Her non-pregnancy is more popular than my pregnancy

If I were to rename this site based on the numero-uno-most-popular search that leads people here, this blog would instead be known as:

Maura Tierney Pregnant.

So, those of you looking to crank up those sitemeter hits, I sincerely recommend you go with that title. You will be astounded.

TV soundtracks

Got a few hits today for people searching for "Scrubs" and The Fray's "How to Save a Life." I think it's interesting that my two favorite medical shows ("Scrubs" and "Grey's Anatomy"--yes, "ER" is now in the number three spot) have played the same non-top-40 song. At first, I was thinking this was the second time this has happened. But then I remembered that whereas "Scrubs" played Keane's "Everybody's Changing," "G.A" used "Somewhere Only We Know." Close but no cigar.

(Of course, "ER" does get points for playing a different song by The Fray, "Over My Head.")

Rapture

NSAH's comment to my last post reminded me of the email he sent earlier this week, about dropping AB off at school:

He got fussy in the car. “I don’t want to go dis way! I want to go DAT way." (pointing back toward home, even with trees in the way.) Finally, it was more specific – “I don’t want to go to school!”

He had picked "I Want Candy" for his morning listen, but he lost interest in it, and I switched it off while he was fussing. I started to sing something, and he said “No! Don’t sing dat.” So I asked if he wanted me to rap. Long pause. “Yes.”

Uh oh. What can I rap? Hmmmm. “Fab Five Freddy told me everybody’s style, DJ’s spinning and slez my my, Flash is fast, Flash is cool, Francois se pha, no shay or two, and you don’t stop, you keep on eating cars. (Wait – that can’t be right. When does the man from Mars come in?) And you don’t stop, you keep on eating cars. Then, when there’s no more cars, you go out at night and eat up cars, where the people meet. Face to face, cheek to cheek … um … then when … wait … the man from Mars is through with cars and through with bars and now he only eats guitars.”

Phew.

“Do it again!”

Oh no … OK, let’s get the man from Mars in there earlier … geez, what part am I missing … the meter’s way off on the last line … oh well, I did it again.

“Do it again!”

Best. Daddy. Ever.

(The only raphip-hop songs I remember the lyrics to are the final verse of "Parents Just Don't Understand" ["OK, here's the situation..."] and "Bust a Move.")

The Inappropriate-for-Young-Ears Mix

Haven't been in a ranting mood lately, so you're getting another Angry Boy post. (Sorry. Maybe the Post will run an article about 4-year-olds with cell phones and that will set me off or something...)

The only song he wanted to listen to on the way to school today:
Rilo Kiley's "Portions for Foxes." Three times.

Sample inappropriate lyric:

And the talking leads to touching
And the touching leads to sex
And then there is no mystery left

The only song he wanted to listen to on the way home from school today: "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid Soundtrack. Four times.

Sample inappropriate lyric:

Darling, it's better down where it's wetter
Take it from me

Oddly, I can't decide which song I like singing along to more.

Houdini

AB's been having sleep issues lately. He used to be very good about sleeping, both during the day for naps and at night. But lately, it's been a struggle. Last night, he was up chatting to himself past 10 p.m. (after being in bed since about 8:30), and he still woke up before 7 a.m.

At naptime today, we put him in his bed and shut the door. He was crying, but we were trying to ignore him and see if he eventually fell asleep. I went to the kitchen to heat up some leftovers, and then I headed toward our bedroom with the food. I stopped in my tracks at our bedroom door: there was Angry Boy, sucking his thumb and holding on to his blanky, and leaning against our bed! It was the first time he'd ever gotten out of his bed by himself, and so I was definitely caught off-guard. It was all I could do to keep from laughing. I put him back in bed. He got out again. A few times.

He did his escape act again tonight (just once so far, knock on wood). But it's a little after 10 and I haven't heard any one-sided conversations over his monitor. I hope not to hear the pitter patter of his little chubby feet on the hardwoods until he's running for his breakfast tomorrow morning...

I saw movies once...before I had a kid

As seen at MysteryMommy, who saw it at Overread:

The list is Jim Emerson's101 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Bold the ones you've seen.

