The first time is the most special.

Today is the first time in the history of my life that my parents are leaving me alone while they spend the night somewhere else. People are shocked when I tell them this, but, yes, my parents have never taken a vacation without me (not my doing, I assure you). As I have no experience being alone in my parent's house (being alone in my house at school doesn't count. My housemates being home didn't exactly stop anything wild from happening, them being home actually made the fun more awesome), here is the short list of things I assume should and will happen (based on TV/movies/stories I've heard):

~ I must break a lamp, vase, or have made some kind of mess that I will only have an hour to clean up.
~ If I had younger siblings they would need to get lost. Instead, my cat will magically get outside. I will find her at a jazz club around 2 a.m.
~ The babysitter will DIE!
~ My parents will call me from Atlantic City to let me know they'll be home an hour early!
~ I will use the house as a bordello to pay off my gambling debts.
~ I will fall in love with a hooker, who will betray me. Oh, I will learn so much about growing up!
~ I will invite two or three of my best friends over, who, even though they're my most trusted friends, will be jerks and invite the entire school! Including my crush and the head cheerleader he's in love with!
~ Excessive drug and alcohol use.
~ Someone will have sex in my parents' bed.
~ My sibling/cat will get drunk/stoned for the first time. Chewbacca and I will then have a long, touching talk in order to make the movie experience less hedonistic.
~ Robbers will attempt to break in, and I will use a series of wacky booby traps to stop them.
~ Witches will try to kill my virginal friend, and with the help of a talking animal we'll trick them into crossing holy ground.
~ Terrorists will try to take over the world, but somehow only me and my group of misfit friends know this! We'll have to do illegal things and steal some cars to save the world, but in the end I'll get a metal of honor from the President.
~ I will: eat a ridiculous amount of candy and/or ice cream; dance in my underwear; blast music; read my sibling/cat's diary (Dear Diary: today the girl made me wait five minutes before she fed me. One day I will steal her soul as she sleeps).
~ Me, my sibling/cat, and wacky friend will accidentally stumble into the time machine my scientist father is building in the garage. We'll hang out with talking, humanoid dinosaurs, learn some life lessons, and save the dinosaur world from destruction. (P.S. this is the greatest movie ever, and if you don't know what I'm referencing I feel bad for you. Actually, if you do know what I'm referencing please comment with the name of the film, because I can't remember it.)

"You call that a life? This is a life!"

Remember that guy who tried to sell his life on Ebay after his wife left him? Turns out none of the top bids can go through with it.

I can't tell if my reaction is "oh you poor kid" or "well, did you really think it would work?"

The article quotes him as saying

"I am very surprised I am the only person out there with a bit of adventure. It is a bit of a shame, but never mind."

So, only six people wanted to buy his terrible life and now they can't take it, so he's entering into denial and assuming its everyone else's fault for not wanting to spend 2 million pounds for a tiny house, a boring middle management job, and friends this guy doesn't seem that upset to lose.

On the Daily Show two nights ago, during the Back in Black segment about how America was being bought by other countries, Donald Trump gives a similar statement about how he's disappointed no American stepped up to buy his ridiculously ugly and expensive property. That's right. It's totally our fault that we don't want your stuff.

I couldn't tell if I wanted to use a picture of the guy or Crocodile Dundee. And then I thought "hey, this is relevant. I would buy Dundee's life."

An intelligent (and spoiler-free) Dark Knight review

Firstly: Holy #%$@ wow.

Ok, so maybe this isn't that intelligent of a review.

I saw Dark Knight last night at midnight, and was not disappointed. I was worried that with all the hype this movie has been getting, that even if it was very good I would still be let down. Especially now that Heath Ledger has been getting oodles of Oscar buzz, I was secretly ready to walk out of the theater sad that he couldn't live up to my expectations.

Disappointment never came.

Ledger owned the Joker. I can't describe how perfect his acting was. From the occasional bursts of manic laughter to his need to loudly swallow his saliva during monologues (the smile in this version, as I'm sure anyone whose seen a movie poster already knows, is due to scars on the sides of his mouth. The attention to detail of the Joker having to deal with saliva build-up blew me away). What I liked most about the Joker was how he wasn't over-the-top. He was the Joker: insane and sadistic. But he was a human being, not a cartoon character. He didn't spend every scene laughing (which made when he did laugh all the more horrifying), he didn't repeat his "Why so serious?" catch-phrase more than three times. He was a human villain, and that made him creepy.

The first movie in this franchise, Batman Begins, was not scary - even though one of its villains was Scarecrow. This movie scared the crap out of me. It is not a Batman to bring the kids to. Terrible things happen, in disturbing ways. This is not the Joker from the Adam West TV series, this is the Joker who shoots Batgirl in the stomach, strips her naked, photographs her, and then shows those pictures to her father, Commissioner Gordon (not a spoiler, that doesn't happen in the movie, but it does happen in the comic books. The Joker is a fucking scary dude).

As a side note about the Joker - during the movie it occurred to me that the last movie I'd see with my childhood crush, Heath Ledger, the boy whose poster I'd had on my wall since 10 Things I Hate About You, was so disturbing that I didn't have one scene of "yeah, I'd make out with him." Ledger effectively did the opposite of what his critics said he'd do. He was not a pretty boy leading man in this, he was an actor.

