Catwoman

I had Monday off, so to celebrate, I engaged in one of my favorite leisure activities: watching terrible movies with my buddy Matt, the head_of_fema! We decided on

winner of several 2005 Razzies, and like the others we’ve watched, it disappointed in the most pleasing way.

We open on a credit sequence (Matt: “Directed by Pitof? That’s not a thing”) of cats and maps. Maps and cats. Cats. Maps. Soundtrack evocative of, but not as good as, Enigma’s “Sadness Part 1” (come on, you know that was your jam).

Maps.

Cats.

Voiceover: “It all started on the day that I died.”

That’s Patience Phillips speaking. Not-a-thing Pitof clearly tried to make the main character start out as frump girl — unkempt hair, flowy Afro-print tank top — but how do you make Halle Berry unattractive? Un-possible. Whatever, she’s supposed to be not-hot and clumsy and flustered all the time. She’s Halle Berry, of Monster’s Ball — girl can act — so I’ll buy the clumsy and flustered part, even if she’s gorgeous.

Patience and her chubby BFF Sally (you probably know her as Ms. Swan) work in the marketing department of a huge cosmetics company. Sidekick Sally is shown slathering herself with the as-yet-unreleased product Beau-line (pronounced Bee-you-leen, for no reason whatsoever) and effusing about how great it is. Wanna bet?

Cut to board meeting. CEO with a Fronch accent and slimy demeanor is announcing the launch of Beau-line. Wifie (Sharon Stone) interrupts to say she’s stepping down as the face of the company and introduces the new model, who’s fucking her husband. She doesn’t say that last part, but you can just tell.

Back in his office, Fronch CEO dresses down Patience for her work: “I don’t know why I expected your art to show better taste than your wardrobe.” Ouch. But he has a point. That tank top. Ugh.

Late that night, Patience is awakened by a loud party at the neighbor’s apartment. She opens the window and says at a conversational volume to the closed window across the alley, behind which death metal is playing at full volume, “Could you, like, turn down your music? Aw. Hmph.”

The next day, she attempts to rescue a cat on the ledge of her building. Police officer Tom Lone (Benjamin Bratt — mmmm, dreamy) thinks she’s a jumper, tries to talk her down, runs upstairs, bashes in her apartment door, and catches her as she’s about to fall to her death, all in the span of about eight seconds.

Me: “That was fast.”
Matt: “He’s a really good cop.”

Patience sprints out to work.

Back at the company, Wifie is wearing… I don’t know.

Me: “What’s she got on there?”
Matt: “Seven yards of amazing.”

Fronch CEO is lecturing her about how we can’t defeat Father Time. Wanna bet?

Tom Lone has tracked Patience down (using her dropped wallet, natch, because she’s clumsy). While Sally looks on, Lone asks her out for coffee. After he leaves, Sidekick Sally tells Patience she has to wear that leather outfit she got her for her birthday. (I always wear chaps on my coffee dates.) Patience says she’ll never wear that leather outfit. Wanna bet?

Late that night, Patience takes the redone artwork for the campaign to the cosmetics lab and overhears the brass talking about whether they should release the product given the side effects (headaches, fainting, nausea, and if you stop using it, dinocroc skin!). Aw, man, she shouldn’t have heard that. But she definitely shouldn’t have bumped into a tray full of glass, alerting them to her presence. She’s so clumsy!

The brass send a coupla goons after her, who flush her out a pipe, and she drowns.

BUT!

Eighty-seven cats stalk up to her washed-up corpse. One sits on her chest and breathes Fancy Feast breath right in her face, and she’s a cat! She coughs up a hairball, bats at a spider, jumps onto a balcony, and punches through her own window because those are all things cats do.

Patience/Catwoman wakes up the next morning. The breathy cat from last night is in her apartment. She checks the collar and goes to visit the owner, the mom from Six Feet Under, in her craftsman house right in the middle of the city skyscrapers, because sure. Francis Conroy rubs catnip on Patience’s face. I am not making this up.

In some of the worst dialogue of the movie, Fronch CEO tries to fire Patience for not getting the artwork in, and she quits. Sassily. Like how a cat quits its job.

