I got hit on constantly today. By two different women. It was a bizarre little day.

One of them is married and so is completely off limits; her one flirtatious remark on the day was extremely veiled and therefore open to interpretation, I've always thought she was really attractive, so it was nice for me, anyway.

The other one hit on me all day long; I'll just call her English Girl and let that suffice. So I had an e-mail from E.G. first thing this morning (this was company e-mail, mind you), saying how great it was hanging out with me this weekend (our company had a bowl-a-thon for charity). Her note essentially said that with all the problems she's had with her guy the past several months, it was nice to hang out with a fun, sexy, intelligent guy without any stress or pressure or whatever. Her words.

I was floored. This does not happen, people. Not only do women not flirt, they never, ever make statements that are even remotely committal, so using words like 'sexy' and 'attractive' (which she did in a separate e-mail later in the day) is unheard of.

Let me stop you right here and explain something. Our bowl-a-thon yesterday was at 9:30 a.m. On a Sunday morning, now. We were all dressed in things like jeans and t-shirts, so I was looking about as sexy as a No Parking sign. But apparently, something made these two take notice; of what, I know not. Hanging out with me outside of work prompted a response that today they decided they weren't in the mood to keep quiet.

So today, shortly after I replied with the requisite flattery and lovable disbelief, she sent another message out of the blue: "This is way out of line... but you have gorgeous eyes... I thought you'd want to know that."

OK, she's ramping it up a bit. And I thought, really? My eyes? My sleep-deprived eyes with dark circles? She loves 'em. En fuego, chingada.

There were more e-mails, more flattering messages, more things that seemed somewhat out of the blue to me but that I'm sure had been bubbling in her head for a while. Isn't that how it works? I replied once and said wow, I had no idea you thought so much of me, and her response? "Believe me, you do NOT want to know what I think of you." So there's some evidence that this has been going on for some time.

I'm trying to let myself enjoy the compliment. I have, actually, to a great extent. As always, there is that little, tiny voice in my head that knows E.G. feels really alone right now, that things with her guy are pretty much over, and that even her issues have issues. But I'm trying to allow myself the luxury of accepting the idea that her attraction to me would exist even without these things. Look, people: she came out and said that I am attractive. She used the "s" word, sexy. She broke out the word "gorgeous" to describe a physical attribute of mine; she did all these things without prompting, and without working her way up from "not ugly," as most people do. I don't care how lonely you are, you can't invent looks, and she thinks I'm hot. No ifs, ands, or buts. It's a rare moment, to be honest, and it feels pretty good.

There's just no accounting for taste, as the saying goes. That my biggest weakness can be seen as a strength is very nearly proof enough.

Remember the Week of Exams I stressed over not so long ago? Week before last we had a quiz Monday night and the midterm Wednesday night.

Yeah, the quiz brought home a 98 and the midterm was a 92. That's what I thought, snatch.

Posted a last-minute review of the new Enchanted DVD that came out this week. You can find it, as always, at www.movie-popcorn.com. Do stop in.

I know I've posted a fair number of videos lately, but I just came across this and I have no idea what the deal is, if the guy's got an agenda or just has way too much time on his hands. It's just funny.

Newly-posted reviews of Shutter and Drillbit Taylor are up on www.movie-popcorn.com.

The new review is up on Movie-Popcorn. Stop in and check it out, won't you?

I'm coming down off the biggest week I've had in quite some time. It turned out not to be quite as big as I thought it was going to be, but that may just be the retrospect talking.

First, I thought for a few brief moments I might have to choose between my job and my classes. The college I work for has academic quarters, not semesters, but the college at which I attend classes has semesters. This week was the Week One of the new quarter at work; it was also the week that double-teamed me with a quiz Monday night and the midterm exam Wednesday night. The conflict comes into play because work expects us all to be there in the mornings and evenings to hand out schedules to new students, help distribute books, etc., and in the past, I've even had to miss a class or two on account of this illustrious event. This week, though, that wasn't an option; I had way too much going on, and at first, it didn't look like the boss wanted to let me go early enough in the evenings to make class. I was preparing myself for the worst.

