cindy's world

I walked into jujitsu yesterday wearing my UCLA jacket. The first thing the instructor did upon seeing me was turn to another student next to him and say, “I keep forgetting to bring in a handicap parking placard for her.”

I would love to argue that, but I can’t, considering I’m aware of certain people I was very close to in college abusing handicap placards back then, who still does it to this day. =P

Apparently the USC Cheerleaders have been on the news giving the top 5 reasons why USC will beat UCLA on Saturday, the best one in my opinion being “Because we play the entire game, not just the final 4 minutes.” UCLA’s Cheerleaders gave 5 reasons why we’d win them, but the only one I know about is “Your men wear skirts,” which I suppose is a comeback to what they said about how we’re pansies in powder blue.

P.S. As an afterthought, I thought I’d give a bit of background to readers who are not local to Southern California, or familiar with university sports rivalries. UCLA (my alma mater) is the cross-town rival of the private university USC. UCLA’s mascot is the Bruin bear; USC’s is the Trojan. Thus, all the jokes about Trojan condoms (“A Bruin is forever, but a Trojan is only good once.”), and about their armor resembling a skirt. And a few years ago, a story hit the news that some doctors local to UCLA would significantly lessen the standard for declaring students physically handicapped before giving them a handicap parking placard — for a fee — which some students abuse to park in the very hard-to-park Westwood area. My favorite rivalry item is a burgundy T-shirt with a yellow square in the middle, and in the square is a yellow profile of a trojan. It looks exactly like the typical USC shirt with USC colors, except if you look closely at the letters on top of the square, instead of saying “USC” it says “SUC.” Oh, the reference to UCLA playing the last 4 minutes is due to the fact that we have pretty bad defense, and in the games this year, we’d let the other team score on us until a hail-Mary type comeback in the end when we’d turn the game around and win based on offense alone. Our colors are blue and gold, but in the early days of UCLA when newspaper photographs were black and white, UCLA’s athletic department realized powder blue photographed better in b&w, so they made their uniforms powder blue, altho to this day our official colors are still a sort of royal blue and gold.

The November statistics barely beat the October stats in hits. October: 26,309 total hits. November: 26,891 total hits. I was totally rooting toward the end of November, trying to — by mental prowess alone — push the bar graph higher so that November’s bar gets just a little higher than October‘s. It didn’t happen until the very last day of November.

There are some new countries and sources this month, but in the lead are some of the same countries. The US first, then Sweden with 4.38% of total hits, then Australia (0.55%), Cocos (Keeling) Islands (0.53%), and then Canada (0.42%). I hadn’t heard of Cocos (Keeling) Islands, but I looked it up online and it’s beautiful! What waters! US Military, welcome! I saw on the stats for today that there are some of our best and bravest, stationed in Kuwait, giving me a visit. Hi!!

For the rankings of the top 30 of 39 (5 more than October!) total countries/sources, click on the “more”:
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This is the best trailer I’ve seen in awhile. It’s for an upcoming Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Costner movie called Rumor Has It. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard at a trailer. The movie is about a family getting together in Pasadena, CA for one daughter’s (Mena Suvari, the blonde friend in “American Beauty”) wedding and the other daughter (Jennifer Aniston) finding out that their mom lost her true love (Kevin Costner) before she married their father because he slept with the grandmother (Shirley MacLaine), and Jennifer Aniston’s character was intrigued about who this man is, and this man actually comes to the sister’s wedding, and next thing you know, Jennifer Aniston’s character gets sucked into his charm as well. BTW, her character’s engaged to a great guy (Mark Ruffalo). It’s just a big mess with some really great, witty lines.

Rumor Has It trailer

Unfortunately, it doesn’t come out until December 25 this year. “What’m I gonna do till then, implode?” I wailed to Mr. W, who sent me the trailer.

Diana has a link to a UCLA page that not only has the words to the UCLA fight song, “Sons of Westwood,” but PLAYS it in its full band glory, complete with the cheer

U! (clap, clap, clap)
C! (clap, clap, clap)
L! (clap, clap, clap)
A! (clap, clap, clap)

U-C-L-A! Fight! Fight! Fight! .

My family law reference judge is/was an active Trojan, and his daughter is presently a USC student following in his footsteps. He is away on a judicial conference for the next couple of days, and won’t be back until Monday. So I called his line in his chambers, waited for it to go to voice mail, and played the song in its entirety into his voice mail. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Gawd, I hope UCLA wins this Saturday against USC at the Colliseum. Cuz if we don’t, when the judge comes back on Monday and listens to this voice mail, it’d just be inane. Good thing I didn’t identify myself.

Haha, due to my playing of the UCLA Fight Song in this prank, my bailiff du jour (not my regular bailiff) is now stuck mindlessly humming and whistling the song. HA! Now if I can get this song stuck in more people’s heads… Muahahahahaha!

