Dave White Knows

Come along and hate with me...

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:21:09 GMT

My latest Advocate.com TV column is up and ready to be digested. It's the second part of my year-end wrap-up thingie. Last time it was "Best of" and this new one is the "Worst of" list for 09.

Please read, forward to everyone you know, leave a nice comment and click that new "Recommend" button they have:

http://tinyurl.com/yamcgbz

No, this isn't one of the worst TV shows of 09. But its cancellation made the list...

Hey Popcorn Mafia listeners....

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:48:57 GMT

If you found me here from that podcast then here are the other links you oughta know about:

On Twitter I am DLelandWhite
http://twitter.com/dlelandwhite

On Facebook I'm one of a million Dave Whites...
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=name&id=623912186

Here's Movies.com
http://beta.movies.com/

And if you are simply one of the regular readers of all my junk then you should know that yesterday I was the first guest of 2010 on the Popcorn Mafia podcast and I spent a full 90 minutes talking to the nice (yet seriously naughty-talking, mouths full of swears) PM ladies about all kinds of movie stuff. One listener already told me I sound like the guy who announces "I Survived A Japanese Game Show."

http://www.popcornmafia.com/

Brokembouche

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:47:19 GMT

My croquembouche disaster was the result of I don't even know what.

On December 22nd, my kitchen-helper PW came over and we effortlessly created the puff pastry and the caramel cream filling, but failed at making the caramelish sugar stuff that sticks the mountain of pastry all together. That was not heartbreaking because we still had delicious cream puffs to gorge on. I figured that I could re-jigger the hot sugar mess on Christmas Day enough to be impressive for Christmas Day dinner at our friend Bryan's house and all would be great.

To bring a food to his house is to enter an unofficial competition of insane cooking skill. Last year an actress friend of his served a Beef Wellington that would make a grown man cry. And that same lady was there cooking again this year. (And being rad, like she is, and spookily remembering me and moroccomole even though it had been exactly 365 days since we'd last seen her.) This year lady_miss_leigh's mom Tommie brought a Timpano, like in the movie "Big Night." People take this shit seriously. So I was all cocky thinking I'd be Mr. Croquembouche and sit around letting people praise me all night.

So I spent Christmas afternoon at the home of friends Dennis and Terence constructing the croquembouche again while everyone else played "Just Dance" on the Wii. (Terence won because he has homosexual hip-sway abilities but MM was also pretty impressive at making the booty go pop.)

But then something went wrong with the pastry batter. It was like it got too hot while on the stove and as I added each egg yolk they started cooking or something right there in the pan. And when they came out of the oven they were little grainy discs.

I'm not the type to despair over ruined recipes. I generally think of myself as pretty studly in the kitchen but sometimes it all goes wrong and you just have to scrap it and go buy something readymade.

Except it was Christmas Day and everything was closed. So Gary Cotti and I jumped in my car and drove around until we found this Mexican market run by Buddhist Asians who don't care about Christmas. They had rice pudding. I bought a dozen of them.

Then I went out to my car and waited for Gary Cotti to come back from the liquor store across the street, also run by people who know that somebody needs you to be open on December 25th. I listened to my voice mail messages. One of them was from my mother, who cracks me up with her renewed ability to dial phone numbers even though she has no way to create coherent speech onces she dials them. My voice mail from her was an emphatic and happy-sounding, "MUH MUH MUH MUH MUH MUH MUH! MUH MUH MUH MUH! MUH MUH!" and then a click. When he returned to the car I said, "Here, listen to my mom telling me 'Merry Christmas.'"

He listened and then said, "It's weird because when I read the words 'muh muh muh' in your posts I just hear them in your voice, like I didn't ever think of her having her own.'"

But now he can think of hers, which sounds like a lady's, unlike mine which sounds like some kind of grumpy foghorn. We took the rice pudding back to Dennis and Terence's house and I dumped all of them into a big bowl and sprinkled cinnamon-sugar all over it and said, "Ta-Daaaa!"

But I'm going to try it again and again until I get it right. By next Christmas I will dominate the croquembouche and it will call me SIR.

