I can't even. No, I really can't

Grayson: "Hey, do we have any of those ear covers for the thermometer?"

Me: "Yes, they're under my sink."

Grayson: "I just looked in there and I didn't see them anywhere. Where would they be in there, exactly?"

Me: "Check in the basket, probably near the thermometer."

Grayson:  [frustrated]  "I'm looking ... I don't see them. Can you come look?"

Me: "Yes, just a minute."

Me:  [opening the cabinet]  [blink blink]

Me: "Grayson. Come here."

Me:  [wildly gesticulating at the covers]

Grayson: "Well, THEY WERE COVERED UP BY THE CUPS."

My Foolproof Movie Recommendation Formula

I am extremely picky about movies. I see a lot of them, but I don't love a lot of them. I like about 65 percent of the ones I see. I LOVE about 5 percent of the ones I see. The rest, I'm "meh" about.

I'm much more forgiving about TV shows -- not that I'm willing to waste time on TV, but I find that I'm not as disappointed by spending 30 minutes watching a sitcom that makes me laugh twice as I am by a two-hour movie comedy that makes me laugh twice. Also, I can make the choice not to ever watch that sitcom again, but all I can do about the movie is choose not to watch a potential sequel. NOT MUCH REVENGE THERE.

But these days, I have help with movies. My personal film critics preview most movies for me and then tell me if I'll like them: my friends Jamie and Melanie. They are excellent barometers. Basically, they apply my Foolproof Movie Recommendation Formula, which I've developed subconsciously over time and has greatly enhanced my odds of enjoying a movie.

Today, I share it with you, Internet.

Start at 50.  

Was an animal abused, attacked or killed/died? If no, add 10 points. If yes, subtract 25 points.

Was a child abused, attacked or killed/died? If no, add 5 points. If yes, subtract 20 points.

Was there any element of racism? If no, add 20 points. If yes, subtract 40 points.

Did one or more character speak with a British accent? If no, subtract 15 points. If yes, add 15 points.

Did one or more British actors speak with an American accent WHAT A WASTE? If no, add 5 points. If yes, subtract 20 points.

Was Matt Damon in it? If no, subtract 5 points. If yes, add 10 points.

Was Jennifer Garner in it? If no, subtract 5 points. If yes, add 10 points.

Was Chris Pratt, Bradley Cooper, Channing Tatum or a Hemsworth in it? If no, subtract 5 points. If yes, add 20 points.

Was Jennifer Tilly or Steve Buscemi in it? If no, add 5 points. If yes, subtract 30 points.

Did it feature an inspirational sports theme? If no, write a letter of protest. If yes, add 50 points.

Is it a Pixar film? If no, subtract 5 points. If yes, add 20 points. 

Did it take place prior to 1950? If no, add 20 points. If yes, subtract 20 points. 

Was the entire movie a long series of unfortunate or depressing events? If no, add 10 points. If yes, subtract 70 points.

Was much of the plot predicated on ridiculous, easily avoided conflict or miscommunication between the love interests? If no, add 20 points. If yes, subtract 40 points.

Did Aaron Sorkin write the script? If no, subtract 5 points. If yes, add 40 points.

Was the ending happy? If no, subtract 35 points. If yes, add 35 points.

WAS THERE A "SIX MONTHS LATER" EPILOGUE? If no, subtract 5 points. If yes, add 30 points.

Using my Foolproof Movie Recommendation Formula, the following movies would have received:

Inside Out - 125*

Titanic - 95

Sense & Sensibility - 65**
 
Ex Machina - 20
 
Notting Hill - 200***

Guardians of the Galaxy - 145
 
Pretty Woman -140

The Spy -155

Eight Below - 50
 
Wild - 60
 
Rudy - 190
 
The Patriot - I've never seen it, but I hate it. Please listen to this week's Bonus Episode of The Popcast for more information on My Superpower and how this works.

Apply my formula to the movie of your choice and see how it comes out. Did the results surprise you or confirm your own opinion of it? Let me know!


*Inside Out would have scored a mere 25 if I'd chosen to stipulate that the entire movie was "a long series of unfortunate or depressing events." Which it kind of was. But not really in the traditional sense, so I'm giving it a pass on that one. The fact that all four of our kids loved it has a lot of bearing on which way I let that one go.

**Sense & Sensibility is one of my favorite films of all time. Lost major points for how much of it was predicated on the "miscommunication between the love interests." Good thing I didn't know Jamie and Melanie when this came out.

***I may have to watch Notting Hill again, since I only saw it once when it was released and it scored so high on my Foolproof scale. WHO KNOWS WHAT I MIGHT BE MISSING?

What's in a name?

Can we please talk about actors who at one time took a stand on the correct pronunciation of their names but over time have just given up in a spectacular way?

