3BT: Beating Wii, Bach and Bender

I know I've been off the horn for a while. Not only have I not posted for a few weeks, I've been bad about visiting other blogs. I owe visits and comments to Joe, Pearl and Sonnjea, I recall off the top of my head. But tonight I write just to get something posted, and because yesterday gave me a few items to make the day lovely. So, the beautiful things:

1. A few weeks ago, I got a Wii Fit for my birthday. I know I'm out of shape and could stand to lose a few pounds, so I wasn't surprised by the what the scale and BMI measurement feature of the Fit told me. (Still within the healthy range, but on the high end of both.) What did surprise me was the "real age" function of the Fit. It evaluates your weight, BMI and your balance and from there comes up with a "real age" for you. I am in my early 30s, according to my birth certificate. Wii Fit told me I was 42. I was quite disheartened. But I've been using it more and improving my balance a little, I guess, because Tuesday morning, Wii told me my new "real age" was 27! WOOHOO! I have conquered the balance board!

2. Yesterday morning, I was driving into work, feeling good about being 27, but not really looking forward to dealing with the challenging client I had waiting for me. Feeling stressed, I switched my radio dial to the local classical station. It was playing Bach's "Sleepers Awake," which is an immediate salve to my stressed out mind! It's a soft blanket. I hear it and immediately I'm driving in the mountains of Northern New Mexico (my soul's second home) with my family under the bright sky dappled with the leaves of Aspen trees. It really is a welcoming piece, even with the swelling brass, it's unpretentious - at least to me. I needed it and didn't know I needed it until fate placed it at the right place at the right time. Like God's little "chill out" postcard.

3. Getting to watch the new Futurama movie! (Poster w/ title above.) Honey pre-ordered it and it arrived yesterday. We wasted no time popping in the disc and seeing what Fry, Bender, Leela and the crew have been up to since Bender's Big Score. I liked this one better than the last. Without giving too much away, I'll just say that there really was a Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Apropos of nothing. In fact, inappropriate

WARNING: If you're easily offended by bodily functions and non-medical/clinical discussions thereof, then it may be better for you to check out another blog.

Alright, so tonight I should be writing content which may or may not be used in collateral to be distributed at a fundraiser I hope to attend this weekend, but haven't really delved far into my wallet to see what kind of coin I can afford to part with these days. Yesterday I attended a baby dedication for a friend (or rather, for his baby) at a Unitarian church where I had several years previous, attended a memorial service for a former coworker, and I had been planning to blog on religion, ritual and variations on the theme. However, musings on religious expression will have to wait, and before I proceed with my writing assignment tonight, I simply must share with the few of you who read this what simultaneously turned my stomach and tickled my funny bone (all foreshadowed puns intended) this evening.

Honey and I have been watching The Tudors on iTunes; the first season anyway. It's totally as trashy as the website makes it out to be, but it's also got plastrin-front gowns! lutes! plague! Northam, Neill and Jonathan Rhys Meyers! Tonight, we watched the 10th (and I believe final) episode of season one. It opens with the young King Henry VIII masturbating into a cloth being held open by a servant-boy. I kid you not. I can't help but laugh just thinking about it!

The scene is awkward to say the very, very least. It cut away to shots of Anne Boleyn's heaving breasts and then back to the young king straining and whacking (all seen from the waist up). And just as the king came, we saw a closeup of Anne's delicate hands piercing a threaded needle through a piece of embroidery she was working on. Then, with the king spent, the servant, who had previously had his face maybe a foot from the royal junk and turned away (a wise choice in his position, I must admit), gets up, bows to the king, and holding the cloth slightly slack, leaves the room.

The way the scene played out, it seemed like Henry was working off some morning wood. Now, I have no idea if this was common practice for male monarchs to employ a manservant to accept his "kingliness," as it were. Though no history buff myself, per se, I place no faith in the historical accuracy of this series; I see it more as costume-drama porn set against the skeleton of historical events. All that said: what worse job could there be in the court than to be the Royal Jizz-catcher? Who did you have to piss of to get that assignment? I should hope that promotion was swift. My God! I'd much rather scrub the peasants' outhouses than have to spend each morning with my face inches from the sweaty scepter, praying that his aim was good. (Massive shudder!) I would be begging God every day for tuberculosis or the plague or leprosy to get me out of that job!

