Friday, March 26, 2010

Vintage videos with helpful advice about what to do (and not do) during your period

These videos crack me up, although I personally think the second one is better. I especially love the advice about not swimming the first few days of your period because you might get chills and catch cold (first video), or the advice to dry your hair quickly, dress nicely, and avoid strenuous exercise (second video). "Pay more attention to your hair and nails, and plan to wear your prettiest dress," around minute 5 in the second video. Oh yes, that surely has something to do with menstruation!

Also, who changes their pad 6 times a day? That seems a bit excessive. Maybe the absorbancy and quality of pads was different back then or something. Thank goodness they got rid of those sanitary napkin belts. I'll never forget finding a really old box of pads in my grandma's closet one summer and being entirely perplexed as she explained the old system to me.

I especially love how everyone glosses over the part about cramps. In the first video, Molly only alludes to feeling a bit strange, but her mother just offers to have a mother/daughter conference night. Oooh, wheee! That will help with the pain I'm having from my uterus cramping! Thanks mom! And the dialog about referring to it as "the curse" is pretty funny, too. All I know, is that based on the way the female reproductive cycle and birth are constructed, God is a man.



Sunday, March 21, 2010

Oddly entertaining

I'm not sure what to say about this. It's weird and oddly entertaining.

Sunday, March 07, 2010

Music video meets Rube Goldberg machine

OK Go does some really great music as well as videos to accompany them. Their latest is a giant Rube Goldberg machine, which looks like a pretty wicked difficult set to put together. Read the background here.



From the same guys who brought us the music video gem on treadmills. I love this Lego tribute.

Oscars

I watched the Academy Awards tonight, even though I hadn't really planned on it in advance. I ended up getting my new computer delivered this week, so I was sitting downstairs working on getting things setup the way I want them, and moving things off of my old machine. In the process, I started the awards show and realized that I had not seen one movie up for an award.

I used to watch a lot of movies, and had a pretty healthy relationship with Blockbuster every weekend up until a few years ago. I don't really know what's happened in recent years, but the mainstream movies seem so blah to me anymore, and if I watch anything it's usually something on the Sundance channel. So, I didn't have any stake in the game this year while watching, although I was kind of pulling for Precious mostly because I think the story is pretty amazing and it would have been a big departure for the academy. In the end, I was pretty choked up by Sandra Bullock's acceptance speech for The Blind Side, and was happy to see a woman finally bring home the Oscar for best director (Bigelow for The Hurt Locker).

And throughout the broadcast, I took notes about some films that I would like to check out after being introducted to them tonight:
Paris 36
The Young Victoria
Logorama
An Education
A Single Man
Up in the Air (which I did want to see before, but hadn't yet gotten around to)
Food Inc (also wanted to see after an Oprah feature on this, but hadn't yet gotten around to either)
The Cove
The Most Dangerous Man in America

The crazy thing is that I found myself shedding a few tears at different moments, which was completely unexpected. The John Hughes montage was really touching. Seeing clips from all his films reminded me of how much an impact his work had on my upbringing. They're the movies that I still love to watch today. The In Memory section was pretty emotional, especially since they started out with Patrick Swayze, and had a section in there about Brittany Murphy and Natasha Richardson. They all died too young. Then I shed a tear at Bullock's acceptance speech. I must be PMS-ing.