"2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) Stanley Kubrick Hated it.
"The 400 Blows" (1959) Francois Truffaut I've seen Truffaut, but not this one.
"8 1/2" (1963) Federico Fellini I've seen Fellini, but not this one.
"Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (1972) Werner Herzog
"Alien" (1979) Ridley Scott Hells yeah.
"All About Eve" (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
"Annie Hall" (1977) Woody Allen
"Bambi" (1942) Disney Why must anyone see this movie before they die? I can think of 10 better Disney movies.
"Battleship Potemkin" (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
"The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) William Wyler
"The Big Red One" (1980) Samuel Fuller
"The Bicycle Thief" (1949) Vittorio De Sica
"The Big Sleep" (1946) Howard Hawks
"Blade Runner" (1982) Ridley Scott Ooo, yeah.
"Blowup" (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
"Blue Velvet" (1986) David Lynch Many college memories.
"Bonnie and Clyde"(1967) Arthur Penn Really liked it.
"Breathless" (1959) Jean-Luc Godard
"Bringing Up Baby" (1938) Howard Hawks Meh.
"Carrie" (1975) Brian DePalma Dirty pillows!
"Casablanca"(1942) Michael Curtiz Ugh. Overrated.
"Un Chien Andalou" (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
"Children of Paradise"/ "Les Enfants du Paradis" (1945) Marcel Carne
"Chinatown"(1974) Roman Polanski
"Citizen Kane" (1941) Orson Welles Even more overrated than Casablanca.
"A Clockwork Orange"(1971) StanleyKubrick Only read the book. Still want to see this.
"The Crying Game" (1992) Neil Jordan
"The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) Robert Wise
"Days of Heaven" (1978) Terence Malick
"Dirty Harry" (1971) Don Siegel
"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972) Luis Bunuel
"Do the Right Thing" (1989) Spike Lee
"La Dolce Vita" (1960) Federico Fellini
"Double Indemnity" (1944) Billy Wilder
"Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying andLove the Bomb" (1964) StanleyKubrick Didn't get it.
"Duck Soup" (1933) Leo McCarey
"E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) Steven Spielberg
"Easy Rider" (1969) Dennis Hopper
"The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) Irvin Kershner
"The Exorcist" (1973) William Friedkin
"Fargo"(1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
"Fight Club" (1999) David Fincher Why is this on the list? The movie could've been called "It's Hard Out Here For a Privileged White Guy."
"Frankenstein" (1931) James Whale
"The General" (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
"The Godfather," "The Godfather, PartII" (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola No Part III? Reeeeeeeally??! Ah, Sofia. At least you direct better than you "act."
"Gone With the Wind" (1939) Victor Fleming
"GoodFellas" (1990) Martin Scorsese Yeah, baby.
"The Graduate" (1967) Mike Nichols Overrated.
"Halloween" (1978) John Carpenter
"A Hard Day's Night" (1964) Richard Lester
"Intolerance" (1916) D.W. Griffith
"It's A Gift" (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
"It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) Frank Capra
"Jaws" (1975) Steven Spielberg
"The Lady Eve" (1941) Preston Sturges
"Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) David Lean
"M" (1931) Fritz Lang
"Mad Max 2" / "The Road Warrior" (1981)George Miller
"The Maltese Falcon" (1941) John Huston
"The Manchurian Candidate" (1962) John Frankenheimer
"Metropolis" (1926) Fritz Lang
"Modern Times" (1936) Charles Chaplin
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
"Nashville"(1975) Robert Altman
"The Night of the Hunter" (1955) Charles Laughton
"Night of the Living Dead" (1968) George Romero So good.
"North by Northwest" (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
"Nosferatu" (1922) F.W. Murnau
"On the Waterfront" (1954) Elia Kazan
"Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968) Sergio Leone
"Out of the Past" (1947) Jacques Tournier
"Persona" (1966) Ingmar Bergman
"Pink Flamingos" (1972) John Waters
"Psycho" (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
"Pulp Fiction" (1994) Quentin Tarantino
"Rashomon" (1950) Akira Kurosawa
"Rear Window" (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
"Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) Nicholas Ray
"Red River" (1948) Howard Hawks
"Repulsion" (1965) Roman Polanski
"Rules of the Game" (1939) Jean Renoir
"Scarface" (1932) Howard Hawks
"The Scarlet Empress" (1934) Josef von Sternberg
"Schindler's List" (1993) Steven Spielberg
"The Searchers" (1956) John Ford
"The Seven Samurai" (1954) Akira Kurosawa
"Singin' in the Rain" (1952) Stanley Donen &Gene Kelly One of my favorite movies ever.
"Some Like It Hot" (1959) Billy Wilder
"A Star Is Born" (1954) George Cukor
"A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) Elia Kazan
"Sunset Boulevard" (1950) Billy Wilder
"Taxi Driver" (1976) Martin Scorsese
"The Third Man" (1949) Carol Reed
"Tokyo Story" (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
"Touch of Evil" (1958) Orson Welles
"The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948) John Huston
"Trouble in Paradise" (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
"Vertigo" (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
"West Side Story" (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise If this wasn't on here, I was going to fly to Chicago and beat him
"The Wild Bunch" (1969) Sam Peckinpah
"The Wizard of Oz" (1939) Victor Fleming

OK, off the top of my head, here's what he left off:

• To Kill a Mockingbird, for fuck's sake


• Animal Crackers, far superior to Duck Soup. If you want to see a Marx Brothers movie, see Animal Crackers. Or even A Night at the Opera.


