review

i really loved annie hall.  and i think even in my worst moments, i'm not as neurotic as woody OR diane.  (or does that just mean i AM ultra anxious and uptight?  isn't it long purported that the loony people believe they're NOT crazy, and the lucid amongst us fear unnecessarily for their sanity?)  

my favorite line was, "You know, I don't think I could take a mellow evening because I - I don't respond well to mellow. You know what I mean? I have a tendency to - if I get too mellow, I - I ripen and then rot, you know."

and as for the grilled (or in the end, baked) stuffed apples, it actually turned out ok!  usually when i cook it is a waste of money and time.  the toiled o'er ingredients are as a paper airplane, against all odds, colliding with a firework mid-eruption.  and sizzles all the way to the unfriendly ground.  but this was a redemptive cooking experience, and i'm all a'twitter over it.

2 firsts

fire water. i, meredith kathryn eaton, for the first time in the 5 years i've been legally able, purchased wine.  finally, a reason for my drivers license to say "AGE 21 IN 2003" in a large stripe.  ah but irvine stake members, before you get on your blueteeth to spread the word, let it be known: it's for cooking. all the fermented and inherently evil particles shall be zapped right out in the grilling process involving some stuffed apples.  this recipe is something i intend to kick into the next century on the morrow.

why haven't i seen a woody allen movie yet?  i love neurotic people.  neurotic people are the best.  have you met my family?  have you met me?

i think annie hall and i are going to be fast friends.

happy labor day.

my gift to you:

a blog of beauty is born

sometimes lindsey freaks me out with her knowledge of movie lines. i thought i was good, but she could wipe the floor with any movie fanatic any day.

she has taken her blogging chisel and a big ol' phatty hammer and hacked out her own little piece of internet this very day, and has invited me to contribute (among some other lucky ducks).

i think many of us could have entire conversations purely borrowing bits of movie genius.

i think of the screenwriters who toil and suffer and ache for their craft, bent over their computers until the sun peeks o'er the mountain tops, hoping for some director to take a chance on it and, hopefully, not violate it to pieces in the sell-out attempts.

i think it should make them very proud to know their ideas become so well loved and used.

and now i present, fuel for the movie quoter fire:

(drum rollllllllll....curtain opeeeennnnnnss)

http://yuleuloo.blogspot.com/

see she's so good at this i don't even know what movie that URL is from.

the reason why he's shakin in his boots.

do you want to know why obama is really nervous?

because he knows i'm voting for the first time this year*. and he knows i'm completely unimpressed with his parthenon backdrop from last night.

we think he's going to start making house calls, bringing me turkish delight to win me over.

*i have really tried to vote before, i have great excuses as to why i haven't, but then, excuses are in the likeness of belly buttons, and also "my guy" has won every time without my vote, so all's well that ends well.

who am i?

"babeldeee rama doo del hobbanaa twinkeldah -- mo mo!"

who am i and what did i say?

give up?

jesse jackson! duh! and i said, "i'm going to go buy a twinkie to munch on during obama's speech -- a man gets hungry!"

visit

this week sally the sarah has been in the house. i just get a kick out of my sister, never a kick to her. that would be rude.

on my mission she'd make up conversations we could have had, email them to me for p-day, and this was the cause for many a tico looking over my way and thinking in the internet cafes, "my, but gringas do laugh boisterously." she's plucky, she's hard-working, she's frugal, she's a gem. let me give you some visuals:

she's good with kids. and look at heh skin! who does heh hair?

she's snuggly.

her hair blows in the winds when she helps give us a tour of versailles.
not everyone can pull that off.

but after all that, sorry to disappoint fellas,

but she's pretty much taken.

this week we've been getting yogurtland every night like the miserable addicts we are, watching arrested development like the miserable addicts we are, and it's been a grand old time. i happen to be very pleased with this week (except for the fact that i hate my job with the fire of a thousand suns). tomorrow the family is going to an angels game, and i am pretty sure that my life is so basically perfect!

spirit fingers!

quick fix

my friend says if you're having a bad day you need to just go buy a new lipstick (unless you're a dude).

i say if you're having a bad day you need to go buy a new haircut.
nat, you are a genius.

An afternoon of Merzy

for radiohead day i took off the whole afternoon to avoid traffic and play in los angeleeeees. the getty museum is one of my favorite things about southern california, and i was itching to go.
i would have taken these pictures if a) someone had given me my own jet in time and b) if it hadn't been closed on monday. woops.

so i had about 4 hours to kill in santa monica.

hmmm.

basically the driving push for me to throw down mucho dinero i don't have and get an iphone is for the GPS system. i am, most of the time, lost. i do my homework, but usually the navigational fairies forsake me, and this usually causes smoke to pour out of my ears, as i hate to watch my gas tank dial go down while flipping endless -- and usually illegal -- u turns. so i stuck to streets i knew like sepulveda and santa monica blvd until i got tips on where to go. it was an afternoon of merzy time. LA has some extras. i saw 3 transvestites, 2 orthodox jews, and hey, you don't see that in irvine very often.

