This Is Not A Post

Posts should have, you know, original content. Lists don't count, especially when they're just videos. BUT this is for me: generally, whenever I find myself spinning my wheels and staring at the blinking cursor as it mocks me relentlessly for not putting anything new down for over ten minutes, I resort to watching dance scenes from movies from youtube. So I've collected them here and now I can just go to this list! Hooray!

This is also for Sarah, who I know does the same thing. Feel better, babe!


Dancing in the Movies: A Montage
Masterfully done. I especially like the usage of Airplane!




Seven Brides For Seven Brothers - The Barn Dance
I have no idea why I love this movie so much. The plot is pretty deplorable - can't get a woman? Kidnap one! She'll fall in love with you eventually! But still, I watch this movie every time it comes on TCM, at least until this scene. Once of my favorite dances ever.




Bye Bye Birdie - Bye Bye Birdie & Reprise
I love the differences in the two Ann Margaret puts into play - so childish in the first one, and so grown up and over it in the second. Bye now!




Xanadu
If you ever find yourself in a conversation with someone who doesn't know what Xanadu is, do NOT engage. Just back away slowly from the conversation until you've arrived at a safer topic. This shit is not something you can just explain with words.

Earth Girls Are Easy - 'Cause I'm A Blonde
This movie is...odd. But this is the best part.

Sister Act - Finale
Shut. Up.
Oh, also, "I Will Follow Him" is a much less creepy song when it's nuns singing about God as opposed to a woman in a supposedly healthy relationship.



Strictly Ballroom - Final Dance
I used to watch Dancesport on TV and wish I could dance like that. Now I know it's pretty much a lost cause, but I still love this movie. My favorite part of this, though, is when everybody gets on the dance floor to 'Love is in the Air.'




The Drew Carey Show - Windy, Brotherhood of Man, Cleveland Rocks
I loved this show in the beginning, when it wasn't afraid to do weird things like have the entire cast do a Broadway production in the middle of everything. Also, the first time I ever saw the Windy scene, I was crying I laughed so hard.

Windy

Brotherhood of Man



A Knight's Tale - Golden Years
I will defend this movie until I die. Heath Ledger, Alan Tudyk, AND Paul Bettany. Seriously, you can't beat that.



Charlie's Angels - Sam Rockwell Dancing
Guh.



Enchanted - How Does She Know
You know, for a Disney princess movie, I totally didn't see this coming at all. I'd seen the commercials and I figured there was the bit with her singing but then finding out that people DON'T burst into song in the real world. Instead, this happened. Much more awesome. Also, I've been to this fountain, like, eight times. How come shit is never going down when I'm there?



Clerks 2 - ABC
On the other hand, who the fuck saw this coming?




500 Days of Summer - You Make My Dreams
God, I love this song.




2010 Emmys - Opening Scene
Now I'm actually pissed I missed this year, just for this six minutes I have no idea existed until ten minutes ago. Easily my favorite part of this is that I love watching actors from different parts of TV working on something together. Also, Jon Hamm is quickly joining Jude Law in an elite group of actors, where I care almost nothing about their serious acting but love every time they do comedy.

Bye Bye Baby, Baby, Good Bye

That's right. I went with a Bay City Rollers reference. Chew on it.

Anyway, before I kick things off proper, I want to explain where the hell I've been for the past month: Ireland, packing, desperately trying to find a job, crying about not being able to find a job, cursing careerbuilder.com for spamming me in almost every way imaginable (I imagine the snail mail will start rolling in any day now), and watching copious amounts of Supernatural. No, I don't know why I've been watching that, either. I was packing all my DVDs for shipping and I went through literally every DVD set I have, and yet for some reason my brain saw Supernatural and started bothering me about it why aren't we watching it put it in the TV we still have a TV we haven't watched this forever nao nao nao.

So, uh, there's been that.