And by “spectacular way,” I mean they allow the world at large – E! correspondents, Oprah and Gayle, the hosts of the Popcast podcast, to name a few – to butcher their names, and they do nothing to prevent it. No more corrections in print or on The View, or even to the annoying paparazzi who yell their names INCORRECTLY as they try to get them to turn around for a picture in the airport.

Who are these actors? A partial list:

• Keanu Reeves
• Joaquin Phoenix
• Lindsay Lohan
• John Lithgow
• Catherine Zeta-Jones
• Amanda Siefried

 

To be fair, I’m not even sure all three of those people should be lumped into the “actor” category. Perhaps we go with “celebrity,” then?

Bygones.

Growing up, I was regularly called “Kathy” and “Kathleen” by people who couldn’t be bothered to remember my name or what I preferred to be called. KATHERINE. Not that hard. When I was young, I didn’t even have a nickname, and I didn’t go by my middle name, so we’re talking, I went by the name that was listed legally on my birth certificate, how I was registered at school, all of that. That never stopped the occasional teacher from asking, “Kath-reen?” on the first day of school. REALLY?

Wasn’t aware that was even an option.

But this is a hill I’m willing to die on. I’ll answer to a few names: Katherine, Kat, Mommy, and – courtesy of the last seven years – GRASS. If you mispronounce any of them, I’ll politely correct you. If you call me Kathleen or Kathy, I’ll tell you what your actual options are. Nicely.

This is what separates us from the animals, Internet. Call a tortoise who goes by “Einstein,” “Titus” instead, and there’s not a heck of a lot he can do about it.

So I guess what I’m saying is, I hope KEE-uh-noo, HAH-keen* and Lindsay LOH-en will once again pick up the mantle and make a go of it. Because IT’S YOUR NAME. 

*I have always assumed that Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos named their son Joaquin (Wah-KEEN) after hearing Joaquin Phoenix’s name earlier in their lives. Which is unfortunate. Because they didn’t ask him how his mama pronounces it.

iPhone home screens, because I'm a glutton for punishment

Okay, Internet.

It's been a year since we've done this. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?

Yes, a year since I first LOST MY EVER-LOVING MIND over the state of your iPhone home screens. It was purely accidental, and I can't believe I'm about to do this to myself -- and to you -- again on purpose.

But I am. And as I look back on my own home screen from a mere year ago, I'm surprised to see how much it's changed in that time.

Then:

And now:

If you weren't around a year ago, what happened was that my friend Rachel innocently texted me a screenshot of her home screen in the process of asking me a question about something related to her phone. And I don't think I was even able to answer her question, SO DISTRACTED WAS I BY THE STATE OF HER HOME SCREEN.

I was so undone that I knew I had to investigate to see if others were living in similar states of chaos -- hundreds (or thousands!) of unread emails, screens upon screens of apps just piled upon one another, horrid background images flying in the face of all that's good and holy -- and SURE ENOUGH.

You were.

You provided enough fodder for two posts. The original, and then a follow-up. Truth be told, there were even stragglers beyond that, but I was worn slap out. I couldn't bring myself to post any more screens. My eyes were nearly seared out of my head by the ugliness of it all.

But I'm ready. Bring it, Internet. BRING IT.

Send your home screen screenshots to stainsofgrass at yahoo dot com. (I assume you all know how to take a screenshot. If you don't, email me and ask.) (I probably won't tell anyone you had to email me and ask.) (PROBABLY won't.)

I'm VERY interested to see if anyone has finally moved the Phone out of a perma-spot.

I've never eaten ...

You want a real kick in the pants? I've been trying to work on the Day 6 Disney post. But Amelia has strep throat, and I took 383 pictures on Day 6 alone.

Three hundred, plus another 80, and then three more on top of that.

So since I wrote and posted Tuesday's Day 5 post, I've been drowning in Day 6 pictures while being weighed down by a weepy, whiny toddler. Not that it's her fault or anything. But it's certainly not making the blogging any easier.

You know what, though? I have like 27 other posts in Draft. And "I've Never Eaten" is one of them. So I figured I'd just go ahead and share this list with you -- and it's only a PARTIAL list of fairly mainstream things that I've never eaten -- so that you could just begin judging me right away.

Have fun.


I'VE NEVER EATEN:

1. A Big Mac
2. Catfish
3. Barbecue ribs
4. Anything, ever, at Captain D's
5. A banana split

What do you feel like everyone else has eaten that you've never tried?

My Bucket List

1. Pull a paper towel off the roll at work without first pinching off a fingertip's worth ... three times.

2. Throw something in the kitchen trash can without scraping the skin off my index finger on the pantry door jamb.

3. Walk across my bedroom without stepping in fresh cat vomit.

4. Exit Target with a receipt for less than $190.

5. Go parasailing.

ONLY ONE OF THESE IS EVEN REMOTELY LIKELY TO HAPPEN. But it's important to keep the dream alive, Internet. Always keep the dream alive.

iPhone and iPad backgrounds, because why shouldn't something you look at 2,983 times a day be beautiful?

