The Pink Ladies

pinklady.jpg Do you remember this variety show from the late 70s or early 80s that featured a caucasian male American host with two very pretty lady cohorts from Japan called the Pink Ladies? I don’t think they really spoke English, but they were big in Japan, and wanting to capitalize on that, they made up this random show, where each episode ended with the bikini-clad Pink Ladies got the guy host dressed in a tux to go into a hot tub with them in the end.

Okay found a picture, thanks to Tony. And it was with an article entitled “Possibly the Worst Show in the History of Television.” Yea!

Sunshine

images22.jpg Nothing like the prospect of the sun burning out to put your petty office grievances into perspective. Saw Danny Boyle’s “Sunshine” on Friday night, and I LOVED it. It had a lot of disconcerting neat visual and audio effects, and featured three of my favorite things about movies:

* anything sci-fi or that shows life in the future (this includes “The Jetsons”)
* anything that is even mildly existential
* anything that features Asians (not including porn) (This had three! Two from Asian and one from the U.S. Woo hoo!)

My friend Nancy says I have to give up and just accept that I’m Asian and into it. *sigh* My long identity as an atheist Jew is dissolving slowly….

Be Aggressive! B! E! Aggressive!

images21.jpg Oh, man, it seems to me American business culture rewards the folks who can brag at meetings but don’t necessarily do the work behind the scenes, and as someone who has trouble with listing my individual achievements in an aggressive manner, I am staying in a positively mediocre corporate path. Folks who excel at kissing up and sound like a corporate borg in public succeed. I like doing a good job and working hard, but I don’t like participating in meetings, unless they are actually about getting work done. I mean, isn’t the path to happiness not through emphasizing our personal accomplishments but focusing on the bond we have with others? (I believe that, though have trouble focusing on that at times.)

Sure, I could dismiss this favoritism of excellent face time as a business flaw, except it probably happens in the arts too. I mean, don’t all documentary filmmakers hate Ken Burns b/c he hogs all the grant money up? What about Robert Wilson? Surely, he’s not the only one out there that likes to fill up a football-size exhibit full of random stuff and call it art, right?

So get ready, starting Monday, I’m going to be so freaking perky about work people won’t recognize me.

Working Out

Oy, I lift weights and do cardio three times a week and do cardio on my “off” days, when what I really want to do is just watch TV, drink wine, and eat ice cream EVERY DAY. What if I just give up and wear a sack for the rest of my life, like these:

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I can get them in like crushed blue velvet so my friends won’t be embarrassed by me. Someone else at work asked if I was expecting this morning. Ha ha ha ha.

What can I say

fergie.jpg I love when pop stars go to Korea and dress up. It’s pretty entertaining. I just wish I could post the picture of Britney Spears dressed in traditional Korean gear. That was rad.

Big Head Con’td

images16.jpg And not to belabor the point, but did you know my mother was concerned in my dating days that the size of my cranium would be a turn-off to men? She saw it on “Friends.” Joey apparently rejected a girl on this basis. And I’m like, thanks, Ma, like I don’t have enough complexes.

Karl Rove and Big Heads

images13.jpg No way! No way! NO WAY! Dude, he’s leaving the White House. I’m shocked. I mean, I wish this was like four years ago, but okay, I’ll take it.

And I notice he has as round a face and large a head as I do. My friend Jesse and I were bonding over the size of our noggins recently. He had mentioned it as a possible theater thesis focus when he gets to grad school this fall. As for me, I shared with him an anecdote my cousin Aimee loves to tell.

When I took tae kwon do the year after college (lived with my folks b/c I was in book publishing, which is like going on welfare), I had to get sparring gear and the only size that fit me was EXTRA LARGE, which felt so embarrassing and unfeminine, I just sucked it up and got the size LARGE helmut. MISTAKE. I mean, survived, but it was just a little too tight. Those were the days when a sparring match meant me physically cowering in the corner while I got whaled on by hyper 17-year-old boys. I had no mad skillz back then. Not like the ninja I am today. Ha ha ha ha ha.

As for Karl Rove, perhaps the size of his head fueled an insecurity that influenced one of the worst American presidencies ever? Who can say. He’s like the Darth Vader of the Republican Party. I’m so glad he’s outta there.

Nonplussed

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A lot of people I know, including my husband and myself (I keep looking it up and forgetting), think this word means “not so impressed.” It doesn’t.

According to dictionary.com, it means “to render completely perplexed; puzzle completely.” As in, “I am nonplussed by the fact Tina felt compelled to post the definition of this word.”

Well, it’s b/c my bad memory only allows me to say to my husband “You’re using it wrong. I don’t know how, but you’re wrong.” Which, of course, is excellent fodder for fighting.

Mars

mars.jpg images17.jpg So I read last week in the Times about this new space hotel being opened, i believe, on the moon. You pay three million dollars for about a week stay and they designed the suites to have velcro areas so you can stick on and move around that way. The showers are like body size capsules with floating water and bubbles or something you have to swim into. And they keep a shuttle on site, so if you get panicky about being in space, you can flee back to earth. But the trip out there alone, you see something like 30 sunrises in a couple of hours. (I could totally be bungling the details, but google it to check it out, or I’ll post the link later). There are about 40,000 people in the world right now who can afford this trip.

Kinda sounds Ray Bradbury. But now I heard a cousin of mine just got a job with NASA in Alabama, on this Bush initiative that will explore how we can “colonize” Mars, so people can move there. Why? B/c we’ll get bombed or the sun will burn out or some other environmental disaster? No idea. But I comforted my parents. If you think moving from New Jersey to Brooklyn was hard, just try moving to Mars.

Here’s the link: I think got all the facts wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-space-hotel.html?em&ex=1187150400&en=06838933db413351&ei=5087%0A

Steve Carell

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When “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” came out, I saw it–twice. The writing and Steve Carell’s acting/timing, I thought, were far more sophisticated than any I had seen in mainstream film in a long time. I mean, the egg salad monologue, the “her breast felt like a bag of sand,” to playing the tuba in the living room after a humiliating night of poker, I just loved, loved, loved this movie. The other thing where Paul Rudd’s secret love was a rather dark-skinned Indian American girl instead of typical Barbie fare, was up my ally. I mean, I became so obsessed with this film, replaying the scenes in my mind over and over again, that I started to have a crush on Steve Carell. (My 83-year-old former junior high school teacher still doesn’t understand why I like the film and she’s after me to defend it. And to her defense, it exhibits a junior high school boy/boob sense of humor, which might disguise the skill level of the picture to those of us alive during World War II. I’m just saying.)

So it is with great disappointment that I’ve watched Steve Carell’s career choices. “The Office”—okay. I guess, I mean you’re recycling a Brit show that wasn’t even your idea but okay, but the buck stops at “Evan Almighty,” people. I recently saw it in July in Kentucky on an in-law trip. My only excuse is that it was shown at a drive-in along with “Transformers” (more than meets the eye), and I had gone for the latter flick and the experience of being attacked by mosquitoes by watching Christian/military friendly fare outdoors. Ha ha ha. I guess he did a fine job in “Evan Almighty.” My question is why??? Are you that hard up for cash, Steve? Are you?

FYI, he got $500,000 for “Virgin” and $5 million for “Evan Almighty” according to imdb.com (which I was look up at work for entertainment. I will enjoy till IT cuts off access). Cowabugna!