Beth Labonte's Blog, page 12

While doing some research (googling) for my last blog post about that heinous Lifetime movie The Perfect Roommate, I came across this hilarious Lifetime movie review blog!  Tomorrow being a holiday that I have to work, I plan to spend some serious time checking it out.

The movies are categorized by theme, such as:  jerkwad boyfriend/husband, graveside funeral, watersports, Stamos, stairs of doom, and rape as a plot device.

I almost can't wait to get to work tomorrow!

[image error] We both wear men's shirts

But it doesn't matter, because you should never watch this movie. I've never done a movie review before, mostly because they don't fit the content of my office humor blog. But one of my favorite Sunday activities, in order to ward off thoughts of the impending work week, is watching a good Lifetime movie. So when one of them leaves me disappointed and shocked as to, not the poor quality (as that is expected), but the total dud of an ending, I feel compelled to spread the word.

As you may or may not know, Lifetime movies typically focus on the story of one unfortunate woman or another - maybe she's anorexic, or wrongly accused of murder, or being beat senseless by John Schneider for purchasing the wrong kind of potato salad ("You know I hate German!!"). The best ones were made in the early 1990's, and the worst ones were made in 2009 and beyond. Recently, the quality of the acting and the look of the movies in general have come to resemble soft core porn. I have a theory that the "full" versions of these movies actually do exist on Cinemax, with Lifetime purchasing them for twelve bucks, editing out the sex, and airing them as "television for women." It could happen.

Anyhow, you can imagine my delight when I plopped down in front of the t.v. and saw that The Perfect Roommate (2011) was on Lifetime On Demand. With a description like this, it felt like Christmas:

"Carrie Remington seems like any other struggling waitress who's had a run of bad luck including a recent divorce. Things seem to be improving when she moves in with Ashley Dunnfield, a young woman from a wealthy background who's trying to make it on her own without assistance from her father, Richard. Ashley is thrilled when Carrie helps to win her father over, but when Carrie starts dating Richard, Ashley starts digging into her past and finds out that there is much she didn't know about her new roommate's sinister history."

The movie was doomed from the very beginning by the casting of main character Carrie. There was something disturbing about her, and I'm not talking about her 'sinister history.' I'm talking about her bowl cut. I'm talking about the fact that she looks like a nightmare version of Katie Holmes. I'm talking about the fact that this so-called seductress appeared to be hiding a nine months pregnant body under strange, billowy, outfits. All of that combined made it laughable when Ashley's 22 year old boyfriend describes her as being "hot." Yeah, maybe if you find the love child of Paul McCartney and a Twiddlebug to be up your alley.






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So, Carrie moves in with Ashley after telling her that the friend she's been living with has died, and that she has no place to live. Ashley, meanwhile, is dealing with her own drama involving her mega-rich dad, Richard (hereafter referred to as "Mega Dick") and his inability to let her live her own life. Ashley's dad is played by

Lifetime Exec:  Mr. Moses? We have an idea for a movie...

WRM:  I'll do it.

Lifetime Exc:  Don't you even want to know what it's abou-

WRM:  Sign me up.

Lifetime Exec:  But sir, you'll be playing a cross-dressing - 

WRM:  When do I start?

Hey, the guy's gotta eat. And usually when you see his name in the cast list you can expect a pretty formulaic Lifetime movie. You know: 1 crazy woman + 1 normal woman + 1 clueless guy being controlled by his penis. Crazy woman's craziness is discovered by normal woman, but not before crazy woman drugs and ties up clueless guy in a cabin in the woods. Normal woman shows up to confront crazy woman and there is a shoot-out/slugging with sledgehammer from the garage scene in which crazy woman dies and then comes back to life before being taken down once and for all by a police officer who finally believes normal woman's story ("Look lady, go home and let us do our jobs"). Clueless guy can either live or die, he doesn't matter in the least. 
You know you're in for a treat




















The Perfect Roommate had the perfect set up. It had this exact formula laid out and ready to roll.  Ashley's boyfriend's brother is even a police officer. He was shot in the line of duty and is now confined to a wheelchair. He's depressed and has low self esteem. "Perfect!" you think. "This guy is clearly going to figure out Carrie's dark past. He's going to arrive at the cabin in the woods, and out of sheer determination to save Ashley from harm, will rise from his wheelchair, shoot Carrie, and once again be a hero." You know what happens instead? He makes a phone call to another police officer and asks him to do a background check. Then he relays some suspicious information about Carrie to Ashley and her boyfriend. THAT'S IT. You never see the guy for the rest of the movie!! Instead of giving the poor sap a medal of honor, the writers just leave him in a wheelchair in his apartment with the curtains drawn, probably watching shit like this on t.v.