Anyway, I've got plans for when I finally do make it to Florida. I want to do a write up about the trip out there, and unlike my Ireland write up I think that's actually going to happen because it'll only be three days instead of ten, and I can't imagine how I would take as many pictures. It's not nearly as overwhelming.

Also, I am going to finish The Fountainhead if it kills me. This is literally the longest its taken me to read a book all year, and it's not because I'm putting it off, it's because I have so much to do and barely any time and put more pretty boys fighting demons on the TV or I go after the amygdala.

Finally, I have all my recipes planned for October, which, duh, will all be Halloween themed. And, like, obviously so. Any vaguely fall recipe has to wait for November. If bones or blood isn't involved, it isn't getting made this month.

We'll see how much of this actually gets done. Part of my brain seems to think that once I get to Florida all this hassle will be over with, like I won't have to take care of my car and set up my apartment and, oh yeah, FIND A JOB. But I promise to make the effort.

So, moving on to the actual topic today, I wanted to write up a list of things I'm going to miss about Cheyenne. I came out here because I wanted to try living in the west somewhere, as I've already conquered the east coast, and I think I could honestly stick around longer if I wasn't missing my friends back in Orlando so much. There are some really nice points about this city. Such as:

Mondellos
You can go anywhere in the world and find quality, expensive Italian food (Probably. Okay, I haven't been to near enough places in the world to back that statement up. But I have been to Ireland, and I did get some amazing Italian there, and if Boston social politics have taught me anything it's that Italians and Irish are from completely different planets, in different galaxies, in different fucking dimensions. I wouldn't be surprised if the Old Ones regularly dine on chicken parmagiana between meals of human bones. You know. Just to shake things up a little bit.). It is much harder to find quality cheap Italian. No, that's not a contradiction. You need to find some place with counter service, greasy pepperoni pizza by the slice, the smell of peppers and onions and fat just hanging in the air, and customer service that closely resembles emotional trauma. The best place to find such places in the country is the northeast, between New Jersey and Boston. Philadelphia has made some important contributions also, but they are on the outer rim. The farther south or west you go, the worse your chances. I once ordered a cheese pizza in Utah that greatly resembled American cheese melted onto pressboard and tasted only slightly worse.

Which is why I am so grateful for Mondellos. Run by a few misplaced Jersey boys, they have everything - pizza by the slice, pepperoni rolls, salads dripping with mozzarella and oil.

Florida Alternative: Valdiano's a local chain in Orlando that makes some of the best pepperoni grease ever, and CiCi's Pizza Buffet, which, actually, is NOT good pizza at all, until you apply five dollar buffet standards, at which point it is the shit.


Going to the Movies
I don't think anyone in this city knows what 'sold out' means, nor has ever seen the two words together in a sentence. I've rolled into the theater five minutes before a show on opening day, stood in line for four minutes, and still gotten a choice seat. This is inconceivable even at the piddling theater in Bellingham, Massachusetts that I worked at, let alone the one in Orlando. In fact, the Capitol Theater on Pershing in Cheyenne is the largest theater in the state. City? No. County? No. State. We're talking twelve screens and not even three hundred seats in the largest theater. To compare, the one I worked at in Bellingham at fourteen screens and 350 seats each in their two largest theaters, and the one I worked at in Orlando had twenty screens and 450 seats each in their two biggest (which, actually, wasn't even the biggest in the area. The one in Oviedo has 22 screens and fits, no kidding, 650 people in it's largest.) And yet, the city doesn't need any larger because, like I said, nothing ever sells out. It's very casual, and your chances of being the only one in the theater for a movie are sky high. How much better would, say, 2012 be if you could spend the entire time making fun of it?

Also...all right, let me include this PSA. I worked at several movie theaters over the course of three years. During those three years I worked everywhere - concession, box, usher, customer service. I could write several posts about all the shit that went down during those three years, but for right now I'm just going to say this:

If you ever convey surprise at how much your movie or snacks cost to any movie theater employee, you are an asshole.