i window shopped to my heart's content; my quota is indeed filled until late november. i finished my little book club book. i ate at a little french cafe and there learned i don't like soft tofu but i LOVE seaweed. i mostly kept thinking of how i would probably not be able to do this again on a monday afternoon for quite a while. an afternoon free and clear and all to myself? yes please!where the streets have no naaaaame
this is the store where they sold "team aniston" and "team jolie" shirts back in the day when brangelina was still a scandal and not an icon of brady bunch philanthropy. i'm not one of those "uh, wealth disGUSTS me" people, but i did see a dress there that had no discernible shape to it and cost $550.
i just wanted to look around and pretend i was at versailles. but this german accented woman came out and said i could only look if i were a buyer for myself or a client. i told her i was a buyer by profession and she asked, "what are you looking for?" "......a statue......" and then i snapped away like i was very directed and knew this was just the one that my very rich client wanted. then i sneaked out when she wasn't looking so she wouldn't ask for my card or something.

good day, LA!

+1 to Radiohead of the World

-the opening band's lead singer does his big ol' bring in the fun introduction, "heeey los angel-eeees! heaven or hell?"

huh?

Radiohead of the World

last night peter and i went to radiohead at the hollywood bowl. i knew it was going to be horn-swoggling fun, but there were some delights even i hadn't anticipated.

i've now learned for myself that only at a radiohead concert can you:

-hear the featured artists "get over themselves and play their biggest freaking hit, karma police."

-buy a shirt (green in eco make-up and yet gray in human eye absorption) that says, "you used to be alright, what happened to you?" i would definitely wear that on a date with michael jackson...if he ever asked me on one...and if i were ever loopy enough to accept....)i was going to wear it to work today but it smelled kind of funny...see next....

-sit in, and i mean no exaggeration to befall this sentence, a thick cloud of pot the entire time. hold on, i'll be right back, i gotta go buy another bag of doritos. ooooh, and maybe some twinkies....

-have your mind blow over the lack of muffin tops. it laughs in the face of the long honored tradition that is attending a concert and spotting oozing amounts of people who prefer to ooze out of their pants. what, don't radiohead fans like to eat?

-see your very own fist fight after the concierto. i hadn't seen one since 8th grade!

-spot an RULDS2? couple. this was done after careful analysis and deductive reasoning. young, fleece (for him), 3 sizes too small shade top (for her), BYU bling, peaceful of countenance, short hair and clean-shaven. if we're going into details i'd have to also say they hail from texas or south jordan. i don't know how i know, i just know.

-be sucked into a vortex of high school nostalgia when they play the song from baz' romeo and juliet.

-see a girl whose outfit involved items i'd never thought could be clothing. her demeanor reminded me of luna lovegood from harry potter, and when she and her posse reached their seats' row she turned her head ever so slightly toward me and said in an ethereal voice, "tight."

-peter adds this one: "and the domino-like phenomenon of one person standing up in the front and then hundreds behind him / her have to stand up in order to see the stage." and wouldn't you know it, there were a few people a few rows ahead who drank, oh i'd guess, 5 million redbulls before the show, so they were shakin' what their mamas gave them like ravers from 1997 from start to finish.

the concert was genius. absolute genius. i intend to share a better slice in a moment. but there was a dollop of whipped cream for the evening's end:

because parking was stacked, we weren't exactly sprinting to the car after their 2nd encore finished. we sat to people watch, as there is no better circumstance under which to participate in said activity. right in front of us, dispersing leaflets to the masses, was this dude. he was saying to everyone, "halloween! lie to your girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband about what you're wearing! halloween! lie to your girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband about what you're wearing!" after a few rounds he'd start speeding it up, and then he'd slur it and trip over his words...and then he wouldn't finish the ad campaign. he'd kinda let it drizzle like a "niner" and then start over. the tragic hilarity of it is he spotted us watching him and he came over and half-whispered, "i know it sounds crazy, but i say it and they take the flier." i loved the dude justifying his chosen path of employment. meet halloween guy:radiohead, i salute you.

gettin away with it

we all know those people who can, with minimal output, get away with nearly everything. i am not one of those.

but there is my dear friend alyson. in college she would run out of her cell phone minutes by mid-month. one of those chatty types that's always taking care of everyone and would therefore plow through her contracted allowance quicker than you can say "bob's your uncle."

no minutes? no problem! she'd call t-mobile customer service and, if necessary, hang up and redial until she would get a dude on the phone. using her flirtatious wiles and energetic charm she'd paint a picture of why she used up her minutes, always striking an empathy cord and winning 1000 or 1500 extra minutes for the month, a la gratis. this is just one instance in a series of many (ask her about getting her name legally changed at the DMV last week even though she forgot her marriage license.)