So after a few weeks of boring ass dates where Carrie drinks a lot of wine and tricks Mega Dick into thinking they have loads in common, the repulsive lovebirds take off on a romantic hotel getaway. While they're on this getaway, Ashley finds out that Carrie is actually a psycho and is behind the murder of Mega Dick's ex-girlfriend. "Perfect!" you think again, sadly still mustering some shards of hope. "Now comes the part where Mega Dick gets tied up and the hotel gets set on fire and Ashley gets stabbed!"

You know what actually happens? Carrie intercepts a voicemail Ashley has left for Mega Dick asking him to come get her at a gas station where her car has broken down.  Carrie leaves Mega Dick sleeping peacefully in the hotel (he's not even drugged for Christ Sake. NOT EVEN DRUGGED) and drives to the gas station where they finally have a confrontation. Ashley reveals that she knows who Carrie really is! Carrie snaps! She picks up a broken bottle and chases Ashley around the parking lot! Only...she chases her for one lap. One lap. Then this cop pulls up and Ashley tells him that Carrie is trying to kill her. Carrie sashays her twiddlebug hips over and says all innocent-like "She's lying!" And instead of the cop doubting for even a second that Ashley is telling the truth (and in a normal Lifetime movie, allowing Carrie the chance to smash him in the face with the bottle), he simply tells Carrie that she has to come with him. AND THAT'S THE END OF THE MOVIE!!!! That is the atrocious, anti-climactic, more disappointing than the ends of Twilight, LOST, and Seinfeld combined, end of the fucking movie.

Except for the very last scene where Mega Dick is having a boring dinner with his daughter and son-in-law-to be, which then cuts to Carrie sitting in jail with a magazine, eyeing the picture of another rich dude who she's supposedly going to target next. What? How? You're in prison for murder for the rest of your fucking life.

In short, do not waste your time on this movie. With 5,764 other William R. Moses Lifetime movies to choose from, you're bound to find something better.

Wendy's fancy new "Hot n' Juicy" burgers look even worse than the regular ones. WTF is this? I haven't tasted it yet as I was so appalled at the presentation that I had to post immediately.

Update: After eating said "Hot n' Juicy" burger, I can conclude that it was neither hot nor juicy. It may have been less than hot due to me blogging about it before eating, although the radio ad claims it is "hotter than ever." If that was the case, it should still have been hot by the time I ate it, and still relatively warm when 3/4 of the way down my digestive tract.

As for juiciness, I found the patty pretty rubbery, and, as a coworker put it, it looks like someone knit it out of yarn. I found ONE crinkle cut pickle inside, along with one skinny, stringy, onion. I don't have to describe the cheese - you can see for yourself how difficult it is to place a square piece of cheese atop a square burger. I didn't even notice the buttered up bun as I was too busy wondering why I didn't go to Five Guys.

I do like Wendy's, but every time they have something new and improved, it tastes terrible.

Finally, along comes a study showing that something once thought bad (albeit by upper managment) is actually good.  The National University of Singapore says that spending time surfing the Internet at work will actually boost an employee's productivity.  Researchers claim that this sort of "cyberloafing" refreshes workers mentally after long periods of work.  Granted, I've never partaken in these so-called "long periods of work" before surfing the Internet, but still. This is a study that we, and our bosses, should pay some attention to.  Also of note - excessive Internet monitoring actually leads to more Internet use by employees.  Looks like us employees are fine-tuning the act of spite.  Well done everybody! 

