Needful Things?

(December 20, 2006)

Have you ever looked at the lyrics to Bjork's "Army of Me"? This is one of my, um, shower songs. I have a little sort of repertoire of shower-singin' favorites and "Army of Me" is right up there with "I Will Survive," Blondie's "Dreamin' is Free" and, for some reason, Juice Newton's "Queen of Hearts." What. They just seem right, with the water and the solitude. But with "Army of Me" I always just sort of vocalize the verses until the "if you complain once more" line. So tonight I said to myself, after this shower I'll Google the lyrics. Know what I learned? This song isn't friggin' about anything. It's basically saying "quit yer bitchin" for three minutes and some-odd and that's it. Just another notch in the I Can't Tell What's Cool Anymore column.

...

I DON'T KNOW EITHER!

The sappy truth is, we're always bringing each other presents. He just got me a cool Lebowski T-shirt, two movies and flowers. I just got him new music paper, a cool Batman T-shirt and some fun rock star costume-y stuff. We cook nice meals for each other all the time. The sex is awesome. We both just joined a gym (oh yeah, he joined up too!). We literally do not need anything. So a Europe trip is being talked about again. Let's NOT buy any presents and just put a bunch of money aside for travel in the spring? Maybe?

I'll think more on it tomorrow. Right now I need to get my man out of his studio and go to bed.

***An Hour Later***

I did go to bed, but it didn't take. So hi. I'm back in this entry again.

One of the things I do when I can't sleep is play Six Degrees of Separation with myself. There are variations. Sometimes I do the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon thing where I think of a movie and then have to get from that title to Kevin Bacon in less than six hops. Sometimes I just pick two people at random and try to get from one to the other.

Sometimes I pick two TV shows, find the shortest hop between them, and then I play the same two shows but omit the shortest hop.

That's what I was just doing. I said "Get from Mad About You to...um, Sex and the City." Now that's a challenge because I didn't watch Sex and the City. No HBO. All I know is what I now catch in ads for it on regular TV. Still it only took a second: Jamie Gertz and Sarah Jessica Parker were in Square Pegs together (take THAT, random 80s fact!), and Jamie Gertz was in Twister with Helen Hunt. But see, then you play again but omit the short hop. No Square Pegs allowed. I got it though. Peter Gallagher. You know, Eyebrows? I know he was in Sex and the City, and he was in Project Greenlight with Denis Leary, and Denis Leary is in Rescue Me with the actress who played Mrs. Buckman on Mad About You. Actually she plays "mother" to my brother's character on the show. I don't know her name so that would not count in a real Six Degrees match, but in my I Can't Sleep So I'm Doing This match, she counts even though I don't know her name.

Now, to make it a REAL challenge, I can jump to the other side of this solitaire match and try to challenge. I did that and realized you could also go with Sarah Jessica Parker and Ben Stiller being in If Lucy Fell, and Ben Stiller did a Friends episode, and Lisa Kudrow was on Mad About You as Ursula.

There has to be a shorter hop though. So you can play too: what you're looking for here, to beat the Ben Stiller hop, is essentially an actor that was in both Mad About You and Sex and the City. One name. Shortest ever hop.

Let me know how you do. But like, don't lose any sleep over it or anything. Then it defeats the purpose of being the I Can't Sleep game.