for a week or so before Christmas. These boys are called the Holy Terrors, too, so they are a little on the difficult side. When one of the boys overhears Dean and his wife talking about the possibility of actually adopting one of the boys, they go crazy acting good in hopes of being the one who is adopted. Misunderstandings abound in this movie and then everyone lives happily ever after, of course.

Christmas movie review: A Diva's Christmas Carol

Rating: B

A Diva's Christmas Carol originally aired on VH-1 nearly ten years ago, but I somehow think I've missed it all these years so I thought I'd add it to my backlog. Of course, it's the same old story from Dickens we all know by heart. This time, it's told from the point of view of a diva pop singer, played by Vanessa Williams, who wants to have a concert on Christmas, much to the chagrin of all of her employees. It's your standard story and has nothing particularly original, although Kathy Griffin is the Ghost of Christmas Past and I'm a huge fan of hers. And, of course Vanessa Williams rocks in just about everything she does. This was basically her current Ugly Betty character years before that show started.

Christmas movie review: The Ultimate Gift

Rating: A-

I might be giving The Ultimate Gift a higher rating than it deserves because I've seen so many bad ones lately but I did mostly enjoy it. This one is from 2006 but I hadn't seen it yet and features James Garner as a really rich family patriarch who passes away and decides to give his grandson, instead of money, a series of gifts intended to make him a better person. Of course, the spoiled rotten grandson is not happy at first but eventually learns how great the gifts really are and totally changes into a better person. It's a little hokey when he ends up in a South American jail (or whatever it is) but I'll forgive it because Abigail Breslin does a fantastic job appearing as a dying girl that the guy meets when he's sleeping on a bench in the park. Overall, it's somewhat predictable but it's also touching.

Christmas holiday 2009

Yesterday was Christmas with my parents and it was a good day. I got some clothes, a Nintendo Wii and a portable external hard drive, which will be great for my laptop.

Today, my brother and his family came over. My niece and nephew got a lot of presents (of course!) and I think really enjoyed themselves. Ben's playing with a robot on the left. On the right, Mia seemed to have more interest in my dad's cane than she had in any of her presents. But that's okay, she's only 15 months.

Christmas movie review: Thomas Kinkade's Christmas Cottage

Rating: C-

Wow, I could not get into Thomas Kinkade's Christmas Cottage at all. I watched this over the course of three nights and kept falling asleep. I WANTED to like it because it pulled in some relatively good, or at least well-known, actors (Marcia Gay Harden, Jared Padalecki, Peter O'Toole, Richard Burgi, Ed Asner, Chris Elliott all come to mind) but wow, was it boring. It's apparently based on true events in the life of the painter Thomas Kinkade, the Painter of Light whose work is pretty recognizable even if you don't know his name. Basically, this story takes place in the 1970s and deals with young Tom and his brother trying to raise money so their mom can stay living in this cottage. He gets a job painting a town mural and meanwhile, his artistic mentor is in some sort of depressed funk that Tom's trying to get him out of... I honestly don't even know what the deal was with his mentor. And that's only half of what I didn't get. There was some kind of drama with Tom's dad, who is no longer married to his mom. There were a ton of small town folk stories, way too many to keep track of. It really was kind of a mess. Do not waste your time.

Christmas movie review: Christmas Town

Rating: C

Christmas Town also aired on ION this year. It was below average, mostly because the acting was subpar. A workaholic real estate agent mom decides to take her dad up on an invitation to spend Christmas with him in some idyllic town. It turns out this town is like Santa's southern headquarters or something, although no one really comes out and says that, even when asked. I guess I get the secrecy of something like that but, on the other hand, they also make a big deal throughout the movie on how hidden away this place is. The mother and son were invited, after all. Anyway, combining the woman's son trying to figure out the big secret and the woman trying to get the message of Christmas slammed down her throat, not to mention the bad acting, I found it all a bit much. Yawn.

Christmas movie review: A Golden Christmas

Rating: B-

A Golden Christmas was one of a couple of Christmas movies airing on the ION Network, which I'd never really heard of before doing a Tivo Wishlist search on "Christmas." Nonetheless, it wasn't a bad movie. It was average, so for a Christmas movie, that equates to a "B-"ish. It tells the story of a woman who secretly intends to buy her parents' house from them at Christmas but when she arrives for the holidays finds that someone else has already bought it. So, she tries to sabotage his sale. All the while, it turns out that this woman and the actual buyer met as pre-teens and both have idealized their meeting to the point that they both want to live on the property where they had met as youngsters because they feel that the property is magical. But of course neither realizes who the other is and instead of reuniting, they fight and bicker all movie long. Until the end, when it all changes and they live happily ever after, of course.