This was welcome news to me after reading a depressing study about that weapon of mass destruction known as sugar.   Basically, sugar leads to obesity, which can lead to diabetes, cancer, heart disease, etc. Sugar is evil.  Sugar will bite at your toes if they are hanging over the side of the bed.  These days you pretty much have to grow your own food in order for it to not be poisonous - and then you have to cover yourself in head to toe sun protection before going outside to pick it.  Even then, if you microwave any of that food in a plastic bowl you're exposing yourself to cancer causing chemicals (according to a chain email I received from my mother-in-law).  Tupperware will also nip at your toes if they are hanging over the side of the bed.

It's tough finding out that something you thought was good is actually bad for you.  It's even tougher trying to figure out which studies to pay attention to, and which to just shrug off as scare tactics.  But I have hope.  If researchers can prove that wasting time online is a good thing, who's to say they won't soon find that hard work, exercise, pap smears, and flossing are also hazardous to one's health?  I have faith that modern science will someday declare us fat, lazy, and totally healthy.

It is then that a giant meteor will slam into the Earth, killing us all.

Guess I used all that Listerine for nothin' 

Ahhh, this poster made me feel terrible about my "too busy" attitude toward working out:















I found it over on ProfessionGal where you can find all sorts of career advice and fun articles to get you through the week....and also some inspirational stuff to make you feel like a lazy turdface.

"If it weren't for secretaries, I wouldn't have a stepmom." - Andy Bernard

I just keep forgetting to bring home the jacket I wore in the morning...

"It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination." - THHGTTG

Interesting article and infographic from Minyanville about workaholism in America.  I am always baffled by the fact that there are people out there who don't use all their vacation days!!  We actually had a guy who once spent his entire Caribbean cruise calling the IT guy about problems he was having with his BlackBerry.  It went so far that the IT guy Fed Ex'd a new one to a Coach store in the Virgin Islands so that he could pick it up when the boat docked.


Image by: Business Insurance Source

A few posts back I mentioned that you should always jump at the chance to take an office road trip. I also mentioned that you should only volunteer to go if it's a nice day outside and if it doesn't involve city driving.

On Tuesday I got suckered into both.

After finally settling into my chair after a rainy commute, I was asked to drive an hour & a half into the heart of downtown Hartford Connecticut. Down. Town. I had no choice. Our intern was out sick, and the rest of our employees had apparently turned into stone heads, so that left me as the only viable option.

It all depends on you. "It's not so bad," I thought to myself back when I assumed I was driving to a nice lawyer's office and that maybe there would be some kind of trendy coffee shop downstairs where I could hang out before driving back. I stupidly didn't ask for details about where I was going before I left - I just had the name of a place that I assumed to be an office park.
It was no office park.

After calculating where the worst part of town was and recalculating me directly into it, my GPS informed me that I would be at my destination in .1 miles. Point 1 miles? I peered nervously out the window at a man talking to himself on the sidewalk. I paused to let a parade of trash bags filled with tin cans cross in front of me before turning into the apartment complex that my boss had sent me to. I drove slowly through the parking lot trying to figure out where to go. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to go to the management office, or if this is where the guy lived. Was I supposed to start knocking on doors?
Wifebeater clad men, sitting in their "yards" amidst piles of wet living room furniture, gas cans, and broken television sets, stared at me between cigarette drags and I immediately knew there was no way I was ever going to get out of my car. I did see one woman. She was getting out of Jeep wearing platforms and a boob shirt at 12:00 in the afternoon. The click of my doors locking did nothing to comfort me.

I called my boss to ask him why he had done this to me. Didn't he have work for me to do later? He needed me to come back alive, didn't he? After a quick call to our client (and probably his attorney), he told me that he had no idea he was sending me to a place like that. Then he gave me the property manager's cell phone number so that he could meet me right at my car. I called the property manager and tried to direct him to where I was parked:

"No, no, I said left at the hooker, left! If you see the homeless guy pissing on a brand new Rav4, you've found me."

And then, in what probably appeared like the nerdiest drug deal ever, I handed off the precious sets of engineering plans and hightailed it back to the safety of suburban Massachusetts.