furthering my self-loathing

“The Bachelorette.”

I watch it and I hate myself.

Quite honestly, I want to fling myself off a bridge every Monday night now. But after “The Bachelorette” is over. I blame it on my sister-in-law because she expects me to be up-to-date on these things so we can discuss, you know, the deep issues the show brings to light.

Like the f-o-o-t fetish.

Yup. Dude on the show has a major f-o-o-t fetish and he’s been FREAKING me out for three weeks now. That’s all he can talk about.

“I need to see her feet.”

Uh-oh.

“I can’t decide how I feel about her until I see her feet.”

Seriously?

“If her feet aren’t cute, I’m outta here. I can’t go on.”

Drama queen.

“Ohhhhhh … those are some niiiiiice feet.”

I feel icky.

“I need to touch those feet. I gotta GET with those feet.”

Uhm …. I’m confused.

“Those feet are like a 9.5 out of 10. Change the polish to a nice mango, and it’s a 10.”

Oh, okay. I’m less confused now. “A nice mango”? You’re gay.

But thank the blessed baby Jesus, F-o-o-t Fetish Dude got dumped last night and I really think he was more disappointed about losing her feet than losing her.

Although here I am, judging F-o-o-t Fetish Dude while I’m watching it all, so I’m pretty sure this makes me some kind of accomplice to a f-o-o-t fetish and means I need to rethink, well, everything basically.

Please forgive me for watching this show, talking about f-o-o-t fetishes, and for this entire post. I don’t feel good about any of it. I really don’t.

(Dashes in the word “foot” added thanks to Cullen’s comment. Don’t really want f-o-o-t fetish Googlers showing up here. Thanks for having my back, Cullen.)

meryl streep, steve martin, and alec baldwin

So I happened to watch 5 minutes of “Entertainment Tonight” the other night — a show I never watch, NEVER, because I have Mary Hart issues and because, eh, I just don’t tend to watch these kinds of shows. But I happened to click on at precisely the right moment. Apparently, Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, and Alec Baldwin are filming some as-yet-unnamed romantic comedy by the writer of “Something’s Gotta Give,” a movie I loved so that bodes well. Besides, it’s Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, and Alec Baldwin, for Petesakes.

So “ET” is on set — minus Mary Hart, thank God — interviewing the three of them together and it is just impossible. Total mayhem. They simply cannot behave themselves and it’s killing me. They will not answer questions seriously. I mean, Steve Martin is notorious on that score and that’s part of why I love him, but somehow, pair him with Alec Baldwin and it’s hopeless. They are lost to civilized society, basically, and refuse to bow down to the niceties of an interview. Meryl Streep is dying, having to sit between them, red-faced with weepy laughter. So so funny. They have some bit between them on the set involving “memory” songs — songs like “Unforgettable” and “Try to Remember” which they proceed to sing as if they cannot for the life of them remember anything whatsoever. Streep squinches her face; Martin goes blank; Baldwin rubs his chin; they are all spontaneously looking off in different directions. “Trrrry to rememmmber ……” Hahahaha. It is insane. A five-second moment and I am undone. I’m easy, I guess. The visual of their sudden collective Alzheimer’s is just too much for me. I am gone. Brilliant and stupid, which is one of the very best kinds of brilliant.

But my favorite question and answer:

So, you three, any guilty pleasures as far as food?

There is a pause. They are all considering it with great care and THIS question they do answer, oh so very seriously. Of course.

Martin: Celery …

Baldwin: Melba Toast ….

Streep: …. Anchovy Paste.

Perfect timing. Perfect inflection. Completely unrehearsed. Genius. I keep reliving it and it makes me laugh all over again.

The movie is so far called, well, “Untitled Nancy Meyers Project.” Frankly, I don’t care what it is. I am there.

Oh, and happy birthday to Meryl Streep! Sixty years old today and still gorgeous, still a cinematic goddess. LOVE her.

“best thing ever” days away!

Okay. Wimbledon started TODAY at The All-England Tennis Club, pippa. So that means that The Best Thing Ever: England will be under way within mere days. For anyone new to the blog and therefore new to the game, there’s a dizzy — and ditzy — explanation of the game here.

So. To give you some time to think of what your entry will be, I’m giving you this year’s theme now.

Ready?

This year’s theme:

The Best Thing Ever England: British Movies.

Meaning: Movies made in Britain or about British people or both. Basically, I’m not going to be too particular here, but if the movie is dripping with British accents, then, BINGO! It qualifies, okay?

So start thinking now. I’m not taking entries now, just giving you a heads up. Also, please remember: The Boo-Bye Speech. I’m very big on the Boo-Bye Speeches. If your player/best thing is ousted from the tournament, please post a Sad Boo-Bye speech in the comments. Be as bitter and snarky and petulant as you need to be. Quote lines from your movie. Whatever. We’ve had some awesome, hilarious speeches in the two years I’ve done this. It’s one of my favorite parts of the game. Giving everyone free rein to be horrible bad sports. I love it. If you don’t feel you can do this, then you don’t have to place an entry. It’s a little more interactive than just sitting back and watching the fortunes of your player/best thing.

Also: Talking smack is not only encouraged, it’s basically required. Beware Sarahk. She is adorable and precious but she is also the devil incarnate and she skeers me.

