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July 07, 2000
A mini-rant, of sorts. And Russell Crowe, yum!
So I'm on the bandwagon. I love, love Russell Crowe. I tell you, he will be mine.
I finally saw Gladiator with Lee the other night. She'd seen it once before, but as her love of Russell Crowe in his little leather skirt thing rivals my own, she was more than willing to see it again. On the whole, I really liked the movie. I hated the CGI stuff, though. The opening battle scene gave me a headache because it was so choppy and jerky -- I couldn't focus my eyes on what was happening, it was just a big loud choppy blur. I think maybe they were attempting to make it look deliberate -- you know, the chaos of battle and all -- but I just thought it was annoying. And don't even get me started on the damn tigers. They looked awful, for the most part. Some of them looked okay but -- beware of a potential spoiler here -- in that particular scene, why, when the actual fighting stop, did all the tigers stop moving? I mean, they were supposed to be these ferocious man-eaters, and during the dialogue, they just laid down and listened politely. And the guys holding the chains were still straining and struggling away... it just made me giggle. But other than that, I liked it. And I now plan to watch every Russell Crowe movie I can get my grubby little paws on.
I had other things to write about, but they're all depressing, so I'll tell you all about a particularly annoying thing that happened thins morning. I had just opened up, and was working alone, when these two loud guys came in. They wanted to use one particular type of computer -- the ones that use MIT's e-mail system. We have two of those terminals upstairs, and two downstairs. We also have a classroom full of them, but that room isn't available to the public. Anyway, the upstairs terminals weren't working, and the downstairs ones were in use, so the two guys asked to be let into the classroom. I explained that the room was available only for class use, and had to be reserved in advance. First they tried to bully me into it ("Is there somebody else we can ask? Is your supervisor here?"), and then they resorted to really juvenile tactics -- "Come on... I'll be your best friend!" (Um, that didn't work on me in the third grade, and it sure as hell doesn't work now.) "I'll buy you a cup of coffee if you let us in." And my favorite -- "How about if I have sex with you? Then will you let us in?" No kidding. It would have been bad enough if he had said it once and then stopped, but he said it three or four times, with his friend egging him on -- "I don't think she's buying it, dude, you better sweet-talk her some more." Now, I don't really know whether these guys just had no social skills whatsoever (news flash -- if the person you're talking to isn't laughing, the joke isn't funny.) or if they were hassling me because I was working alone, and female. My coworker thinks it was the latter -- and if that's the case, I'm extremely pissed off. I don't get offended easily, but this just put me on a slow burn for the rest of the morning. I mean, what did the guy expect me to say? "Oh, tee hee, you're such a stud, I'll just have to let you in!" Um, no.
My crankiness at that was compounded by the $#@%&! summer cold I'm coming down with, and by the fact that I have no plans at all for the weekend. I hate being at loose ends. I get bored and depressed. Well, maybe the Russell Crowe movie-fest will take my mind off it...
Posted by Mary Ellen at July 7, 2000 03:21 PM