Big Doings

Dear Blogger,

It's been a while since we've talked. I just...I just felt like I had to get this off my chest.

I can't do this anymore. It's not working--we're not working. You have to admit, things haven't been good between us for a while. Remember that time that you wouldn't let me upload an image for a solid three hours? You should remember--it was yesterday. Or how about when I spent forever trying to create a "jump" cut so I could make my longer entries more aesthetically pleasing on the front page, only to find out that you don't cater to those kinds of demands? I've never wanted to hurt someone as much as I did that day, Blogger. You bring out the worst in me.

We had a good run of it, but I think you should know, I've found someone else. He knows how to treat me and most importantly, I feel safe with him.

I won't forget you, Blogger. I promise. I hope that someday, after the pain has faded a little, you'll be able to understand and maybe--just maybe--we can be friends.

BTW, tell Google Reader I say "hey" and that I'll meet her for coffee after work. Thanks!

Warmest Personal Regards,

Rachel

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Hey, everyone! This blog is officially MOVING. You can find me over at WordPress, my new boyfriend, at the following:

Will Think for Food

Will Think for Food

Will Think for Food

Will Think for Food

Will Think for Food

Hope to see you there!

Burritos, Scientology, & Sex Peddlers: A Weekend in Our Nation's Capital

This past weekend, I had the good fortune to be able to take a weekend trip to D.C. with Nikki and her awesome BF, Kevin, to surprise our dear roomy of yore, Megan, and hang tough with her BF, David (shout outs!). While we cavorted like the Greeks of old (you know the ones I mean), we also had a series culturally significant experiences while bumming around Dupont Circle on Saturday afternoon.

Our quest began as a trip to a renowned sexy boutique called the Pleasure Place--because nothing says "roommate reunion" quite like giggling like teenagers in a porny store.

But lo! En route, we happened upon a most blessed visage!

1. Chipotle

Holy crap, you guys. Though I consider myself a connoisseur of the mid-range, fast-and-fresh-ish-food burrito joints (ah, Qdoba and Moe's, I do know thee well), I'd never been to a Chipotle before. I don't think I've ever been happier to eat anything wrapped in foil before.

Side note: is it more gross or less gross that this picture isn't of my own half-eaten burrito, but rather, someone else's half-eaten burrito?

So after fueling ourselves with burritos the size of a second-trimester-sized fetus (gotta credit that to Megan, natch), we continued on our way to Ye Olde Sexy Shoppe. And much like happens on any good pilgrimage, there we ran into the second big deal of our trip.

2. The Founding Church of Scientology

Just hanging on a corner in Dupont Circle is the first church of Scientology! Go figure. We were all curious, so we decided to check it out. What we found first was the active church, but a friendly Australian lady offered to shelter us in the midst of a completely random storm in the L. Ron Hubbard House, which acts as a museum for the founder.

So, Scientology gets a really bad rap on account of Tom Cruise crazying around Hollywood and any number of other things, but I have to say, from first hand experience, that it was an altogether pleasant and interesting experience. We were given a tour of the building, including Hubbard's office, furnished with all his original stuff and information on his early life. Unfortunately, I don't really have anything peppery to say about the visit--the Aussie lady led us into the basement and showed us an E-meter, which is used in the Scientological (if that wasn't a word, it is now!) practice of Auditing. We each got to try it out and we were declared to be a "good group," which I assume means that none of us are obviously and emotionally deranged. Go us!

My overall impression of the whole thing is that Scientology seems to be more of a set of practical applications to feeling good than a full fledged religion. In fact, a cornerstone is this collection of 21 tenants called The Way to Happiness, which is basically a set of really specific Commandments like, "Be temperate" and "Be competent."

Here's my favorite:


Click here to view other Public Service Announcements

Kinda inspiring, right? You can see the others via that link there.

So yeah, basically, what I'm saying is that I checked out Scientology and it seems okay. Everyone can calm down now.

After being enlightened at the Scientology Museum, we finally reached our destination:

3. The Pleasure Place

After getting in touch with our thetans (which is just a Greek word for "spirit," turns out, so take off your tin foil hats, boys and girls!), ye olde sexy place just wasn't that exciting. However, one of the MVM (Most Valuable Moments) of the trip was found when a sketchy, fratastic fella in a polo shirt tried to come onto the Jeanine Garofalo-looking clerk:

Fratty guy: So...you must be pretty sexy if you work here.