• The Music Man


• Glory


• Rocky


• Silence of the Lambs


• It Happened One Night -- it and Silence of the Lambs were two of only three movies to win the big five Oscars: Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor and Actress.

Random Friday stuff

• Bought the following songs recently, all of which are connected in a soundtrack way:
  
  
  1. "How to Save a Life" by the Fray
  
  
  2. "In the Sun" by Michael Stipe
  
  
  3. "Edge of the Ocean" by Ivy
  
  
  4. "Fix You Up" by Tegan and Sara (saw them in concert a little while back)
  
  
  5. "Other Side of the World" by KT Tunstall
  
  
  6. "Scratch" by Kendall Payne
  
  
  7. "Sparkle Me" by Buffseeds
  
  
  8. "Today Has Been Okay" by Emiliana Torrini
  
  
  9. "Where Does the Good Go?" by Tegan and Sara
  
  
  I've put these songs on a playlist with Rilo Kiley's "Portions for Foxes," which Corndog was nice enough to share with me (when I won last year's NCAA Sweet 16 contest, I believe), and Keane's "Somewhere Only We Know."



• I hate reruns. When do new episodes start again?


• Good day at work--got a bunch of new assignments, but they all interest me.


• Watching playoff hockey after watching a couple of NewsRadio episodes.


• My fantasy baseball team sucks ass. I've decided I don't like weekly head-to-head matchups. I can't get my brain to think in such short-term spurts. That's why I invest in mutual funds for the long haul, not in individual stocks for the quick buck. Or something. Whatever, my team sucks.


• I have to get my car inspected tomorrow morning.


• I might get to have lunch with my friend Nutso Ranter tomorrow. Yay.


• I might get to work out tomorrow. Yay.


• I have to buy Angry Boy some new shoes, even though I just bought him new shoes a month ago.


• Starting to come out of my blog funk. And I don't mean funk in the fun Parliament way. But whatever, it's ebbing. So yay.

This made my day for reasons I can't explain:

Poco and the Pure Prairie League are going to be performing in this area in June. Tickets are a mere $35.

Drought

Blogging has been harder than normal lately. Work is taking up a good chunk of my time. I'll come across good blog fodder during the day, but by the time I get home, the desire to type has abandoned me. It's not blog depression, exactly. More like blog fatigue. Or blog apathy.

Happy Easter

As seen at Thoughts From the Waiting Room:

You Are a Cadbury Creme Egg

You're the type that stole little brother's easter basket so that you could have MORE CANDY!

What Easter Candy Are You?

Off to eat one of those right now...

Past, present, future

As seen at Yankee Transplant:

20 Years Ago I...
1. Had three dogs.
2. Went to see my first movie without an adult (I think it was The Money Pit).
3. Wanted to be an actress.

10 Years Ago I...
1. Was living with no dogs, but my roommates had fish.
2. Was about a month away from meeting NSAH.
3. Had time to read books for pleasure.

5 Years Ago I...
1. Became obsessed with "ER."
2. Was trying to figure out what I should do with a law degree.
3. Was working out 4-5 days a week.

1 Year Ago I...
1. Had two dogs.
2. Was working out 1-2 days a week.
3. Finally saw Lost in Translation.

So Far This Year I...
1. Have gained too much weight.
2. Have taken a vacation.
3. Have started using our slow cooker on weekends.

Yesterday I...
1. Ate too much.
2. Got home late.
3. Fretted about billable hours.

Today I...
1. Ate too much.
2. Decided I'd take my kid to see The Wild this weekend.
3. Worked from home for part of the day.

Tomorrow I will ...
1. Eat too much.
2. Have lunch with a friend (maybe, I hope?)
3. Watch "NewsRadio" DVDs.

Judas

Warning: Religious post by decidedly non-religious person below
(In other words, I approach the matters below not as a "believer" but as a lover of the stories nonetheless.)

The latest news stories about the Gospel of Judas are giving me chills. As unreligious (non-religious?) as I am, I studied both Judaism and Christianity (and, specifically, the life of Jesus) in college. In the class on the life of Jesus, we read the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; we read books by John Crossan and Elaine Pagels; and--most moving to me--we watched movies like The Last Temptation of Christ, Jesus of Montreal, and Jesus Christ Superstar. (Yes, and Life of Brian, too.)