 Movies are overpriced. Them's the facts, and it's been like that for decades. And thanks to the prison bitch relationship between movie theaters and Hollywood and the ever-increasing competition movies have for its viewers, it's not going to change anytime soon. Your passive aggressive attempts to take down the system by dealing with the tiniest fish on the food chain isn't changing anything. Either don't see the movie, or shell out the money and shut up. It's not annoying the first time you hear it. It's not annoying the second. Try hearing it dozens of times a day for three years and then see what happens.
 
And if anyone in Cheyenne is complaining about movies they really need the reality check. If I went at the right time in Cheyenne I could see a movie for $4.50, and get a dollar soda and a dollar popcorn. $6.50 won't even get you a child ticket these days on the east coast. And then, if you don't mind waiting, you can always go to the Lincoln Popcorn Palace, an old second run theater where $4.50 will get you everything. Plus they have Dr Pepper.
 
Florida Alternative: Either waiting to get the movie on Netflix or manning up and paying the ten bucks for the movie.


Fall Weather
I can't do winter anymore. I can't. It just...God, it just sucks. Snow is terrible. Wind is terrible. Biting cold makes me want to...to...to do something terrible! (Shut up.) After four years in Florida I thought maybe I was just being a whiner and could take it again. Turns out I couldn't. At least now I know.

What I WILL miss is fall weather. And in fact, the fall weather I really miss I can't even get in Cheyenne. It's too sunny here.

There are days in New England, mostly in November and early December, where the grass is brown and the leaves are on the ground and crackling about in the breeze and all signs point to winter and snow but it just won't happen. The sunlight is unlike the sun during the summer. It's wasted and underfed and just kind of trickles in through the branches without any kind of conviction and the whole day is stuck in this perma-twilight and even though the whole season is about nature winding down into the death cycle that winter really is, it always gives me this cozy feeling. You can't get that anywhere else, certainly not in Florida. Here in Cheyenne it's close enough.

Florida Alternative: NO WINTER. Seriously, man. Fuck that noise.

The Killers - Spaceman

Five seconds and I'm already scarred for life. That has to be a new record.

Wow. The new football uniforms are really weird.

I'd tell him to get off the table, but I don't think anyone here really cares.

Crazy Town Gangsters.
They're not like regular gangsters.

"Uh...little help?"

If that isn't the face of a man screaming for help with his eyes, than I don't know what is.

Butt.

"Guys...come on, dinner's ready....Guys, the food is getting cold!"

"That's it! I'm eating by myself."

Clapping
It's fun.

Crazy Brandon Flowers
is sick of this fuckery.

The truth behind the Easter Bunny.

"We now switch live to the inside of Bjork's head."

This
is a three story clusterfuck of batshit.

Are...are those pugs? Why pugs? Actually, why the hell am I even asking?

He's looking at me like that because he knows even in that getup I still find him damn attractive.
Stupid, sexy Flowers.

This is the way Lost ends: BADLY

*sigh*

On the Series Finale Scale, fitted on one side with the likes of St. Elsewhere and Battlestar Galactica and on the other with Newhart and Jericho, Lost sadly enough falls in with the former. (It's been over twenty years since St. Elsewhere went off the air and there are people still arguing about Tommy Westphall. People have written academic papers about the discussion and, much more sanely, someone mapped out every last show that would have had to take place in Tommy's mind thanks to various crossovers. And, actually, Lost is one of those shows, thanks to Oceanic Air being the airline of choice for both JAG and Diagnosis Murder, to Nozz-a-la Cola for being readily available in all Stephen King vending machines, and to Charlie Pace for dating a girl who's father worked in a paper factory in Slough. So, I guess, all the blame for everything below goes to Tommy.) (And while we're on the subject of St. Elsewhere, let's all not forget that after the show (arguably) announced that everything people had watched for six seasons was just a dream, it went and topped itself by killing Mimsie the kitten.)

Holy fucking hell, NBC.