PS:
Back when I was getting friended here by a dozen people a day, I was really good about updating my friends list and clicking the boxes. At least once a week. But I got all busy and distracted and stopped doing that in November or whenever. But I just added back all the folks who've added me recently, so welcome to fogbear and ithinkin3d and leaftronic and literal_alchemy and phenryss and raffymd and wordswit.

I just posted some of this on Facebook but y'all get the whole burrito.

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 02:49:17 GMT

I saw over 200 movies last year for work. But now that MSNBC.com isn't really a job I can count on that'll let me do my used-to-be-annual "Awful is the New Awesome" list and since Movies.com doesn't make me or Jen do Best-of/Worst-of lists, I figured I would take every film I reviewed (and a few others that I saw but didn't review, marked with asterisks*) and chop them up into lists that made sense to me. Here they are.

PS None of these lists are ranked in any order, neither by alphabet nor quality.

My favorite movies of 2009...

1. Avatar
2. The Headless Woman
3. The Sun
4. Fantastic Mr. Fox
5. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
6. Where the Wild Things Are
7. Antichrist
8. Big Fan
9. Inglourious Basterds
10. Beeswax
11. Lorna's Silence
12. In The Loop
13. The Beaches of Agnes*
14. 35 Shots of Rum*
15. The Hurt Locker
16. Up
17. Summer Hours
18. Star Trek
20. Coraline
21. A Town Called Panic
22. Police, Adjective

Awful is The New Awesome: movies that were so shitty they kind of have to be seen--some people call this sort of thing "so bad it's good" but i just like to think that pleasure can be found even in total failure--which I'll be talking about tomorrow on a podcast called "Popcorn Mafia," for later linking...

1. The Unborn
2. Taken
3. Knowing
4. Obsessed
5. The Taking of Pelham 123
6. Orphan
7. The Burning Plain
8. Law-Abiding Citizen
9. 2012
10. The Lovely Bones
11. After Last Season
12. C Me Dance

Other movies I liked a lot for whatever reasons...

1. I Love You, Man
2. Monsters vs Aliens
3. Adventureland
4. Earth
5. Tyson
6. The Limits of Control
7. Rudo y Cursi
8. Big Man Japan
9. The Girlfriend Experience
10. Drag Me to Hell
11. Tetro
12. Moon
13. Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen
14. Public Enemies
15. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
16. Herb & Dorothy
17. The Cove
18. Funny People
19. Ponyo
20. District 9
21. Shorts
23. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
24. 9
25. The September Issue
26. Anvil: the Story of Anvil
27. Valentino: the Last Emperor
28. Whip It
29. Paranormal Activity
30. A Serious Man
31. The Informant!
32. Bright Star
33. Bronson
34. La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet
35. Broken Embraces
36. Precious
37. The House of The Devil
38. The Blind Side
39. The Road
40. Up In The Air
41. A Single Man
42. Invictus
43. The Princess and The Frog
44. Crazy Heart
45. The White Ribbon
46. Red Cliff

The irritating, the pompous, the not-so-funny, the dull, the ones I completely forgot I ever watched...

1. No Easily Broken
2. He’s Just Not That Into You
3. Two Lovers
4. Sunshine Cleaners
5. Fast & Furious
6. 17 Again
7. The Soloist
8. Fighting
9. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
10. Battle For Terra
11. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
12. Cheri
13. G.I. Joe: the Rise of Cobra
14. It Might Get Loud
15. Brief Interviews With Hideous Men
16. Fame
17. Pandorum
18. Love Happens
19. New York, I Love You
20. Couples Retreat
21. The Invention of Lying
22. Amelia
23. The Twilight Saga: New Moon
24. Planet 51
25. Everybody’s Fine
26. Brothers

The ones that were despicable all around...

1. Bride Wars
2. The Uninvited
3. New In Town
4. Pink Panther 2
5. Confessions of a Shopaholic
6. Street Figher: the Legend of Chun-Li
7. The Last House on The Left
8. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
9. Ice Age: Dawn of The Dinosaurs
10. The Ugly Truth
11. Post Grad
12. Whiteout
13. All About Steve
14. The Stepfather
15. A Christmas Carol
16. Old Dogs
17. Serious Moonlight
18. Did You Hear About The Morgans?