Walking with Sidekick Sally, Patience hisses at dogs and then is drawn to a necklace in a jewelry store window. You think this necklace will have a big significance later in the movie, but you’re wrong. Sidekick Sally faints. (Are you wondering if she has headaches, nausea, and dinocroc skin too?!) They go to the hospital. Sidekick Sally flirts with her doctor and acts totally not sick.

Patience visits Officer Lone at the school where he’s giving a Say No to Drugs talk, and then they play the weirdest game of one-on-one basketball ever. Patience wins because cats are good at basketball.

The neighbor is having another wild party, but this time, Patience busts down the door, sprays the speakers down with the soda hose, and then uses it as a whip! She’s recognizing her power!

Matt: “MONTAGE! MONTAGE!”

That leather outfit she was never gonna wear? Wears it. That unkempt hair? Edward Scissorhandses it. That motorcycle? (Whose motorcycle? Shush!) Rides it all over the city.

Robbery in progress at the jewelry store where she saw that necklace! Catwoman puts a stop to that. “You thought you could come here and steal all these beautiful things? What a purrrrrrfect idea!” She beats them all up and surfs on one dude across the floor. Cats and surfing are like cats and basketball.

Matt: “They love water! They love surfing.”

Catwoman grabs the loot and leaves. Regretful in the morning, she returns it all. Except a real pretty ring and the Insignificant Necklace.

Patience returns to Francis Conroy’s house. Frances Conroy tells her she died and was reborn a cat and pushes her off a balcony to show her she’ll land on her feet. Patience vows to find her own killer.

She runs across rooftops in even less leather than before until she sees one of the goons who was chasing her before her death, at which point she follows him into a club. Dance break! Whip! Fight scene! She whoops ass.

[Other stuff happens but it’s boring.]

Fronch CEO has a fight with Wifie, slaps her, and almost breaks his hand. Beau-line has made her face like marble!

[More boring stuff.]

Shortest, least satisfying sex scene ever between Patience and Officer Lone. I’m feeling real weird about how hot I got watching Halle Berry have sex with Billy Bob Thornton and I’m scowling when she’s getting it on with Benjamin Bratt?

<Avid Bruxist makes therapy appointment>

Lone is putting zero and zero together to figure out that Patience is Catwoman. Meanwhile, Wifie kills Fronch CEO and frames Catwoman. Officer Lone arrests her. She tries to explain that things aren’t what they look like.

Lone: “What should I see?”
Patience: “The girl you had that short, unsatisfying sex scene with last night.”

Patience slips through the bars of her cell, leathers up, and steals a — wait for it — Jaguar. To thwart the evil cosmetics company’s plan, Catwoman chains all the Beau-line truck axles together. All of them. Because for their worldwide launch, all the company needed was a baker’s dozen of 18-wheelers.

Catwoman confronts Wifie. Wifie explains that if you stop using Beau-line, you get dinocroc face, and if you keep using it, you get marble face.

Um.

Thanks for that exposition.

Because exposition always goes in the climax.

And we didn’t already know that from the exposition earlier in the movie where exposition goes.

CAT FIGHT! Not a bad one either, actually. Wifie ends up falling fifty stories out a window.

And then we have another Montage! Montage! Francis Conroy pets a cat. Sidekick Sally finds love.

Me: “Hey, chubby girl gets hot doctor!”
Matt: “Doctor loses license.”

Catwoman writes Lone a Dear John letter and cats off into the distance to a sassy song that’s evocative of, but not as good as, anything by Christina Aguilera (come on, you know she’s your girl).

I mean, if you only have two hours, go with Dinocroc vs. Supergator, but if it’s a lazy Sunday, you could put on your Blu-ray of Pitof’s Catwoman.

Liar

Depression lies.

Depression tells you that that one’s too young — he can’t possibly want what you want out of a relationship, so don’t even ask — and that other one, he’s too straight-laced — he’d bolt at the first sign of the real you.

And do you really want him anyway?

Depression says you’re too tired to walk the dogs, it’s too cold to walk the dogs. Then you’re an asshole for not walking the dogs.

God, you’re so fucking lazy.

Depression tells you that that thing you posted on your friend’s Facebook wall? She didn’t realize you were joking and now she thinks you’re mean. And it won’t stop saying it.

You’re mean.