It wound up working out, and the truth is that I made it a much bigger conflict in my head than it was in real life. I'm used to working for people who don't give a shit; who knows, I might still work there. But the relative ease with which the boss accommodated my extracurricular activities (read: my career path) surprised me, and at no point was I in any real danger of missing anything.

We videotaped our homework at a classmate's house on Sunday (that's how we roll now), and I went home for hours of quiz/midterm study and tons of stressing out. The way we'd had to rearrange the syllabus in class, we couldn't avoid the quiz-midterm Monday-Wednesday progression, it had to be done. Well, it went pretty well. I'll probably snag an A on that. I studied all I could on Monday and Tuesday nights, and then on Wednesday it took approximately 124 years to reach 5:30 p.m., which was when I left for the midterm.

It's a sign language class, so the first segment of the exam was to be signed. We all sat in front of our own computer with its own video camera and video monitor. We popped in a blank DVD to record our performances, and when 6:15 hit, we were off to the races.

I was shocked by how short it was. It was only two pages long, and the bulk of the first page was taken up by a diagram of a room and its furniture; our job was to describe the set-up of the room using vocab and classifiers. There were a few Q&A sentences, and then the entire second page was vocabulary, one word per line. I blew that part away; I stumbled some on Page 1, but vocab was my strong suit, and I didn't miss a single one.

Afterwards, it was upstairs for the written. I might have even scored perfect on this part; there was one question I was wary of (out of two pages), but the written ended with 22 more vocabulary words, and again I nailed 'em all. Overall, I don't see how I could come away with anything but an A, but since you never know what curveballs there are until after the fact, I'm going to hold off on predictions until week after next when we get the results. We're on spring break next week. I can wait.

The week wound down pretty quickly once Thursday hit, because students at work were mostly taken care of by that point, and I was no longer under the midterm gun. I'm exhausted, though; I know my child-having friends will laugh at that, but I don't know anything else. A guy I work with is having a beerfest tomorrow at two at his house near Westport, but I don't think I'm going to make it. I'm worn out, and I'm just not in the partying mood. I'll probably see a couple movies, write them up, shop for some new clothes (the income tax refund rolled in today), and hit a deaf chat tomorrow night. That's about as party as I get this weekend.

War Against Web Music Tops Music Biz "Screw-Ups" List

The talent scout who turned down the Beatles has long been credited with committing the music industry's biggest gaffe.

[But today, t]he major labels took top dishonors for driving file-sharing service Napster out of business in 2001, instead of figuring out a way to make money from its tens of millions of users. The downloaders merely scattered to hundreds of other sites, and the industry has been in a tailspin ever since."

I came across an old journal yesterday, one of the two that I kept during the summer of 1999, the only summer I stayed in Kirksville, and the one that gave rise to so many of my theatre-related adventures at Truman State.

One of the pages was devoted not to a journal entry, but to a mix tape I had made for a girl I was dangerously close to falling on my ass for. I'm not still hung up on the girl, of course, but I am still hung up on the songs, many of them very characteristic of that summer, in terms of the Soundtrack of My Life. I'm in the process of obtaining the songs I no longer have; perhaps, if you guys want, I'll make them all available on the old Numb Trolleybus, because I've already been moved to goose bumps twice, and some of them I haven't heard in ages. You all will probably find some long-lost gems in here as well.

