Amy Winehouse walks into a Walgreens...

And nothing happened. Seriously. Apparently, either I look like I should be that tore up, or people are fazed by nothing.

Backstory- dressed as dear old Amy for work(It's like I get to do a Winehouse Watch on myself!), I forgot to bring any sort of makeup remover, and believe it or not, I looked even more bizarre without the wig. So I drove home as Amy Winehouse, and stopped in at Walgreen's (yes, I am a little exhibitionist, I suppose). No one in the store batted an eye! I didn't even get a "funny costume" remark. Whatever, people. I do my best to entertain, and I get nothing. Though I did make a little girl cry in the parking lot. Mostly because I stole her candy though, not the outfit. Just kidding. I didn't steal ALL of her candy. Just the Reese's. Because I'm an Amy that likes to eat. Me, below. Damn, my desk is a mess.


Onto the REAL Winehouse Watch- Last week we reported that Amy was in for a "chest infection". She got released on Friday, but then checked back in again today. Sources say it was because she wanted to make sure there were no complications due to the chest infection. I say it's because she tried to smoke her own hair.

Netflix Round-up: Snow Angels, Sweet Bird of Youth, Little Fish. Little Fish, while not being the best movie I've ever seen (no visible plot arc), has me convinced that Cate Blanchett could read a recipe to make cold cereal and make it interesting.

Snow Angels, on the other hand, was beautiful and tragic. Set in a bleak, gray winter landscape, the film follows Annie (Kate Beckinsale) and her attempt to move on after separating from her emotionally disturbed husband Glenn (Sam Rockwell, whom I love more with every film). Bleak cinematogrophy, bleak characters. The movie is like watching two trains heading for a wreck, but you can't warn them any more than you can look away. One warm, sweet spot in this emotional wasteland is the relationship between two teenagers, Arthur, a former babysitting ward of Annie, and Lila, the new girl in town. While there is drama and pain surrounding them at every turn, it is so sweet to watch their uncomplicated, young love unfold.

Sweet Bird of Youth made me grateful Paul Newman existed. Paul Newman and his raw, steamy, sexuality and tortured character, which works so well for anything written by Tennessee Williams. What I love most about Tennessee Williams is his exploration of the ugliness in beautiful people, and Sweet Bird of Youth is a prime example. Newman, a man raised on the wrong side of the tracks-turned gigolo returns home with a fading Hollywood star, and tries to revive his relationship with his former love, the daughter of Louisiana's biggest power broker, Boss Finley. As with any Tennessee Williams play, sex, tragedy and mint juleps ensue. The movie was subjected to early 1960's censors, which unfortunately removed storylines of veneral disease, hystorectomy and castration that are present in the original broadway play. Sounds like a hell of a night at the theater.

Seriously... when am I going to get better?

Evil "death illness" has now turned into a lingering chest and head cold... complete with dribbling nose. SOOOO attractive. I feel better though- perhaps sleeping all day over the weekend helped, rather than just making me feel like a bored shut-in loser. Thanks to big brother and sis-in-law for having me over last night! Chicken Kiev! woo! Though I think Jenny Craig would probably frown on deep fried chicken swimming in a garlic butter sauce. It was so f-ing great though.

Winehouse Watch has an update! Naturally. I really want to see the E! True Hollywood Story for her... maybe a Lifetime Movie? Having re-enactments of her nightmare would be simply delightful. So what's new on the Winehouse Watch? Miss Amy was checked into the hospital again- rumors are for rehab (from which she escaped after two days last time), but her publicist says is for a "chest infection" (READ: her lungs have actually turned into Crystal Meth).

That being said, I watched some great movies on Netflix Round-up. I watched Penelope (a sadly under-developed story about a pig-faced girl... something about self-esteem), The Good Night, a convoluted story about dreams vs. reality, written and directed by Jake Paltrow (Gwyneth's bro), The Band's Visit and, courtesy of big bro and sis-in-law we got a freebie, Smart People.

The two most worthwhile films were The Band's Visit and Smart People, two movies about isolation and the necessity of human interaction, something that really resonated for me this lonely, quarantined weekend.

The Band's Visit, a Cannes Film Festival winner, is a short film about an Egyptian police band that gets lost for a night in the wrong town in Israel. The town is tiny, isolated, and completely devoid of music and art, the things that create, as the story is stressing to point out, life. Housed for the night by some quiet, reticent Israeli families, people from these two cultures are forced to interact, and humanity prevails. yay!

Smart People, featuring Dennis Quaid, Ellen Page and an increasingly severe-looking Sarah Jessica Parker proves that no man is an island, no matter how hard he tries to push people away. Quaid and his daughter, Ellen Page, cover up their grief over losing their wife and mother through intellectual snobbery. Their snide remarks and percieved intellectual superiority are a safe and off-putting way to avoid interaction with just about everyone, until Quaid's adopted brother (Thomas Haden Church), an eternal slacker, and love-interest Sarah Jessica Parker shows up and forces the family out of their ivory tower.

While I appreciate the fact that this movie did NOT go for stereotypes (Stick in the Mud professor falls for Free Spirit doctor!), some relationships weren't wholly developed, and Quaid's son in the film seems to be present merely to advance the plot. Still, both movies were well worth watching, and make you feel all warm and fuzzy.