Everyone thinks you’re mean.

Depression whispers that it won’t work out. It’ll never work out.

Depression says there’s something wrong with you. Like, fundamentally wrong with you. That’s why shit is so messed up.

It’s your fault. You caused it.

And depression? Depression is an excellent liar.

**********

I’m fine. I’ll be fine. It’s just, for the last couple weeks, I’ve been lied to a lot.

¡Pura Vida!

You may recall that, back in September, I vacated Durham for a week in Costa Rica with my super-friend Shiv (a.k.a. my sister-wife). You’re most likely saying to yourself, “Well, that must’ve been pretty dope,” and if so, YOU ARE A GENIUS AND TOTALLY CORRECT.

Evidence:

  • We stayed at the base of a volcano for a coupla/three nights.
¿See it over there? ¡That’s Arenal!
  • We went to a hot spring spa and sat in 100-degree waterfalls that came off that volcano.
  • There was a parrot named Estefanía who lived at/around our hotel, and
she would harass the workers until they gave her bananas
or “bañañas” as Shiv and I took to calling them for no good reason.
  • All breakfasts included fried plantains. All breakfasts everywhere should include fried plantains.
  • We ziplined over the jungle.
Seriously. Will you look at that.
Shiv=badass (She kept wanting to go upside-down and stuff, and the guides were like, “OK, crazy lady.”)
  • We went on a gorgeous hike.
What.

Also,

  • We met a baby sloth named Cheu, and
he did ET-phone-home finger with Shiv.
He also slothfully scratched his armpit for a long time. It was adorable.
  • We had two fantastic beach days.
Here I’m doing the Handstand Everywhere You Go requisite for people who do CrossFit. (I’m both proud of and embarrassed by this photo because, hey, that’s a pretty good handstand but, Jesús, you could land planes on my thighs.)

(I know. I need to cut that shit out.)

My favorite picture of the trip: Shiv en la bahía.

The only obstacles we had to overcome, other than the torrential rains for the first few days, were the incorrigible scavenger animals. To wit, the raccoons and coatis:

But also one morning, a band of capuchin monkeys terrorized/delighted (tomato/tomahto) the restaurant where we had our breakfast. I had wondered why the waitstaff didn’t put boxes of sugar packets on the tables — you had to ask for them — but it’s because the capuchins are junkie-monkeys. They will run through the restaurant, snatch the sugar packets right off your table (sometimes the whole box), and

scamper up the trees to get their fix.

The funniest part was that if they happened in their caper to grab any packets of artificial sweetener, they would throw them on the ground. (“Pump that garbage in another monkey’s face,” said the capuchins.)

[Side note: I told my 10-year-old niece this story, and she wrote the following poem.

Monkeys Don’t Like Splenda

I was sitting in the restaurant, (I was on vacation,)
I was taking lots of pictures I would send to my relations.
I got a big white envelope; it didn’t say the sender,
All it said upon its face was; MONKEYS DON’T LIKE SPLENDA.

I sat eating bananas, pondering those words,
I was in Costa Rica, but it did seem quite absurd.
Maybe they were picky eaters, or didn’t like the food,
Either way, this or that, I thought it was just rude.

I asked the waitress, bout the note, the manager’s the sender,
Each table gets one, and it’s true, that MONKEYS DON’T LIKE SPLENDA.

Then a monkey raced down and grabbed the sugar packets, 
Dumped the Splenda, dumped the box, and just made quite a racket.
I learned a quite good lesson; that healthy isn’t ALWAYS good,
Cause if monkeys don’t like Splenda, I don’t think that I should! 

I’m not biased or anything, but I’m pretty sure my niece is a genius?

End side note.]

Shiv and I sat on the beach late in the afternoon of our last day. Pieces of the navy blue mountains across the bay, which itself turned slowly from aqua to slate, chipped off and floated skyward. A lone trawler chugged its way toward the open Pacific. The branches of the guayaba tree stirred above us, and every time we stood up to leave, the yaw-kish of the waves hitting the beach lulled us back to our chairs,

while the sun became an ever-tinier pink sliver and disappeared.

The common Costa Rican expression pura vida means a lot of things, including hello and goodbye. If you say it about a person, it means s/he’s good people. But it also translates loosely as “Life is good”.

