High Art with Ally Sheedy. I know the role was a real departure for Ally Sheedy – she hasn’t acted in forever, has she? – but despite the photographer-lesbian-drug addict role, she was still very much Ally Sheedy. She had all the same mannerisms, the shrugging one shoulder, the looking sideways while she talked, the same impish smile. I was very aware while I was watching it that she was Ally Sheedy – she didn’t get lost in the role at all. It wasn’t a bad movie, though. Speaking of people who get lost in roles, when we watched The Sixth Sense last week, I still couldn’t believe that the kid at the beginning was Donnie Wahlberg. The first time I saw the movie, in the theater, I had no idea it was him. This time, even knowing that it was him, I still couldn’t believe it. He looks nothing like himself – and he doesn’t even really sound right, either. He must have lost a lot of weight for that role, and I think they did something to his eyes, too, contacts maybe. Hell, while we’re on the topic of movies, Fred and I watched Drive Me Crazy last weekend. Yes, we love dorky high school movies, what can I say? So we were watching this very formulaic movie (halfway through, I guessed that Dee was the computer chick) and something happened that surprised Melissa Joan Hart’s (who we still call Clarissa, no matter what she’s in) character, and she made a face, spurring Fred to note, "She sure does go all slack-jawed and stupid-looking when she’s surprised, doesn’t she?" I couldn’t have put it better myself. Lord. While I was looking for those movie links on IMDB, I noticed that Melissa Joan Hart is slated to star in a remake of The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer. That’s gotta be interesting. So while we were on IRC at work this morning, another regular – let’s call him Del – who hangs out in the channel (it’s a programming geek channel, but I like the people – most of the time, anyway) was telling us that a headhunter he’d been e-mailing with had e-mailed Del and told him that he (Del) needed to change the message on his home answering machine, because it wasn’t "professional." How rude!, was our response. What does the message on your answering machine say? Del said that it was his wife saying, basically "We can’t come to the phone right now ’cause we’re ALL TIED UP, but leave a message after the beep, and we’ll give you ALL the attention you deserve." Sounds pretty harmless and kinda cute, doesn’t it? Well. Fred called me back to his office and used his speakerphone to call the Del’s home phone so we could listen to the message, and it sounds like the answering service for a sex line – she’s got a low, breathy voice, and the message is interspersed with lots of heavy breathing. As I told Fred, "What the hell is she working three jobs for? She could get a job as a sex-phone chick in ten seconds flat!" Anyway, Fred helped Del write an email to the headhunter telling him, basically, to go fuck himself. I’ll be interested to find out what the headhunter has to say to that. Y’all have a good evening, and please excuse any mis-spellings or typos; I don’t have time to proofread, because That ’70s Show is about to come on. God, I love that Hyde! Night, all. —–]]>
04/03/2000