Newsflash: Laura Left the House and Saw a Movie!

It's a(nother) rainy day (duh) here on the East Coast and Laura finally hauled herself out of her house and out to a coffee shop for a change of scenery.  She's not going to lie -- she's been feeling pretty, well, uninspired lately and one of the things that happens when she feels uninspired is that she kind of forgets to leave the house (you know, for reasons other than pick up or drop off, food shopping, shrink, Ben's music lessons, etc).  She doesn't actually forget -- she just forgets to remember that leaving the house and changing her scenery is an option.  

Yesterday she really shook things up -- she actually went out to a matinee movie -- a 3 p.m. showing of Sandra Bullock's new movie, "The Proposal" that she'd heard was hilarious and had earned, through this alleged hilarity, to claim the #1 spot at the box office this past weekend.  Laura can't believe she just said "#1 spot at the box office this past weekend" like she knows anything, but it and the great reviews sure sounded like selling points, and so she decided to go against her normal routine of staying home in the rain and pretending to work and shake things up a little. She recently even started Twittering so she thought what could be better than a cheap afternoon movie and a little mini-micro-tweet-branting?

She was a little embarrassed leaving the house and going out into public with her ridiculous Jew-Fro from all the rain and humidity but she shouldn't have been because hitting a suburban movie theatre at 3 in the afternoon isn't really "going out into public." The only people there besides the two teenagers selling tickets and popcorn were about 4 or 5 or 6 senior citizens, getting their discounts and their teeny-tiny little cupfuls of popcorn (sidebar question: did you know that at the AMC theatre chain there's the 'kiddie' cup equivalent 'Senior Size" cup of popcorn? and when Laura says "cup of popcorn" she literally means CUP of popcorn.  It was served in a small paper cup, the kind they give away for free to cheapskates like me to get water at the water fountain -- not the big giant super gulp size with the Coke logos all over them).  

Laura also realized that she was wrong about it being a cheap afternoon -- the "matinee" ticket was $8 and the non-senior citizen small size popcorn was $4.75 and that plus all the text messages and "Tweets" she sent from her phone about her big day out probably put her over the $50 mark. (Just kidding. Probably over the $100 mark.)

But this was all worth it once the lights went down because Sandra Bullock was hilarious -- Laura would like to go on record here and now and say that she has always been a huge and unabashed Sandra Bullock fan because of her incredible comic timing and willingness to make herself look completely ridiculous and do absolutely anything for a laugh while somehow being able to jerk a tear from Laura every single time (okay, maybe not in Speed, but how she managed to do that in "Miss Congeniality" Laura has no idea). Ryan Reynolds was also hilarious though of course she's not demented enough to pretend to herself or her eagle-eyed brant readers that Ryan Reynolds' comic timing is all she's interested in.  Because that would be a lie. And while Laura doesn't brant that often when she does she tells the truth.  And the truth is that Ryan Reynolds is entirely celebrity-crush-worthy and even quite possibly (God strike her dead) a Hugh-Jackman-replacement.

(Laura figured she'd give that last line a second or two to sink in.)

Of course, one of the real reasons she went to see a movie was because she figured that she should start seeing movies if she wants to write them.  She may not have branted about this yet, but Laura did actually just finish polishing her first attempt at screenwriting -- the adaptation of Piece of Work (her fourth novel)(which had been optioned by Tom Hanks' company Playtone)(but the option lapsed a long time ago and Laura only now got around to trying her hand at writing the script and hopes her agent will be able to re-sell it). She's really happy with it, believe it or not, and has to say that she never ever in a million years could have possibly written it without the help of the amazing screenwriting book Save the Cat, by Blake Snyder.  More about Laura's adventures in screenwriting in future brants, but suffice it to say that she had a lot of fun -- yes, writing can be fun! -- sort of! -- kind of!  -- but not really!  -- I mean, fun is relative! -- and hopes to do more of it in the not-too-distant future.

Laura hopes to leave the house tomorrow, too, which would make it three days in a row and give her lots to brant about!

Real Estate Correction

Laura's friend Wendy sent her an email tonight to let her know that she always checks Laura's "brant links" and when she checked the link to Laura's house listing she discovered a major error:  namely, that the link Laura provided in yesterday's brant is to the wrong house!  Laura can't bear the thought that people think she lives in this other house that the link went to -- not that there was anything wrong with that other house! it's just not hers! -- so she's not only corrected the link in yesterday's brant but has provided a few photos of her actual house and the correct link in this emergency correction-brant.  Feel free to share the new correct house-link with anyone you think may possibly want to buy it.