Clerk: (deep, soul-eroding sigh) Not particularly. Um. It's a job.

Then she preceded to head back behind the counter, where she immediately began to busy herself so he wouldn't keep talking to her. Excellent.

So that's it, kids! My trip to D.C. in a nutshell. Props to everyone who made this weekend possible, with extra-spicy props to Kevin who drove through hellish weather to get us there.

Coming up next: more nostalgia with a possibility of a blog surprise...!

justin timberlake is god

I've got some blogging to do, but first: how NASTY GOOD was that last three-pointer Steph Curry threw? FOR THE WIN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! NCAA, here we come!

Anyway! Ever since the gentlemen over at Tropophilia posted their blogging stats, I've been dying to do the same here. I'm not nearly as good at reading data as those guys, so just bear with me and round up, mmmkay? And for those of you who like numbers about as much as I do, here's a picture of puppies.

Since I started this blog in May 2007:

• I've blogged 59 times, with this being my 60th (woo hoo!).
  
• My most popular post, until recently, was on The Disney Afternoon (nostalgic bunch, aren'tcha?), but the overwhelming allure of match.com and controversey bumped the discussion on deal breakers in dating to my most visited post.
  
• There have been 656 visits with 1,063 page views (you know what this means, right? You all aren't whoring me out enough. Get to it!).
  
• In terms of reader loyalty, y'all are either totally into me, or find me repugnant enough to never come back. 32% of readers here have visited only once and 18.29% of readers have visited 26-50 times. I attribute this to the most generous linkage here by The Disney Blog.
  
• Generally, half (50.66%) of my readers have visited 1-8 times and the other half have visited 9-200 times. I honestly can't decide if I'm delighted or a bit distressed that anyone would visit this site 200 times...as always, I'll err on the side of delight.
• The majority of you (90.09%) are from the United States and as I've always suspected, my popularity plummets from there with my next biggest fans being France (2.13% [no doubt inspired by my Beauty and the Beast post]) and, SURPRISE, Singapore (1.98%).
  
• Fun fact: Canada and the United Kingdom combined (1.83% of visitors) still don't find me as entertaining as Singapore. High five, Singapore!
• So who are you people? 50.91% of you use Firefox to read this on a Windows machine and 15.70% of you use Firefox on a Mac. But really, I'd like to address the 30.49% of you poor souls who read this using Internet Explorer on a Windows machine. Stop it. Head toward the light.
• One of you reads this using Opera on a Linux machine. And you are either my brother or my Uncle Bill.
  
• The top referrer here is, natch, my facebook page (20.88%), with my mom's blog coming up close behind (15.09%). The Tropophilia boys come up next, bringing 10.21% of my visits (high five!).
  
• Okay, let's talk search terms, which is the real reason I'm putting this together in the first place. The top search term that leads here is, obvy, "will think for food." After that, pandemonium. Here is a hierarchical list of some of the more interesting searches that have led readers here from that great expanse we call "teh internet:"

• "ron loves twizzlers"
• match.com profiles
• "ironic thumbs up"
• "rebecca cunningham"
• "ron...ron loves twizzlers"
• altoid company
• cause/effect wga strike
• do ron weasley and hermione get married
• dwight schrute stranded on a desert island
• dwight's book if he were struck on an island
• far off places, daring sword fights
• is ron as brave as harry potter
• ron weasley
• ron weasley least favorite food
  
• justin timberlake is god

My heart. It swells with pride.

Coming up next: random trips to our nation's capital in which resides much jubilation and a healthy dose of Scientology learnin'! Peace, y'all.


Images used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of the user linked.

"Item: Big Foot Eats Out of My Trash"

All right, kids. I'm about to discuss something very close to my heart.

Eerie, Indiana.



Posted above is the entire first episode, Foreverware. It is with a great optimism that I hope you'll watch the whole thing, but realistically? Watch the first few minutes and bask in the utter weirdness of the fact that this was broadcast in 1991 on FOX. It lasted 19 episodes, which is five episodes more than FOX allowed Firefly to have. You know, for those of you keeping score.