And as long as I'm on a tangent about these shows, not everybody agrees with me about Jericho, but seriously, I screamed outloud twice during that finale, one "FUCK YEAH!" and one "FUCK YEAH YOU DID!" Of all the dramas I have watched the entire way through and supported, Jericho easily has the most satisfying and entertaining finale. Nothing else comes close.

But we're here to talk about Lost.

Cheyenne Frontier Days: Josh Turner and Alan Jackson

The last concert! I've made it out alive!

Cheyenne Frontier Days: Parade, Parade!

I grew up in Milford, Massachusetts, and every year in high school I had to be in the Veterans Day Parade, Santa Parade, and Memorial Day Parade. Every parade was exactly the same. To get the full effect of what, exactly, a Milford, Mass. Parade sounds like, turn on all four videos below at the same time, one after the other.

WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?!?

So, not having a clue what a real parade looks like, I was pleasantly surprised to have retained my hearing after this one. Also, the hotel my dad had booked solely because it was basically the only thing left, the Central Plaza Hotel, looked right out over the parade route, so we got this awesome, Arnie Pie in the Sky view of everything.

Cheyenne Frontier Days: Danny Gokey and Sugarland

Danny Gokey was the one act I was not invested in all week, and for fairly good reason. His music is middle of the road, fun but nothing special, and the man himself just bothers me. He looked like a sleazebag, somehow, and he spent way too much time singing to the cameras instead of us. Hi, yeah, I know you were on American Idol and I guess there I can understand doing that because most of the people watching are at home. But we're, like, right in front of you. Right here. Stop it.

Cheyenne Frontier Days: Miranda Lambert and Dierks Bentley

I started listening to both Miranda Lambert and Dierks Bentley the summer after my freshman year of college. I came home, found out that there was a station on DirecTV that was nothing but country music videos, and I would just leave it on all day so it could follow me around the house. It was awesome in the beginning, too, because it would play something like five or six videos in a row before going to commercial break, which was only one commercial long and was for the station, anyway. I got a lot of new music that way: Miranda, Dierks, Josh Turner, this great cover of 'Jolene' by Mindy Smith. I was just in a country music mode. For some reason I always associate country music in my head with summer, so that might have helped. Also, I had just spent the past two months listening to nothing but Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco and I think I needed a change for a while.

Cheyenne Frontier Days: Rodeo

The next day I went to the Rodeo with Courtney and her dad. My first rodeo ever! And I’m going to be honest here: kind of boring. I mean, yes, it was very exciting through the first set of bucking broncos and cattle wresting and bull riding. But eventually it’s just the same, over and over – horse, horse, calf, calf, ouch, ouch, daddy of them all, stuff it clown, no, seriously, STUFF IT clown, ouch, ouch, horse. Much like NASCAR, actually.

Cheyenne Frontier Days: Brooks & Dunn

Brooks & Dunn were the opening country act for Cheyenne Frontier Days. I have to add ‘country’ in there because CFD likes to open with a rock act. And this year’s rock act?

Cheyenne Frontier Days: And So It Begins

Cheyenne Frontier Days, also known as the ‘Daddy of ‘em All,’ is a week-long rodeo/fair/music festival, the biggest rodeo in the country, not that I had heard of it at all before coming to Cheyenne to be an AmeriCorps VISTA and kick some homelessness ass (wait, that came out wrong). Rodeos, like country music, is a very area-specific animal. For most of the country you can't open your car door without hitting a guy wearing a Johnny Cash t-shirt, but wander into certain places and its like country music and rodeos don't even exist. New England, and for the most part Orlando, are both firmly entrenched in these areas. You can find it if you want, but you'd have to actively seek it out. Which I never did. Anyway, it’s held every year during the last full week of July. I got to Cheyenne last year in September, missing it by a month, so I’ve been waiting all year for this thing. I am pleased to say it didn’t disappoint.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice: If You Don't Expect Too Much, It's Really Kind of Awesome

First off, I walked into Sorcerer’s Apprentice with zero expectations of quality. I had not somehow fooled myself into thinking that this movie would have any meaning, or weight, or be anything besides a very pretty piece of fluff. I wanted exactly three things from this movie:

1. ridiculous overuse of CGI and set pieces,
2. Nicolas Cage being his damn crazed self, and
3. Jay Baruchel, who is currently topping my Inexplicable Crush list.

