TIFF 2009: Jennifer's Body Premiere

Oh yes, my friends! It's that time of year again - the air is getting crisper, the nights come earlier, and My Boyfriend Michael Cera is in town for a film premiere... Suddenly, everything in the world seems right!

I had the pleasure of attending the world premiere of Jennifer's Body on Thursday night, kicking of the Toronto International Film Festival's series of Midnight Madness films. Whooo boy. It was a good time!

The movie itself was a pleasant surprise - I had my doubts because of early bad reviews and the seemingly sudden genre-change for Diablo Cody. All was quickly proved wrong by the excellent casting, the tongue-in-cheek sarcastic script, and excellent acting by Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Brody, and Johnny Simmons. Honestly? It was great and SUCH a good time. The audience totally got it, laughed a lot, and were genuinely scared at certain parts.

...And I haven't even mentioned how stunningly beautiful & fiercely talented Megan Fox is in this movie. I found myself anxious for her to come back on screen and wanting more. She was truly great (and ridiculously beautiful).

Aside from the movie, it was great to see such an ecclectic crowd out for a movies - from geeks to film buffs to industry insiders (my cousin and I were sitting beside the owner of one of the hottest hotels & clubs in Toronto - talk about a lucky coincidence!). The line up was long, the red carpet fans rabid, and the 2AM Q&A post-movie HILARIOUS.

Check out the snaps & DEFINITELY check out the YouTube video of the Q&A. Diablo Cody has officially become my fucking hero. I currently am obsessed with trying to find a way to use "anatomical reality" in a sentence... sheer brilliance.

The line-up stretched around the block


Waiting for the red carpet celebrity march to begin.


Red Carpet press.


An artsy shot of Adam Brody - he was so short in person!


And Adam from behind.


I have to give him props - he came around and signed autographs and took pictures with fans, which is a first in my red carpet experience (damn you Michael Cera! and there were half the fans at your premiere last year!).


Q&A


Q&A


Q&A

And the YouTube vid of the Q&A - totally worth the 9 minutes!!

Quickie

What I have I been up to in this far-too-long-it's-uncomfortable hiatus?

Check it: www.melissajosephphotography.com.

I'm working on getting the new site up and back-posting some photos, as well as actually taking said photos, photoshopping said photos, saving up money for fancy photo equipment and, um, a big upcoming trip (miiiiight be going to LA in October. Damn you Jason Mraz and your incredibly generous offers of gratitude to SuperFans!!), and other life stuff. (I totally ordered business cards today. What has two thumbs and feels official? THIS GIRL.)

So, you know, sorta busy? Still, no excuse. And it's not for lack of funny things that have happened to me. INCLUDING adorable My Ex-Boyfriend Michael Cera updates!!

I'm feeling like things are getting sorted out nicely and that I'll have more time for posting both over there (www.melissajosephphotography.com, just in case you forgot the address... cough) and over here.

Good times, blog-friends. Good times.

Yours in Michael Cera,
Melissa

Dear Melissa: You Suck at Blogging. Love Always, Me

Not posting a new blog in over two months makes me sad for many reasons:

1. The last post on here was of that dude that called me fat. Whoa negative vibes!

2. Because Rosie O'Donnell told me I'd be a comedy writer, dammit, so why the fuck am I not comedy writing??!

3. The very reasons I lost interest in both comedy and writing.

To expand on number 3, I should fill you in on my life since I got back from California: getting layed off, being depressed about getting layed off, not having a job, looking for a job, still looking for a job, trying not to die. Repeat for 4 months.

Frankly, I haven't felt funny in a long time. My focus completely shifted from "I have a lovely day job where I have the freedom (and recreational internet) to pursue my true goals and objectives" to "Find a job RIGHT NOW so that you don't die and have to give up your apartment, furniture, and life in Toronto to live on a day bed in your parent's RV".

Exactly. I don't think anyone could be funny with that kind of hurricane blowing through Lifeville.

Not that things are much better now, really. The only difference being I am starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel and I think I'm quite close to narrowing in on what I want to do for the foreseeable future and in so doing avoiding the day bed and the life-giving-upping.

