LadyGypsy.net – the blog of Kimberly Dowd of New Jersey

Woohoo! It’s easy to blog on Friday, thanks to the Friday Five. Here we go!

(whoa…this is wordy and history-based. Bet WM will eat this up)

1. On March 6, 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev presented the first Periodic Table of the Elements to the Russian Chemical Society. What memories do you have of your high-school chemistry course?

My high school chemistry teacher, Mr. S. was a very sharp dresser in his early-60s. (I remember him being older. He was probably 36. :/) At times, he’d even wear three piece suits! My best friend and I tracked his wardrobe choices in our chemistry notebooks, and he went almost four weeks without repeating a suit.

Wait, did he mean academic memories? Oh. Um. If you chuck a chunk of Potassium (K) into water, it sparks and almost explodes.

2. On March 6, 1899, the Bayer company registered aspirin as a trademark. When did you last take medication for pain?

The Vile Goddess Menstrua (remember when she used to be a semi-regular blog character?) made not one but TWO appearances in the last 30 days. So I took a Naproxen (I may be divorced from the pharmacist, but I still know that generics are a better deal!) early this week.

3. On March 6, 1853, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Traviata premiered in Venice. How do you feel about opera?

Not very interested at all. I was never exposed to it as a young adult (through much fault of my own) and now all I like is the Rabbit of Seville.

4. On March 6, 1947, American film director Rob Reiner (Meathead!) was born. Which of these Reiner-directed films have you seen, and what do you think of them?

Ugh. I’m not a movie person.

* The Bucket List (2007)Didn’t see it. Why grow attached to characters I know will die?
* Rumor Has It… (2005) Didn’t see it. Aniston’s best movie work was Office Space. And I’m Team Angelina, anyway.
* Alex & Emma (2003) Didn’t see it.
* The Story of Us (1999) Didn’t see it.
* Ghosts of Mississippi (1996) Didn’t see it.
* The American President (1995) This one I saw many times and still love. Andrew Shepherd is my 2nd favorite fictional president. My fave is the president in Independence Day.
* North (1994) Nope.
* A Few Good Men (1992) I know I have seen this, but all I remember is the Nicholson quotes.
* Misery (1990) Not a suspense person
* When Harry Met Sally… (1989) Didn’t see this until 2 years ago, when WM promised me it’d cheer me up after BvP and I separated. It was okay.
* The Princess Bride (1987) I avoided this one until 2 years ago. Inconceivable. Very sweet movie. Makes me miss my grandparents.
* Stand by Me (1986) I saw this in 1986 when I as 14. It had cute boys and a dead body.
* The Sure Thing (1985) Nope
* This Is Spinal Tap (1984) Nope

5. On March 6, 1972, American basketball-player Shaquille O’Neal was born. How do you feel about basketball?

Don’t like it at all. Why spend all that time watching the back and forth when all you have to do is watch the last 5 minutes? Also, I think basketball has single-handedly ruined college education for many. They should just draft out of high school rather than make these players pretend to play school for four years and waste money and slots that could go to more qualified and willing students.

***
I’m on furlough today, which means I’m technically not a Gannett employee. So unlike a vacation day, I can’t even be called if something goes wrong. The five days unpaid is a hardship, yes, but I think we’re going to squeak out of the first fiscal quarter without layoffs. Which is good.

Shameless self-promotion: I blogged on the newspaper’s gadget blog yesterday about a World of Warcraft-related product: Authenticate me! I’m now listed as an official author to the blog even though I only have that one post. Which is pretty nifty.

I’m accruing a readership on the World of Warcraft blog too. Which is weird, since I never thought it would catch on. Many of the readers are not local but they certainly love to comment. Makes me feel good.

Of the top five blogs on the C-P site, two are not written by newsroom staff members. One is mine, and the other is Fish Head, written by Coworker A in our IT department. It’s hysterical, and I don’t even fish. If you do fish, check it out! We’re proud of our blogs, because up until now we didn’t have the benefit of name-recognition or promotion from the paper like the reporters do.

Although I’ll likely never see a dime from it, I want to call myself a writer. And the more I’ve been writing, the more ideas I have. Which is good for me, and good for my blogs. Probably not as good for you.

As always, thank you for sticking with me through the writers block and countless memes.

Whoa! It’s a lunchtime blog!

So Mom and I went to see Mamma Mia last night. In a summer where most of the movies feature comic book characters, assassins, murders, ass-kickings* and caricatures of women, it was a pleasure to FINALLY see a light-hearted movie!

