Tragically hip...or maybe just tragic

I have stated before, at great length actually, about my almost insane love for Anthropologie. Seriously, if I could only shop in one place forever, that would be it. Well, providing I could afford it. The good thing about the store is that they ALWAYS have a sale. Now, sometimes the stuff is so pricey to start out with that I STILL can't afford it after it goes on sale, but on occasion, you can find a REALLY good deal, and I'm talking $9.95...$19.95...$29.95. It pretty much rocks.

Which is why, I was so excited a week and a half ago to discover that they were in the midst of an ENORMOUS sale. And one of the best things about the bulk of the clothes at Anthropologie is that so very many of them are multi-seasonal. Which I actually DIDN'T think would apply to what I bought. Which is a strapless, silk print, harem pants romper.

Ok, you are now allowed to laugh.

Because you are correct that I used both 'harem pants' and 'romper' in that sentence. Actually, I already have this particular outfit in another color. I got it this summer when it first went on sale. But when I wandered in there while waiting for B to be finished with the SAT tutor, this particular piece was only $9.95. I decided to go ahead a get it. And put it up 'til next spring. But when I was checking out, the girl who was helping me said that she had just bought the exact same thing and planned on wearing it with a fitted turtleneck under it. Hence:



It's weird, actually. For all that my spring and summer wardrobe is so completely 'Charlotte', I am sometimes surprised at how my fall and winter wardrobe has so many more 'Carrie' elements. Which is strange to me. Not in the least because I am always scared that I look silly. That I'm not sure exactly how to put them together. That I look like the crazies on the People of Walmart website.

So I guess my question is whether this is ok. Or should I wear it with tights and flats? Or heels?

Weigh in here, people.

When the crypt doors creak and tombstones quake--A Halloween-y Top 10

As if having had an honest to God SNAKE in the house in the last week wasn't scary enough, I thought it being the holiday of all things creepy and crawly, I would give a shout out to the ten scariest things ever. And by 'things' I mean movies, tv shows, whatnot. Things you can put in the old DVD player (VCR, if you're old school) and get the shivers.

10. Se7en--Since this movie is 13 years old I don't think I'm spoiling anything when I say that in the denoument OH MY GOD GWYNETH PALTROW'S HEAD ENDS UP IN A BOX. I think that the best way to describe the entire movie is 'tense'. It follows two cops who attempt to thwart a serial killer who is choosing his victims because of their flagrant commission of one of the biblical Seven Deadly Sins and then killing them by forcing them to commit said sin in the extreme. The post-modern urban landscape through which Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt chase their suspect (played by Kevin Spacey. Who is, like, BEYOND a creeper) is unrelentingly bleak and depressing which is part of the reason the whole movie feels so oppressive. The sheer visual assault as each of the crime scenes is discovered is overwhelming--guts-o-rama. And if you say you didn't jump three feet, scream blue bloody murder and possibly wet the seat in the sloth scene, then I say you is a liar.

9. The Ring--No blood. No guts. No knives or claws or instruments of stabbing. And yet scary as all hell. Because there's nothing scarier than a creepy-ass little kid. And also a cursed video tape. Especially when said tape is packed to the brim with a metric shit ton of bizarrely disturbing images. Including the creepy-ass kid who eventually comes out of the TV to kill you dead. In case I didn't convincingly describe the sheer terror this movie invokes...



8. Nightmare on Elm Street--This was the first scary movie I ever saw and it freaked me right the hell out. In retrospect, after seeing this one again not long ago, it's not actually that scary. I mean it's hard to live in abject terror when you can't stop laughing over the fact that Johnny Depp was eaten by his bed and then vomited back out as a bloody spray all over the walls. And ceiling. 'Cause that's funny. But the whole premise of the movie--you will die if you go to sleep--is so frightening at first viewing that it earns a place on the list. I mean, SLEEP. It's one of the few human functions absolutely necessary for continued existence. Plus, I was totally wigged (still am a little bit) by the part where Freddy's arms get really long and his razor claws scrape the walls.

7. Rosemary's Baby--I know that a lot of people are all about The Exorcist in this category. And I'm not saying it's not scary as all hell. 'Cause that shit is terrifying. I mean, when they did the special edition of it with the footage where she crab-walks backwards down the stairs? My eyes started watering I was so scared. But this shit is messed up to the nth power. I think it's that in The Exorcist you see all the bad shit and in Rosemary's the evil is just kind of lurking in the shadows the whole time. Plus, getting raped by Satan and having his child? Sucks.