The ones that had stuff about them that I really enjoyed and would call more okay than not okay, even if the thing I enjoyed was just doggies in little outfits or Danny McBride or the machine guns that popped out of Astro Boy's butt cheeks...

1. Notorious
2. Hotel For Dogs
3. The International
4. Watchmen
5. Phoebe In Wonderland
6. Race to Witch Mountain
7. The Great Buck Howard
8. State of Play
9. The Brothers Bloom
10. Angels & Demons
11. Land of the Lost
12. The Hangover
13. Away We Go
14. My Sister’s Keeper
15. Humpday
16. Bruno
17. (500) Days of Summer
18. Julie & Julia
19. Bandslam
20. Capitalism: A Love Story
21. The Boys are Back
22. Coco Before Chanel
23. Surrogates
24. Astro Boy
25. Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant
26. An Education
27. Zombieland
28. The Box
29. Michael Jackson’s This Is It
30. The Last Station
31. The Young Victoria
32. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
33. Sherlock Holmes

Bad filmmaking that I enjoyed anyway...

1. My Bloody Valentine 3D
2. Friday the 13th
3. Hannah Montana: The Movie
4. Dragonball Evolution
5. Crank: High Voltage
6. Terminator Salvation
7. Easy Virtue
8. Halloween II
9. The Fourth Kind
10. Ninja Assassin
11. It’s Complicated

The ones I felt like had good intentions maybe that I half-liked, half-didn't...

1. Fanboys
2. Fired Up
3. Whatever Works
5. I Hate Valentine’s Day
6. G-Force
7. Cold Souls
8. A Perfect Getaway
9. The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
10. My One and Only
11. Extract
12. Taking Woodstock
13. Jennifer’s Body
14. The Men Who Stare At Goats
15. Gentlemen Broncos
16. Me and Orson Welles
17. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
18. Armored

Really shitty except for like one, maybe two, things...

1. Paul Blart: Mall Cop
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
3. Inkheart
4. Donkey Punch
5. Push
6. Madea Goes to Jail
7. Crossing Over
8. Miss March
9. Duplicity
10. The Haunting in Connecticut
11. 12 Rounds
12. The Mysteries of Pittsburg
13. Next Day Air
14. Management
15. Dance Flick
16. My Life In Ruins
17. Imagine That
18. Year One
19. The Proposal
20. The Answer Man
21. Adam
22. Aliens in The Attic
23. The Collector
24. The Time Traveler’s Wife
25. Spread
26. Gamer
27. Sorority Row
28. Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself
29. Pirate Radio
30. The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond
31. The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
32. Nine
33. I Love You, Beth Cooper

The movie at which I spent way too much time out of the theater and vomiting in the men's room, thanks to having taken too much codeine cough medicine on accident. Seriously...

1. Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience

Not seen yet but really want to because they're on other "Best of" lists...

1. The Maid
2. Tulpan
3. Still Walking
4. The Damned United
5. Every Little Step
6. Import Export
7. Sugar
8. Goodbye Solo

And I'm sure I'm forgetting some others. Here's a link to the site where you can click on my face and/or the face of my excellent friend Jen Yamato who is my new co-critic...

http://beta.movies.com/

PS...

Maybe one or more of these people will be our new friends.

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:29:08 GMT

Yesterday, xtreem_aaron moved the last of his stuff to Long Beach where he will begin his next chapter of life and love with his boyfriend Brian. Naturally we put up a Craigslist ad for a new roommate right away. I've narrowed it down to these four people. You can help me select who's most appropriate by voting in the comments section:

This lady was intrigued by the stack of issues of "100% Beef" XA left behind, but then she asked "Are those thumbtack holes on the wall where an ugly Royal Trux poster used to be?" We couldn't lie and say no. She turned and walked away. But we're still hoping she gives us a chance because she would class up the joint.

These guys seem like fun. They don't need much closet space and promise to bring the party with them.

This dude was full of quips and and jokes, but kept asking, "Where are the pretty ladies at?"