Thank you!

Back to Branting

It's been so long since Laura last branted that she can barely remember how to log on and get to the New Post page.  

Another measure of how long it's been since her last brant is how many new photos of Hugh Jackman there were to pick from to pimp her brant and get people to read it.  Obviously there were gazillions of gorgeous photos, but she didn't want to waste the whole afternoon, you know, staring at photos of some gorgeous person she met once and will probably never meet again -- I mean, seriously, why torture herself with the way things were and aren't now? -- so she just took one of the first ones that came up on Google images so she can jump right back in.  

Speaking of HJ, and let's face it, every time Laura brants -- especially after a long hiatus -- she needs to kind of do a recap of HJ news -- just to put her new brant post, and her life, in context.  This might sound strange -- because of course it is strange -- putting her life in the context of his life -- but let's just accept the fact that this is the way things go when she's starting up again.  Because, you see, deep down, Laura's really shy, and insecure, and doesn't believe that anyone would be reading her brant right now if she didn't have a picture of HJ's unbelievably ginormous bulging biceps up at the top of it.

What struck Laura as kind of strange when she sat down to catch up on her branting is the oddness of her hiatus -- the fact that she would cease branting at a time when Hugh Jackman was more in the news than he ever was before.  Yes, okay, so she didn't win the screening of the new movie in stupid Newton, Massachusetts.  Who cares. And yes, okay, she didn't win the charity-fundraising Lunch with Hugh Jackman back around Valentine's Day because she didn't have any money to bid on it. But she missed HJ's whole world tour to promote the new Wolverine film and a few other interesting stories about him as well.  One of Laura's friends, in fact, Kathy Mintz, someone she knew long long long ago in the old Random House days, has been kind enough to email her really fabulous Hugh Jackman news -- like sightings of HJ downtown and news of his future Broadway projects:  Laura will dig these up and share them in a later brant -- and she's really grateful for this and wishes more friends and readers would share their Hugh Jackman news.  Because what Laura's really been trying to create here on her brant is a community -- a community of people connected by their interest in Hugh Jackman and his life and his work.  And if in between the HJ news there's a little bit about Laura well, then, hey, that's an extra little bonus.

But enough about Hugh.

It's May 31 -- practically June -- and Laura has had a busy few months.  If she had to characterize things in one short Twitter-like sentence -- one Haiku-esque line that would capture the essence of the recent past in general and Laura's life of late in particular, she would have to say this:  

Laura feels like she is waiting for her fate to be decided.

Or:

Laura can't remember a time when she didn't feel like everything was hanging in the balance.

Or:

Laura feels stuck and wishes something (good) would happen already.

Laura could go on and on and on with these one-liners -- no wonder people are addicted to Twittering, she's suddenly realizing now -- it's like graduate-level branting -- or the Reader's Digest Condensed Version of branting -- one little line that could basically replace an entire 5000 word brant and save her, and her readers (hi Wendy!  hi Janet!) some precious time.

And maybe she'll indulge in a few more before this post is finished, but what she really wants to say here, today, is that she feels like her life is up in the air in a way that it hasn't been in many many years.  

Laura feels a little bit lost -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

For instance, she's trying to sell her house - it's been on the market since early February, and obviously it's a really slow market -- the slowest in decades!  what fabulous timing!!! -- and so it's not selling.  It will sell -- she knows that -- I mean, it's a great house and someone's going to buy it, she just doesn't know when and for how much because it's a very "unusual" house -- architecturally interesting and a little complicated in the stairs-department -- but, just like people used to tell her when she was "dating" (she puts the word in quotation marks because she never saw herself as someone who was "dating" as much as she saw herself as someone who was looking for human salve), it only takes one.  All it takes is one person -- one family, one couple -- without a fear of heights or a fear of living at the end of a dead-end -- and she will be able to take a breath and think about a less-expensive more urban future.  Now of course, if her house does sell, she has no idea where she's going -- she doesn't want to make any big decisions or lock herself into another stupid giant mortgage, so that sets up its own anxiety-producing situation: where will she go? where will she live? what will become of her? -- but somehow that is a better anxiety-producing situation than the one she is in now: because the one she's in now just makes her feel completely and utterly stuck and inert.

Laura feels like a bug trapped in amber.