6. "Home" The X-Files--Let's face it. In its nine seasons, The X-Files produced any NUMBER of episodes which will teach you to fear a mighty and vengeful Old Testament-style God. I can name a good TEN off the top of my head which I watched with one eye peeked out from behind a sofa cushion held in front of my face. But the plain and simple truth of the matter is that you ask anyone who watched the show what the single most disturbing episode was and I'm pretty sure that this one--featuring a trio of inbred sibling (one of whom is probably the father of the other two) and the clan matriarch, their limbless mother whom they repeatedly impregnate--is pretty much the unanimous choice. I'm not saying that the episode with the fluke man in the sewers or the one with the liver eater who will squeeze in through your vents or the one with the tobacco beetles who gestate in your lungs and eat you from the inside out aren't scary. They are. I'm just saying that this particular episode was SO SCARY that Fox refused to show it in reruns. FOX NETWORK. Fox who has proven their willingness to show all manner of terrifying mutants by happily airing eight seasons of American Idol auditions. I can assure you, you will never hear a Johnny Mathis song the same way again.

5. Stephen King' The Stand--I know that people get their knickers in a twist over Stephen King's It. And BOTH versions of The Shining are pretty freaky--even if you DON'T factor in those creepy ass twins, they are SCARY. And while I'll admit that much like It (evil child-snatching CLOWN in sewers turns out to be...manifestation of big spider in a cave?), the apocalyptic, good vs. evil Vegas nuclear showdown ending isn't so much with the scary. But also like It the lead up to said climax is located somewhere beyond terrifying. And more. Because unlike It, the impetus for the cataclysm is a human-created, biological weapon, super flu accidentally unleashed on the public. Oh. My. God. Not even the pretty that is Rob Lowe is enough to alleviate the horror of 99% of the world's population dying. Thanks to this I live in fear of the tunnels into NYC. Because again? Oh. My. GOD.

4. Watership Down--I'm not sure how to even describe this. It's based on a novel. About rabbits. It's allegorical. It references both The Odyssey and The Aeneid. The film version is a cartoon. So people show it to kids. Which is probably one of the worst ideas of all time. Because this is what it looks like. Ok, so it looks like that but doesn't actually use the soundtrack to The Omen, which only serves to make something that is really, really nightmare-inducing, something that is really, really, REALLY nightmare inducing.

3. Return to Oz--Another from the category of alleged movies for kids. This is purportedly a sequel to the original Oz. But imagine how scary you remember the Wicked Witch of the West being the first time you saw the original when you were four and multiply that times about eleventy thousand and you have some idea of the truly paralyzing nature of this film. It begins in Kansas where Auntie Em is having Dorothy subjected to electroshock therapy in order to 'cure' her of her tales of the magical land of Oz. So it's just a barrel of jolly laughs right from the start. Once Dot arrives in Oz, she finds it a desolate wasteland, ruled by an evil sorceress who has a closet full of HEADS that she swaps out with her own and policed by these THINGS called Wheelies which are kind of like clowns with wheels for hands and feet. It's like L. Frank wrote it with Lewis Carroll while BOTH were on meth and then had Cronenberg direct it. Think about all the things weird and disturbing about The Dark Crystal, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Labyrinth. Then roll them into a ball and you pretty much have the idea of what this one's about.

2. The Watcher in the Woods--I'm not saying that there aren't any number of Disney offerings that will lead to weeping and despair. Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, the witch in Snow White, the entirety of The Black Cauldron have all been known to cause fear and terror. Hell, I can't even LISTEN to "The Siamese Cat Song" without getting all twitchy, but anything Uncle Walt or his minions came up with is completely schooled in the fear department by The Watcher in the Woods. This is a DISNEY MOVIE, FOR GOD'S SAKE. But it involves the following scary, scary things: scary, scary little girl; scary, scary ritual; scary, scary Bette Davis; scary, scary possible ghost in mirror; scary, scary unseen something that spends the whole movie LURKING: scary, scary channeling of said scary, scary possible ghost by scary, scary little girl. I hate this movie.