Creepy, right? Aside from being hilarious, there's something--dare I say?--eerie about watching a kid keeping records in the event of his untimely death. This show. Did not. Eff around.

Eerie, Indiana was a half X-Files, half Twin Peaks show for misanthropes and conspiracy nuts under the age of ten. Our heroes are Marshall Teller and Simon Holmes, the only people in town who realize that there's something off about their hometown.

And no, dear reader, you are not wrong--that mop-topped child looking uncomfortably (eerily, perhaps?!) into the camera is Omri Katz, star of everyone's favorite Halloween movie, Hocus Pocus. I've already talked about my first big crush (not Roy Scheider--um, ew?), but if Jonathan Brandis was the first, Omri Katz was the second.

I can't even pretend that I don't remember everything about this show--I have it on DVD, friends, and let me tell you, there's something truly satisfying about realizing that First Grader Rachel had great taste in television. Eerie, Indiana not only had a really sharp sense of humor and a talent for the creepy-making (eeeeeerie?), but it was also praised for its smart cinematography and unwillingness to talk down to children. In fact, it's a sad, ongoing gag that Simon hangs out with Marshall all the time because "his parents don't want him around." Poor Simon!

And Tobey Maguire guest starred! For serious! He played a kid named Tripp who DIED trying to deliver a love letter to his sweetheart! Naturally, our heroes help the letter get to where its going--into the ever-waiting hands of a really, really old lady.

This show knew how to combine some of the most subtle and scary things: a dead child, a faithful and aging lover, and an UNDELIVERED LETTER. Which creeps me out the most.

I know what you're thinking. "Okay, this show would be totally awesome...if I were eight. But where are the ORPHANS?"

Worry not, friends--Eerie, Indiana filled its orphan quota with Dash X, Marshall's arch nemesis, who just woke up in Eerie without any knowledge of how he got there. He's homeless and likes to antagonize our heroes. My thought is that he's just jealous of Marshall's luscious 90s boy band hair.

So where did these kids end up? Apparently, the kid who played Simon grew up to be kinda hot and sort of working. Omri Katz, fulfilling only a fraction of the prophesied tragedy bound to befall any of my early heartthrobs, fell off the face of the earth, went to Israel for a while, was in a really bad short film, and might be working in LA as a hairdresser.

Well, thank God he's alive. Even if his career took a nose dive, he still has plenty of access to product to keep his hair looking good.

Day Finito - Conclusions

Well, my time on match.com has come to an end. Pardon me if this isn't as irreverent as what I typically shoot for (we'll be back to our regularly scheduled snarking tomorrow), but I think I have some Thoughts with a capital "T."

I know I sent this around to a couple of you when I first found it, but I've been blog hoarding it for this very purpose. This article, which was featured in Esquire and is utterly worth the read despite how long it is, charts the progress of a writer who decides to play Cyrano for his beautiful baby-sitter by hooking her up on match.com. It's a fascinating and accurate look at the culture of online dating, but I want to echo a surprising sentiment that writer A.J. Jacobs makes near the end of his article:

I know [Michelle, his babysitter] will find it with someone. Not just because the e-mails from interested men keep flooding in, unabated. But because of the men themselves. The only thing more surprising than the quantity and deviousness of the creeps was the emotional honesty and fragility of the noncreeps. It's a side of men that other men just don't get to see.

It's enough to bring out the nurturer in anybody.

When I signed up for this experiment, I expected to be entertained, possibly a little intrigued. I can honestly say that I didn't expect to be surprised, and surely not by the unbridled and terrifying vulnerability all these guys are throwing down.

People often wonder where all the "good guys" have gone. I'm not convinced enough to say I found them, but I will say that that rumors of their deaths have been greatly exaggerated. Sure, I was "hit on" (I use quotation marks because, really, how hard can a guy hit over the internet?) by a few creeps, but mostly, it was just really nice guys using a variety of awkward conversation starters.

What I'm wondering, though is why meeting people in this way is becoming more and more popular. It lacks intimacy, is about as romantic as a low budget arranged marriage and save for a few startlingly specific sites (thanks to Taylor for sharing this with me!), the chances of finding someone on your same wavelength seems daunting at best.