I'm leaning toward these applicants. Their current owner is apparently hell to deal with.

A sad day for us, a happy day for Xtreem A.

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 23:26:50 GMT

When I met xtreem_aaron several years ago he didn't know many gays because he was still trying to figure out how to tell his then-wife that he was one, too. But he talked to me about it because he and I shared a lot of the same tastes in things and he figured out he could be a guy who wants to bone dudes and not have to enjoy bullshit cultural offerings in the process. He made me some mix CDs with R. Kelly and Whitehouse on them and we went to see the Boredoms together.

Then he told his wife he was a homosexual and they got a divorce and he went to be roommates with some El Grosso who never cleaned up when the cat would poop on the floor. I said, "This is unacceptable. You have to stay in our guest room." So he did. Then he looked for a his own place for a while but those, as you know if you live in New York or Los Angeles or San Francisco, are difficult to find and afford on your own. That's when we came up with the big idea of him being a permanent resident in that guest room.

So he stayed and we loved having him here because he's hilarious and "effortlessly cool" (his words) and full of surprises and was The Great Chef of Taco Night. He also made me watch "The Mighty Boosh" and gave me so many funny things to write down and steal while watching "American Idol" and "Project Runway" that I should pay him a percentage.

But his boyfriend conquest of one full year, Brian, has enticed him with a yard and the promise of a washer and dryer not located in a laundromat down the street. So he's gone down to Long Beach to live and we are back to being roommate-less. I will miss him a lot.

What Brian doesn't yet know is that he will have to get used to XA walking around singing this on a regular basis (embedding disabled, dang it, just click the link):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F9DxYhqmKw

Some things, no sequence, no story.

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 02:29:54 GMT

Made stock out of leftover turkey carcass and bones. Never done that before but the "Martha Stewart Cooking School" cookbook showed me how. And it is not bad. Of course I made like over a gallon of it so I guess I'll have to figure out what to make with it now.

*************

Celebrity sighting: Jonah Hill at the supermarket down the block. That's all. He wasn't doing anything memorable. But I know that some of y'all still like to know when I see a famous person running around. Better than him was the kid in the pasta aisle who stepped on the back of his mother's flip-flop, tearing it in half, forcing the poor woman to walk barefoot in the store. That's what she gets for wearing flip-flops. It's not especially warm in Los Angeles right now, either.

*************

The croquembouche on Christmas Day was a disaster. More on that later. I GOT TOO COCKY!

*************

Been lazily cruising art websites all day. Galleries, artist's homepages, blogs etc. Found a site that deals with multiples from artists I'll never be able to afford, big art stars like Elizabeth Peyton and Maurizio Cattelan. I'm kinda snooty about multiples in general, unless they're from people I'd have to be super-rich to afford. I'm an extremely small-potatoes art-buyer. But I did buy a Louise Bourgeois print last year because an original piece from her will never happen in my life. And I'm now also hung up on the Peyton multiple of "Napoleon After His Bath" and the scale model of The Wrong Gallery (see link below) from Cattelan. Just because it would be rad to own.

http://cerealart.com

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2005/dec/21/art

On the site are prints from Taylor McKimens, another guy whose work I like a lot. Here's what he does:
http://www.booooooom.com/2009/08/20/taylor-mckimens-drawings/
Except with that dude I actually bought a drawing of a smiling anthropomorphic orange he did on a paper towel for five bucks back in 1999.

*************

Heating up leftover prime rib and peas w/prosciutto from Christmas Eve right now... I love all the not-cooking that dinners made of leftovers require. What I don't love is being interrupted in my not-cooking by telemarketers or credit card companies wondering why we're late paying the bill, and when they ask for "Alsan Durlade" and I say, "Do you mean Alonso Duralde?" and they pause before saying yes, I know I'm close to hanging up on them.

I lie and say, "He's not in."
Then they say, "I'll call back."
And I say, "Who's calling?"
"Ramona."
"With which company, Ramona?"
"Are you the person I need to speak to? Are you Alonso? Is there a spouse I can speak to?"
"I'm his spouse."

Pause.