1. The Day After--In case you are wondering, the scariest thing that has ever happened on film or television is a made for TV movie about nuclear holocaust. At some point, back when you used to record things on VHS tapes off of television, my dad recorded The Sound of Music. On the same tape as The Day After and because of this I was traumatized. Seriously traumatized. I spent the bulk of my childhood under the assumption that nuclear holocaust was imminent. Because this movie and its graphic depiction thereof put the fear of the Lord in me like nothing had before of has since. Actually thanks to this movie, ANYTHING about nuclear war put me into a state of hysterics. About four years ago, I saw that this was on and I decided that I would watch it because there was no way it could POSSIBLY be as scary as I remembered it to be. Don't worry. I made it as far as the actual nuclear attack and had to turn it off because my hands were shaking I was so freaked out. I will sum it up with this thought: in the even that I ever need psychiatric care, I feel sure that this movie will be at the root of that need. I'm just saying.

Honorable Mentions: Willy Wonka (Gene not Johnny), any episode of the X Files mentioned with "Home" plus any number of others NOT mentioned; Testament, and anything with a creepy kid ghost

I am no longer ready for some football.

I need a break.

I'm not sure if the combination of theatre and football was what did me in, but know this...I am exhausted.

For the last two weeks, I have had to endure "watching" at least part of the game on the ESPN feed on my BlackBerry. Week before last, this meant that I missed the first three quarters before scrambling home to see the last. Of course, I am a little embarrassed to admit this, but my character in the play had a purse and I ended up putting my BlackBerry on silent and carrying with me on stage. So every time I checked my makeup or took out money to pay for something, I took a peek at the score. I'm not sure if that is the sign of dedication or the sign that I am completely deranged and would benefit from the help that only an extended stay at a place like Bryce would provide.

Bringing us to this past Saturday. Oh. My. God. Instead of missing the first half and seeing the end, I saw the first three and half quarters and missed the END. Which was, in a word, WRENCHING. The fabulous Taylor, soon to be the catcher of snakes, graciously stayed on the phone with me during the last five minutes of the game, giving me play by play like my own personal Eli Gold. I'm pretty sure that by the end of the game, which resulted in me standing in a dressing room in my slip screaming, most everyone involved in the show thought I was monkey shit insane.

But for reals, Yankees, you are gonna have to get over it.

Also on the list of people who need to get over it: Lane Kiffin, the moron announcers and everyone on every sports blog who insisted that the refs were on Alabama's side for not calling a penalty for excessive celebration. Was it excessive? Probably. I mean Terrence Cody was 350 pounds. Anything, celebratory or not, in which he involves himself is gonna be excessive. Should they have called it? Maybe. Would it have mattered? No. Excessive celebration is a dead ball foul assessed on the NEXT play, so it would have been Alabama's ball with a loss of 15 yards. Game over.

So all in all, I, like the football team, am in need of a little vacay. I will pay minimal attention to the non-Alabama games this week (this is a lie. I will probably watch all damn day) and rest myself up to cheer like a maniac against LSU.

And for the record, Terrence Cody still rocks it. In a jiggling manner, but rock it he does.

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the snakes of our lives...

It was SUPPOSED to be a relaxing late-Sunday afternoon. I had just finished the last performance of Bus Stop. Taylor had come back to the house with me so we could have dinner and watch the end of the Alabama-Tennessee game (again!) before he took the train back to the city when Kelly comes walking towards the downstairs family room and announces, "I see Herbert."

These are three words I did NOT need to hear. In the five days since Herbert's initial appearance, I had convinced myself that his one foray into plain sight was an anomaly. That Herbert was simply a confused garter snake who mistakenly wandered in and, having realized his mistake, wandered back out. Nevertheless, while I had ceased stuffing the crack under my door with a towel each night, I still stepped cautiously all last week, never entering a room on that floor without turning on the lights and definitely not sticking my toes under the edge of the ottoman as I am wont to do. But I had managed to dial back from the unease that Herbert's appearance had instituted.

And with three words all ease and lightness was gone. And sure enough, in the tiniest of cracks in the baseboard just as you step down into the room was Herbert's head and about two inches of the rest of him sticking out and testing the waters, as it were. Taylor, good man that he is, immediately went for our intruder. But one move in his direction and Herbert was once again safely ticked into his hidey-hole. After some discussion, we three decided that our best bet was to leave the area and return, if necessary with a towel heated in the microwave, the better to lure our serpentine visitor into the open.

So after dinner, I heat up a towel and Taylor and I head into the fray. Only to find that in the half hour in which we were gone, Herbert had made himself quite comfortable under the end table.