***
Update 10:40am: I just returned from another floor. The UCLA-USC rivalry is rampant around here! People (judges, clerks and lawyers alike) are actually wearing collegiate pins and colors and insulting each other in the elevator. I always knew the rivalry was a big thing and I’ve been harassed by judges before coming back from jogging at lunch wearing a “Bruins Unlimited” T-shirt. This is GREAT!

I was talking to a friend about our childhood eating habits. She to this day will not drink milk nor eat chicken, because she has always despised the way they taste. She said that as a kid, her mom would make chicken and rice on the same day each week, and my friend ate rice and her brother ate chicken, so when Mom left the table, they’d switch plates and eat what the other won’t. Then her brother moved out and my friend would just sit and stare at the glass of milk on her table, and stare at the chicken, until one day her mom finally got the picture. I asked why she couldn’t have simply told her mom that she didn’t want the stuff. She said that in her household they couldn’t be picky and had to eat whatever was in front of them. When her brother left, she finally told her mom that she had never eaten the chicken.

I told her that in my house my dad always conned me into eating something I didn’t like by telling me some crazy story about how it’s magic or I’m creating a park in my stomach and the broccoli is the trees and the people would be sad if my park had no trees for them to sit under, the soup is the lake and I need to eat some duck to swim in the lake, and of course I need more rice so that the people can use it like bread to feed the ducks, I can’t very well let the poor duckies starve, etc.. (I blame my wild imagination and constant psychological guilt on my parents.)

My no-nonsense friend said, “That would never work at our house.”

This is totally the type of smart ass, idiosyncratic remark that I would make:

Panicking when her two-year-old
swallowed a tiny magnet, my
friend Phyllis rushed him to the
emergency room. “He’ll be fine,” the
doctor promised her. “The magnet
should pass through his system in a
day or two.”
“How will I be sure?” she pressed.
“Well,” the doctor suggested, “you
could stick him on the refrigerator
and when he falls off, you’ll know.”

Marie Thibodeau, Nashua, N.H. as contributed to Reader’s Digest and printed in “Life in These United States,” December 2003.

In the gym locker room earlier at lunch, as I was pulling my workout clothes out of my bag to change, I realized that I had not packed my sports bra. I couldn’t believe it. I went thru all my stuff, and sure enough, wasn’t there. I actually stood there for close to 2 minutes, unsure of what to do. I had planned to do a 3-4 mile run on the treadmill, so I need the jogbra. Can I go in the bra I’m wearing now? Not enough support for running, and I don’t want to wear a sweaty bra back to work and for the rest of the afternoon. Light workout, no run? Not worth my time if I don’t sweat. My MP3 player was about to die on low batteries anyway.

So I drove to McDonald’s and had a fajita wrap, small Fruit n’ Yogurt parfait, and their Fruit Walnut Salad, sat in my car and listened to the antics of Heidi, Frosty & Frank on 97.1FM.

My trainee, however, busted her butt at the other gym doing a long cardio session at an increased resistance level. Shhh, don’t tell her all I did was eat and sit.

I watched Rent (the movie, not the musical, altho the movie IS a musical) over the weekend. I didn’t know until I talked about it at work on Monday that much of the original “Rent” broadway cast performed the same roles in the movie. No wonder. I thought the acting was brilliant. The actors embraced their roles and their music. I’m not normally a fan of musicals, but I thought the presentation onto film was done excellently, i.e. merging the snapshot-vignette expose’ of the individual characters akin to the style of soliloquys in plays, with Hollywood camera angles and editing. Impactive, definitely.

For those of you who don’t know much about the plot of “Rent” (like me before I watched the movie), it’s a glimpse into the lives — personal issues and interpersonal relations — of approximately 7 people (I’m too lazy to count) living in some slummy apartments in New York. The main themes depicted are relationships (homo- and heterosexual, and friendship), HIV and coping therewith, near-poverty and coping therewith. At first it seemed I couldn’t relate to any of the things or people in the movie, so it seemed like a good “escape” film. But I was wrong. The plot works hard to show that as removed as these ghetto rats are from the average person’s reality, they are still Everyman, and the same heart of humanity runs a rich thread through everyone no matter what the life experience.

It was a very tearful weekend. I cried thru much of the movie. If you decide to watch it, watch for the symbolism of when Angel (the cross-dresser) takes off his/her wig; the meaning of Santa Fe; the perfect body language between Angel and boyfriend Collins, from the eyebrow arches down to the fingertips.

One warning tho. Well, actually, two. 1.) If you don’t enjoy this movie, you’d be annoyed to discover it will pretend to end 4 times before it actually ends. 2.) If you have ever nursed someone through HIV to AIDS to death, you probably should not watch this movie before seriously emotionally bracing yourself. In a Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Studies course I took at UCLA, we watched a movie documenting a gay couple’s life from the onset of AIDS till death; we saw the social stigma that is their life, each emotionally painful step they took to get through every day. Even with just that detached, prior exposure to patients with AIDS, portions of Rent were very difficult to sit through.