Then she thinks I'm fucking with her because her company never bothered to tell Ramona that gays exist. So she says, "I'll just call back."
"You do that, Ramona."

*************

Can't wait for New Year's Eve when I'll get to stay home and do nothing but make dinner and fall asleep by 10pm. It's going to be great.

**************

A bawdy lady I know just referred to my penis (which she's never seen) as a "fuzzy mojito."

WTF AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS GIFT YOU GAVE ME THAT SUCKS?

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:44:33 GMT

Because I love you best, LJ friends, you get the link-up first:

In case you aren't paying strict attention to every single detail of my life, I now write for a new site called OurSceneTV.com. It's gay, which tips my 50/50 gay work outlets to un-gay work outlets into the 60/40 range, but whatever. I like to think I balance the gay sites I write for by being extra-rad instead of extra-homo.

So they have a feature on OurSceneTV.com called "WTF" and all the pieces have titles that begin with "WTF." I like having to come up with titles first before I write. It's a fun cart-before-the-horse kinda exercise. And my boss said, "Quick, someone, I need a holiday-themed WTF!" and I said, "Gimme 30 minutes."

It actually took me 50 minutes but that's because I stopped to eat some turkey out of a Ziplock bag. Go make nice comments and forward this on to everyone you know.

http://www.ourscenetv.com/articles/wtf-am-i-supposed-to-do-with-this-gift-you-gave-me-that-sucks

Because I have to occupy myself for the next couple of hours...

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 13:18:38 GMT

moroccomole sleeps till like eight. I wake up at five. So it's not 100% Christmas until he gets up. In the meantime it is extremely quiet on our block, I am having my first cup of green tea and in a bit here I will go wash more of last night's dinner dishes. I decided to post the last batch of ornament pictures I took.

No time to explain what's in the pictures, except that...

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 16:49:29 GMT

The Jackie Kennedy ornament was made and sold by Dallas's Sixth Floor Museum when they first opened. But they weren't around for long because people complained that it wasn't appropriate. They discontinued making and selling them almost immediately, I hear.

Also, note xtreem_aaron's most important contribution: a pug in a sleigh. His reason for the season.

And again, sorry if some of them are blurry. I'm a terrible camera operator.

Some things on our tree.

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 21:30:16 GMT

It was requested that I take photos of some of the things on our Christmas tree. I am shitty at photographering, but here you go. I have more that I'll post up here later today after I vacuum the house.

With explanation:

1. A homemade mini-pinata. I can't seem to make the little mark over the letter "n" on LJ but you know what I mean. I have no idea what's inside the thing.

2. A couple years ago when they rebooted the "Rocky" franchise, a line of action figures came along. One of those action figures was the side of beef that Rocky punches. We liked that.

3. This is a vintage Santa figure, clearly fashioned out of leftover unused baby doll bodies and faces.

4. My mom gave me that old bird ornament. It's from whenever-ago, like from when she was a kid is my understanding. She also gave me the old blue ornament next to it. The "OnoChord" flashlight was given out at Arthurfest a few years ago when Yoko Ono performed. It still lights up, but you should only use it when Yoko is singing. So some day when she comes over I'll make her perform "Walking On Thin Ice" and flash it along to the beat.

5. Morocco Mole. I know some guy with that fake name too.

6. We are on exactly one celebrity Christmas card mailing list. And it's the man who directed "Female Trouble." (He and MM became familiar back in Texas when MM was the artistic director of Dallas's USA Film Festival.) We look forward to his card coming every year because it's always a freakout. One year it was this ornament with a plastic cockroach inside. Nice. The white ceramic dove is Jonathan Adler.

7. Mini detergent boxes from some old doll house. There's really detergent inside.

Christmas Wrapping

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:24:21 GMT

I'm good at it.

This box contains my mom's annual jar of La Mer face cream. After she divorced my useless alcoholic stepfather, she decided to be nice to herself more frequently, even though she was absolutely not well-off, and would buy herself a 2 oz jar each year on her Neiman Marcus credit card that otherwise she never used. You live in Texas, you kind of just have a Neiman Marcus credit card. Then the stroke happened and now I get her a small jar for Christmas if she's recently run out.