I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to be confused or to learn any moral more complex than something you’d get out of an early Adam Sandler movie (Stay in school! Love your grandmom!). I wanted to enjoy myself while knowing what was coming five steps ahead and saying the lines with the actors as they were spoken, because of course that’s the next line! That’s always the next line!

And holy shit did this movie deliver. I’ll tell you the plot, but really I don’t have to. No, really. Just think about what a quasi-children’s movie called The Sorcerer’s Apprentice would be about. Go ahead, I can wait. Got it? Okay, let’s see how you did. Give yourself a point for every point below you totally called:

Surprise! Predators Didn't Suck!

Predators was so far off my radar that I walked into this thing with only a few basic clues. I was going to let it go by and then I wake up Friday morning and io9.com is talking about how surprisingly good the movie is and Yahoo! News is saying the same thing and suddenly I feel like a movie, damn it! Actually, I’ve been feeling like going to a movie all week, and since neither my stupid-but-fun movie (Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and guys, I’m telling you right now I am too far gone on this one to feel the least bit embarrassed to admit I’m paying full admission price for this next weekend. I saw that it was coming out on Wednesday in the paper the other day and I squealed and clapped my hands. Pray for me.) nor my intelligent-highly-anticipated-and-so-well-reviewed-already-that-my-expectations-are-currently-diverting-air-traffic movie (Inception, which looks so balls to the wall awesome I can forgive Ellen Page’s presence) have come out yet, I decided, what the hell, I could use two hours of wandering around a jungle and getting beat on by aliens. Below are my HUGELY SPOILERIFIC thoughts on the whole matter.

• I did not buy Adrian Brody: Action Star once. I know a lot of people are saying he did a terrific job and that he surprised them with how well he took on an action hero role, but…I just couldn’t see it. I kept getting thrown out of the movie. “What the hell is Adrian Brody doing here?” “Who thought it was a good idea to give Adrian Brody a gun?” “Why do we need Adrian Brody and Topher Grace? Surely they’re playing the same type of character.” And yet, no, he was our Hero, he kept being our hero for close to two hours, and I just couldn’t make it work. He kept coming off as your little brother playing Alien Invasion in the backyard, complete with one liners he got from other movies and Gravelly Action Star Voice. Seriously, everybody else is talking fairly normal and Brody sounds like Bale’s Batman during flu season. I don’t know, maybe I just have to give it a while. I mean, supposing he makes a habit of this and I’m the only one who can’t see it as believable? That’s a sad world, right there.

• Boyd! Hi, Boyd! You’re my second favorite part of that show! And also…

• Movies like this can sometimes provide you with some of the most accidentally layered characters ever. I mean, yes, most of the characterization is based on what our guys are wearing when they fall out of the sky: guy in an orange jumpsuit, inmate; Japanese guy in a suit, yakuza; Danny Trejo, Mexican cartel, etc, etc. But you can’t have just a bunch of bad guys running around, being evil, and expect the audience to root for anyone besides the thing that’s killing them. You need positive personality points. So you get the funny one and the one with kids and the one who has honor, but, like, the funny one is also the one who’s in prison for violent rape, and the one with kids is carrying around a machine gun and the honorable one is only honorable because his organized crime outfit beat it into him. So you get these awesomely layered and sometimes incredibly ironic characters. And if you were watching a drama you know you’d be delving deep into their psyche and what makes them that way and you’d watch them have a character arc and grow into another person. But this is an action movie, so there will be no soul searching, the growth will consist of moving up from a blade to a gun, and the only arc will be the one their lifeless and field dressed body makes as it gets tossed aside like yesterday’s newspaper.

