Arianna Georgi

We threw Nathan a b-day party with our favorite things.  It’s Always Sunny Season Premiere, Scotch, Meatballs, Beer.  Here’s how you too can have this much fun…

Step 1.  Evite:

Step 2:  The Details:

“Your finest Jelly Beans… Raw”

“Pears weird me out. Where do you start? The top? The bottom? It’s a weird looking thing”

Step 3:  Are you taking me to a spaghetti day?

“What’s your spaghetti policy?”

Step 4: Urinal Cakes

“I happen to think this bathroom is pristine because I work very hard cleaning it. In fact it’s so clean, I would say you could eat out of these urinals.”

Step 5:

Happy People

Tags: evite, It's Always Sunny, jelly beans, meatballs, pears, urine cakes, ziplocs

How do you make the world’s greatest movie trailer?

Ultimate fighters: If you are looking to take your movie trailer to the next level, I highly recommend adding Ultimate Fighters. It does not matter if they can’t act, look borderline mentally challenged, and it’s completely unbelievable that they could teach someone physics; they are awesome. In fact all of those things just mean the audience will spend the entire trailer trying to decide if it was a joke or not! #airofmystery!

Current events: Years from now, when we show Warrior to our children, it will be not just because it is entertaining and has ultimate fights, but because it will hold up as an amazing document of our lives in the year 2011. There was a war going on. People had issues with their mortgages. Cameron from House was super young. Ultimate Fighters walked like gods among men, and EVERYONE wore TapOut clothing.

Family drama: A good movie trailer should have liberal doses of family drama. Don’t be scared to throw in a husband and wife screaming cliches at each other. How about a dad, who was never there for his son but wants to train him to fight now? How about that dad is played by Nick Nolte? And how about the TWIST…

Crazy twists: The two men fighting… ARE BROTHERS. In this trailer, not only do you pretty much get to watch the entire movie in 2 minutes and 31 seconds, you also get the big twist revealed- the brothers have to fight each other at the climax. I am not sure I would call that “impossible,” but it should ensure the movie is filled with plenty of tension.

I could go on and on about what makes this trailer so awesome. Music that lets you KNOW something inspirational is happening, amazing lines like “I used to be one of those animals,” scenes of people training to fight and running by train tracks and hobo-style trash can fires and stuff (which are always awesome). Since I saw this in the trailer I have probably watched it about 15 times.  It is the the greatest movie trailer I have ever seen this last week and when Warrior opens, I plan to be there, in my finest TapouT wifebeater to celebrate.

Tags: Movies

My cat Hot Dog is scared of everything.  Now that I have a video camera, I would like to introduce the ongoing segment, What is Hot Dog Scared of, in which I film him being terrified by household items.

I’ve read Little Women pretty much every year since I was ten.  I love that book, and I love almost every version of the movie (the best being the 1949 one and the worst being the one with Katharine Hepburn because she is too old and pretty to be Jo).  I love how disgustingly good the whole March family is, giving their meager Christmas breakfast away after a few seconds of debate (I wouldn’t be so good- real butter?  F-that).  I love how superficial Amy is and the part where Jo cuts her hair.  I’m not so nuts about Beth, but I still cry when she dies (SPOILER ALERT).  The book is comfort food to me and every time I read it I am delighted in spite of knowing every plot turn.

Well, mostly delighted… there is one thing I just have a hard time getting past.  Every single time, I go into Little Women praying the relationship between Jo and Laurie will end up differently and she’ll choose him.  It makes no sense to me that she doesn’t.  He’s handsome, he rich, he thinks her creativity is awesome and he acts in her stupid attic plays.  He loves her for exactly who she is, but doesn’t she return the favor.  For whatever reason, Jo ends up running off to New York and getting married to an old guy with a whole litter of kids who acts all snobby about the fact that she writes ridiculous soap opera short stories.   Bad call.