there's my old friend matt. he had a really magnetic personality and would just kinda look at people in a way that sang, "hey. how are you? i love you. you're my friend." he would get away with everything, and besides that, hooked up with loads of free stuff.

there was pot-head mcgee who was in my history class junior year of high school. his scholastic routine consisted of:

I. swagger into class
II. sit down at seat in back
III. allow head to thunk onto desk, padded by thick crop of unruly hair
IV. sleep through entire 90 minute class (we had block scheduling)
V. wake up when bell sounds, clean up lake o' drool, swagger to next class
VI. repeat

no one ever had beef with this. nary a word was said in objection by the teacher.

i stumbled into class one morning after pulling an all-nighter with lanz finishing a project, and teacher started plugging in the VCR for a video. cha-ching! i decided, for the first time, just this once i was going to see how life is on the other side. i layed my little heed down on the desk. it was there not 10 seconds before mrs. history teacher called out in a chirpy voice, "meeeeredith, you need to stay with us, here." what, mr. fuzzy top over there hasn't been conscious for a moment's discussion on the rebel army, and i'm not allowed to vacation from a documentary narrated by jane seymore about stalin? jeopardy sean connery from SNL said it best when he said, "it's unjust."

i wonder what in my chemical make up seems to preclude me from the "gettin away with it" club.

i've tried. oh but i've tried.

in high school my choir toured in new york. we were with 2 other high schools from orange county, and on the last big apple night our hotel was drenched in the scent of teenage ne'er do welliness. i could describe many of the shenanigans, but i'll let this single one paint a sufficient picture: boys from fountain valley high school wore snorkel gear and towel-capes. are your minds reeling yet? i thought so.

i had to return a dress i'd borrowed to a girl i'd met from fountain valley (actually, THE alyson i speak of up above!) and it was "lights out" time, but i knew that half of the hotel was blatantly disregarding this fact; why not i? my friend jamie and i 007-ed our way to alyson's hotel room, not spotting a single gestapo chaperon. we dropped off the dress, chatted for a minute, flirted with the audacious and dreamy towel-caped capers (they'd written their hotel room numbers on my hand earlier so we'd know where to visit...oh my butterflies!)

jamie and i were about to return 5 flights up to our hotel room, and i suggested we take the super-sleuth stair well. jamie whined that our legs would fall off if we did that; the elevator would be quicker. "but mr. messenger [our very formidable choir teacher] could be on the elevator!" "no he won't meredith, it'll be fine. it'll be much faster this way."

we go one flight up. one flight, and ding! the elevator doors open, and in walks mr. messenger, with gamma rays of penalty shooting from his eyeballs. it helped ever so much that we were the only 3 on the elevator. that's all i'll say there.

no gettin away with it.

until! until!!! friday night i drove to vegas. i feel in the year i've been home from rosta cica i have taken so many, bordering on too many, road trips. i'm never in one place very long at all (don't get too excited, i vacillate between only about 3 places), and while i enjoy the visits and travels on ever so many levels, my accident/ticket/tire blow probability is on a constant spike. i already got 1 ticket last month, which i haven't even gotten around to paying yet, so imagine my fervent annoyance when a copper pulls out of nowhere and flags me down when i was apparently going 93 mph. blast and wretch. i went to my happy place (a lake house with calorie free brownies and a single, mormon, hetero rufus wainwright) and breathed deeply and braced myself for the verbal lashing and promise of a personalized astronomical fee.

the cop asked for all my materials, asked where i was headed, and how fast i believed i was going. there was compliance but no hope of mercy.

he went off to run my info through the system. i looked in my rear view mirror to find that 2 other cop cars were behind his. what, did he call for back up because he took one look at me and noted the probable num-chuck skills? he returned with a big toothy grin, handed me my stuff, and let me off the hizzle!

i could have kissed him. i didn't but i could have.

i got away with SOMETHING!

with david sedaris making his grand debut in my life this year, plus getting away with something, plus seeing radiohead last night (post to come) my life just might have peaked!

you know you're obsessed with blogging when:

because i'm paranoid that i'll lose my spanish, often i'll translate in my head sentences that i say, are said to me, or things i think. or movie lines.

i realized yesterday that somewhere along the lines, out of deep necessity due to frequent use, i invented a verb, and have conjugations in all tenses.

blogar: to blog

yo - blogo
tu - blogas
el/ella/usted - bloga

nosotros - blogamos

ellos/ellas/ustedes - blogan

preterit

yo - blogue

tu - blogaste

el/ella/usted - blogo

nosotros - blogamos

ellos/ellas/ustedes - blogaron

imperfect

yo - blogaba

tu - blogabas

el/ella/usted - blogaba

nosotros - blogabamos

ellos/ellas/ustedes - blogaban

and so forth. of course these could already exist in the espanish version of google. but the point is when i realized i talk about blogs and the act of blogging enough to merit my own creation in my other language, i didn't know which adjective was more appropriate: pathetic or passionate?

and a lovely monday to you!