Not that she's complaining or anything -- people have far worse problems than feeling dead because they live at the very end of a dead-end -- literally -- or feeling utterly stuck and inert -- but she's just a little tired of feeling like she has no idea what's going to happen next.  And not knowing what's going to happen next is something that's been happening for a long time since her line of work isn't exactly something you can bank on -- even in good times, and God knows these have not been the best of times for Laura's work.

The stress of not knowing where or when her next paycheck is coming from is really starting to take its toll.

Which is an understatement:  it's not "starting" to take its toll.  It's taken its toll in a big way over the past few years and has aged her enormously, so a revision to that last Twittery line is probably in order:

The stress of not having a steady paycheck is fucking killing her.

Yet despite all her self-avowed pessimism, deep down, in small pockets of life -- like earning a living from her writing and keeping her boat afloat --  Laura is kind of a ridiculous optimist, believing that just when she thinks it's all going to come crumbling down around her something unexpected comes along to save her, work-wise -- that there's always a Hail Mary catch she's going to make -- and Laura believes that now. Which is why she's been throwing an awful lot of spaghetti at the proverbial wall in the hopes that something will stick -- that one of the new irons she has in the fire will turn into something viable and profitable.

Laura feels old and fat.

Which is why she's going to bring this brant to a close -- with the promise of more brants soon -- so that she can go downstairs and use the treadmill.  Or take the dog for a walk outside on a day that is glorious enough to almost make you forgot how stuck and inert you feel.  Right after this one last Twit:

Laura always forgets how much she loves branting and wishes she would remember.

Hugh Jackman Contest! Please help Laura win!!



OK. It's been a while since Laura has posted a bonafide Hugh Jackman brant but this one is truly exciting. Laura thanks the fabulous Helen Hill for sending her this clip of Hugh Jackman asking for people to enter the contest to win the premiere of the new Wolverine movie -- "X-Men Origins: Wolverine." It means that the town with the most votes will get the premiere, but more importantly it means that the town with the most votes that gets the premiere will also get HUGH JACKMAN because he will be there for the premiere. Laura knows it's piggy to think she should be able to go to TWO premieres with Hugh Jackman in one lifetime (the first being Someone Like You, of course), but fuck it. She's a pig when it comes to Hugh Jackman and that's just the way it is.

Obviously, Laura's here begging friends to enter the contest with her zip code. Arrangements will be made to transport and house all of Laura's Hugh Jackman Voting Elves if she wins. The contest ends on April 17th and winning town will be announced April 20th so time is of the essence, people. Please vote ASAP.

So watch the clip, then go to the voting site, then enter the contest with this zip code: "02466"

Thank you!!

Ben's Vakay Part II

Laura's had a lot of shitty jobs in her life, but if she had to pick the shittiest one she'd have to go with the one 12-hour shift she spent working the Drive-Thru at the Burger King in Hadley, Massachusetts, during a UMass/Amherst winter-session in the early 1980s.

That's an actual picture of the actual Burger King she worked one shift at -- and you might be wondering how she got that photo. Well, she got that photo when she suggested to Ben that they make a trip during his vacation to Mass MOCA (the supercool museum of contemporary art in North Adams, Mass) and then drive through Amherst, her old college town, on the way back home from there.

You might be wondering, given Laura's discussion in last week's Bird-on-the-Head brant, why on fucking earth Laura would be interested in taking yet another drive down an unhappy memory lane -- her college years were, she thinks, among the worst years in her life -- and all she could say to that at the little hotel they stayed in at Porches, right near Mass MOCA, she saw a whole bunch of brochures -- one with a Natural History Museum at Amherst College -- and, being in her new Kerouac-ian Road-Trip Frame of Mind, figured it would be fun to show Ben where she went to college and some dinosaur bones.

First of all, they got off the highway in Northampton, a nearby crunchy college town that is part of the "Five Colleges" business (Smith, Mount Holyoke, Hampshire, UMass, Amherst College) in what's commonly called "The Happy Valley." (Seriously, that's what they call it.) This was kind of a lucky accident, given the fact that Laura was "improvising" her way there -- instead of using the exit off the Mass Pike that she normally used to go to UMass, she decided to go a "different" way which she figured would be faster. Whenever she thinks this she knows deep down in the pit of her stomach that she -- the person with absolutely zero sense of direction -- should not be "improvising" her way anywhere. But it was kind of too late for that as she looked for road signs to Amherst and instead took the exit for Northampton since she knew her way to Amherst from there.