Are we, as a society, lonelier than we were when our parents and grandparents were dating? Busier, perhaps? Or just not as willing to brave the unruly wilderness of the dating scene? Being on match.com is like applying for a job on Monster--you put your resume out there and see what kind of interest it generates.

Is it that our culture is obsessed with investments and returns? We're willing to put in the online energies because it's quick and easy, but are we unwilling to take a risk unless there's a digital safety net? It's almost as if the old adage "nothing ventured, nothing gained" has transformed from a rousing battle cry into a reassurance, a promise--nothing ventured, nothing gained, but nothing lost, either.

Before I start sounding too much like the insufferable Carrie Bradshaw, I'm going to address you all, since I know some of you will have some opinions to share. What's up with online dating? Does it still have the connotation implied in the above PostSecret? And is our generation more likely than any other to soak up this digital dating? Bueller?

As for me, I'm done with the online scene--maybe I'll pick it up again someday, but for now, I'd rather spend my money on dog racing and hooch, thank you very much.

And lastly, for those of you who might have found this boring, I shall now summarize:

Images used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of the user linked.

"One child a week is fifty-two a year..."

I've been "re-view"ing a lot of TV shows from the early nineties lately, and as much as I've enjoyed it, I think it's time to switch genres. In fact...I think it's story time:

A Note About Witches

In fairy-tales, witches always wear silly black hats and black cloaks, and they ride around on broomsticks.

But this is not a fairy-tale. This is about REAL WITCHES.

The most important thing you should know about REAL WITCHES is this. Listen very carefully. Never forget what is coming next.

REAL WITCHES dress in ordinary clothes and look very much like ordinary women. They live in ordinary houses and they work in ORDINARY JOBS.

That is why they are so hard to catch...

So opens Roald Dahl's deliciously and delightfully terrifying 1983 novel The Witches. Frequently the target of (lame) parental ire and (lamer) censorship, The Witches tells the story of a sweet old lady and her (ORPHANED?!) grandson and their never ending battle against REAL witches.

Am I the only one who totally bought this when I was younger? I vaguely remember thinking that one of my elementary schools was a witch. Let us recall, there are some very particular ways to spot a witch:

1. slightly larger nostrils
2. blue tinge to tongue and teeth due to naturally blue saliva
3. their pupils seem to have fire dancing inside
4. claw-like fingers (always wearing gloves)
5. bald (wears a wig)
6. toeless (wears pointy shoes)

Turns that the teacher in question was just a remarkable unattractive woman with wig-like red hair, but still! I was on alert!

The best and scariest thing about The Witches was how mundane it made evil seem. Do you remember how ungodly BORING grown ups were all the time, with their meetings and events and going to work? That these witches get together for a convention in a hotel under the guise of the "Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children" seemed SO believable to me. That's how grown ups got stuff done! Boring meetings! And what if they wanted to kill a bunch of kids? A boring meeting would probably help!

I haven't read this in years, but the eerie little touches are what have stayed with me--the thumbless grandmother who can't talk about what happened when she met a witch, and the little girl in the painting who couldn't get out. To this day, I think it would be kind of nice to have a little white mouse as a pet.

Did you read this? What do you remember? I think I'm going to order a new copy on Amazon right now...

NEWSFLASH! I just read that Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón are in talks of making a new movie based on the book! Del Toro says he wishes to stay more loyal to the book than the 1990 film with Anjelica Houston did. Huzzah!

A Kinnearean Manifesto

After my last post disappointed Megan because "it was just bashing Greg Kinnear and [she] likes him," I feel the need to clarify.

I like the guy! I really do. I mean, look at him! In fact, I'll differ to Seth Rogen in Undeclared talking about how great You've Got Mail is: "You got Tom Hanks, you got Meg Ryan, you got a very likeable Greg Kinnear. You know, you think you're better than it, 'ooh, this movie's gonna suck,' but then you watch it and it's... it becomes a part of you. It's IN you."


In my head, I think of Greg Kinnear as "a very likeable" man.

BUT.

Greg Kinnear is the actor equivalent of a sesame seed--he could be there or not be there and I wouldn't notice. Sure, the sesame seed lends a pinch of class to an otherwise pedestrian, American cheeseburger, but it by no means makes or breaks the meal.

Know what I mean? I'm trying to think of other actors who are like this for me...any thoughts?