And can I say again, Taylor is not just a good man, he is, in fact, THE MAN, because while I held the Tupperware bowl, Taylor picked Herbert up, deposited him therein, and then after I had slammed the lid on, took him out to the garden and deposited him in his new abode.

I have two things to say. First of all, Taylor B.---YOU ROCK. Second, Herbert, we hardly knew ye. And we are ok with that.

SNAKE ATTACK: Our Visit from Herbert(ina)

The world is full of unexpected things. Surprise parties. That Andrew Lloyd Weber song. The Spanish Inquisition. But few things are as unexpected as finding a snake. IN YOUR HOUSE.

Look, I grew up in the Deep South. Alabama is just chock full of snakes. And the time I DIDN'T live in Alabama was the nine months I lived in Florida and that place is like an episode of Wild Kingdom. And in all those thirty years that I spent in Land o' Snakes, I managed to never once encounter one indoors. Garter snakes and racers a few times in the yard. Cottonmouths a couple of times in the river. And once I saw a HUGE rattlesnake at Camp Sumatanga. But other than that, any snake I ever saw was either in the possession of the guy who brought them to the elementary schools every year or one of those dudes who thinks it's cool to wear them like a necklace in a club.

SO imagine my shock on Tuesday night when I went into the downstairs family room to retrieve a needle and thread to repair a button that had dislodged itself in the wash and there in the middle of the floor was a teeny-tiny garter snake.

Now, having lived in Alabama for so long, I have definitely established a hierarchy of snake fear. I don't like any of them really, but unless it's rattling or otherwise identifiable as a snake that has the ability to kill me dead, then I am more in line with getting a case of the heebie-jeebies than actually screaming my head off. And to be honest, when I saw it there, I thought to myself, "What did Kelly and her friends leave in the floor when they had a sleepover the other night?" It was only when I bent over to pick it up that I said to myself, "Dear Jesus, that is a LIVE SNAKE." And to be honest the whole thing was so surreal and out of the ordinary that my normal response which would be to jump ten feet back and yell for the 17 year old boy child to help me, immediately flew out the window and instead I calmly walked into the playroom and told Kelly, and then headed upstairs and informed Brendan of the predicament and headed back down, Tupperware in hand, in preparation for some snake wrangling.

The problem being that in the approximately 90 seconds I was gone, the damn thing decided to disappear. So now I have a snake loose. And not just loose in the house, but loose in the house on the floor where my bedroom is. It has now been almost 48 hours. And we still haven't seen Herbert, as he's been christened (Herbertina if he's a lady snake). Which leads me to believe that Herbert(ina) has either returned from whence he came or he is lurking somewhere in the house ready to surprise me into instant death.

And I ain't gonna lie, people. I am ever so slightly FREAKED THE HELL OUT. I mean, I've been checking my shoes before I put them on (Herbert's a wee cuss, about 8 inches long and about as big around as a pencil) and I'm not ashamed to admit that when I noticed the night of his appearance that you can see a strip of light from the hallway under my door, I rolled up a towel and stuffed it under there. My parents' house in Alabama used to have camel crickets out the wazoo on the bottom floor and I woke up one night to go to the bathroom and when I turned on the bedside lamp there was one sitting on top of my covers at about chest level and I didn't go back to sleep for about an hour on account of the shock. I can only imagine what would happen if I woke up with a snake on my bed (I'm not sure he could get up there, but there's no way I'm taking chances.)

So for now, we are a household under siege. We just like to think of it as our own little Halloween treat.

It really has been one hell of a two weeks around here...

Dude.

I admit that I had already turned into somewhat of a slacker in the posting department. The past month or so has really just seemed INSANELY busy. First of all, I'm a southern girl, remember? And that means that as of September, my weekends are pretty much consumed by football. Plus, the whole work thing? Well, if you are a mom-type then you know that the beginning of the school year is just crazed. As a nanny, I have to take care of much of the shuttling to and fro from sports practices and math tutors and SAT tutors and play rehearsals and choral practices...you get the idea. And if that wasn't enough, I have my OWN activities. My truly awesome friend, Beverly, convinced me to take an adult tap class one morning a week AND I was pretty much consumed with rehearsals for Bus Stop (which opened this past Friday) for the last little while.