The Joke stole the show, which is a shame, because the other characters and actors were top notch. Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent was perfect, through both stages of Harvey Dent's life. And again, the writing of this movie was superb. There was no cheesy build-up to "what eventually happens" (comic book fans know, everyone else can be surprised), just subtle hints that aren't forced into the story.

My only complaint about the movie is a plot point that will be a spoiler, so I can't talk about it. Let's just say, that as a female who goes to nerdy action movie I loved something that this movie did differently, and then my hopes were completely dashed.

In conclusion, go see this movie. You will walk out of the theater going "Iron Man? Who the hell is Iron Man?" This was the greatest movie of the summer (well, maybe. I still haven't seen Wall-E yet).

WHY SO SERIOUS?!?!

This morning I received an e-mail from humanresources@whysoserious.com offering me free tickets to an early showing of the new Batman movie. The e-mail was a link, and then the following text: "HA HA HA HA HA ha HA HA ha HA HA ha HA HA HA ha HA HA HA ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ha ha ha HA HA ha HA HA HA ha ha ha HA HA ha HA HA HA ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ha HA HA ha HA ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA ha HA HA ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA ha ha HA HA HA ha HA HA HA HA ha ha HA ha HA ha HA HA HA HA HA ha ha ha HA HA HA HA ha HA HA HA ha HA HA HA HA ha HA ha"

Unfortunately, the only theater till available in the tri-state area is one in a town in Pa that I've never heard of before, so I don't think I'll be taking the Joker's offer.

May I just say that I love the viral marketing for this movie.

If you're really (and I mean really) bored today...

The giant Eddie Murphy head, as seen in this article terrorizing Washington, DC, has made it to Philadelphia. It's in front of the Fox building on Market St. today.

Of all the days for me to not bring my camera to work.

Lawn Chair Drive-in

I think this blog is helping me get through my post-graduation quarter life crisis (as seen in classic films like The Graduate and [the debatable classic] Garden State).

Anyway, while I still have absolutely nothing to do and am waiting for the work day to end, I'm going to plug my friend's event. Every Tuesday night at the park at 3rd and Poplar is the Lawn Chair Drive-in. Bring a blanket or a beach chair and claim a spot on the grass, and then watch old movies screened on a 16MM projector. Bonus: it's free. Added bonus: this is one of the few parks in the city where drinking alcohol in public is legal. The show starts at sunset, so figure out whenever that is whatever day you go (because you should).

More information, including upcoming movies, can be found here.

A lunch break journey through historical Philadelphia

It may not be clear from the fact that I readily admit that I am a lush, but I'm really a huge nerd. I admit this now, because its time we were honest with each other (all three people who read this), and because it explains this post, in which I explore historical Philadelphia in a half hour.

The time limit is because this half hour was my break from work. I sort-of-kind-of work in the entertainment industry (sorta. kinda.), so when there's nothing to promote there's nothing to do, and I spend 7 hours at a desk playing travian and annoying my boss by asking her for work every twenty minutes. I finally got frustrated, pretended I was going to Cosi's for some overpriced coffee (entertainment people love overpriced coffee), and went walking through the streets.

Franklin's Court happens to be less than a block from my office. This is my favorite spot in the city, and has been since I was a child. Unfortunately, it closes its gates before my work day ends, so I rarely get to go there even though I'm so close.

The Court is the former home of Ben Franklin. In 1812 his grandchildren sold it for some reason, and the original house and printing office were torn down to make way for row homes, which were then torn down when the city realized what a great tourist trap Franklin's house was. The property is a square featuring gardens and hollow outlines (pictured) of where the house and printing office once stood. Best of all, and the original reason my mother and I came here all the time, it houses an underground museum, which is free to the public and air conditioned. Air conditioning is very important.

I love the area because since its literally inside of the block, very few people know its there. Once tourist season ends the place is virtually deserted. Even now, smack dab in the middle of the annual "tourists attack the city" month (the week around July 4th, for obvious reasons, is unbearable for natives), there were maybe seven people wandering around the entire square. That's heaven.

I like cutting through back alleys and finding the lesser known historical areas of the city. I took a picture today (which I may upload later if I remember) of the window where my best friend swears he saw a ghost one night. His story is helped by the fact that that house is supposed to be the most haunted house in the city (its diagonal to Carpenter's Hall, south of it, on the corner of 2nd if you want to go ghost hunting).

Post 9-11 Philadelphia, unfortunately, is not the Philadelphia I grew up with. Once upon a time the park behind Independence Hall was my playground. Today, to get anywhere near the building you have to go through a metal detector, stand in a 2 hour line, and be forced to tour the entire building and liberty bell first. No thanks. I love the building, and I love this city, but some nights when I wander by it I'm afraid to linger too long, lest some Park Ranger think I'm plotting something.

I find it sad that Ben Franklin is the city's patron saint (not literally of course. He wasn't Catholic.), who warned us that "those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither," and this is what his former neighborhood has become. Obsessed with pretending to be safe when, really, what the hell is a tiny fence that comes up to an adult's waist going to do?

While we're on the subject of Independence Hall, the geography of Philadelphia in National Treasure is wrong. It's the wrongiest most wrong layout of the city ever. Please do not come here and expect to be able to walk from the Hall to South Street to Reading Terminal in five minutes. You will be laughed at, and then keel over and die from trying it.

As a final note: I did eventually go get my overpriced coffee from Cosi. As I walked into the store, the woman behind me turned to her friend and said "yeah, this is it for historical Philadelphia. It's just these few block." That lady is wrong, and may inspire a future entry. Maybe.