In watching those movies (especially Harvey Keitel's performance in Last Temptation and Carl Anderson's in Superstar), my heart broke for Judas. In these portrayals, he felt compelled to give up Jesus. Not because of greed, as some people would maintain. But because he was pushed to do so, either by his concern for his fellow Jews under the oppressive Roman rule, or by Jesus himself. Temptation really brought it home for me: If Jesus doesn't die on the cross, mankind is doomed. Thus, when Jesus is tempted by the Devil, he must refuse. He must remain on the cross and "die for our sins."

But for some reason, the same people who understand why Jesus rejected Satan while upon the cross, and indeed who love him for it, despise and curse Judas for putting him there. I never understood that. If Jesus must die to save mankind, then Judas is a crucial and necessary component of that. If Judas had shrugged off the forces compelling him to "betray" Jesus and had instead protected his friend whom he loved and admired, then where would Christianity--and mankind--be? My mind just does not understand how Judas became the villain in all of this. The man did what he knew he had to do, possibly knowing that he would be vilified for centuries because of his heart-breaking yet utterly necessary deeds.

And now, the Gospel of Judas is a text that backs up that line of thinking. I am so excited about this. And right now I'm watching an excellent two-hour special on the Gospel of Judas on the National Geographic Channel, which has appearances by Bart Ehrman, of whom I'm a big fan. My mind doesn't often turn to matters such as these, but now I am transfixed. Is anyone else as interested in this as I am?

Damn you, Scrubs!

You can play "Still Fighting It" all you want--I will not cry!

Is this something I should be proud of?

I went to Whole Foods today and spent less than $100. Less than $90, in fact. And my purchase included two different vitamins (prenatal, and iron), which always jack up a grocery bill, regardless of where you shop. And with some of the food I bought, I made a great chicken dinner in our slow cooker. So hurray for me.

Billable 10

I got nuthin' tonight, and the brain is in the process of frying (doc review). So here's tonight's billable 10 shuffle:

1. "Digging" by Jonatha Brooke


2. "China" by Tori Amos


3. "High on Sunday" by Aimee Mann (one of my best friends is taking me to see her this summer, and it's at my favorite venue--yay! I haven't seen Aimee since law school.)


4. "Hurricane Eye" by Paul Simon


5. "Green Eyes" by Coldplay (ooo, I've got an "eye" thing goin')


6. "Hate" by Fiction Plane


7. "Overblown" by Mudhoney


8. "He Got Game" by Public Enemy


9. "Don't Change" by INXS


10. "Ich Bin Ein Auslander" by Pop Will Eat Itself (haven't listened to this song in ages--reminds me of college)

And I've decided that, regarding the big issue, I'm not going to do anything about it (passivity from APL? Quelle suprise!). I'll just keep doing what I do here. And if this person from work decides to come clean with me, fine. And if not, fine. I'm going to try to put it behind me and not think about it... much.

This is how lame I am

At 9:41 on a Tuesday night, I'm reviewing documents while listening to (among other songs) Andrew Gold's "Lonely Boy" on iTunes.

... you know, I probably shouldn't be listening to this song in my current state:

In the summer of '53 his mother
Brought him a sister
And she told him we must attend to her needs
She's so much younger than you
Well he ran down the hall and he cried
Oh how could his parents have lied
When they said he was an only son
He thought he was the only one

Oh what a lonely boy
Oh what a lonely boy
Oh what a lonely boy

Anyway, still mulling over last post's big issue. But, as you can see, I'm still here for now.

Big issue

I think someone from work is reading this blog. I mean, I have a few real-life work friends who read my blog, but that doesn't wig me out at all. If I saw them in person, I'd talk to them about exactly the types of things I write about here. But I'm talking about someone who is not a close friend. Or even an acquaintance. I think this person only has a vague idea about who I am in the workplace. But a couple of newly discovered facts are seriously making me wonder if this person has found this blog and, more importantly, has guessed who I am.

So I don't know what to do. I thought about moving to another URL, sharing the new URL with everyone on my blogroll and then telling others to email me if they wanted to know the new address... but I realized, I would want to keep using the name "Angry Pregnant Lawyer." It's my "brand," as the folks who work in PR like to say. So I would keep calling myself APL and I'd be fairly easy to track down via search engine, wherever my URL might be.

I'll be honest with you, I'm less motivated to write as I think about this new problem.I've never written anything unfavorable about work--quite the contrary, in fact--so I'm not worried about feeling stifled in that regard. But the things I write about here are not always the types of things I'd want people I work with to know about me.

I'm at a loss--unmotivated and kind of sad about the whole thing.

On a happier note, Angry Boy was very good tonight with some out-of-town family members who were in town. After dessert, when it was time for us to leave, he walked around the table giving kisses and hugs (and later high-fives) to everyone...and this group included people he'd never met before. I think he just really comprehends the meaning of "family." Sweet boy.