Who's going to see SATC2?

Um, not me. I know, I'm probably letting some of you down. But I just can't do it.

I've said this before here, but I wanted the writers to leave the ending with the TV series and not screw up Big's coming around with a movie, especially one where he leaves her at the altar (briefly). Yet, in the name of loyalty I went to see the first movie on opening night and found it mediocre at best.

No more.

I've watched the previews and read every plot summary and review that my eyes have come across in the past week, and all I can say is I'm embarrassed for the Sex and the City franchise.

The TV series was groundbreaking in the way it portrayed single 30-something women. It was smart and thought-provoking and managed to survive the groan-worthy puns Carrie occasionally unleashed and the unreality of a designer shoe-obssessed newspaper columnist (and not one for any of the big three NYC papers) being able to financially survive. It was smart enough that I know plenty of dudes who got into watching the occasional episode, even if they were slow to admit it.

SATC2 appears to take the worst of the TV series -- the unrealities and the puns -- and plays them up while forgetting what made the series so good. I loved how the characters in the series were able to grow through the changes in their lives without the show losing its edge. Now it just seems the characters have had plenty of changes in their lives but no growth. And in this day and age, they're neither breaking any new ground nor representative of how the world/economy has changed in the past few years. And BTW, Stanford and Anthony are such polar opposites and hated each other so much in the series I'm not sure there's anything this movie can do to convince me they'd be getting married now.

'But it's like visiting old friends,' someone said on my Facebook wall when I declared I was skipping SATC2. I have six seasons of DVDs if I need to visit old friends. The disc with 'The Agony and the Ex-tacy' episode is ready to go in my DVD player for whenever I need a dose of SATC.

Maybe I'm overanalyzing here, but I just can't bring myself to spend the $10 (or however much the going rate is these days) to see what I know will disappoint me. I know I'm probably in the minority here of SATC fans, and I won't judge you if you do decide to go see the movie. In fact, if you do, report back here and tell me if I'm totally off base. But, if you're on the fence post, I'd encourage you to skip the movie too. Because the last thing we need is Michael Patrick King mulling a THIRD Sex and the City movie.

And in the mean time, here's a slightly unfair but also kind of funny mockery of SATC2 done in 60 seconds ...

Be in the moment

Last night the Modern Love Machine picked me up for us to head to a local track to run and noticed one of my car's tires was flat. That nail was the straw that almost broke the camel's back.

I've been super stressed out lately, and in a way that's completely of my own doing. I'm in my slow period at work, where my work pace slows down to about 0.1 mile per hour after being 1,000 miles an hour for about nine months straight. I have a lot more free time in which to let my mind wander. And when it wanders, it stresses about things that would never bother me when I'm working 1,000 mph. I stress that I'm not working hard enough. I stress that I don't know what I'm doing in trying to plan a wedding. I stress that it will be months before I feel settled into my new house. I stress about the fact that I can't even move into my house the first week that it's in my possession because I have to go on a stupid work trip. I stress about gaining some of my weight back and struggling to lose it. I stress about the fact that I've been out of town for the past three weekends straight, and I've got three more weekends of being out of town before I get to see my city on a Saturday. I stress about the fact that I'm not even going to be in town for the MLM's birthday and I don't even have a birthday card for him yet.

Most of these worries are not legit at all, they're all a figment of my own brain. Still, I saw that flat tire and thought, 'When the F am I going to take care of this???'

Since then I've cried a few tears, run a couple of miles, declared I was going to hire a wedding planner (which may or may not actually happen), slept, had a doughnut (yeah, that won't help the gaining weight stress) and drank some coffee.

I also got to spend five minutes seeing and talking to one of my best Knoxville friends, whom I haven't seen since before my weekends became consumed with travel. It was only five minutes, but it helped me feel so much better.

And I remembered something Noodles told me right after the MLM and I got engaged: Be in the moment, especially when it's hard to be. It's kind of a vague concept, but this is exactly what she was talking about.

So I'm taking a deep breath right now and am just being. I'm callling it mental yoga. Things will take care of themselves -- I mean with some effort on my part -- but there's nothing to worry about.

Happy Friday :)

To dream the American Dream

In the past couple of months I've managed to all but moved in with the Modern Love Machine in his teeny one-bedroom apartment. Except all my stuff is at the house where I pay rent. If you've been following my blog for a very long time, you might know this has happened to me before (but on a slightly more long-distance basis) and that having my life in one spot and my stuff in another makes a homebody like myself absolutely insane.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that I OWN MY OWN HOUSE BUT HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO MOVE IN FOR THE PAST MONTH AND A HALF AND STILL HAVE TWO MORE WEEKS TO GO BEFORE I CAN. Sorry for the all caps, I just can't do the frustration of that situation justice without them. Really it's going to be more like three weeks before I can move in because I'm having to hit the road for a work assignment that I very much wanted no part of in the first place.

