I rahther feel like expressing myself now.

Obviously, I only love Audrey Hepburn. And obviously, as a result of that I only loved this Gap ad when it came out in 2006, to the point where I asked a Gap employee in Boston if I could have or purchase one of the awesome, five foot tall posters they had hanging in the windows. When they said that wasn't allowed, I tried to pull the ol' Emerson "I Need It For My Production" card, but they wouldn't budge. ANYWAY, point is: sometimes a girl's got to dance. Audrey gets it. Lord knows I do. All the best houses have space to dance in. The von Trapp house, my grandparents' house, my parents' house, my old Beacon Hill apartment, the apartment I live in now. And sometimes you've just got to dance it out and jump around and remember how that's just what you've done all along.

Divas.

Josh says TWIST, Celine says IS MY FRINGE AT A RIGHT ANGLE YET?!

Merciful Heavens.

Being Facebook friends with 13/14/15 year old cousins and former babysittees has made me really grateful that the Internet became mainstream long after I grew some semblance of a social conscience.

Although, they're not entirely to blame. Clearly all of their friends are exactly the same, complaining via status update about how they have to go to "gay ass schoollllllllllllll" the next day or that they're "STILL single even after THIRTEEN WHOLE YEARS ON EARTH". Not their adorable little faults.

I know I'm old now. I'm old because kids whose diapers I would change for 5$ an hour are now somehow old enough to be socially networking and swearing to seem like badasses in front of their friends. I'm old because I recognize and pity the insecurity that prompts some once precious girl to use adjectives like "gay ass" to describe high school. I don't even know what they think they mean by that. To me it sounds like a positive thing I would high five one of my gay friends about. "Oh man Danielle, I scoped out the hottest piece of gay ass West of Santa Monica Boulevard at the Alley last night!" "No way, you did?! UP TOP!"

Give it ten years, little ones. Pucker up. You have no idea. "Gay ass" doesn't even BEGIN to describe. And I doubt any of you have ever even SEEN Dawson's Creek, so imagine what it's like to be me, STILL SINGLE after all these nearly twenty four years of life.* I KNOW, RIGHT?! Let me just settle something for you all right now. I did not spend the summer before my senior year of high school sailing from the Cape to the Florida keys with Joshua Jackson aboard the True Love. I spent it hmm...let's see...oh, I remember. I spent it doing this.

*Given the alternative, which of course for the sake of this argument is an unhappy arranged marriage, it's perfectly great.

Liz Makes a Case.

"When I came into work today the ceiling had fallen in the toilet and roaches were falling from the hole. This is why I can't see 2012. LA is so apocalyptic all the time already." - Liz

Hypocrite is to Hollywood

Now that my car is registered in California and my driver's license says California and my health insurance only works in California...

...All I want is an Upper Crust, half Uncommon, half Charles St. pizza picnic on a chilly esplanade.

I'll know I have arrived when I get my Upper Crust flown in to L.A. OR when I get myself flown to Boston to go pick it up on a whim.

This is how it works.

Driving with my dad when I was little, a song he liked would pop up on the radio and he'd tell me exactly how old he was when he bought the album that it was on. I used to think this was just part of his genius and while I still maintain that he's by far the most smartest, the same thing happens to me. And if it happens to both of us, then it must happen to everyone, at least once they get to be old enough to actually have some sense of value and reverence for the passage of time.

What's funny is how random it is, and how you can't make a conscious effort to associate music with any one particular thing. It just happens. Par example, I can't hear 'Toxic' without immediately thinking of pastel jellybeans in 2004, and that Regina Spektor song about the radio reminds me of Halloween last year and what I now recognize to be an uncomplicated, naive sense of possibility, and I usually don't even know about cool bands but Liz made me a CD that had some Modest Mouse song about a dashboard melting and that only reminds me of driving to work through Beverly Hills last year while wondering how the hell I wound up there.

All still apply.

I'll be right here.

The original 1982 version of E.T. featured the NASA agents bearing these huge guns, ready to shoot the kids or something if need be. I know, it seems a little extreme. Gunning down a 10 year old to prevent him from sending his alien friend home just doesn't really feel like the answer to me. Furthermore, since they did have guns, what the heck was stopping them from just shooting the air out of the kids' bike tires? That would have slowed them down for sure.

Anyway, the point is, when the movie was rereleased in 2002 for its 20th anniversary, the guns were digitally removed and replaced with walkie talkies, which, while being a hell of a lot less threatening, also make more sense in terms of the content of the movie. Sure, by all means, communicate with the base unit about the locale of the fugitive children. No need for any children to die here.

It must be nice to have options like that. Now if technology could provide me with a similar opportunity to to turn a few past guns into presently harmless walkie talkies, that would be stellar.

All that aside: this is a movie that makes people care, genuinely, I might add, about a mess of rubber and wires in the turd-y shape of an alien. Say what you will about emotional manipulation, but really? Job well done. I love this movie. Which most people already know, considering the mass influx of messages I got a couple of weeks ago when the E.T. house became threatened by the path of the fires in the Valley. Thanks for the alerts, everyone. I'm doing alright.