If you link directly to this blog, I’ve moved it. The new blog is located at: http://personal.marran.com/blog.

I think you’ll like the new one!

Okay…just to even out my feelings about gay culture from my last post: here are some clips from a very funny drag queen movie: Girls Will Be Girls

One of the hardest things about getting older is that you can’t tell if you’re turning into a grumpy old crank or if you’re just starting to notice how irritating the world can be.

I just saw this commercial on Comedy Central. I found it offensive on so many levels. The most obvious and irritating thing about the commercial is that they equate meeting people with picking out clothes. They might as well be advertising crystal meth.

I wish I had started keeping track of all the calls I’ve been getting from political candidates lately. It was at least five calls yesterday. They’ve all been democratic candidates. It makes me wish I had signed up as a republican, so I could have compared the average republican call to the average democratic call. Although, now that I think of it, why bother. They’re all going to be the same.

The Clinton calls go like this:

This is Hillary Clinton. In my XX years of EXPERIENCE bringing about CHANGE blah-blah-blah CHANGE blah-blah EXPERIENCE.

The Obama calls go like this:

This is Barak Obama. On February 4th, vote for HOPE and CHANGE blah-blah-blah HOPE blah-blah CHANGE

It really seems aggressively anti-substantive. I guess it’s foolish to expect that they could say something of value in a 1 minute recorded voice message. But if they aren’t going to say anything actually relevant or important, why bother me?

The whole thing is making me feel very…used. And creeped out.

I got an email from Obama yesterday that was titled: “One Last Thing…” Did he not get his message in the previous 2 emails he sent me that day? He starting to sound like someone that can’t end a telephone conversation for fear I’ll never call back.

I wish political candidates realized that they should be following dating rules. When you’re in that initial dating phase and you aren’t sure if you’re going to go all the way, you would NEVER call someone that twice in one day! That would sound way too desperate and needy. I would have been happy to have a call on Friday from the candidates that went something like: “Hey. It’s been great getting to know you. I hope we can continue our relationship. Have a great weekend. Call me if your bored.” And then nothing until primary day.

They should let me have some time to sit and think about it, chat with friends at Sunday brunch, etc. The soonest they should call would be the eve of the primaries with a “Happy Primary Day. I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. I hope you had a good weekend. Think of me at the polls.”

The candidates have crossed over from courting me into stalking me. At this point, I’m looking for anyone that knows how to not sound desperate.

David is now traveling every weekend until February. Since I’ve been on a weight-loss kick, I’ve decided to take his absence to try a month of weekend crash diets. Every weekend, I’ll pick a new theme. I should say that some of these are not crash diets but legitimate lifestyle choices. However, they are choices that I never thought I’d make, so I’m trying them out for a weekend since you can stick just about any diet for a weekend.

This is the first weekend and I’ve chosen to give up dairy. If I had a normally bad diet, I don’t think giving up dairy would make a bit of difference, but I’m already on a pretty healthy and restrictive diet, so this is just the icing on the cake. It’s a chance for my system to clean itself out. I tend to think that dairy slows down our digestive system and I think a good part of healthy eating is getting your body to be able to process food faster and more completely. I have also heard that people with dark circles under their eyes have a low-level dairy allergy, so I’m hoping to see a difference in my complexion.

I don’t have a lot of dairy normally, but the dairy that I have is heavily ingrained in my routine, so I had to be able to substitute. For instance, I have milk in my morning protein shake and then my coffee. I’d have to change both of those things. I had tried soy milk several months ago and while I liked the taste, it was definitely not making my digestive system happy. So this time around I’m trying almond milk. I had some last night and was surprised how good the unsweetened kind is. At first it seems pretty watery, but the aftertaste has a delicious, nutty tang to it. So that’s my substitute for milk.

I have recently gotten into a daily dose of yogurt. That’s going to have to be replaced as well. I may try soy yogurt in the hopes that the enzymes in yogurt will balance out the issue of the digestive problems of soy. I’ve also stocked the refrigerator with watermelon, which is another healthy snack that I’ll have in place of my usual yogurt snack.

I think the hard part will be salad dressing. I’ve been getting into salads a lot lately. Even a non-creamy cobb salad has blue cheese in it. I suppose that my salads will have to have oil vinegar dressing for the time being. Anyway, it’s just for a weekend.

I’ll be sure to do another entry next week to discuss any changes with a dairy free diet.