Side A
1. "Even Angels Fall," Jessica Riddle
2. "Fall From Grace," Amanda Marshall
3. "Life's a Bitch," Shooter
4. "What Would Happen," Meredith Brooks
5. "Cry," The Sundays
6. "Siren," Tori Amos
7. "London Rain," Heather Nova
8. "Turn Back Time," Aqua
9. "Take Me Home," Donna Lewis
10. "Cruel to be Kind," Letters to Cleo

Side B
1. "Your Winter," Sister Hazel
2. "Open the Gate," No Doubt
3. "I'm Your Angel," Celine Dion
4. "Love's Funny That Way," Tina Arena
5. "Summertime," The Sundays
6. "The Background," Third Eye Blind
7. "How Do I Deal," JLH
8. "Heaven Tonight," Hole
9. "Fate," Four Star Mary
10. "I Want You to Want Me," Letters to Cleo

Everyone's a driving expert, right? Except that I really am. I recently discovered a radio show on NPR called Car Talk, which isn't about driving as much as it is about figuring out car-related repair mysteries. The two guys on the show, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, are absolutely brilliant, funny, and have the thickest northeastern accents you'll ever hear.

I found their web site today, read through a few rants, and decided to respond to one. It's from a few weeks ago, so I may not get a response from them, but if I do, I'll post it here. The rant they posted involved the issue of passing on the right, a highway option in which I'm a firm believer. Here's what Tom had to say on the subject:

---

Here's what I want to know: Just whose bright idea was it to allow passing on the right?

There are no good reasons to allow drivers to pass on the right. And there are hundreds of reasons not to do it.

How did this bogus idea sneak into our lives? It's the worst thing I've heard of since the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth. (They didn't actually do that, did they?)

How did this happen? Here's my bet: Some misguided traffic specialist or tweezer-brained bureaucrat probably thought passing on the right would speed up traffic flow. Eureka! Rush-hour traffic jams will be a thing of the past--at no extra cost.

But what will come of this? I'm glad you asked. Here's what: Plenty more accidents. Many of them at high speeds. And some of them will probably involve friends or relatives of yours. Or you--even though you're certainly a safer driver than everyone else reading this, right?

Do we need a study to prove this? Of course not. It's common sense. Or are we lacking that now too? I'm beginning to wonder.

It wasn't too long ago that the only thing on the right was the breakdown lane. Now, you've got to deal with wackos trying to pass you on all sides.

It's time to reverse this little bit of highway stupidity, so I'm starting a campaign. Here's the question:

All things considered, do you think the law that allows passing on the right is a good idea, or do you think it's pretty dumb and ought to be repealed?

And there's one other thing.

I want to know who's the Mensa brain who suggested this? If you have the slightest clue, I want to hear about it. You can e-mail me right here. And when you're writing, tell me what in Evel Knievel's name was the reasoning that this harebrained Australopithecus used.

Just when did we decide to start trading safety for somebody's idea of efficiency?

What's next? Are we going to pass a law that allows us to pass over the top?

Tom Magliozzi

P.S. Until we get this law repealed, I expect you to pass on the left only. Look for the 1952 MG TD. I'll be watching you--from the breakdown lane.

---

And here was the response I submitted tonight:

Dear Tom,

I hope I've selected the right destination for this e-mail. I just recently discovered your show and the site, and I was reading through the rants. The one I'd like to discuss is Passing On the Right, even though it's a few entries back.

Obviously, you're adamantly against the practice of passing on the right, and you've made clear your distaste for it, saying there are about a hundred reasons not to do it -- but you didn't name any. At a later point, you did mention it would cause more accidents (at high speed), but you didn't say why or cite any statistics. What you did do was give your audience a fair amount of credit by assuming they would know the reasons automatically, but I'd wager I'm not the only one who doesn't.

I'm less interested in the law and more interested in safety. I can't picture why passing on the right is any more dangerous than passing on the left -- the blind spots are exactly the same size and in exactly the same places. But while I'm driving, I have a much wider field of vision over my right shoulder than over my left shoulder, which leads me to believe passing on the right is actually safer. I leave it to you to dismiss this argument with one of your own.

Thanks for a great show every week,
me

---

And now, Numb Trolleybusers, I leave it to you: can anyone -- anyone at all -- give any semi-solid reason or provide a single substantiated statistic as to why passing on the right is dangerous?

Am I to believe that if a car is in the left lane doing five under the limit and the other three lanes are clear, I'm required to remain behind his back bumper no matter what lane I'm in or how fast I was going? How do you justify holding up traffic like that?