It should have arrived at my brother's house already for him to give her on Friday. I gotta check on that...

Couple new reviews are up on Movies.com

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 15:20:21 GMT

My reviews of "It's Complicated" and "Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel" have just posted on Movies.com

Enjoy them.

More should be posted later today...

http://beta.movies.com/movie-reviews/film-reviews/dave-white

My "Best TV of 2009" piece is up at Advocate.com

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:19:58 GMT

Go read it, forward it, click "Recommend" at the top of the page and leave a comment about me being awesome. I think that's a fair exchange.

http://www.advocate.com/Arts_and_Entertainment/Television/The_Best_TV_2009/

So, obviously, I have a Brittany Murphy story...

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:54:09 GMT

If you've read my book, "Exile in Guyville," then you remember the ending in which two actresses that I meet play good cop and bad cop with me and my bad attitude. The bad cop was Parker Posey, who is a friend of a friend, and who won't even remember meeting me and putting me and my annoying, boring ass in its place with a few simple, well-timed words, a moment for which I'll always be grateful. It ends my book because she was, without even knowing it, the first person not to indulge my whining.

The good cop was Brittany Murphy.

I haven't interviewed a celebrity since eating turkey bacon with Jennifer Hudson in late 2006. But in 2000 I was being assigned that task with increasing frequency and I was learning on the job. I had very little experience and, subsequently, more than a few disastrous meetings with various artist/actor types already under my belt. And I was still unable to steer an interview in the direction I needed it to go for my editors' sakes. If the person was dynamic and charming then they could bulldoze me and take over. Which is what Brittany Murphy did to me in the best possible way.

This was post-Clueless but pre-everything else, so she wasn't super famous yet. I hung out for her photo shoot all day, waiting for it to end, and watched her sing a lot of Rolling Stones songs while she lounged, in a staggeringly expensive dress, on the hood of a car. I remember the shoot was supposed to have been over by 2pm but wound up lasting until six for some reason. Her publicist was nice to me but was also keen to cut short my time with her for the actual interview because the other stuff had taken so long.

When it was finally time for my sixty minutes with her, the people who'd brought all the free lunch food were gone, as was everyone else, and she wanted out of the studio. Unfortunately the only other place to have the interview was the parking lot. So we went outside and sat on a low-level cement block wall (and had to move twice because of ants). She was still in the expensive dress and makeup and hair and was starving, so I gave her the Milky Way bar I had in my bag.

Back to my inability to control an interview: she immediately began asking me a million questions about myself. My background, bands I liked, Luby's cafeterias in Texas (the source of her "King of the Hill" namesake, Luann Platter) and how I was adjusting to living in Los Angeles. And because I wasn't adjusting well to living in Los Angeles, I told her that. Completely unprofessional on my part. But whatever. She was disarmingly adorable and sweet so I gave in to her prodding. She had that actress quality of looking you right in the eyes and hypnotizing you with her personality.

After listening to me gripe about being homesick for Texas, she told me that Los Angeles was just a place, just a zip code, and that there were awful selfish people everywhere, and that, yes, at 22 she couldn't be expected to be very wise, but that's what she believed. And she said something that didn't wind up in the interview or the book: that it was all going to be okay and that it sounded like my life was going to be great in Los Angeles. And she was right. It did turn out that way.

Then we got on task and did the interview, which was for a weird horror movie she was in called "Cherry Falls." And we talked about movies we liked and food we were obsessed with and then she did what no other interview subject has ever done to me. Unsolicited, she gave me her phone number and said, "You're so cool. Let's hang out. I'm going off on a movie shoot next week but when I come home let's hang out." I felt odd about it but was so moved by her kindness that I thought, "Okay, I'll bend my rule of no weirdo actor friends and see if she's cool to hang out with." So I waited for her to come back from the shoot, called the number, and her mom answered the phone and took my number. And that was that. No return call. We didn't hang out, which was fine. I have never craved celebrity friendships.

