Ok, having a small amount of trouble breathing... Read THIS! Holy cow. Someone is listening to my hopes and dreams - the Extended Edition versions of "Fellowship of the Ring" and "Two Towers" re-released in theatres, and THEN, an ALL DAY marathon of the three movies back-to-back-to-back. Whew. Merry Christmas to me.

Old Man Update: I'm getting emails left and right saying "So, what's up with the old guy who's working on the back porch? You talked about him for a couple of days and then... nothing. What's up with that?" Ok, no one has actually emailed me asking about the old man, but I'm going to talk about him anyway. Yeah, he's still here - A WEEK LATER. Actually, he didn't show up this morning, but he has been coming every morning (typically between 8 and 9am), doing some work, adding to the hellacious mess that is the back half of our apartment, and then leaving without a thought to the unbelievable mess that is the back half of our apartment. Honestly, it's completely disgusting. There is a THICK layer of some mixture of sawdust, old moldy wood, drywall dust, and run-of-the-mill dust covering every surface in our kitchen. Thing is, I'm 99% sure that when this guy FINALLY finishes his "work" he will shut the door behind him and never look back at the HUGE mess he has made. WE will be stuck cleaning up after his ass. Yesterday I asked him how much longer he would be and I'm pretty sure he said, "Two more days." Well, since he didn't show up today, I'm assuming that now means he should be done on Sunday. He'd better be done on Sunday. It's just been incredibly inconvenient. I know that may sound petty, but I like having free access to our CLEAN kitchen without having to constantly push aside (and then push back) a bookcase. If we lived in a cool, old castle it might be fun in a "where-does-the-secret-passage-lead?" kind of way, but here it's just a pain in the butt. Plus, I'm REALLY sick of having the cats' litterbox in the bathroom. The feeling of stepping on cat litter when getting out of the shower is nasty - it makes me want to jump right back in and scrub the bottoms of my feet raw. Just ick.

So, "Boy Meets Boy". Well, I may hold out on writing about it until next week when we see the finale. Right now, let me just say that I'm intrigued. Oh, and I was totally duped. The previews for this week showed the (hideously over-madeup) hostess saying, "ONE of the guys is straight." Well, naturally I assumed that that meant that only ONE of the last SIX guys was straight. When they started the champagne glass ceremony without showing her say these words to James I immediately yelled out, "Darn! Franklin is straight!" And, seeing the previews for the final episode, my feelings about the show are swinging back to how I initially felt about the premise: How freakin' dare they? What a really awful "twist" - why do some of the guys need to be straight? When we got see a glimpse at Audra bawling screaming out, "This is BULL***T!", I really sympathized with her and James. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised to see James, next week, saying, "How dare you do this to me? I'm out of here..." At the very least, I hope that they have a follow up show so that we can see what James really felt about the whole experience. We'll see next week.

My schoolmate Monica and her girlfriend were over watching "Queer Eye" and "Boy Meets Boy" this week. To label Monica's girlfriend "butch" is a bit of an understatement. Honestly, she's way more masculine than I will EVER be. During both shows she kept saying, "I just can't stand effeminate men." Hmm. Think about that one for a second...

So, we saw "American Splendor" at the free screening the other night. Yep... we saw it... I didn't really get what all of the fuss was about. It was good, but, ultimately, I really wasn't all that engaged by this guy's story, I thought the performaces bordered on parody (which, I suppose could've been the point...), and it didn't strike me as being as "revolutionary" as I had read it was. Things really can be over-hyped. OH, and, yes, the screening was filled with the usual losers. I remembered, though, that there was once a time when I considered it a badge of honor that I went to ALL of the free screeings that IU had my freshman year (which included Jamie Lee Curtis in "Blue Steel", and that gem in Travolta's crown "Look Who's Talking"...). Heck, I didn't know very many people, I didn't have any money, and had most of my nights free. Ok, I was a loser...