The plot was contrived, the singing was inconsistent (Oh, Pierce Brosnan…you are SUCH a Trooper. A “super” Trooper. Bwah!) and I loved it!

I sang along in my head the entire movie. It helps that I’ve loved ABBA for years thanks to a cassette tape that was always played when I was young. I even got weepy in the middle, but I have issues.

And I know the characters of Donna (Meryl Streep) and her friends are purely fictional…but darned if I didn’t feel inspired to grow my hair long again, to stop being afraid of growing older, and to walk as if there is a mile-long line of Greek women singing and dancing behind me.

After the movie ended – half the women in the ladies’ room stalls were singing “Waterloo.”

Anyway, we loved loved loved it and I definitely want to see it again when it comes out on DVD.

*Even Kung Fu Panda, though light-hearted, had tons of ass-kickings. I haven’t seen WALL-E yet. I’m tired of “humans suck and are lazy and ruin EVERYTHING” storylines.

***
Tonight we’re off to GGs restaurant in Mt. Laurel to celebrate a cousin’s birthday. I’m getting cheaper in my old age, but at $19.00 for pasta marinara, there’d better be someone feeding it to me.

RSS/Newsfeed reader: I have spoilers at the bottom of this post and I don’t think the white-font-on-white-background trick works in Feed Readers. Be warned!

Wandering Minstrel is a HUGE Indiana Jones fan. I say this as I sit to blog after he left for work wearing the brown fedora he wears every day. There’s an Indiana Jones brown bullwhip on the wall with a Mickey Mouse Indiana Jones beanie sitting inside the loops. The Indiana Jones theme song is his ringtone. It’s my ringtone for him. And basically, WM was first inspired to be a history teacher by Indiana Jones.

And for his birthday last week, I got him this little guy from an Etsy store.

So yeah, he likes Indiana Jones. And when I found out that our local theater was showing the movie at 12:01 am this morning on four separate screens, I knew what I had to do. So for his birthday, he also got a pair of tickets to the flick.

We arrived at the theater at 10:45pm hoping to beat the crowds. We did – they weren’t as thick or as freaky as we thought. There were fedoras a-plenty there, though. Oddly enough, WM left his home. When you’re genuine enough to wear a brown fedora every day, you don’t need to prove your fanhood by wearing it to the flick. And I couldn’t pull my Short Round costume together in time any way.

After sitting through 15 minutes of preview trailers and only laughing at Kung Fu Panda, the movie started. And despite my fatigue from doing nothing for an hour and a half and my disdain for movies in general, this was a VERY fun movie.

I thought that the character of Mutt Williams — Indiana Jones’ son (that’s not a spoiler…we’ve all known that since Shia LaBeouf was cast) — could have been a really stupid move. But it was well-written, well-played and not at all treacly. I also enjoyed the interplay between Indy and Marion. I’m just glad they didn’t recast the role with a 35-year-old. Or Calista Flockhart.

This was my first midnight movie ever. Despite the fact that this morning I want to hiss at anyone who looks at me I had a great time. You know that at 12:01am on a weeknight you’re getting real fans of the movie franchise who are happy and excited and not on cellphones the whole time. You’re also getting an adult audience, which you never see anymore, even at Rated R flicks.

The plot? A big bunch of loopy fun with jungles and waterfalls and tombs and everything you’d expect from an Indiana Jones flick. Just swap in Communist Russians (the 1957 kind) for evil Germans and you’re good to go.

My beef with the plot? Highlight the lines below with your mouse…spoilers..

It was established at the beginning that the FBI considered Indy a “person of interest” because of Mac’s dealings with the Russians. They ransacked Indy’s office at work, which forced the University to force Indy to go on a (paid!) leave of absence. He was headed to New York en route to London when Mutt found him and told him about Oxley. Then they go off on their adventures. When all is settled (and really people, ALIENS?) Indy comes back to a new title as Dean of Students and no mention is made of the FBI? Were suspicions cleared while Indy was adventuring? The stuff he did in w/r/t the skull wasn’t patriotically redeeming. I’d have liked one more scene where the FBI clears Indy’s name. Then he punches the agents as his military buddies laugh.

And kudos to Cate Blanchett for her work as the knowledge-obsessed Russian official. She was just over-the-top enough to make the character enjoyable without turning into Natasha Fatale.

Enjoy your Thursday!