Of course, moving to LA is not out of the picture; it's just delayed slightly. I'm pushing the move date back by a year so that I can get myself organized (read: debt payed down). To that end, I've placed an embargo on travelling this year, so you can expect my handy and oft-used "oh the places i go" label to be more or less retired for a while. Thankfully the embargo does not include roadtrips (I'm going, in fact, to Illinois this weekend!) so I'll trot it out for those special occasions.

Another reason I haven't been around as much is because something (or someone) else has monopolized my attention: I have a new/old boyfriend! He's been dying for me to mention him here (even though he no longer creeps my blog and probably won't realize I've said anything about him for weeks), so here goes: Nick Jones has stolen my heart and even though he was supposed to call me like 2 hours ago, I love him enough to mention him on my blog for all my readers (if I have any left...) to read about.

Coincidentally, my other Boyfriend has been in town filming his new movie. I may have run into the film set one or three times. Totally coincidentally.

Totally.

Anways, blog-friends. Hopefully this upswing means I'll be back to stay for a while. And hopefully it means you'll be back too.

Happy spring!

Love,
Melissa

PS If you see my boyfriend (either one) tell him to fucking call me already!!

March Malltercations

There is an overwhelming abundance of assholes in this city right now. Is it the sudden change in temperature? The failing economy? The daylight savings adjustment? I don't know, but I am one unsettling incident away from standing on a street corner with one of those giant "FREE HUGS" signs to try to cheer Toronto up. Yeesh. See below for a recount of one of the meanest, more horrible things to happen to me at the hands of a stranger. Note to my readers: don't get in the way of some average middle-aged man at 7pm on a Saturday night because he's got places to go, dude. Places to go!

Read on......................................................

so. i went to see the watchmen tonight with a friend (mmmm billy crudup wang) at the busy theatre in the mall by my house. i enter the building and cut through the bookstore and go upstairs to get to the theatre entrance. as i reach the top of the stairs, i swung my arm back (as one naturally does when walking or climbing stairs) and gently knocked someone behind me that was clearly right on my tail. he said "excuse me", which i took to mean "sorry for being on your tail old chum", and we kept going.

i rounded the corner was just before the doorway into the mall when i feel hands grab my shoulders and push me out of the way - not so violently that i fell into anything or was knocked over, but forcefully enough that it was obvious that it was an angry shove. i look over and the dude from the stairway is blowing past me and shoots me a look of anger. "fuck him," thought i, cause who the fuck puts their hands on me and shoves me??! so i say to him "what the hell buddy??!" as he's walking away and he whips back around at me and i shit you not yells this in front of the HUGE crowd of people milling in front of the theatre:

"well get out of the way you fat ass! your ass is so fat no one can get around you! i said excuse me and you didn't move. you're so fat! fat ass!"

no. no. not joking. he actually said that.

he was so angry and yelling so loudly that i decided to pull out my "hey, look at you crazy!" line that throws people off guard - so as he was screaming at me and calling me fat ass all i said back to him super condescendingly was "you know what? have a fabulous day. no seriously, have a fabulous day. really. fabulous. have a fabulous day."

in melissa speak, it means "wow, you sure are bat shit crazy. do you see how crazy you are? you physically put your hands on me and are now calling me fat in front of hundreds of people so that you can get to where you are going 10 seconds faster. really, think about that - 10 motherfucking seconds. you are NUTS."

the first time i said it he just sort of looked at me, shocked at my reaction. i think it must have made him angrier because it was about that time that he starting going off on exactly how fat my ass is.

the things that bother me most about the story is as follows:

1. that there are people that angry that exist in the world

2. that a man physically put his hands on me, a stranger and a woman

3. that he resorted to calling me fat etc. first thing, instead of myriad other reactions he could have had... it's a true sign of a man's douch-y-ness and intelligence that he resorts to calling a woman fat straight out of the gate. it's a low blow (no woman ever wants to hear the dreaded "f" word) and an obvious sign of a bully losing control. ugh.

4. that it's a saturday night - where the fuck is he in such a rush to get to that he needs to touch me and then verbally berate me in front of a crowd? crazy busy rush hour on the subway? i mean, i could have at least understood a little - but it's the fucking weekend, dude!

it also bothered me that he said it in front of a huge crowd of people, so obviously i was embarassed. blergggg.