This is not the only book or movie that irks me in this way.  When I was younger I used to wonder why the clever reporter couldn’t just choose the bad guy in whatever super hero movie I was watching.  Sure, he wants to destroy the earth or blow up the moon, but he also has an awesome evil lair, and he’s totally into you.  Do you really want to date a super hero anyway?  Not only do you have to spend all your time being good, but other women would hit on him constantly.

And consider the case of Reality Bites, one of the defining movies (and soundtracks), of my teenage years.  Why would you turn down handsome, successful Ben Stiller to be with sulky, “deep,” Ethan Hawke?  Ben Stiller wants to buy Laney things, take her to nice dinners, and make her silly documentary into a movie.  Ethan Hawke wants to get high and sings the Violent Femmes.  He makes fun of her dress.  He’s a jerk.

Tucked into all of this is the idea that these guys are better because they see our heroine for who she really is.  Laurie loves Jo, but he doesn’t push her to become the writer should go be.  Ben Stiller loves Laney, but he edits her movies into MTV style visual junk food.  I get it, but I’m not entirely convinced these other guys are so great either.  The Professor has never even met Jo’s family and that’s a pretty crucial part of who she is.  Ethan Hawke has sex with Laney and then freaks out (but later he wears a suit which presumably means he has grown up and won’t do that anymore).  Why can’t they just end up with the guy that loves them without all the work?  Why does Winona Ryder make such terrible choices in movies?

I will never stop rooting for Laurie and I’ll never stop being grossed out when Jo hooks up with the old guy.  As for Ben Stiller, if Laney doesn’t want him I am more than happy to take him for myself.

Tags: Movies, TV

A friend of mine recently introduced me to a show called American Pickers.  It’s basically the TV love child of Antiques Roadshow and Hoarders.  In it, two guys travel around looking for antiques (this is called picking) which they then buy from hillbillies and sell for what seems to be an average of about 50 dollar profit.  I am not sure how this financial model works for them, but apparently it does.

In every episode that I have seen, (three), this search leads the pickers to an old man’s house.  The old man’s house has about 15 outbuilding structures that are in varying states of decay.  If I came to this house, I would get the heck away from it since it is the sort of place I would assume I would be serial killed or captured and made to live in the basement as a pet for years by mutant mountain people.  And the only man looks like this:

It doesn’t matter which episode it is, because every single one features this old man.  Seriously.  I watched a marathon of this show on a plane, while I was working, and I thought I fell asleep for a while because this guy was in every episode.

The show basically glorifies hoarders by making them seem like super savvy collectors of junk.  The Pickers go nuts running around the barns, or water closets, or basements or whatever looking at pile and piles of creepy hoarder junk.  Then the following exchange inevitably occurs:

Picker: Do you have any interest in selling this (holds up rusty watering can)

Old Man Pictured Above: No, not that.  I’m not ready to part with that yet.

(Cut to picker talking to camera)

Picker: He has sooooooo much amazing stuff.  Hopefully one day he will sell that rusty watering can to me.

All over the country, hoarders are gleefully screaming “I told you so!” from between their 50 foot high piles of Life magazine and old milk cartons.  I actually think this might be part of an evil plot between A&E (Hoarders) and Lifetime (Pickers) to keep both supplied with show material.

The best thing to come out of me watching this show is that I now have a new and highly effective drinking game.  I had only heard the word “picker” a few times before in my life (garbage picker, etc) but that lifetime total tripled while I was watching this.  These two guys can not seem to stop saying it.

“This is a pickers playground!”

“That’s like a pickers dream come true!”

“The first rule of picking is blah blah.”

I think these guys sort of made this word up (History Channel Disagrees)- but either way they are doing an excellent job of branding it.  You should probably not play the game with hard alcohol.

Anyway, given a choice in bad reality TV, I will probably stick with Patty Stager, but I do appreciate why some people (probably old people) might enjoy American Pickers.  At the intersection of hoarding, home invasion, and antiques, everyone comes out a winner.

(American Pickers Airs On Lifetime and I Guess Also History Channel)

Tags: American Pickers, Lifetime TV for Women, TV