Dita XXXmas delights!

Dita is here with her new line of cute Christmas lingerie for Frederick's of Hollywood. My sweet husband just called to tell me that the new catalog arrived in the mailbox today! Although I'm not huge fan of Frederick's of Hollywood or anything, I love Dita and can't wait to go shopping! Of course, I know that donning said clothing will not turn me into Dita Von Teese, but I'm happy to support her endorsements. Since I can't support her new Cointreau endorsement, I can at least get a bra or something.

Why I am not a people person

I transcribed a phone call that I received at work yesterday. No, this is not a joke or some prank call. I attempted to transcribe it verbatim. This is why I'm so tired after work. I fear for the future of the human race and pray that stupidity isn't contagious.

Caller: I’d like tickets for Saturday’s performance of M*A*S*H.
Me: We don’t have M*A*S*H here, m’am. We have Catch-22 that evening.
Caller: Oh! Maybe that’s what I wanted to see. Can I get one ticket then?
Me: You can reserve a ticket using a Visa or a MasterCard.
Caller: Oh no, I don’t want to do that. Can I just buy one?
Me: You can buy tickets at the door, but please call on Saturday just to make sure that tickets are still available that evening.
Caller: Okay, I’ll do that. I really want to see M*A*S*H.
Me: It’s not M*A*S*H, m’am. It’s Catch-22.
Caller: Oh, is M*A*S*H on Friday then?
Me: No, it’s Julius Caesar on Friday.
Caller: So M*A*S*H is only on Saturday?
Me: No, m'am. Julius Caesar will be on Friday and Catch-22 will be performed on Saturday.
Caller: Oh, that's right! I'll call back then.

I heart...

Hans Bellmer.

Books tag

Michael tagged me to do this thing about books. This is difficult as I am barely literate. So here goes:

Total number of books:

I don't know. I don't know if this is number of books I own or have read in a lifetime. But it's a few. More than 5, less than 5 million.

Last book I read:

Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men (fantasic, wonderful, amazing, glorious, captivating)

Last book I bought:
Junko Mizuno's Pure Trance (so that I could understand what my new toys are all about, but the comic is so bizarre that I actually understand less no that I'm in the middle of it).

Five Meaningful Books (important to my life, in no particular order):

1. Bram Stoker's Dracula because I am a vampire buff (but no, I don't file my teeth and drink blood and such). This is a classic for so many reasons.

2. Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is my favorite novel. Perversions and stigma aside, it's simply a beautiful and heartwrenching love story.

3. Koushun Takami's Battle Royale isn't really a great novel, but it's a freakin' great riff on The Lord of the Flies and it made for one of the greatest films ever made, Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale. This is one of the rare cases in which the film is far superior to the original novel. That movie kick-started my insatiable obsession with contemporary Japanese cinema.

4. Tie: Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Anais Nin's Henry & June turned the everyday act of keeping a diary into the creation of literature. Plus, they left in all the good naughty bits!

5. Dita Von Teese's Burlesque and the Art of the Teese/Fetish and the Art of the Teese for all the reasons that I would have never expected. I bought this out of curiousity, and it turned out that Dita is my hero. Yes, Dita is beautiful and the photos are stunning, but there's a heck of a lot more to it. Instead of making me feel like a lumpy, bulbous slab of blubber like usual, Dita makes a very strong argument that beauty is an illusion that you can create. She states that she works very hard to look like she does, that beauty is not necessarily effortless and that every woman can achieve beauty with a little patience and a lot of hard work. Instead of feeling grotesque and inferior, this book actually boosted my self esteem a tiny bit which is no small feat. I generally feel like a female, semi-human version of Jabba the Hut. Dita made me feel like an attractive woman, or at least potentially attractive. I'm forever a Dita fan and I can't recommend this gorgeous book enough. I know this is more of a photo book that a novel, but I don't care.

I tag anyone who feels like doing this. This was time consuming which is good cause work is making me insane today.

Something to get excited about

This year has managed to be a decent one for movies. I've been able to get super jacked up about the release of a few. Earlier this year it was Grindhouse and the Satoshi Kon's Paprika. Now I've got another couple of films that look as though they'll exceed all expectations (which are very high). The first, of course, is the Coen Brothers new adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. The book was phenomenal, as all McCarthy's novels tend to be. The film looks like it sticks to the book pretty faithfully, so we may have a stunning return to form for the Coens. Then we have Julien Temple's new documentary, Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten. Okay, maybe it's not the perfect film if you are not a Clash fan. But I am indeed a Clash fan. I wasn't a huge fan of Temple's Sex Pistols documentary The Filth and the Fury, but I think this new one will surpass his previous work. It's about damn time someone made a documentary about Strummer. Last night I watched Transformers and it was so painful and lacked all the things a good movie needs, namely a script. Therefore all the more reason to get excited for something good.

Iso.blog tagged me

I don't really understand, but apparently I'm supposed to respond to being taged with this:

Rules: Once tagged, you must link to the person who tagged you. Then post the rules before your list, and list 8 random things about yourself. At the end of the post, you must tag and link to 8 other people, visit their sites, and leave a comment letting them know they’ve been tagged.

1. I was the president of the Science Club my senior year of high school. We went dolphin watching. I think we saw one.

2. I hated school. I would never go back to school. No way. I hated all school, from elementary right through to college.

3. I have six tattoos (no, you can't see them all, but you can see some). I have plans for more on the way.

4. I got to meet Hal Hartley very briefly. He's the director of one of my favorite films of all time, Amateur.

5. I worked at a car dealership for almost 3 months as a receptionist. It was awful, just miserable. It was sleazier than you could imagine. Car salesmen are the scum of the earth, they'd run over their grandmother to make a sale. I basically got myself fired on purpose by bringing in a book of Joel Peter Witkin photographs. F^c! car salemen. F^!k car dealerships everywhere.

6. My favorite actress is Fairuza Balk.

7. When I lived in London, one of my housemates was a crazy but sweethearted German guy. I once saw him eat a raw bacon sandwich.

8. In the summer of 1992, I joined two fan clubs. One was Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and the other was Deee-Lite.

Okay, so now I'm supposed to tag others to do this. So please ekroblog and punchbuggyblues do this, too. You're the only two I'm tagging, so have fun!

super nerd

As a birthday present, I got a three-day pass to the Nekocon anime convention here in town. I went two years ago and had a pleasant time. Yes, I know that there's a stigma attacted to attending an anime convention, and I'm okay with that. I don't do cosplay and I'm not really all that interested in anime. I like some stuff, like Satoshi Kon's work and everything by Studio Ghibli (of course!). Mainly, I love people-watching and shopping there. They have great shopping! Plus, you can watch videos all day in different screening rooms. It's like a sample platter for anime. I have to work some this weekend, but should be able to get some nice shopping time in. I have to remember to take some pics this time. Last time some guy did a killer costume of the Prince from Katamari Damacy.