I happened to be served up the following video, which is by definition “cute”, and I highly recommend it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUJzcU6vbPE). However, what it led me to was the Dramatic Prairie Dog phenomenon. It’s a simple shot of a prairie dog from a Japanese kid’s show, but someone added a dramatic flourish of music. Here’s the original video:

And here are some of my favorite remixes:

[youtube]2Uaw2CdjU3c&NR[/youtube]

I just saw Sweeney Todd. I loved it. The filming is impeccable. The scenes of 19th century London are stunning. The story is captivating (they made some changes from the stage version that tightened it up).

I had read a review in The New York Times that said that it is as gory as Saw. I haven’t actually seen Saw all the way through, though I think I can safely saw that it is not nearly as gory as Saw. In fact, the blood is too bright red to be realistic. It’s meant to be over-the-top Grand Guignol. There are some big gross-out moments, of course, but it’s always in Tim Burton style - meaning that it’s effective, but cartoonish.

The acting is great. The singing is not as good as you’d like, but it’s no surprise. Johnny Depp had a bit of a rock-and-roll flair to his singing, which I expected. He hit the notes better than I was expecting. But his acting is just so good, you have to forgive him.

I had seen a revival of Sweeney Todd last year on Broadway that was excellent. I really shouldn’t compare the two, because there’s no coming close to how talented the cast was in the stage version; however, the movie has one thing that I’ve never seen in a stage version of Sweeney Todd - it’s creepy fun.

I really can’t think of anyone that I wouldn’t send to go see it.

My friend, Renee, has been talking about raw food restaurants here in New York. She turned me on to one in particular, Pure Food and Wine. There’s a little blurb on their website describing raw food.

Last night, we were looking for a restaurant to take a kosher friend to and I suggested that we try this place out. They had a sample menu online and everything sounded delicious by the description of things.

Our kosher friend, Sarah, upon hearing that we were going to a raw food restaurant said “Aren’t there a lot of articles about raw food restaurants making people sick?” When we pressed her for more information, it turns out she was talking about a Sex and the City episode.

So we got there and I ordered a cocktail. It was good, but definitely felt light on the alcohol part. They use sake and prosecco for their main alcohol. I don’t know what it is about sake that makes it more organic/raw than other alcohol.

The menu was different than what was on the web, but still as tasty-sounding.

When the food arrived, I was blown away. You would never be able to tell in a million years that there was no dairy - the food was so rich and creamy. I really don’t know how they did the things they did.

Both the appetizer and the entree were extremely good. I was thinking that I might not fill up from eating there and was fully prepared to get dessert on the way home. But halfway through my entree, my stomach said “I’m filling up! Slow down!”

David and I decided to split a sundae for dessert. It was amazing. I never never never would have known that it was vegan. In fact, I preferred it to a regular dairy sundae because I didn’t feel weighed down and bloated from eating it.

Even the kosher doubter had a great meal. She confessed that she was ready to harass me about the meal. But she left with a changed attitude and a happy palate.

I guess I have to face the fact that I’m not going to have my new site up any time soon. At this point, I think hitting January 15th would be a tough deadline.

So in the meantime, here’s a video of our latest dance performance. Yours truly is the one shaking the finger at the dancer playing the little girl in the beginning. Then I re-emerge later.

This was a great performance. I had a lot of fun because there’s a bit more acting, the choreography was not quite as demanding, and it had a creepy Halloween theme to it.

Normally, you can chalk up my lack of recent blog entries to laziness. Well…maybe that’s too harsh. Distractions is perhaps a better word. Anyway, I have a reason this time.

I had written a nice long blog entry about a movie that I had been hunting down on DVD for a long time. It took me about a half hour to write. I click “post” and the browser-busy icon kept spinning. After several minutes, the server timed out and I lost all my work.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time this has happened. My blog software is Wordpress, which is pretty good, but it’s PHP running on Windows. My hosting company hasn’t quite worked out the kinks and unfortunately the server hangs from time to time. You would think I would finally get in the habit of writing posts in a separate application so as not to lose any work. Alas, no.

So when I lost that entry, I vowed to re-do my site and put it on a Linux server. The new site is going to be pretty great. It will be divided into three separate sections: Business, Personal, and Creative. The content of the current site will be moved into the “Personal” section.

To make sure that I don’t take forever, I’m telling everyone that the new site will be live by August 15th! Be sure to come back on the 15th for the new site. There will still be a lot under construction, I’m sure, but at least the current site will be completely migrated.

See you back here soon!