Sugar Daddy's Little Girl

This is the current Klondike "5 Seconds to Glory" ad featuring the guy who jumps into the "dreaded dance circle" to get his Klondike bar. I picked up on the "sugar daddy's little girl" line in the song and it's become a little bit of an obsession every time the commercial came on...



I thought this song was just some humorous thing for the ad -- it's not. It's a whole song!

, so

Almost McRisen

Because I'm somewhat amazed sometimes by how quickly a building can be completed, I was taking pictures of this McDonald's site near my workplace. First was January, shortly after they tore down the old one...

...then early March...

,,,and here's the pic I took on May 4th, my next-to-last day of work:

As you can see, although it wasn't taken from the same spot (I was across the street instead of right on the corner), it's close to completion. I don't know if they've had the grand re-opening yet and, unless I see some mention of it, I won't really know until I go back to work in (hopefully) September (assuming I don't get a job somewhere else first).

My 2012 Movies

Can't believe I didn't set this up before: the post with all the grades I've given to movies released in 2012...the ones I've seen, of course. Not that I've seen that many as I write this, but still...

A+: Argo
A: The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Skyfall, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Lincoln
A-: 21 Jump Street, Brave, ParaNorman, Pitch Perfect
B+: Chronicle, Friends With Kids, Hit and Run, Frankenweenie, Wreck-It Ralph, Zero Dark Thirty
B: Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, The Hunger Games, The Campaign, Premium Rush, Looper, Flight, Silver Linings Playbook, Life of Pi, Parental Guidance
B-: Snow White and the Huntsman, The Amazing Spider-Man, Hope Springs, House at the End of the Street, This Is 40, Django Unchained
C+: The Woman In Black, The Cabin In The Woods, Sparkle, Taken 2, Rise of the Guardians, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Promised Land
C: The Guilt Trip.
C-: Mirror Mirror, The Dictator, Dark Shadows, Magic Mike, Total Recall, The Bourne Legacy, Hotel Transylvania
D+: The Three Stooges, Prometheus, Seven Psychopaths, Cloud Atlas, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2
D: Men in Black 3
D-: This Means War, Silent House, Les Miserables
F: Rock of Ages

Quick Reviews: Pre-Summer

So I've got seven ticket stubs here, for movies I've seen as recently as a week ago and as long ago as April 7th. I was still a young 49 then. Since three of the movies were released at the start of the big summer season (in other words, when "The Avengers" came out), I'm going to just throw the other four into this post and be done with them.

The Cabin in the Woods: A little overrated. The trailer hinted at a much more snarky twist, and didn't exactly pull through. But I did sort of appreciate the ending. My grade: C-plus.

Mirror Mirror: A lot of silliness and overacting. And, while Armie Hammer is pretty, he has weirdly shaped chest hair. I hope it was just for this movie and not how his chest always looks. My grade: C-minus.


Friends With Kids: Enjoyed it quite a bit. Smart and clever. My grade: B-plus.

The Three Stooges: Apparently there was a surprise musical bit after the credits. I didn't stay that long. This was almost as bad as I thought. I think they were going for a "Brady Bunch Movie" kinda thing, but these are the wrong characters to do that with. Credit for just about perfect impersonations of Moe, Larry and Curly, though. My grade: D-plus.

The Gays (And Others) Can Be Snarky

This pic spoils a moment from the recent Muppets movie.
If you still haven't seen it, as Scott Rolen once said,
"Sorry about your luck."

I can't help but be both amused and a little disappointed at the reactions to the news media's running of the story that actor Jim Parsons of "The Big Bang Theory" is gay. Now, he didn't make some big announcement about it. He didn't hold a press conference or do an interview with some gay publication. The information was made public in a New York Times profile of the actor, who's about to hit Broadway in "Harvey." Parsons previously did a stint on the stage in "The Normal Heart," a play about the rise of AIDS in the 1980s. Here's what the Times revealed, almost at the end of the story:

“The Normal Heart” resonated with him on a few levels: Mr. Parsons is gay and in a 10-year relationship, and working with an ensemble again onstage was like nourishment, he said.

That's all. But because he's never actually revealed this in an interview or talk show appearance or whatever, the rest of the news media is running "Jim Parsons comes out" stories. And that's understandable, even if it's sort of a misleading headline.

The reaction I've seen on my Facebook and Twitter feeds has mostly run along the lines of "Who didn't know that?" or "When was he in the closet?" -- again, I understand it, to an extent. It's been talked about and rumored and even assumed. But there's also, to me, an undercurrent of "This isn't news -- why is the media bothering to report this?"

Well, it IS still news and, more importantly, it still needs to be said by people such as Jim Parsons.

Movie Magic

While a movie starring Colin Farrell was shooting a couple of weeks ago, they changed some street signs on Walnut Street. The film, "Dead Man Down," is set in New York...

I know they do this all the time. Films are shot all over the place that are set in New York. Sometimes it's really obvious that it's not really New York, though. It seems to me they shouldn't do this unless New York City is really central to the plot (i.e. a terrorist or alien attack on a specific location). Anyway, love the disclaimer...