I will take EIGHT entries — first-come, first-served, as usual. I’ve done 16 in the past and it was too hard to stay on top of it. (Haven’t decided if I’m doing the men’s or ladies’ draw yet. Rafael Nadal isn’t playing, so no hope of a Nadal/Federer match-up. Ladies may be more interesting this year — both Williams sisters and Maria Sharapova. I’ll decide on that shortly.)

And, yes, I have a prize. A completely ridiculous prize to be revealed later. It’s glorious in its stupidity!

So, again, don’t post entries YET.

This is just a chance for you to think about what your entry might be.

Get ready!!

to answer the question

Asked by Marc in the comments of this post:

Don’t you think integrity is important for a Christian then? It sounds like you don’t think it’s important.

If that’s the impression I gave in that post, then, wow, I really wasn’t clear enough. I did say this in that comment thread, although perhaps it was overlooked:

I think valuing one’s integrity is important. Value it to the point that it’s too sacred to speak of or advertise. It’s something others should say of a person, not something they should say of themselves.

So that’s my opinion, in brief, on the integrity issue. And that’s my opinion across the board, Christian or no. Hope that clears up any confusion.

“pillar of the community”

(This disappeared, but it WAS operator error.)

As it really happened.

Well, okay … except The Dude wasn’t wearing a sweatsuit or carrying a tennis racket.

Other than that, yes, I was wearing a pink mini dress and high heels in the middle of the Trinity Alps, my spectacular boobins had deflated into sad shriveled pancakes, and I had cut my hair short and dyed it brown just to have this conversation.

I mean, really, the lifelike nature of this whole animation staggers me. Oh, and these were his exact words. Oh, yes.

Stolen from Sheila.

Since words keep disappearing into the ether on this blog, maybe I will simply animate our entire trip.

quote day: a spiritual theme

“Madame,” I said, “if our god were a pagan god or the god of intellectuals — and for me it comes to much the same — He might fly to His remotest heaven and our grief would force Him down to earth again. But you know that our God came to be among us. Shake your fist at Him, spit in His face, scourge Him, and finally crucify Him: what does it matter? My daughter, it’s already been done to Him.”

~ George Bernanos
Diary of a Country Priest

Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.

~ Frederick Buechner

The only ultimate way to conquer evil is to let it be smothered within a willing, living human being. When it is absorbed there, like blood in a sponge or a spear thrown into one’s heart, it loses its power and goes no further.

~ Gale D. Webbe
The Night and Nothing

Vengeance is a passion to get even. It is a hot desire to give back as much pain as someone gave you ….. The problem with revenge is that it never gets what it wants; it never evens the score. Fairness never comes. The chain reaction set off by every act of vengeance always takes its unhindered course. It ties both the injured and the injurer to an escalator of pain. Both are stuck on the escalator as long as parity is demanded, and the escalator never stops, never lets anyone off.

~ Lewis Smedes
The Art of Forgiveness

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God …
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing:
wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing;
there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

~ T.S. Eliot
“East Coker”

When you forgive someone, you slice away the wrong from the person who did it. You disengage that person from his hurtful act. You recreate him. At one moment you identify him ineradicably as the person who did you wrong. The next moment you change that identity. He is remade in your memory. You think of him now not as the person who hurt you, but a person who needs you. You feel him now not as the person who alienated you, but as the person who belongs to you. Once you branded him as a person powerful in evil, but now you see him as a person weak in his needs. You recreated your past by recreating the person whose wrong made your past painful.

~ Lewis Smedes
The Art of Forgiveness

He seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye. Creation seems to be delegation, through and through. I suppose this is because He is a giver.

C.S. Lewis
The World’s Last Night

I had far rather walk, as I do, in daily terror of eternity, than feel that this was only a children’s game in which all the contestants would get equally worthless prizes in the end.

T.S. Eliot

And here in dust and dirt, O here
The lilies of His love appear.

~ George Herbert

happiness is ….

Having the tattooed clerk at the supermarket checkout sing “I Just Wanna Celebrate” to you as he rings up your stuff.

You know, this song:

And then having him say, “Hey, I don’t get a bunch of days tacked on at the end to make up for the bad ones. I make ’em good now.”

Guess you never really know where wisdom’s going to come from, do you?

Thank you, Tattooed Dude. Thank you.

you go, kid

I’m kind of in love with this little kid. His name is Ethan and he has a blog all about animals. Good for you, kid.

(Although, honestly, I’m a little dismayed to learn that there are ma-a-any more, ah, “meat eaters” out there than I ever suspected, but, somehow, I will try to cope with my newfound fear that I can basically be eaten at any moment by almost anything. You know, things like salamanders and whatnot. Again, I will try to maintain my composure, although I have to say the threat of imminent death changes the entire way I view that old favorite of mine, creek-walking. Skeery.)

Nevertheless ….. the blog is pretty cool.

And I’m not ashamed to admit that while I giggled at the sweet self-description from his “About” page, I had a little lump in my throat, too:

I am in second grade, I wear glasses and love animals.

I enjoy playing sports and playing with my friends.

I am Ethan.

GO, Ethan!

I’m scared of newts now, Ethan!

for a birthday girl

I have seen something else under the sun:

The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.

Ecclesiastes 9:11