Which, in Costa Rica, it certainly was.

Pura vida.

Crikey! I Almost Forgot Retrobruxist Friday 11/9/12

Note: For Avid Bruxistists who are resistant to change, I’m giving you a heads-up that this blog will be getting a makeover in the next week or two. Go ahead and do your pre-coping now.

This week in 2009, I got a phone call at in the middle of the night, and I was awake to take it! And it was for the best reason!

(Three years later, and no signs of slowing down. Pretty proud of myself.)

Two years ago, I wrote about a very special date. You remember it. It was very special.

I voted the crap out of this election, but a year ago, I elected to do something else on election day. Something real dumb. I got calls from a producer a few times after that, but I always dodged them. Here’s to making better choices this election cycle.

Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.

Cooking for Dumbs: How to Make Lunch

Today you’ll learn how to make All Your Lunches for the Week on Sunday morning.

Step 1: Go to Whole Foods and buy

one of these guys.

Eighteen bucks, and it comes with

health.

Step 2: In a Pyrex dish with a lid, place

one piece of London broil,
some green beans,
and some potatoes.

Cover with lid.

Step 4: Repeat until all ingredients are distributed. As you do,

check out how bad your dogs want some of that beef
but they pretend they’re not about to take you out at the knees for it when you give them a stern look.

Step 3: Divide the health

into containers, using the same method above.

Note: Don’t dress the health. Even the morning of, because

health doesn’t hold up well under vinaigrette.
Voila! You cooked!

Step 4: For Friday’s lunch, you’ll just have to improvise since, while you were cooking, you got hungry from all the lesbian dancing the previous night and ate one of the portions for breakfast.

Retrobruxist Friday 11/2/12

Three years ago, I responded to the negging incident. Awwwww, I was such an online-dating newbie, with my adorable disappointment in dudes’ profiles and emails. Now I’m all jaded and cranky and resigned to spinsterhood.

Progress.

My battle with acne started decades back. I wrote about it two years ago. I do eat way less sugar nowadays, but I also use

OXY face wash.

My sister looked at the bottle recently and was like, “That bottle…”

And I said, “Looks like it’ll punch your zits in the face?”

“Yes, that’s it,” she said.

It does punch my zits in the face, for the most part. The dermatologist prescribed Retin-A too, and so far, when I apply only a pea-sized amount, rather than the circus peanut-sized amount I used to apply as a teen, it doesn’t seem to make my face

do this

in the sun.

I was just thinking about the genesis a year ago of the great martial art abdo-shindo because I seem to have given myself some abdo this week. There’s something sexy about sore abs. Makes you feel like they’re all hard and tight and ripply.

Sore abs are liars.

Speaking of which, I already gave you the Embarrassing Photo of the Week, but I’m nothing if not generous, so here you go:

Look at that six-pack.

Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.

One Tough Mudder, Part 2

Continued from One Tough Mudder, Part 1…

Where were we? Ah yes, I was freezing my cheeks off. Moving on!

Scariest: About halfway through, we had to Walk the Plank. As a kid, I jumped off the high-dive at the pool once in a while, and I can swim just fine, but I don’t know, faced with a drop three times my height all of a sudden, my heart started throbbing in my limbs. It didn’t help that the lifeguards had to save a drowning guy while I was standing there at the edge looking down on the scene.

I couldn’t contemplate my fate for very long though because a bitch with a bullhorn was up there screaming at everybody to jump, so I did, and I plunged down, down, down—the fifteen feet seemed like a mile, and the water went all the way to the center of the earth—and I felt like I might never reach the surface again. But I did, and I swam out of there, and yeah. I did it. Go, me!

Hurtiest: They actually have two different electrocution obstacles, Electric Eel, where you belly-crawl under a bunch of dangling live wires, and then there’s the Electroshock Therapy at the end.

During the former, I got zapped three times, once on my left shoulder and twice on my right butt-cheek. (Looking at our team “before” photo, I’m kind of surprised that my ass didn’t get more of a jangling.) Running through the latter, I hit no fewer than five zappy strings.

And I don’t even know what to say about how it felt. It fucking hurt? It felt like I was getting electrocuted? I don’t know. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever felt. It hurt a lot.