Ew York

Since I'm up late I decided to post the pictures I took when I went to New York for a weekend in early March. EDIT TO UPDATE: I posted them to Shutterfly and hoped to have a slideshow embedded into this post but using the code they provided, no slideshow appears. So just click on this link.

The main purposes for the trip: my friend Kurt was auditioning for The Voice on the Saturday of that weekend, so while he auditioned I went to see "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying."

The trip wasn't exactly a success. It wasn't horrible, but there were a number of problems throughout. It started with Megabus. (That's their sign at left -- hence the title of this post.) We were supposed to leave at 5:30 pm but the bus was quite late -- an hour, at least, as I remember. We stood out in the chilly air and watched while at least two competing buses (Bolt Bus, which is actually owned by Greyhound) arrived, picked up passengers for New York, and went on their way. Once we finally got on our way, the wi-fi on the bus was wonky.

We finally got to our small hotel, which was in Chinatown, and were told that because a regular room wasn't ready that we would get the "penthouse." The elevator doesn't go to the penthouse without your room keycard to unlock it. Our key didn't work. After the staff couldn't get it to work, they decided to put us in a first-floor room for one night. It was freezing with no heat. We went back to the desk, and after another wait  someone got the key to unlock the elevator button for the "penthouse." The elevator opened right up into the room -- there were no other rooms on the floor. It wasn't exactly luxurious but it was larger than a typical room. It also had a fuse box and some other electrical switches and an emergency phone for the fire department and a door to the roof of the building. I had images of maintenance men traipsing through our room or worse. (I took a video; if I get around to posting it I'll update this.

No Diving

Obey!

This is on Locust Street at S. Sartain, a tiny little street that's across from More Than Just Ice Cream. It was convenient of Mother Nature to fill the "pool," wasn't it? Not sure if you can see it, but on the other corner the message is stenciled there as well.

So I've been out of work for a full week now, and I'm still not catching up on things I've wanted to blog about for so long. I will get to them, I promise. I did my online application for unemployment benefits, and I saw a few movies. Tomorrow I'm going with my friend Kurt to a theater on the Princeton University campus because there's a production that stars one of his favorite actors, Paul Gross. This, plus a hotel room for the night so we can stay for a post-show discussion of some kind -- whether Paul Gross will attend that or not is unknown -- was my gift to Kurt for his 30th birthday. His (along with his BFF Stacy) gift to me for my 50th b-day (remember, we have the same DOB 20 years apart) was a digital camera. The above was not taken with that camera, but I got some other shots that I took on Sunday and this afternoon that will be posted at some point.

I Might Like THIS?

At the bottom of a blog post at EW.com:

Yes, I think I might enjoy reading about someone's gruesome self-inflicted death! And in case you're wondering where these "recommendations" come from...

2 a.m. Musings

First of all, someone needs to tell Twitter that I can't think of three people that I'm less likely to follow than anybody in this group. For various reasons, they're all douchebags.

So it's after 2, and I'm pretty wide awake because, for the second weekend in a row, I stayed in bed all morning and much of the afternoon. I'm talking 3 in the afternoon. So, unless something odd happens and I magically fall asleep or I take some medication, I'll be up all night. That means Sunday will be difficult, and Sunday night and getting up for work Monday is problematic.

Last week I stayed up all night, and finally drifted off for a couple of hours or so early Sunday afternoon. That should have made it easy to fall asleep Sunday night, but I was shocked that I had so much trouble sleeping that night. I did get up on time Monday and made it through the day at work, though. But it was rough. Actually, every day was kind of rough.

That won't be a problem, though, because this Monday is my last day of work for a while. With the heating season over, the money's pretty much spent and all of us who were hired (or recalled, in the case of most of them) in the fall are now being laid off. We can file for unemployment, though. This is new for me. I've never filed for unemployment before.

What this means is I'll have free time again. To see movies, to go walking around the city and take pictures, to blog...the only caveat is that I do plan to do a job search. I'd like something that would be a better fit for me. A job that's either much closer to home, only 2-3 days per week or only 4 hours per day would be perfect. If I don't find that, though, then I'll have to hope that the evil politicians don't kill off LIHEAP or drastically cut the funding so that I'll be recalled come September or so. In the meantime, though, my time will be my own again and I CANNOT WAIT.

Oh, and I'll have more time to sleep.

TLFT: Wish I Got It On Video

Another quickie that won't fit into 140 characters...

This sight struck me as slightly surreal, but by the time I decided to act on my impulse to capture it on video it was too late.

On my way home from work I stopped at a Rite Aid, and after I went back to the corner to catch the bus for the rest of my trip home, a really nice convertible, top down, pulls up to the corner.

The driver looked like he wouldn't have been out of place on "Jersey Shore." Sleeveless t-shirt, muscled arms, wearing the headgear the guy in this picture is wearing.

The music is pumping out of the speakers -- not excessively loud but plenty clear enough. Was it some heavy metal song, or fist-pumping club jam?

Nope.

"Rumour Has It" by Adele.