the shiny guy always worries

My neighbor across the hall is a very nice girl. I just learned that she is a psych major and so far enjoying her first year in college. That's about as much as I know about her. Oh, and the fact that she has THE CUTEST FOUR YR OLD BROTHER IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD.

"Oh no! A vampire!!" -Tristan

His name is Tristan, he has Spider-man Velcro shoes and a pretty cool umbrella: "not just any umbrella...it's a Spongebob one! It's yellow and everything!" And because my roommate and I are basically 10 years old when it comes to our interests (Star Wars, Harry Potter and superheroes), and Marca has decorated our bookshelf and TV stand with dozens of action figures, he seems to really enjoy visiting us.

On move-in weekend, while his parents were unpacking and his sister was organizing, he jet-packed over to our room and started play time.

Of course it didn't start so easy. He didn't just storm into our room demanding toys; he's too polite for that. He just leaned on our doorway for a few minutes, talking to Marca, Jenna and me about our rain boots. I could tell he was going stir crazy with the move-in effort and I wanted to offer him the chance to play with Boba Fett and Hagrid, but everything I said to him came out wrong: "Hey, do you want a cookie?" "We have toys!" and Jenna even asked "Where do you live?"

Some things you just can't say to a 4 yr old without sounding like a molester in an ice cream van.

After move-in day I thought surely I won't see him again until move-out. And I was sad. But today he came to visit his sister. And who's room did he come to first? The FUN room.

The best thing about these play dates is that he has no idea who any of the characters are that he is playing with. When he first saw Darth Vader (who protects our television), he swooped him down onto Remus Lupin and said "Oh no! A vampire!" I later found out from his mother that he has never seen or heard of Star Wars. Which seems like neglect, if you ask me.

the lost boys

I finally saw Lost Boys.

There are a lot of things to be said.

1. the Coreys were ridiculous. And now one is dead. Which is pretty sad.
2. the fake blood was awful. It made me want cherry Kool-aid
3. Jason Patric is a dreamboat.
4. Jack Bauer officially scares the shit out of me.
5. what? Rory Gilmore's grandfather is a vampire? THE vampire??
6. the concert scene almost made me pee my pants. body oil + huge pony tail + SAXOPHONE = me laughing uncontrollably through a fairly important scene, it turns out.
7. Bill (of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, you know, the one who's NOT Keanu Reeves) must have famous parents. Seriously, how does someone with a face like that get into show business?

Overall, I really enjoyed it. Here is my favorite scene:




If I ever get a husky, I'm naming him Nanook.

neutron star collision

ok, so my job doesn't officially start in full force until Memorial day. So...the blah is still here. For now.

Things making me angry today:

• I feel like a lump. par for the course.
• my book club book (which starts Saturday, so I gotta read up) Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut was $15. FIFTEEN DOLLARS. It's a paperback. AND the B&N lady wouldn't let me use my mother's educator's discount card. Because I am not my mother. Of course.
  
• apparently my text messages aren't actually sending.
  
• half priced Frappuccino happy hour is over at Starbucks. Like I need to spend the money anyway. Stupid book sucked me dry.

Alright, now. Things making me happy today:

• it's not so hot today!
• I have half a pint of Americone Dream in the freezer :D
  
• Muse's new single Neutron Star Collision!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE it. and I am listening to it right now. check it out here

Oh, one more thing making me angry:

• Muse's new single Neutron Star Collision was released because it is on the Eclipse Soundtrack.

Alright, this is making me mad simply because of it's connection to the Twilight saga, which is weird. I used to be a pretty big fan of Twilight. I read the books (multiple times. like, a lot of times.) and saw the movies (at their midnight releases. I know). I had the calendar, the soundtracks, and I even own a Team Edward t-shirt. Somewhere amid the frenzy for the movies, I lost interest. It's easy to get so wrapped up in the books, because they are basically romance novels for tweens. Once I was a bit further removed from reading them, the movies began to look ridiculous. I lost any attraction to R Pattz or Taylor Lautner. Kirsten Stewart is clearly regretting signing on. You can just tell how bored she is with the whole situation and that she's thinking back to when she first agreed to act in this seemingly indie-ish off-color "vampire" movie, wishing she could have done the "Heathers" remake or whatever else she was considering at the time instead.

I will probably see the next movie, though most of my friends here (as opposed to campus) made fun of me for reading them in the first place. Which is probably why I read them.

let the right one in

I was recently invited to watch a movie with a friend from high school. It was last night, to be exact. I think that's pretty recent. Instead of some dumb cheerleader movie (Fired Up) we watched Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In, or as he referred to it: "Swedish Twilight." Indeed, the movie centered around a vampire "love story," though in a thoroughly different fashion. Eli, a "twelve" year-old vampire girl moves in next door to a nearly albino child named Oskar accompanied by her "friend" (a 47 year old man who sedates strangers, hangs them upside down from a tree or a lockerroom shelf, and drains their blood into a Tupperware container which, let's face it, probably came from Ikea).

Of course, as the common name would suggest, they have a puppy love romance. As vampire lore (and especially Twilight) goes, she warns him to stay away from her. He confesses he likes her after she climbs through his window and into bed with him (naked...those Swedes) and asks her to go steady. Earlier she asks if he would still like her if she weren't a girl. he says yes, which is good, because she's not. And not in the not-a-girl-but-a-creature-of-the-night type of way, but in the castrated-boy-bitten-by-vampire way. This nugget is displayed in a scene in which she changes into his mothers dress (hers is covered in blood of course) and he peeks through the door and sees a lack of "stuff" in the downstairs region. I did not understand this. I was pretty appalled at the movie at this point and was in shock that they even showed a downstairs region, so I had to read this online.

There are too many interesting/gory things about this movie to disclose in this post. If you're looking for a movie with lots of snow, bloody hermaphrodite kiss scenes, Swedish bullies, switchblades, alcoholism, acid-drenched faces, and Rubik's cubes, I highly recommend it. In fact, I recommend it for anyone not necessarily looking for any of those things. As horror movies go, I was sincerely creeped out by this movie. As I said after it finished, it was not pee-in-your-pants scary, but definitely made you nervous to go to sleep. Luckily, Eli is a fairly gentle vampire shemale, so I rarely felt threatened that she would pounce out of my closet at my slender neck, as I usually am.

On the box some newspaper or off-beat magazine claimed it was the "best. vampire movie. ever." Maybe not. But I would say "most. Swedish. vampire movie. ever" and that's from the heart.