All of this is a long way of saying that they parked the car and went to a diner for lunch. It was one of those old fashioned metal diner-car type authentic diners which Laura knew could be really great or really shitty, and, as it turned out, this place was the latter. Laura's not going to name the place by name but she has to say that not only was the food mediocre but she had one of the strangest restaurant experiences of her life there.

This is what happened: Ben and Laura sat down, looked at the menu, and proceeded to argue about what Ben was not going to get -- meaning that Laura had to narrow down his carb-choices from like 6 to 2. Whittling down the tempting options to "French Toast" and "Nacho Fries" (fuck it -- it was vacation, she thought) they waited for the waiter, a big guy, probably in his late thirties, who was actually very friendly and kept Laura's coffee cup constantly full, to swing by and take their order.

Since they had no idea what "Nacho Fries" actually were, Laura asked the waiter about them. "They're French Fries with nacho-cheese dipping stuff on the side." Laura's certain her face must have fallen -- she could just imagine the sad little cup of microwaved liquid neon orange cheese -- but she ordered it anyway. As she already said, it was Ben's vacation and she thought WTF.

About five minutes later, the waiter brought the basket of Nacho Fries to the table -- incredibly hot incredibly greasy fries in a small plastic basket on top of an unabsorbant sheet of waxed paper. Nestled in the basket of greasy fries was the sad little cup of micravied liquid neon orange cheese, just as she'd pictured it, and as she stared at it and thought how grotesque it all looked, the waiter stuck his food-service-plastic-gloved hand into the basket and grabbed a fry, then dipped it into the cheese dip. "Looks like I'm going to have to try one!" he said as he put the cheese dipped fry into his mouth and chewed loudly. And then he turned and walked away.

Laura's mouth dropped, and so did Ben. Never in her life has she had a waiter so brazenly try food upon serving it.

After that, the day just wasn't the same.  I mean, how could it be??  But they continued on down Route 9 toward Amherst and that's when Laura saw the Burger King, still there after all these years.  She had told Ben about it many times -- how she worked one drive-thru shift on one winter day years and years ago; how she had to wear the disgusting Burger King uniform which was a brown polyester tunic and elastic-waist pants with one red stripe (ketchup) and one yellow stripe (mustard); how at the end of the long day learning the drive thru thing and manning the "flame-broiler" (a giant toaster oven with moving heat belt that the frozen hockey-puck burgers rode) she had to help clean the entire kitchen area -- a place where every single stainless-steel machine and counter and hood came apart and got hosed down; and how after all of that she had to mop the entire restaurant -- you know, with one of those giant heavy wet mops and metal buckets --and how it was a work-shift that almost killed her.

(Note:  Laura had endured and even flourished during her tenure at the International House of Pancakes near Cambridge working weekends  and the graveyard shift during high school and college vacations so readers shouldn't assume that she was a puss when it came to hard labor.)

Anyway, after pointing it out to Ben who was long past his love of Burger King kid's meals, they finally arrived in Amherst.  They parked, found the museums on the Amherst College campus, thought they both kind of sucked, and got back in the car and drove home.

Book Jackets

Maybe it's just Laura, but don't these jackets look incredibly similar? Both have one-liner titles!  That end with exclamation points!  Not that there's anything wrong with the similarity between the two -- it's not like Laura's complaining or anything.  She just figured she'd post them next to each other to see if anyone has an opinion....

Scary Carrot Nightmare Photo

Laura feels like she's channeling the fabulous The Mock Dock site by posting photos and then commenting on them but she couldn't help sharing this photo because it embodies everything Laura fears most about orange vegetables:  namely, having a whole bunch of them in your mouth and a giant bowl of them nearby.  Close friends and eagle-eyed brant readers know all about Laura's fear of orange vegetables -- especially carrots -- and including pumpkin, squash, yams, sweet potatoes (but NOT including orange peppers)(or orange FRUIT).  Anyway, here's the explanation of the gag behind the "Carrot-Off": 

"Legendary actress Glenn Close sat down with Jimmy Fallon Tuesday night and ended up shoving a bunch of baby carrots in her mouth.

Jimmy showed a picture Close had brought of her daughter with 42 baby carrots in her mouth after a family competition, then pulled out a bowl of veggies for a carrot-off on the show.

Close easily prevailed as she tucked them expertly up by her gums and Jimmy had giggle fits."

That's all Laura's going to write about this because looking at the picture is making her want to gag.  But she's wondering if she would still hate carrots if someone slipped her one of those purple ones.  She thinks she would....