Worst, Runner-up: By far, the worst physical part of the Mudder was the running. First and foremost, I hate running. I hate running. I hate running.

I don’t think I can say it enough times or with enough emphasis to get across my vitriolic hate for running. My body doesn’t like to move fast in a forwardly direction. (And “fast” should probably be in quotation marks. Let’s say “faster than an amble”.) The impact makes my hips, knees, and shoulders hurt. And even though I can walk a marathon and dance/hula hoop for HOURS, my cardiovascular system mistakes running for imminent death every time.

Also, it’s so BORING.

And, as I mentioned in my post about the thwarted Tough Mudder Mid-Atlantic, keeping up with my teammates was going to be a real challenge. I solved that problem by scrambling through the obstacles and taking off, so I’d get a little ahead of the group. They would inevitably catch up, pass me, and wait at the next obstacle, but I didn’t get too far behind that way.

But! In addition to my loathing for the sport of quickly covering distance by foot, I’ve been experiencing some Old Lady Problems lately. A couple months ago, my right heel started feeling bruised, particularly after double-unders, but it wasn’t actually bruised, and why pay $70 for a specialist copay when you can ask Facebook about these things? Dr. Facebook diagnosed me as having plantar fasciitis.

I’ve been doing stretches and rolling my foot on a lacrosse ball and whatnot, which has helped. However, the heel was tender at the very start of the Mudder, so I knew it would be an issue, and I worried about what problems might arise if I favored that foot for 11 miles.

Z told me to take tiny steps and lift with my quads, in essence to favor both feet, and to keep them relaxed, making sure my heel touched the ground with every step so it had a split second to rest. When I concentrated, I was able to do that, but you know, there were people to watch and call-and-response cheers (One of us: “Hercu-!” The rest: “‘Lisa!” [Repeat]) to do, so it’s possible I got distracted one or two times.

About mile 8, three Team ‘Lisa members were up ahead; Hammer was just behind me because her knee had gotten totally jacked up somewhere in there. And my right leg crumpled. Just crumpled underneath me. I stopped and looked at the back of my leg, and there in the middle of my calf was a crater about three inches in diameter and an inch deep. Hammer came up beside me.

“WHAT IS THAT?” I said, pointing at the alien that was backflipping inside my leg.

“Oh! You have a Charley horse! Quick, put your foot back and stretch the calf out,” she said. So I did, and whew!, it totally helped. Hammer to the rescue.

Thanks to her, when Charley came galloping by again at mile 10 and then again when I was reaching up for the monkey bars, I knew what to do, and later in the car, Z lent me his

The Stick

to roll out my calf, and it was magically hurty and helpy. (Shiv insists on calling it The Stick, even when there’s another article or possessive pronoun in front.)

[Note to everyone: you should buy a The Stick and use your The Stick every day because it will make your life betterer.]

Now those of you who know me will say, “What could possibly be a Worse Part for Amy than running?” And it’s true, there wasn’t anything else that was so physically taxing (and BORING).

But there was one part that was, spiritually and emotionally, the Super-Worstest of All the Parts, and that was what Shiv likes to call Shitter Village, i.e., the giant bank of port-a-potties at the start line.

Of course, nobody likes a port-a-potty (except maybe Flukie), especially ones that have been enthusiastically used for pre-event lightening of loads, as it were.

And I’m not going to say, after a sausage & egg breakfast and a soy latte, that I left Shitter Village better than I found it or anything, but the first port-a-potty I tried to use, but ran out of screaming—

Actually, let me address the previous occupant directly.

Dear Sir or Madam,

I understand your impulse to squat. I really do. Nobody wants to put his ass directly on the seat of any public toilet, much less a portable one that doesn’t flush. But since you, in your crouched position, managed to miss the hole entirely and shit directly on the back of the seat, I feel like it’s your duty to wrap your hands, wrists, and forearms—whatever you need to do—in toilet paper, and sweep that pile into the space where it’s meant to go.

Sincerely,
EVERYONE ELSE THAT HAD TO GO IN THERE AND WITNESS THAT, THUS LIVE WITH THAT IMAGE FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES

I guess you could say that the Most Worstest of All the Parts, Much Worserer Than Everything Else By Far was the shit show.

And we’ve come full circle.