Now that I’ve hopefully inspired* you guys to be good little spouses, lemme inspire you into making your bodies and health better.

*i.e., scared

Email chain between me and my gym trainee (adjusted for easier reading):

Her: You’d be proud of me I worked on my arms, abs, and did 20 minutes of cardio (x-cross trainer) on level 4. Monday I think I’m moving it to level 5. I was dying yersterday but it seemed easy today.
Me: I AM proud of you. =) Cardio is easy/hard depending on how much sleep you had, whether you had breakfast that day, how hydrated you are, and what time of month it is for you.
Her: I’m working my way to that one. Since I don’t were my medical card around my neck I don’t want to push it and end up in County hospital.
Me: haha! Hey, you don’t have any health conditions that may be exascerbated by strenuous exercise, do you? I should’ve asked you that first before we started training.
Her: high blood pressure. But that’s been great since I lost weight and started exercising. My doctor said it’s the best it’s been in years. To continue to do what ever it is I’m doing. 🙂
Me: wow, I’m so glad to hear that the exercise has more than cosmetic effect for you. I didn’t know that! You’re gonna save a lot of aggravation and money on blood pressure meds.
Her: People don’t understand why it’s so important to me. The doctor told me if I planned on being at my son’s high school graduation I better start acting like it. My body is not able to carry the extra weight. I had problem once I put on 20 pounds while I was pregant. 🙁 So I couldn’t be the happy fat (oops obese) lady even then. So it’s deeper than tryin to be cute. But I love giving the men something to look at too! Now if I can only do something with my hair.

We had a sheriff witness yesterday that didn’t sh0w up as subpoenaed because he was attending a colleague’s funeral in another county. That prompted my judge to tell me about a fiasco that happened a few years ago between a (semi-local) sheriff and a girl in a situation that escalated to a social war between the government and the public.

A bunch of sheriffs attended a wake after a colleague’s funeral, and they were at a bar afterwards drinking and doing guy stuff. One of these sheriffs started talking to a girl, and the two of them, both drunk, went outside and had sex somewhere. The story’s vague as to whether the sheriff took her somewhere, or they just did it in his car. Anyway, the girl walked away from the car and was understood that she would walk home, and the sheriff drove home to his family. Yes, he was a family man. Shortly after the sheriff left the girl, the girl’s “pimp boyfriend” as my judge called him, not sure if he meant literally, appeared from where he’d been following the two cheaters unbeknownst to them both, and killed the girl. The damning DNA evidence pointed to the sheriff as the killer because he had just been with her, altho the sheriff was never convicted. The public was outraged. There was even a segment on Connie Chung’s news show and there was practically a protest movement that wanted the sheriff canned for the murder of this girl, and the world believed that he was a sick murderer who got away with it scott-free. (Who’s Scott? Where did this saying come from? I guess he was free.) This got carried farther and farther, into wrongful death lawsuits against the Sheriff’s Department, other civil rights actions, and it raged for 3-5 years. Finally, finally, it was somehow proven or discovered that the real murderer is the girl’s boyfriend.

The judge was surprised I don’t know about this fiasco. I’d never heard anything of it before. My very moral, very proper judge is of the viewpoint that when these male scumbuckets get together in a bar, no good comes of it. I feel bad for the sheriff, who altho he deserves to get crap for cheating on his wife (but that’s between them only), did not deserve to be blamed for a girl’s murder and be sued and have all the negative life-altering events that ensued in public. This is also how I feel about Kobe Bryant’s fiasco. He’s an awful person, maybe, and an awful husband, but to have that girl create lawsuit after lawsuit to be paid off, claiming rape, and he lost all those endorsement contracts and had to buy his wife that huge rock and buy her mom that house…is a piece of arse worth THAT much? And what about President Clinton and his indiscretion? He’s an awful husband, but it doesn’t mean he should be IMPEACHED from office due to an affair with an intern. I know, I know, the “technical reason” for the push for impeachment was that he perjured himself on the stand. But still. I think the nation was just angry that he’s not — or at least couldn’t keep up the appearance of — the great leader whom we as a country want to be associated with; he subjected himself to a legal circus that had the entire world laughing at us. And you think the damage stopped at the courthouse steps? No. It’ll never be over. It rages on at home. It rages on in people’s jokes. It rages on in the histories of the country and of the family. A smear forever, perhaps lasting generations.

…for a piece of ass?!

People, people. Weigh the potential damage against the potential pleasure. Be more far-sighted. Prevention is key. Remember Richard Gere and Diane Lane in Unfaithful?

I’m sorry to pound the cheating issue into you guys, my dear readers, but I think it, like smoking, is one of the most preventable and most damaging self-sabotages.