tuckergurl

Trouble the Water

I wrote a longer entry about this film at Engine Feed, my work blog, but it bears repeating. See this film! The trailer is below. (Random side note: In the longer entry I wanted to say that the US government was sexist, classist and racist but I didn't feel like I could that there. So I am doing that here.)

Katy Perry Silliness

I just don't get the song "I Kissed A Girl".  I mean, I get it but I think it's sort of dumb.  And I also don't really see why she has a career from it.  Not to hate.  Her cd/album/mp3s (what do we call this now?) could be great.  This song just mystifies me. 

Apparently it mystifies my friend, Giulia Rozzi too.  She wrote a great Huffington Post blog entry about it.  My fave part here is where Giulia discusses Katy Perry's parents being worried that she is now gay (so ridiculous):

So Mr. and Mrs. Hudson I don't think your darling daughter is gay (I mean her lyrics are sorta gay, as in lame, not lesbian gay). Your darling daughter is a smart songstress who knew that singing about girl kissing would knock her into Billboards Top Ten. Yes, one would think that after years of seeing "straight" ladies locking lips (ie: nearly every hot tub scene on MTV's Real World turns into a reenactment of that infamous pool scene from Wild Things) America would be desensitized to the whole "girl on girl" novelty, but it's not and it probably never will be. (Oh how I'd love to hear a song by a totally straight male musician called "I Frenched a Dude").

Honestly, this song just makes me feel old.  It makes me get why our parents used to say, "I don't get kids these days."  And that sort of sucks.

 

Tuckergurl From July to August

I found this clever thing on the internet called a Wordle.  "Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide."  I'm not sure I really get it but it looks cool.  You can put in any text and it takes the works and creates an image from the words.  To see it in all it's glory, go here.  I chose to take my blog over the past few months.  I love that coffee and Ryan are in there.  I love that hungry and movie are the larger words.  Create one yourself.  It's fun and extrapolate all the meaning you'd like.

Mamma Mia

This week Mamma Mia because the highest grossing movie musical of all time! It just took the title from Hairspray.

I'm still not seeing it.

Ryan and Rachel are back!

I heart Ryan Gosling. 

I heart Rachel McAdams. 

When they were together I was happy. 

When they were apart I was sad. 

Now they're together again and I feel some strange sense of joy and satisfaction.  This photo is of them smooching at a cafe in Toronto yesterday.  (All I have to say is that is sucks to be a celebrity.  You can't even have brunch with your girlfriend without paparazzi.  Still, I wouldn't have this info without the paparazzi so ... I am going to stop over thinking this and just bask in the glow of their love.)

The Jane Austen Book Club

I was surprised by how much I lived this movie.  I haven't seen a chick flick in a long time that I related to.  Yes, there are some embarrasingly cheesy moments but I just gave into it. 

So, you should Netflix it or you can watch it on YouTube.  Some person uploaded the whole thing in 12 parts!  Man, people have a lot of time of their hands.  Below is Part One.

(Update: I looked over this post and saw what I thought was a typo. I said "I was surprised by how much I lived this movie." What I meant to write was "I was surprised by how much I loved this movie." But actually I think the first sentance was right. The Maria Bello character has some shades of me. I don't want to give too much away but sometimes, I too make myself a supporting character. I'll just leave it at that. And I might be a little demanding when it comes to dudes. You'll get it when you see the movie. Also, I love Jane Austen and have read all of her novels. Pride and Prejudice is my favorite. I am curious to read some of her novels again to see if, in my old age, another book might speak to me in a new way.)

Elegy

I liked this movie. Forgot to mention it. It's an adaptation of a Philip Roth story. It is about an older man, Ben Kingsley, freaked out by commitment who falls in love with a younger woman, Penelope Cruz. Philip Roth likes to tell this story. The protagonist also reminded me of a writer I like a lot, Hanif Kureishi.

Progress?