One Tough Mudder, Part 1

[Before we begin, a note for my mother and any other worried parties: A friend of mine suggested I solve my ragey eye infection problem by wearing goggles during the Tough Mudder, so I dug through some stuff in my shed and found a pair of ten-year-old swim goggles. They more or less did the trick. ‘Course, they were real squeezy on my head and always opaque with condensation and I looked real cute, you guys. But between them and the drops, which have been actually landing on my eyeballs, thanks to Shiv’s steady hand, it looks like we might be able to save the eye. Onward!]

There were so many Worst Parts of the Tough Mudder Carolinas, I don’t really know where to begin.

We’ll get to them in a minute, but I should start with this: it was SO RIDICULOUSLY FUN. After the Shit Show known as Tough Mudder Mid-Atlantic, TM management was clearly back on their game for this one, and Team ‘Lisa

(from left, me, Kate M. “The Ginger Menace”, Shiv, and Hammer)

had SUCH a good time, y’all. People kept asking, “Are you all really named Lisa?” and we would explain that we were all Herculisas! Ha!

The fifth member of our team, Z, is not pictured, as he was behind the camera. Also, this counts as the Embarrassing Photo of the Week, considering that my “booming system”, as Dan NJ calls it, makes everyone else’s systems look like subwoofers.

Anyway, there was laughter and camaraderie. There was psyching each other up, cheering each other on, and hoisting each other over walls. There were inspiring athletes: one dude carried a pumpkin the entire course (you know, for Halloween!); a guy with a prosthetic leg ran our heat.

Some Mudders dressed in costumes: a caveman, a couple bumblebees, a bunch of superheroes, folks in interview suits, some jailbirds, and two guys who wore nothing but sneakers and pink lamé thongs. With their race numbers written in Sharpie on their ass cheeks.

It was hilarious and awesome and inspiring.

But the Mudder is supposed to be hard. When it’s hard, it’s good, and the good is bad, and the bad is good, because you’re doing it; you’re really doing this ridiculous thing. And so I present to you:

The Worst Parts of the Tough Mudder Carolinas, Ranked from Least Worst to Most Worstest of All the Things Ever

Least Worst: I’m actually kind of impressed that I didn’t have a panic attack in any of the tubes and tunnels we had to crawl through. My knees and elbows got scrapey and bruised, but apparently my theoretical claustrophobia is worse than my practical claustrophobia.

Worse: The upper body obstacles. Not the walls or the haystacks—those were fun because people let me climb on them and/or they shoved me over by my legs, feet, and ass—but the Hangin’ Tough and the Funky Monkey.

To be honest, I didn’t even really try on those because I knew I would be dropping into the water at some point, so I figured I’d just go ahead and put myself there. I KNOW, NOT THE MUDDER SPIRIT. Next time.

Also maybe for next time… Everest. (Z did it!)

Worser: Remember how I was worried about falling into the series of trenches full of water? Well, I didn’t fall in, but I did fuck up some other Mudders’ rhythm because, even though they say not to stop in between, I stopped. Sorry, people!

Kinda Bad: It wasn’t the carrying of logs that was bad. It was carrying the logs a long fucking way that was bad.

Definitely Bad: At one point, you had to fireman’s-carry a partner up a hill. I called dibs on Hammer, threw her over my shoulders, and started trudging. And even though she was the smallest person in our group, I still had to stop mid-way and take a break. She piggy-backed my ass from the switch-off point to the end. Beast!

Goddamn Terrible: The very first obstacle is called the Arctic Enema, a dumpster full of ice water with a board in the middle that you have to swim under. And when I say “ice water”, I don’t mean “really cold water”, I mean, water, but with a shit-ton of ice in it. As someone who grew up swimming summers in

Buzzards Bay,

I liked to consider myself a person who knew something about submersing oneself in cold water, but after experiencing the Arctic Enema, I imagine it’s more akin to winter-swimming in

Baffin Bay.

And even if I’d had the upper-body strength to hoist myself out, which I didn’t, being in that water for eight seconds made all my systems go beeeeeeeeeew brrrwwww booooo, and I was functionally dysfunctional. Fortunately, Z scooped me out by my arms.

Coming soon: One Tough Mudder, Part 2