more reasons to love redbox.

She's the Man.

Dude, I hate to admit it, but with the exception of Lovewrecked, I love Amanda Bynes in quirky romantic, coming of age comedies.

Plus, it's a variation of Twelfth Night, my favorite Shakespearean gift to the world.

My fave Twelfth Night? The one with Imogen Stubbs, Tony Stephens, Ben Kingsley, & Helena Bonham Carter.

Mmmm. Toby Stephens as Duke Orsino.

Yummy-licious.

And for my viewing pleasure now? Eragon.

Guiltless movies at $1.06 a pop.

Less than a pop, even... a Pepsi is like $1.29 if you're lucky!

either way, i'll still be crying...

So I rented The Lake House from redbox.

It's exactly the kind of movie that I would certainly never pay $3.99 to rent, and would probably catch for "free" on HBO, if I still had a subscription. But for $1.06 (including tax), I'm game.

During the opening credits, I noted that it was based on a Korean film called Il Mare.

And I was enjoying the movie, it being a self-indulgent, tear-inducing chick-flick.

But then as the movie progressed, I realized that I wasn't sure if this was going to be a City of Angels, or a Wings of Desire.

In Wings of Desire, an angel discovers a lovely trapeze artist, literally falls, sells his gear, finds her, and lives happily ever after.

In City of Angels, an angel stalks an unhappy female surgeon, falls, gets mugged, finds her after many trials and tribulations, loves her for one night, watches her die horribly in a bike v. logging truck accident, and then lives happily never after as a mortal who has tasted love for one brief moment.

To be honest, it's really all just a matter of how relatively Hollywood-ized and tainted the story becomes in the telling.

And despite either eventuality, I still ended up snuffling and weeping at the end.

Now, I'm going to go watch Failure to Launch, also a $1.06 pick.

sounds

overheard

Onegin the movie?

At least I don't understand opera, or I'd probably judge that, too.

spoken

Things are going so well, I don't even clean my house anymore.

Well, I don't clean my house, either.

Yeah, but you don't have a maid.

driven mad

*chirp* *whirr* *chirp* *whirr*

Shut up! Shut up!

*chirp* *whirr* *chirp* *whirr*

One of you bitches better find that thing and kill it...

*chirp* *whirr* *chirp* *whirr*

... because I am so not living with two crickets.

dramarama at the workplacery

Okay, so I just got off the phone with my Assistant, who is 23, and tender-hearted, and a little weird, because the 40-somethings that work in the salon were bullying her.

Which means they were being bitchy, and she needs to grow a pair.

I am sympathetic to everyone's situation: you've got an insecure child trying to lead a team of stubborn mules.

They kick, they bite, they bray.

They're mules.

And you've got an experienced, opinionated, set-in-their-ways team of mules being led by a child who is afraid of them.

She's practically ready to quit because she's upset that they ignore her and bitch about her.

After listening to her vent for a while, I actually said to her, "When I was your age..." which made me feel really old. But it's true, at 23 I was a whole different person who took everything personally and cried a lot, too.

So, I shared a few experiences that I've had, and told her that at some point, I realized that I can't live in fear of other people, nor can I let their issues fuck with my issues, or worse, become my issues.

And I told her that she needs to learn how to do that, too. But I also told her that I kind of hope that she'll live the kind of life and have the experiences in her life where she'll never have to be hard and not care enough to let things bother her that deeply. I wish that sort of life for everyone.

It's not realistic, but it made her feel better. And I think she realizes that I am on her side, too. Because I'm not going to abandon her or the salon just because some other stylists who should know better than to act that petty and immature are acting bitchy or mean. Seriously, though, they're not going to run me out of there -- if I leave, it's on my own terms and for my own reasons.

Dude, I'm giving sage, confidence-building advice to early twenty-somethings. That's fucked up.

But also kind of cool.

I might be goofy and immature, but I'm also very sensical when I want to be, I've had a lot of shitty experiences in my life that I've learned from, and I've adopted and adapted the motivational teachings of a couple of industry leaders that help put my career life in perspective, and hopefully help others to order their lives a bit.

And good God, I can't even really call it peer-counseling, either, because I'm not really the kind of person who can be her peer.

Which can only mean... I'm a mentor.

drawbacks

I like my job. I really do. But I do not really like children coming into my job.

Perhaps peculiar to that particular neighborhood, everyone that frequents the salon and brings children with them, has like 4 kids, all pretty closely ranged in age from babe-in-arms to about 4th grade. And if they don't have 4 kids of their own, they come in with someone else that has the appropriate amount of children to round the group out to 4 children.

Case in point, we had two women bring their herd of children into the salon earlier today.

One woman had 3, the other woman had 1, and the woman with more children wanted both of her boys to get cuts.

She was told it would be at least 30 minutes, so they put the names in and left.

Ten minutes later, they all returned to the salon and sat down. Well, the adults sad down. The children instead started to whoop and holler and run around like little crazy people, clearly not using their indoor voices, and the mothers responded by increasing the volume of their conversation, as the decibel level of the children rose accordingly.

No chiding, no shushing, no dirty looks. No, "Sit down over here and stop pulling your sister's hair!" No grabbing things out of the children's hands and putting them back on the shelves where they belonged.

No nothin'.

A couple of minutes later, the more apparently fertile of the pair inquired as to whether the wait would be 20 minutes or not, as she could not decide if they should leave and come back, or just stay inside until there was time for the kids to get cuts.

All I really wanted to say, "Well, it'd be a lot quieter in here if you left."

But I didn't.