I started hanging out at the MLM's place daily when Lucydog and the roommate's cat started getting snippier with each other and we moved her in with the MLM and the Pennypup. That means the four of us spend all our free time at his apartment instead of spending any of it at the house where I pay rent.

Then the oven at the house where I pay rent stopped working (in the kitchen where there was once an indoor waterfall), so I basically gave up eating at the house where I pay rent. I just started grocery shopping with the MLM and leaving all my groceries at his place. That hasn't been a problem except I can't seem to make myself cook in anyone else's kitchen besides my own. I have to know where things are. I have to know what's on hand. I have to know how that saucepan with the warped bottom is going to perform over medium-high heat.

This isn't a gripe about hanging out with the MLM or his apartment (although the drive to and fro is a little longer than I care for). I love him so dearly and love spending the time with him and am forever grateful for him taking Lucydog and essentially me in (not to mention it's been good practice for the "as long as we both shall live" bit we're going to get ourselves into in exactly 13 months).

This is just me needing all of my stuff and my dog and my life in one place for my own sanity. And needing to be closer to work. And my clothes. And the YMCA. And a TV with cable. And a kitchen that has all my cookware and cookbooks. And an oven that works.

RIP, Single Ladies

I am now officially declaring the Single Ladies fad dead and deceased because of the super skeevy video I've posted below of some 7-year-old dancers slutting it up to our favorite Beyonce song. Single Ladies has had a great life, with a heelarious spoof by Justin Timberlake and a shout out from President Obama when he demonstrated his own hand-flipping ability, but now it's time to bid it farewell (and I do so with great sadness) because it's just gone too far.

BTW, the Modern Love Machine and I have finally gotten around to digesting the first season of Glee (and it is delightful), and I finally saw the episode that involved a whole lotta Single Ladies, and it was spectacular. I mean, it blended my love of Beyonce and football. What more can I ask for?

And now, prepare to feel icky:



I'm not accepting nominations for the next Single Ladies fad. Until then, here's Beyonce's latest. It ain't bad (and it's sure a hell of a lot better than that Telephone song with Gaga, which I really wanted to like.)

"Why Don't You Love Me" - Beyoncé from Beyoncé on Vimeo.

And now for a word from the Modern Love Machine

The Modern Love Machine asked one day if he was allowed to blog here at The Modern Gal, and I said, 'Of course! I'd be thrilled if you wrote regularly at the MG.' And then he claimed he had no idea what to blog about. Sheesh. Amateurs.

So instead of come up with his own idea, he asked his students to submit a list of interview questions to him, and he has graciously answered them here so you can all get a chance to know him better. Keep in mind he teaches Algebra and Geometry at an inner-city school, so, yeah.

Here we go ...

Q. Why no changy my sucker?
A: Because you don't know how to spell change.

Q. If you could travel the world were would you go or visit?
A: There are so many places that I would head off to that I'm not sure where I would start. Spain, New Zealand, Japan, Italy, Germany, Vatican City.

Q. Have you ever...been skydiving?
A. No. I'd like to say that it would be a blast, and I would love to do it. I have a feeling though that once I was up there it would be hard for me to jump out of the plane.

Q. Who's your favorite Marvel hero or villain?
A. I don't read comic books anymore, but when I was a kid I read a lot of Spiderman and really enjoyed it b/c he was a nerd before he became Spiderman. I always hoped that I would get bitten by a radioactive spider and get those powers too. It didn't happen.

Q. Why do you teach at XXXXX High School?
A. In reality they are the first ones who offered me a job. Now it's b/c I love teaching here.

Q. Have your got drunk at a party?
A. I assume you mean have I ever gotten drunk at a party. The answer to that question is yes.

Q. Why are you bald?
A. Technically I'm not bald, I have a receding hair line. So I'm in the process of going bald. To answer your question though I would assume it's genetics. Also the Modern Gal loves my hair, or lack there of. (Editor's note: True story)

Q. What kind of music do you listen to?
A. I really enjoy rock, pop, 80's, 90's alternative, 90-2000's rap, old school country, and various other musical stylings. I've really been into Ok Go, Them Crooked Vultures, and The Beatles of late.

Q. Why is the ACT so friggin hard?
A. If it was easy then everyone would be able to go to Harvard and they probably wouldn't like that.