As I told Tom, I don't want to hear that it's against the law. I know it is in my home state, and I don't care, any more than those ten cars this afternoon cared about the speed limit as they blew by at 115 MPH. So I'm going to do what I want anyway, but if there's an actual safety-related reason I can get behind, I'll change my tune. I just don't think there is one.

Well, just when I was worried I was getting depressed again, I went and picked up some kind of really mild cold sometime on Friday, or maybe it was the most benign flu I've ever seen, I can't tell.

I started off with a minor sore throat, a random cough, and some muscle aches; the sore throat is mostly gone, except when my allergies drain at night, the cough lingers here and there (mostly harmless), and the muscle aches are intermittent, usually only pronounced when I forget a dose of Advil. I got a ton of rest over the weekend, and I've been feeding like mad, so I suspect the whole thing will be gone in a couple days.

But it's effectively taken my mind off The Latest Girl I Can't Have and my dismal social situation, and overall I haven't felt that bad. I haven't cranked the sad/sappy music on the way home from work, and I haven't been on the brink of tears for days.

I never, ever thought getting semi-sick would be a blessing. Sometimes it takes having something bigger happen to make you realize the problem wasn't that big to begin with... or that's the theory I'm clinging to.

Here's a list of all the movies earning Best Picture awards all the way back to 1928. Bold the ones you've seen.

This is going to be ugly.

1928--Wings
1929--The Broadway Melody
1930--All Quiet on the Western Front
1931--Cimarron
1932--Grand Hotel
1933--Cavalcade
1934--It Happened One Night
1935--Mutiny on the Bounty
1936--The Great Ziegfield
1937--The Life of Emile Zola
1938--You Can't Take It With You
1939--Gone With The Wind
1940--Rebecca
1941--How Green Was My Valley
1942--Mrs. Miniver
1943--Casablanca
1944--Going My Way
1945--The Lost Weekend
1946--The Best Years Of Our Lives
1947--A Gentleman's Agreement
1948--Hamlet
1949--All The King's Men
1950--All About Eve
1951--An American in Paris
1952--The Greatest Show on Earth
1953--From Here to Eternity
1954--On The Waterfront
1955--Marty
1956--The King and I
1957--Bridge Over The River Kwai
1958--Gigi
1959--Ben Hur
1960--The Apartment
1961--West Side Story
1962--Lawrence of Arabia
1963--Tom Jones
1964--My Fair Lady
1965--The Sound of Music
1966--A Man For All Seasons
1967--In The Heat of the Night
1968--Oliver
1969--Midnight Cowboy
1970--Patton
1971--The French Connection
1972--The Godfather
1973--The Sting
1974--The Godfather Part 2
1975--One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
1976--Rocky
1977--Annie Hall
1978--The Deer Hunter
1979--Kramer Vs. Kramer
1980--Ordinary People
1981--Chariots of Fire
1982--Gandhi
1983--Terms of Endearment
1984--Amadeus
1985--Out of Africa
1986--Platoon
1987--The Last Emperor
1988--Rain Man
1989--Driving Miss Daisy
1990--Dances With Wolves
1991--Silence of the Lambs
1992--Unforgiven
1993--Schindler's List
1994--Forrest Gump
1995--Braveheart
1996--The English Patient
1997--Titanic
1998--Shakespeare in Love
1999--American Beauty
2000--Gladiator
2001--A Beautiful Mind
2002--Chicago
2003--Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2004--Million Dollar Baby
2005--Crash
2006--The Departed
2007--No Country for Old Men

Yeah, on a whole, not a big fan of Best Picture nominees, let alone the so-called "winners." This year's Oscars is said to have had the lowest viewership in several years because the Best Picture nominees just weren't big box office draws. My folks actually saw No Country for Old Men recently, and I'm afraid for them. They didn't tell me much because I told them there was an outside chance I'd see it at some point, but I know what it's about, and... yeah. Glad I wasn't there.

Now I'm tagging: Jenorama, Katherine, Adam.