And then Friday before last, my grandmother passed away and I ended up in Alabama through last Tuesday and I came back even more frazzled than one usually would be over such a loss because I literally came in from the airport, threw my things in a back and headed to the theater for dress rehearsal (of which I had already missed one, plus the load-in and rehearsal on Sunday).

But it appears that I have successfully survived it all. Several of my Yardley friends came to the show on Friday (YAY! Bev, Kathy and Melissa! You guys ROCK!!!) and Wes and Ally took the train all the way from the city to see me yesterday (You guys ROCK, too!) and Tom and Barbara came for the matinee, too! (And for the record, I have done a lot of shows with a lot of Sunday matinees and this was bar NONE the oldest audience I have ever seen). And I made my onstage costume change EVERY TIME! And Alabama beat South Carolina! And leap-frogged Florida to #1 in the AP Poll! And it's Third Saturday in October this weekend (even though the television scheduling means that it's really the fourth)! And I know that there are people coming to see me again this weekend! (I'm so glad that I've made friends or have friends who can get here. During Joseph this summer, the night that my parents and the Bs came was the only time I knew ANYONE in the audience).

SO the moral of this is that hopefully, I am back! Not that life still isn't busy--Football is looking like it's on the road to being all-consuming. To the point that I am beginning to contemplate exactly how much a plane ticket to the general Pasadena area would cost (I'm not trying to jinx anything here by saying that we're going, I'm just saying that it could happen and I'm wondering. I'm. Just. Saying.). And then there's Halloween (for which I may already have REAL GROWN-UP PLANS--thanks Wes and Ally--and the Alabama Girls' Brunch the next day!). And there's the production of The Scottish Play that Miss K is student directing. And Thanksgiving. And Christmas. And...has life always moved this fast?!?!?!? (I remember that in high school and college I would have already made a chart counting down the days to Christmas vacation by now and at this point in my life I'm just trying to figure out how I'll get done with everything that needs to be done by Friday!)

As if we didn't know this...Glee is FREAKIN' AWESOME

Glee pretty much cemented itself in the annals of television awesome-ry(well at least in mine) at the end of that first episode when all the kids busted out the SPECTACULAR version of "Don't Stop Believin'". Because that pretty much ruled at life. The awesome has continued with kick-ass music (I just wish they would release when the Acafellas rocked the early 90s R&B! "Poison" and "I Wanna Sex You Up" were just made of awesome), incredible guest spots (HELLO! VICTOR GARBER!!!! I'm only sad that he didn't sing. Next time?!?!?), plus I really like that while the plots are mostly ludicrous--fake!pregnancy, cheerleaders who ALWAYS wear their uniforms and who are the minions of their meglomaniacal coach, geeks who win the football game as the last seconds tick away--there is something so very real about the emotions the characters have. In fact the only character that HASN'T sparked an emotional connection of some kind with me is Matt Morrison's. But he can SANG, so that's ok for now.

So while the first four episodes pretty much rocked my socks clean off, the real tour de force was in last weeks episode titled "The Rhodes Not Taken." Now my adoration of this episode was pretty much a given. It featured (and featured heavily) Kristen Chenoweth, who, we have well established, I ADORE. She, if you missed it, played April Rhodes, who, back in the days when Glee Club was a big deal, was the big deal in the Glee Club. Only it turns out when she left school before graduating to head for NYC and stardom, she really only made it as far as a honky-tonk in the next town and now she is an alcoholic (although, being the Cheno, not a blowsy one, so not of interest to Josh Groban, one would assume). Anyway, Will discovers that the rival club has members who are well past high-school age, but who are failed to keep them competing and of COURSE, tracks down April to add her to the group.

And while the whole plot is the afore-mentioned LUDICROUS, somehow, it worked. Maybe it was that Kristen absolutely rocked the SHIT outta the three songs she sang--"Maybe This Time" from Cabaret which she sang in tandem with Rachel, Heart's "Alone" which she and Will karaoked in a bowling alley and a barn-burning cover of Carrie Underwood's "Last Name" which she performed with the kids. And as awesome as all that was, the number that actually stole the whole thing was after April quit the club and Rachel rejoined and they pretty much tore down the house singing Queen's "Somebody to Love".

The sheer amount of singing and dancing on this show was pretty much guaranteed to earn my love and devotion. And that's why I am firmly on my soap box on this one. It's Wednesdays on Fox at 9/8c. WATCH!!!!!!!!!!!