So I didn't know her at all or anything about whatever problems she might have had. She passed through my life for one day and we had a talk that made me like her a lot, and that gave me enough semi-hope that I put it in my book. I maintained a defensive soft spot for her even after all the tabloidy stuff started. And I'm grossed out that her death is already becoming a joke. Because I didn't meet a joke that day. I met someone who was sweet and kind and decent and funny. And it's kind of weird to feel sadness for a person you don't even really know. But I still feel it anyway.

My husband is famous on TV. You can watch him.

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:23:18 GMT

http://current.com/items/91712985_the-rotten-tomatoes-show-year-endies.htm

There's a newish show called "The Rotten Tomatoes Show" and it's on the Current cable channel. That channel that Al Gore made up.

The show is based more or less on the Rotten Tomatoes website where critics get their movie reviews jumbled together and assigned points. When moroccomole was MSNBC.com's main critic, he was on there every week. (Oh, and PS if you miss his MSNBC.com reviews he's the guest critic for the month on IFC.com)

So almost every week my man is on "The Rotten Tomatoes Show," throwing his reviews in to the show via Skype. And on the most recent episode they presented a montage of his best lines and then gave him a totally important award, for which he showed up in a suit to accept. Tie by Viktor & Rolf for H&M, chosen by me. You're welcome.

If you have Current on your cable system then the show is repeated a million times I think. If you don't then you can go to the link and look at him. The episode is 23 minutes long and he shows up at the 16:00 mark.

GO LOOK AT IT. HE'S SO ADORABLE AND WHATEVER.

Weirdest work assignment of 2009

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:45:49 GMT

Out's Popnography blog likes it when I recap TV shows. "American Idol" and "Project Runway" have been staple employment opportunities for me for a long time. But just recently they said, "Hey watch the new Bravo show 'Launch My Line' and recap it. So now I do.

Except that I think no one is looking at this weird design show about non-designers. What if I am the ONLY PERSON IN AMERICA watching it?

According to moroccomole, "It doesn't matter. You hit the high points and make it sound like they should be watching it." I appreciate his boosterism. It's like he's Sandra Bullock and I'm the adopted football son.

Okay, so, the recaps are short. Go give me some clicks and hits and whatnot...

http://tinyurl.com/ylyb9ta

The first cards have arrived for my Mom...

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:49:31 GMT

And if you missed my entry the other day about the cards in question, I am doing the same thing I did last year, getting LJ people to mail her Christmas cards at her nursing home. If you want to do it then email me at

DLelandWhite at aol dot com

and I will email you back with instructions and where to send. They go through me first, so it's a process and involves two envelopes on your part. Anyway, that's that. She loves this. Lets the other old people know she's the most popular person in the place.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the high hat.

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:17:05 GMT

Also the tambourine... and... furthermore, my friend Jen Yamato, a really decent Los Angeles lady who is now the BRAND NEW LADY-CRITIC with me at Movies.com.

The site relaunched today and there are no more letter grades, just stars to tell you that quick, lazy way of what we thought of the movie. And almost all of them are correct. In fact, all except one of them are. The Lovely Bones reads 2.5 stars right now. I'm going to have it fixed to be one star. Because that's what it is.

Anyway, go read us. Jen is swell. To go into the longer list of reviews you just click on our respective names or faces.

http://beta.movies.com/

PROJECT 'SEND MY MOM A CHRISTMAS CARD' IS UNDERWAY

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:54:58 GMT

A week ago this morning I got a call from one of the nurses at my mother's nursing home telling me that they'd just rushed her to the hospital with stroke-like symptoms. So instead of starting up this now-annual project last week I just held back and had a silent freakout instead.

As it turned out, she was not having another stroke (for all you new people here, she had a major stroke in 2004, lost the use of the right side of her body as well as her ability to speak, read and write) but was, instead, suffering a transient ischemic attack, or TIA. If a stroke is an earthquake then a TIA is a tremor or aftershock. Sometimes they mean another big one is coming, sometimes not. She used to have them with some regularity after the big stroke in 2004 but hasn't had one in a while.

Anyway, they took her to the hospital, kept her a few days, she was up and rolling around the day after it happened and now everything is back to normal.

However!