I was icked out by that for at least the first 5 minutes of the show. I wish I could tell you what transpired in those first five minutes, but I was temporarily blind. That's right: masturbation blinded me. All these years of the real stuff did nothing to my vision; seeing the staged version on TV blacked me out for five.

I apologize if I grossed anyone out. Mostly. This was just too weird and hilarious to keep to myself. ... I suppose it's discussing these sort of things that keeps be from being invited to posh places and events. This, and the fact that I'm not well-heeled.

What's Molly dreaming now? Edition 7

Another strange dream last night. This one was themed a "Saved by the Bell" wedding. I dreamt that I was in Dallas for reasons I could not recall and I found myself at the wedding of Principal Belding. The wedding was actually purely a work of fiction; this was a movie set. Jessie Spano was the photographer, and Elizabeth Berkeley looked totally lived-in for someone who's only 30-something. The weird thing was, though this was a movie set, we were treating it like a real wedding. There was no lighting equipment, no cameras, aside from general wedding videography and people were mulling about the open bar waiting for the ceremony to begin.

I'm not sure why I was there. Not only was Principal Belding never my principal, or really anyone else's according to this piece, I was never in any of the casts (Miss Bliss or post-) and though I did watch it more than a rational, ambulatory, articulate person who has the fine motor skills to tie her own shoes should - which is to say at all, much less sporadically - I found the show blazingly stupid. (My brother liked it, and we both liked making fun of it.) It also became apparent that this was going to be a full out Esther Williams-style musical, since the synchronized swimmers were practicing in the massive swimming pool around which the ceremony was to be held. The place was crawling with sinfully rich, Hollywood-hot young people: mostly teens and college-aged. I felt way out of place and didn't know how I got an invitation. Zack Morris was there with some curly-haired brunette who wasn't the vapid vixen what's-her-name from the TV show. I heard "wooooo!" like a wave, come from a congregation of teen girls behind me. I looked over my right shoulder to see Slater strut past, wearing a tuxedo vest that had been cinched tightly around his waist. He, of course, looked like a moron. I rolled my eyes.

I needed to figure out what I was doing in this musical. I wore high-heeled saddle shoes which had rollerskate style abilities. I somehow discerned that I had a short solo during a poolside number. There were two lines of dancers across from each other, stretching the length of the pool. So I skated down the middle of them, doing the splits at one time - a feat I could once accomplish without wincing; these days, not so much - singing something all the way. I was curious why I was in this musical when I could not sing or dance half as well as throngs of other talent out there. Then I turned around and began to skate down the middle again and noticed that smoke was rising off my left shoe. I stopped skating. The dancers were now in the pool doing some synchronized number. And I decided I was supposed to be in the pool, too, so I dove in.

Then somehow, some time had passed and I was out of the pool, dry, still in my dress and switching out my skate-style shoes for another pair. (I did this at my hallway locker, of course.) The guests were all waiting for the ceremony to begin, again. And I felt even more out of place than ever. I was there by myself, I didn't know any of the guests. It was clear that I was too old and plain and not rich enough to talk to. Then, at the end of my dream, I spotted a friend of mine from my college theater department who I have not seen or heard from, nor really thought of, since graduation almost a decade ago. She looked as miserable as I did. Before I could go greet her, I woke up.

I never really liked that show. I found the characters too stereotypical even for lazy sitcome archetypes. Like the show "Friends," I knew these people would not be friends in real-life, particularly not during class-conscious adolescence. And the storylines were always weaker than tissue paper. I haven't thought of that show in years. I think I read a post somewhere recently in which someone referred to Mr. Belding, but as I've been scrambling to get caught up on my post-vacation blog reading, I can't recall who wrote it or what the reference was. I'm sure that was the trigger for the cast in my dream; but why a wedding?

And more importantly, this is the second high-school, "feeling like an outsider" type dream I've had in a week. Is this some new anxiety dream theme for me? I have a doctor's appointment in about 90 minutes for which I'm anxious because I'm hoping it'll shed a good deal of light on what's going on, but why high school? Why not tornadoes and aliens like my normal anxiety dreams? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?