b.y.o. lawn chair

it should be no surprise to any of you that i'm frequently guilty of cinematic slumming. the fact that i actually own "bring it on" might tip you off. no big shock, then, that i went to see "step up" the night it opened. (my partner in crime for the evening was sm, my new ally in pop teen culture obsession, who was more than willing to delay watching a few episodes of dark, broody angel.) i won't lie - i thought "step up" was great. good dancing, pretty people, predictable story line, happy ending.

but i'm beginning to wonder how my (lovely, yet) snobby, eccentric, vegetarian euro-parents produced a daughter who loves smash box-office dance films... and apparently tailgaiting.

for those of you who managed to miss all the media fanfare (and the deafening roar of the planes overhead), this weekend was the chicago air and water show, a two day blitz of military planes and skydivers doing crazy dare-devil tricks over lake michigan for a crowd of thousands of beer-drinking, hot-dog eating onlookers. i think my blogmate remains a little bewildered at what all the fuss is about, but both of us have spent enough time getting educated by behemoth state schools to know that any excuse to sit in a folding chair next to the grill eating potato chips and sipping miller light is a good one. so much the better if there are actually exciting things happening in the sky overhead.

you'd think i'd be consistent enough in my love of such mainstream fare as to admit that i'm not really tongue-in-cheek about it anymore, and that i'd not be quite so fickle when it comes to my snob-quotient. as such, you'd think that i would have been friendly to the cute guy who was actually nice enough to flirt with me, and would have surpressed the urge to completely high-brow him, even if i did think he was a 21 year-old ticket scalper (he wasn't).

the inner redneck: never there when you really need it.