That means I've gotten a much later start on this Christmas card project than I intended. And again, if you're new to reading this, then here's what we do. I get y'all to send her Christmas cards and she has a happy December (or whatever kind of card you want to send her if you don't celebrate Christmas; she doesn't care what it is, she just likes mail).

Here's how it works:

1. Email me at DLelandWhite at aol dot com for the address.

2. You pick a card, sign it, DO NOT SEAL THE ENVELOPE. That's right, I'm inspecting the card. Because last year I got at least one somewhat inappropriate card sent by someone who really should have known better that my mom's not into nearly naked Santas.

3. Put the card and its envelope into ANOTHER envelope. Then you mail it to me.

4. When I receive it, I put her address on your envelope and forward it on to her.

If you're in then let me know. And thanks. She loved getting all the cards last year.

I was proud of myself for about three seconds.*

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 03:22:28 GMT

Our oldest car, the 1998 Beetle, is kind of a lemon and always has been. On any given day, there's usually something not quite right going on with it. And after 11 years of ownership it has only about 60,000 miles on it. Lights we need burn out, lights we don't want to see come on whenever they feel like it, noises come and go, things snap off. Today the license plate decided to fall off and an electrical cord that leads to something saw fit to come loose and drag on the ground.

And because I know as much about cars as I know about atomic submarines, maybe less, I drove it down the street to our neighborhood garage and said, "Fix this stuff please." So they did.

An hour later I walked the few blocks back and it was done. I paid them $25 dollars just for their labor. They plugged the thing back into whatever it was supposed to be plugged into and re-secured the plate. I could have done the latter if I'd had some bolts that were the right size. But all I have is little bolts for household things, some nails, a hammer, some wire, a wrench and two screwdrivers. And a really awesome miniature sander that plugs in. None of those things work to bolt a license plate back on to a plastic bumper with its bolt hole grooves stripped clean.

Anyway, not the point. The point is that I gave the man behind the counter, a guy from India with a really heavy accent, a $50 bill to pay for it. It's been pouring rain all day here so he was bored. People stay home in Los Angeles when it rains hard. The ones out driving are asking to be involved in car accidents. And because he was bored he decided to have fun quizzing me about American things I should know.

Guy: "Who is the President on the 50?"
Me: "Grant." (Of course. Our hottest-ever President. Don't believe me? Check that bill.)*<--- part where I was proud for three seconds.
Guy: What building is on the back?
Me: Uh...
Guy: The U.S. Capitol. Okay, who is on the 20?
Me: Andrew Jackson. Trail of Tears guy.
Guy: What is that?
Me: Long story.
Guy: What building is on the back?
Me: Lincoln Memorial?
Guy: No, the White House!
Me: Oops.
Guy: Who is on the 5?
Me: Lincoln! Memorial on the back!
Guy: Yes. Now if you will tell me who is on the 2 dollar bill and what is on the back I will return your 25 dollars.
Me: Then that 25 dollars will remain with you.
Guy: Thomas Jefferson. The other side is the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Me: I've wasted my life.
Guy: Have a good day, my friend.

People came over to my house, ate things, sat around, drank stuff.

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:12:24 GMT

Ladies love cool me.

xtreem_aaron: bear magnet

They're getting married like any minute now.

More happy drinkers.

Juan Vigoda spilled a whole beer on that couch. Last time he tracked dog poop onto our carpet. Yet we keep inviting him back.

I ain't mad.

Launch my lunch.

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 20:56:59 GMT

It's not important that you watch "Launch My Line." It's important that you read about how *I* watched it...

http://www.popnography.com/2009/12/launch-my-line-its-no-jersey-shore.html

Invictus, A Single Man and The Lovely Bones all need your help this holiday season...

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:04:43 GMT

http://www.movies.com/movie-reviews/film-reviews/dave-white

Something I wrote for OurSceneTV.com

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:21:51 GMT

I know, you have no idea what OurSceneTV.com is. That's because it's newish. I write for them now.

And I wrote this thing about bummer movies being released around the holidays. Enjoy me.

http://www.ourscenetv.com/articles/wtf-am-i-doing-watching-the-lovely-bones-at-christmas-time