Originally uploaded by RYN TMRW

I am hungry.  I’ve been hungry for days.  Yes there are things that I can eat: strawberries, brown rice, whatever.  But none of it is what I want.  I’m hungry.

To be honest, even red velvet cake wouldn’t suffice.  I am that kind of hungry that no matter what you give me, it wouldn’t be enough.  It wouldn’t be right.

I’ve been doing Weight Watchers for almost six months.  I’ve lost 35 pounds.  I am proud of myself.  But that high is gone.  I’m long past my 10% short-term goal. I have another goal of 10% more but it’s not the same.

I was really motivated before my surgery.  I wanted to focus on something concrete, something I could control that was good for me.  I was freaked out that something bad was going to happen to me during my surgery.  So I chose to focus on weight loss and it worked. 

My surgery has come and gone and though I get random cramps every now and then, I am fine.  I am grateful, really.

So now, almost two months later, I am just hungry.  The smaller I get, the less I can eat if I want to continue to lose weight.  At first my appetite was pretty small.  That was nice.  But now I am hungry again.

Yoga was my thing for a while.  Now I am bored by it.  I am not as flexible as I hoped to be after semi-regular practice.  Though my stamina has improved 150% I am still using blocks for almost every pose.  And the place I take yoga at sometimes can be a bit too filled with LuluLemon wearing cutie girls.

I have so much more to lose.  And I do feel like I need to lose it.  Some have said to stop but as sweet a sentiment as that is, I am still overweight.  That’s just a fact.  I’m not fine with it anymore.  So I guess that’s progress.

Many people in WW get here.  They talk about a cocky stage where you feel like you’ve accomplished something big and you start to get sloppy. For me, it started small.  I stopped writing things down and I was still losing.  Then I stopped counting coffee all together though I’ve been having two cups a day ...

I wrote this entry a week ago in my journal.  It had no real ending so I am adding this one.  My birthday was August 10th so maybe I wrote this a few days before that.  I was feeling much better than this entry so I never typed it up.  Then this morning, I had a setback at WW, my first one.  I gained weight.  This is not a major tragedy but it stung.  Yes, it was my birthday and I just enjoyed myself.  I was entitled.  Still, a blow.  How can people gain that much in one week?  (Yes I am being dramatic but only by taking this seriously am I going to achieve my goal.  Stay with me here.)  There are a variety of reasons for my weight gain, most of my doing, most just simply biology but it was a blow.  I am trying to pep myself up about this. 

Losing weight has been a major time consuming thing (as you can see from my lack of blog entries).  So even when I have weeks where I am doing less than usual, I am still doing more than I ever used to.  Typing this entry gave you/me a window into where I was last week and how the “mysterious” weight gain might have occurred.  I am going to stop thinking about this now and enjoy this pretty Saturday afternoon.  Thanks for reading/listening!

Man On Wire

At work I always say that my perfect documentary is 72 minutes long. I always love films in that range. Anything longer and I am definately squirming in my seat. Most documentaries drag something out. There is always one section where you think, "I get it. I don't need anymore info." So it is true feat if I watch a 90 minute film and at then end wish it were longer. Man on Wire does this.

A little blurb about the film taken from The Tribeca Film Festival site:

On the afternoon of August 6, 1974, an international group of conspirators, disguised as construction workers and armed with fake IDs, snuck into the World Trade Center to perpetrate what would be called "the artistic crime of the century." The following morning, a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit walked on a cable strung between the Twin Towers-not once but eight times over a 45-minute period. After six years of obsessive planning, Petit became an overnight sensation. One of the arresting officers called him "a tightrope dancer-because you couldn't call him a walker." What drove Philippe Petit to risk his life to perform the most jaw-dropping wire walk in history?

This story is a gold mine and every one in the film is really funny and charismatic. This clearly helps. I had so many questions and I liked having questions. Sometimes I am just blown away by what human beings can accomplish. I am blown away by people's ability to dream, to think out the box. Check it out if you can.