Q. How old was you when you first got drunk?
A. I believe I was a freshman in college, so 18.

Q. Do you party?
A. All the time. My life is one big party.

Q. What inspired you to become a teacher?
A. My parents told me that I had 4 years to graduate from college and then they were going to stop paying for it. I picked something I was good at (Math) and kind of wanted to do (teach). That plus I had an amazing high school calculus teacher by the name of Mr. Stelmaszak. That guy could teach math to a stick.

Q. Was you bald in high school?
A. No I were not.

Q. What's your name?
A. Bill Liverwurst

Q. What is the meaning of life?
A. I'm not really sure.

Q. Did you party in high school?
A. I did not party a single bit. I was a huge nerd in high school and was often found in my garage with my other nerdy friends playing nerd games.

Q. What does parabola mean?
A. The curve formed by the set of points in a plane that are all equally distant from both a given line (called the directrix) and a given point (called the focus) that is not on the line.

Q. I heard freshman year that you were an atheist is it true, just curious?
A. No that is not true. I haven't picked a major yet and am still pursuing my options.

Q. Next time you get candy can you get chocolate?
A. I can, although I do believe I went out and bought dum-dum suckers instead. Chocolate is expensive and I don't make that much.

Q. Can you get me a soda from the teachers machine? I'm really thirsty!
A. No. I'm mean like that.

Q. Who's your favorite musical artist?
A. Of all time I would have to say Queen. Right now though Ok Go rocks my socks off.

Q. Are you a morning pooper?
A. I'm a pooper. Like most guys I enjoy my poops and don't like to rush them if I need to, which can often happen in the morning. However sometimes you just go to go.

Q. If you were a fruit what would you be?
A. A lime b/c I would go great with a G&T or tequila.

Q. Have you ever fight at any school?
A. I used to get beat up all the time in middle school. I haven't been in a fight since then.

Q. Are you two faces with student?
A. I generally try to treat everyone the same, but I will admit if you're an asshole to me on a regular basis I probably won't treat you the same as everyone else.

Q. What's one thing you want to do before you die?
A. I really want to see one of those billboards that shows you what the Powerball jackpot is change numbers. Not sure why, but I think that would be kind of cool.

Natural disasters can be funny. Except that they're not.

Oh my goodness, modern friends, I am emotionally tapped out. So many major things have been going on -- both good and bad -- that to say I've been stressed out lately is kind of an understatement. Who knew that buying a house, preparing to move, getting engaged, working a stressful job and watching a natural disaster engulf your former hometown would be taxing on the emotions?

Yeah, on that last little bit about the natural disaster engulfing my former hometown ... Nashville is underwater. Or at least, it was underwater for about four days. Fortunately the waters are starting to subside. The Modern Love Machine and I made a trip there this weekend to catch a Jimmy Buffett concert with my family (don't knock it 'til you try it ... with beer or tequila, preferably) and give our respective families time to hang and bond and become one.

The hanging and bonding and becoming one didn't really happen. It started to rain late Friday night. And it did.not.stop. Imagine the hardest rain you've ever been through. And then imagine that going on for two and half days. I've experienced a hurricane in Florida, and this was very much the same without the gale-force winds. By Sunday night, Nashville had received 13 inches of rain. Let me put that into context for you. It was twice the amount of the previous record for a two-day rainfall. It was over 25 percent of the city's annual rainfall, and Nashville isn't exactly a dry climate.

The city also has a fairly large river running through it -- the Cumberland River, a tributary of the slightly better known Tennessee River. The Cumberland crested 12 feet over flood stage, swamping the honky tonk district, the Grand Ole Opry, Opryland, parts of the Tennessee Titans' LP Field and the downtown hockey arena. It also has countless smaller rivers and creeks that surround it, and those rivers and creeks have taken out thousands of homes. I think the death toll is up to about 24.

Need visuals? Look at these photos. Or watch this classroom (yes, classroom), float down Interstate 24 (yes, an Interstate)

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It's been a little depressing to watch.

But, as with most situations there's been some humor. There's a gigantic mall that's essentially underwater. There was a restaurant there called the Aquarium Restaurant, where one would dine among gigantic fish tanks filled with exotic saltwater fish. Those fish, sadly, drowned in the fresh waters of the overrun Cumberland River. Except for one kind of fish which CAN survive in fresh water -- the piranhas. Who are now swimming around the mall's concourses.

Or this:



We barely made out of town on Sunday afternoon because all the interstates but one were closed. I'm guessing my old townhouse sustained some damage because of its proximity to one of the flooded creeks. I still have plenty of friends (and the Modern Inlaws) in Nashville. Most of them were spared, but they're all hurting. If you can find it in your hearts to donate a little money for the flood relief (because trust me, this city needs it -- this was a once-every-500-years kind of thing), here and here are two suggestions of where to do so.