Saturday: the house recoiled in shock and horror, the cat said "screw this" and retired to the patio, as I scrubbed and cleaned and cooked and chopped and basically did a pretty scary amount of work just to bring the house up to a barely-presentable level of clean and welcoming, in order to host a party-planning meeting. We are having a party in July. At my place! Which means, so much more scrubbing, etc. to do. I am growing increasingly concerned about the number of people that may attend, and where exactly they will all fit. But I suppose that is one of those things I should omit from the worry list, since what are you going to do?
Sunday: I attended a sneak preview of Undead, a seriously misleadingly advertised zombie movie (U.S. ad campaign: grim, serious, 28 Days Later-esque postapocalyptic survival horror. Actual movie: campy, funny, self-mocking B-movie throwback. I fucking hate it when studios do this. It's a good movie! Why lie about what it is, especially in light of the success of Shaun of the Dead, which this movie much more closely resembles if you simply must fit it into some sort of Familiar Product category, which I suppose you must?)
After the movie, I experienced the most hilarious, embarrassing Q&A ever. The adorable Spierig brothers were not the problem - it was the audience. My fellow horror geeks sweated and muttered to themselves, each pale with the effort of proving that his obscure movie kung-fu was the best. Ever more tangential connections were made, ever less attention was paid to the movie we were allegedly discussing or its increasingly bemused production team, as the crowd strained to bring forth the most esoteric knowledge they could. Favorite quotes include:
A Spierig brother, about ten questions in, with a puzzled and slightly mocking tone: "Let me ask you guys a question...how many film students are here tonight?"
Some guy sitting near the back: "Have you ever seen Tombs of the Blind Dead?"
A Spierig: "Sure!"
Some guy (with a tone of triumph befitting an Olympic medalist): "Awesome! No one's ever heard of that!!"
The crowd: Sounds of violent protest, as if they had been accused of not knowing how to add one-digit integers, or how to put their pants on frontwards.
Somehow, in the midst of all this obscurity-measuring, I answered a trivia question and won a poster! (I think the question, "What was the last zombie movie to play at this theater?" was too easy. Everyone else was locked into Things Other People Have Never Heard of Before mode, so the aforementioned Shaun of the Dead was just too obvious.)
Wednesday: I played hooky from work, exaggerating a mild ailment that I really could have taken in for the day. Some realtors visited our already-filthy-again apartment, much to my dismay: I prefer to be out of the way while people are smirking at last night's dirty dishes and the terrible state of the carpet, thanks, instead of contributing to the sense of general decline by sitting there unshowered, in a house dress, with my bangs sticking up all funny, at one in the afternoon. I was futzing around with the accursed spam comment thing, hoping that it looked like I was doing something much more responsible and important and justifying of not having left the house yet today, because...yeah. I'm sure they were fooled. Me and Carl, we work outta da home. Why I care, I do not know, but there you are.
Today: I am considering starting a movie blog, because a) it would be nice to collect all that stuff in one place, b) and get it off here, where it is sort of out of place, and c) I desperately need another project to neglect and feel guilty about, don't you think? So: if you were to read such a thing, what would you want it to be called? I've got exactly no ideas.
Posted by hilatron at June 30, 2005 11:31 AM | TrackBackI realize this wasn't the point of your post, but I am so delighted that you wear housedresses. I have a sort of a house-smock that I wear for cleaning, and I used to have a housedress, but unfortunately it was for a slenderer me. (It was actually a sundress that I bought in France, but it was excellent for doing household chores and pretending, say, I was a young Italian woman trapped in an oppressive marriage and about to have an affair with a dashing soldier.) So where does one find a good housedress these days?
Posted by: Jess at June 30, 2005 01:32 PMThrift stores! They're fairly plentiful and usually cheap. Most often, they get mixed in with the nightgowns and bathrobes and whatnot.
Also, if you have bargain stores near you - not dollar stores, but those places where you can buy whimsical painted toilet seat covers and weird fake flower arrangements and purple cleaning products with Spanish names - they often have housecoats, though they're usually more in the Mrs. Roper style than the Sophia Loren style.
Posted by: Hilatron at June 30, 2005 01:55 PMMy first thought after reading Tron's post: "How cute that she wears a house dress around the house. I'll bet Jess does that."
Seriously, both of you, just pick a weekend and come to my house and cross-stitch together already while I arrange a sundae bar.
Posted by: EV at July 2, 2005 07:50 PMI can't actually cross-stitch, but I wish to offer my wholehearted and passionate support to the sundae bar concept.
Posted by: Hilatron at July 5, 2005 12:45 PM