• Boyd (I seriously had the hardest time getting the names down in this movie. Most everyone had an accent and they were all being cagey about who they were in the first place and sometimes they were gurgling on their own juices. I keep calling him Boyd because that’s his character in Justified, but the actor’s name is Walter Goggins, his character’s name, according to IMDb, is Stans, and you might know him as Death Row Inmate) had my favorite lines and is a prime example of the Accidentally Layered Character, because he’s charmingly funny in this stupid way as he’s talking about…horrible things. I won’t even try to explain how funny I found the biggest chunks of dialogue he gets in this movie, because a) it really, really is horrible, and b) I don’t want to spoil it. I wasn’t the only one laughing in the theater, so I’m not the only one going to hell.

• The yakuza (who IMDb informs me was played by Louis Ozawa Changchien and named Hanzo) is easily my second favorite character because yea Gods. It’s like they were building this guy just for me. First, he’s walking around the jungle in an expensive and complete three piece suit and wearing it like a fox. Then he’s wearing a dark shirt and a vest and we all know how I feel about vests. Then he’s shirtless and muscular and covered in tattoos. All of which is happening on top of an Asian guy, and if you didn’t know, I’ll tell you right now: Shannon loves Asian guys. It’s the cheekbones and the eyes and the hair and the…everything. I’ll shut up now.

 Like the fist of an angry God, I swear...

• Lawrence Fishburne shows up to provide an infodump which, while lacking in actual information, was full of twitchiness and imaginary friends. Also…

• Lawrence Fishburne is turning into James Earl Jones.

 We're not quite at Separated at Birth status yet, but just let Lawrence get a little grayer and his head a little rounder...

• This movie also contains one of the best action movie deaths I have ever seen, wherein one of the predators knocks down Boyd and pulls his spine out of his back, up to and including the skull, and carries it like a goddamn foxtail. The only way it could have been better is if the predator had taken the skull and beaten Boyd to death with it (“That doesn’t seem physically possible!).

• We…weren’t supposed to be surprised when Topher Grace’s doctor character tried to kill the Latina chick, right? Because we’ve established that everyone else is considered a predator back on earth. We’ve got a multicultural, continent spanning group where the only thing everyone has in common is that they’ve killed someone (I was seriously waiting for secret hatches and a hot Scotsman to start popping up). We’ve established they’ve all been brought here because our alien predators want to become better at their job (predatoring?). Were we supposed to assume he was a mistake? That he was sitting next to an ex-con on the bus for some reason and they just misfired their Bright Light? Also, he’s got a scalpel on him. He wasn’t at work. He said he was going to work, and he’s already got a blade on him? Suspicious right there. And then when he stops the Spetsnaz guy from accidentally killing himself on the ugliest fucking flower in the entire universe, he gets a paralyzing neurotoxin all over said blade in a scene so obvious Chekov came back to life for a few seconds. 

 "If in Act I you have a scalpel covered in a paralytic neurotoxin, then it must stab an armed Latina babe in the last act."

• I totally didn’t get his whole ‘I want to stay here line.’ Granted, we don’t get a whole lot of detail on him beyond ‘I’ve murdered’ but you start to get the feeling perhaps the good doctor has been wearing a nice pair of crazy pants under his white coat for a while.

• It takes them the entire movie, but they finally get Brody shirtless. And it is just all kinds of awkward. Because he’s got the whole action star body going, with the pumped arms and the ripped abs and the bulging pectorals and what not but…it’s Adam Freaking Brody. It’s like if Alex Trebek ripped off his suit one day on Jeopardy! and was just a twitching mass of muscles under there. It’s just an explosion of ‘huh?'

 I CAN'T- I DON'T...I DON'T, I CAN'T

WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN

It was a fun time, to be sure. I’m not going to buy the movie or anything, but when it comes on TNT or USA or Skiffy on a Sunday afternoon in a few months I’ll be sure to avoid whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing to watch this instead. Hell, I might see it in pieces as many times as I’ve currently seen Twister (current conservative estimates put it around the fifty mark).