Whatever, though. To paraphrase from a Sex and the City: I don't really care that much because I get to go on being me ie awesome, and that dude is stuck being him ie abusive and angry. I definitely win in this situation, no?

In other news: the medium popcorn I subsequently enjoyed at the theatre tasted extra delicious, in case you're wondering.

:)

A Ball Joint, Two Tie Rods, and an Axel Shaft

Question: Why does everything that is currently wrong with my car sound dirty?

Answer: Because life is mocking me.

So I was noticing over the past month or so that it was starting to get awful hard to turn corners in my car and that even when I was driving straight the car kept drifting to the left. Sensing an expensive alignment issue, I of course ignored the problem and kept on driving. And driving. And driving. To Sudbury and back one weekend. To Schenectady and back another. Up and down the city. Always in the car, always going.

Things came to a head on Monday when after beginning my journey home from a job interview I noticed that I could barely turn the wheel and it wasn't springing back afterwards like it normally would. Thinking that the expensive alignment issue had turned into an expensive power steering issue, I decided that the best thing to do was to get my car safely home and in my parking spot in the backyard and worry about the problem later. Naturally.

So of course I figured I was home-free as I pulled into my driveway and started to make the run up the hill leading between the houses and then into the backyard, but just as I pull of the street I hear a loud crash and my car can't move forward anymore. I stop, get out, inspect the car but don't see anything wrong - I haven't hit the curb, nothing looks off physically about the car - and so I re-enter and try to start up the driveway again. As soon as I hit the gas, I hear another loud bang and feel my car shift slightly to the left side. This time when I get out to inspect the situation, I see my car sitting on top of my front driver's side wheel.

On top. Of. The front driver's side. Wheel.

Je?Sus.

I also see metal, presumably the part that holds the wheel in place, lying on the ground underneath my car. I also see millions of tiny green dollar signs floating around my car as I silently take in the scene.

I immediately call CAA and set to waiting for four excruciating hours for them to send first a mechanic who doesn't even look at my car before proclaiming that I need a tow truck (I'm not sure what part of "my wheel feel off my car" didn't scream send a tow truck to the operator I spoke with first, because apparently she thought it was a mechanical thing?) and then eventually a tow truck to try to extract my tire-less car.

Two days and $800 later, my car is back home and wheel-ful. I'm pretty pissed that it happened at all (nothing like life giving you a swift kick to the groin when you're down, right?) but also super thankful where and when it did: if it had been either of the two weekends before it could have fallen off while I was driving on the highway or in the middle of nowhere and if it had happened 3 feet either to the back or the front of where it ultimately came off I could have either been in the middle of the busy street blocking rush hour traffic or in the middle of my driveway wedged between two houses with no way to get out of my car (and with no way to extracate it from between the houses, either!).

So let's just say that if my wheel had to fall off my car, I couldn't have picked a more perfect place for it to happen.

Plus, now I get to legitimately say that I am a ball breaker. No big deal. A BALL BREAKER.

(Thanks to Jay for pointing that out..... !!!!)

To Schenectady, With Love

I don't know about you, but to me nothing says "romance" like Schenectady.

Just say it out loud: Schenectady. Schenectady. Schenectady!

Right??!

Well, befitting then that I'll be spending Valentine's in none other than the city amongst the pines! And even better is that I'm going to cap off the love with an intimate Jason Mraz concert in the chapel at Union College.

Right!

By the way, when you ask people where Schenectady is, the answer you'll most often get is "near Albany". Since I have no clue where Albany is either, this information was not very helpful. I've since learned, however, that Schenectady is in the Hudson River valley about 3 hours outside of New York City. All this means to me is that I'm bound to find at least one Target on my 6-hour drive south.

I'll keep you posted.

Happy Commercial Holiday Debasing Love, friends!

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Dear My Ex-Boyfriend Michael Cera,

How am I supposed to get over our break up when you keep doing things like this?



Really? I mean, it's so topical, so adorable, so full of plaid housecoat-y goodness. You promised you would lay low! You promised you'd stay out of the gossip rags! For me, My Ex-Boyfriend Michael Cera. For me!

Fuck you. I want you back.
Melissa