It's a bitch convincing people to like you.

Sigh. It is a strange phenomenon that the less I want to be with people, the more invitiations I get! I had two birthday parties this weekend, and in the next month I have two weddings, three more birthday parties, a dinner, a Halloween party, a play and an opera with Pseudograndma, and the Twilight extravaganza. Oh, and Thanksgiving. That's like two events a weekend. How the hell am I this popular?

Invitations like this always seem to mount up when I am feeling the most like something that one finds when you flip over a stone- pale, ugly, shell-less and blind. Perhaps my gross insecurities and crankiness are innately attractive to people? By the way, I feel positively ENORMOUS today... Lithuanian food does not sit well. I don't trust the Kugeles (don't ask me what they are either... some sort of potato nightmare).

The plus side of the weekend was that I have yet to have the post-family party debriefing with any side of the family. I have a feeling my mother is stewing in her own meditative juices though... I probably should have talked to her last night and de-fused whatever it is she inevitably has brewing inside her mind.

Regardless of impending mom-phone-doom, I enjoyed my free time last night so much that I came up with a new segment to Fonzipan... the Winehouse Watch! I am fascinated by this poor girl's road to self-destruction.. embarrassed by it? Possibly... though I don't understand how those who care about her fail to do ANYTHING to help this young woman out of what is surely a swan dive to death. My only thought is that they are hoping her early "tragic" demise will seal her in the rock annals of history and her fame will live on. I'm only too happy to oblige by tracking all I can about the junkie.

SO, on to the inaugural Winehouse Watch (and it's a doozy):

Amy Winehouse was filmed screaming that Satan was giving her drugs at the recording studio last week. She also was apparently unable to record one song before trashing her guitar. I am DYING to see this video. Until then, this picture detailing the differences between the wax figure at Madame Tussaud's and the real life image will have to do. Meth kills, people. And so does the devil.

I also had time for Netflix Roundup this weekend: the last two Wonderfalls discs (Bryan Fuller, I want you to be my best friend) and The Good Shepherd.

Perhaps my brain was a tad fried after running around at a one-year-old's birthday party, but I felt totally stupid watching The Good Shepherd. A film about the early days of the CIA directed by Robert De Niro and starring Matt Damon, The Good Shepherd is rife with amazing actors with little to do: William Hurt, Michael Gambon, Alec Baldwin, Timothy Hutton, Joe Pesci, John Turturro and several others complete a cast of characters that have screen-time of approximately 12 seconds each.

This film couldn't decide if it wanted to be a film about the destruction of a family, or a film that chronicles the shady beginnings of an institution with frightening power in the government. At two and a half hours, it tries to do both, which is too much. It feels as though there are about a hundred characters in this movie, and it is difficult to keep track of them all. Additionally, the film spans approximately twenty years and is told asequentially; none of the actors look much older in the "current" scenes, and it is difficult to know what is happening when.

The Good Shepherd could have been great- two messages that stood out were that of the danger of believing, immovably, in one's own actions as well as the dangers of being born entitled and feeling that nothing can touch you. However, these messages were lost in an over-complicated plot that took too much of my brain power to follow, leaving little room to ruminate on deeper meanings.

Weekend Update

I've actually been busy at work today. WTF?? I had a solid four hours in which I did something. ok... that's a lie. Two and a half of those hours were spent looking for the entrance to my building, since the parking lot of my job looks like a demilitarized zone from Afghanistan. I'm going to start bringing my own hard-hat.

So little time to blog, so much to cover.

A new mascot for the collection... Brutus Buckeye (thanks JAX)... It's a seed! Nut? What is a buckeye, anyway? Same with an acorn... are they nuts? Seeds?

not to be confused with Brutus Beefcake:

Stupid tattoos (Tetris, Monty Python AND Stephen Hawking? This guy's never getting laid):


Twilight Countdown: 39 Days (is it me or does this dude have some crazy lettuce? yeah... still hot though.):

And a Netflix Round-up:
Mirrormask, Infamous, Disc 1 of Wonderfalls.

Mirrormask, a product of the Jim Henson studio and Neil Gaiman, was by far the most intriguing, so that's where I'm gonna get my movie review ya-ya's this week.

Helena (who looks eerily like a child Helena Bonham Carter) is a creative teen born to the circus (circus!!) and dreams of running away to an average life.

After her mother lands in the hospital, Helena stays with her non-circus life grandmother, and fills her room with pen-and-ink sketches of a world built in her own imagination. During a dream, Helena falls into this world of her own making.

A sepia-toned CGI dreamscape, Mirrormask is a "down the rabbit-hole" story along the lines of Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, The Phantom Tollbooth, Labyrinth, The Never-Ending Story... oh, the list goes on. Unlike these stories, Mirrormask does not focus on Helena growing up. Rather, Helena's journey finds her fighting to stay true to her alternative, creative self. Mirrormask celebrates the desire to keep a childish imagination and enthusiasm.

Mirrormask explores duality: light and shadow, truth and lies, masks and reality. Sadly, it does this without the fast dialogue and wit that I have rather come to expect from Gaiman, NOR does it have an awesome soundtrack David Bowie Labyrinth style. It does have a pretty killer version of The Carpenter's Close to You. That was worthwhile.