** I promise, this post even has something for guys. Pinky swear. **

When I upgraded my iPhone from a 4 to a 5S a couple of weeks ago -- {angels singing} -- the extra half-inch of screen real estate suddenly made the chevron background a little overwhelming for me.

Remember? This is what it looked like when we last spoke:

I loved my chevron, I really did. But that extra row of app icons gave me another six-and-a-half rows of chevron, and I think it was just too much. So I did what I always do ... I Googled the next idea I was interested in for a background: "turquoise ombre background." And I found this one in a great quatrefoil pattern and promptly locked it in:

 So today my background looks like this:

It may still be too busy for some of you, but I love it. The Make It ... Create blog also has the ombre quatrefoil offering in pink:

They have about 12 other color options, too, so check them out.

If you like to have a nice print for your Lock screen background but something like this is too busy for your Home screen background, you can always Google solid color backgrounds for your Home screen that coordinate with whatever print you pick out. Take mine, for example ... I could use these two together:

Another blog that has some great free iPhone and iPad backgrounds is Doodle Craft; that's where I picked up my navy chevron background several weeks ago.

You can choose by team colors, holidays, shapes, quotes ... they have all kinds of choices.

An Auburn fan might like this one, for example ...

And I love this red-and-green ikat print for Christmas:

Okay, I promised something for the guys. Here it is (via Hongkiat.com): There's an app titled Icons Skins 2 (and there are other Icons Skins apps, too -- and App Icons apps that let you customize your app icons, another thing people have been asking about) that lets you customize your home screen with themes like Blueprints:

Doodle:

Fire and Metal:

Pencils:

Grass ... ? Astroturf ... ? Sod in front of a privacy fence? I'm not 100 percent sure what this one really is.

Screws and bricks:

Screws and wood:

Tron:

Zelda:

Pacman:

And IT'S ON LIKE DONKEY KONG.

Two other cute ones included in that app are Post-it Notes:

and Clothesline:

Just wanted to answer these questions that had come in from Twitter about where I find my free phone backgrounds; there are plenty out there, and I think we all deserve something AH-MAZING to look at since we look at these screens every 30 seconds.

Or is that just me? ...

A few stragglers and a real heck of a finale

In a nutshell, here's what we all learned yesterday: All iPhones come out of the box exactly the same, and then some people really screw them up. Am I right?

Kidding.

But looking at the way people organize -- or DON'T organize -- their iPhones is truly a study in human nature. There were a few people who didn't get the memo the other day and wanted to be a part of it, so I offered them a second chance to send in screenshots so that I could throw stones at them.

Jamie didn't get it. I tried to explain it.

 

Okay, I'm going to be brief today, but I definitely wanted to share this second group with you guys. If I had to see them, YOU have to see them, Internet.

One of my Dutch readers sent a screenshot! And look! They're just like us over there in the Netherlands (which I was totally going to call Holland, but then I saw "T-Mobile NL" at the top of her phone, so I went with Netherlands). They play Candy Crush, they Tweet, they Instagram (their lunches, presumably), and they don't read their email!

This one came from a co-worker who reads his email but doesn't take phone calls. I am dying -- DYING -- to know about this "I Love Her" app that's in one of his sacred perma-spots. I've never heard of it and it's 12:30 a.m. so I'm not about to look it up at this very moment, but you can bet your bottom dollar I'm hoping someone tells me in the Comments. Thanks in advance, Internet.

This one came from a Twitter follower who has me totally curious if she downloaded customized folder options to get that cloudy, transparent look or if they look that way because of her background photo. I also can't see the little dots at the bottom of the screen that tell me how many screens she has. HOW MANY?

It is a devoted person who sends me a screenshot at 6:29 a.m. She wins some sort of award. Also, does Page 2 have four apps across the top that don't overlap onto the family picture?

Settings gets a perma-spot. INTERESTING. I don't go to my Settings every day, so I hadn't considered this. How much do I love that this person goes to my church, but her Entertainment folder is four times as full as her Bible folder? In her defense, they're not really writing new books of the Bible.

I am continually amazed by all of the photography apps people download. Do you guys USE all of these photography apps? I can't even find the time to use Instagram. Is Starbuck's a "utility" now? Is that Starbuck's in there?

Oh. This makes me sad. This is our friend L, a brand-new iPhone convert. She hardly has any apps, she doesn't have Tweetbot (HORROR OF HORRORS!), and she doesn't have her percentage-left turned on for her battery. Oh, L. We have so much to teach you. It IS very cute that you apparently have a moon turned on to tell you that it's p.m. instead of a.m.

I had to include Screen 1 AND Screen 2 of this submitter's phone so that you can help explain to me the phenomenon that is people using two screens for items that will fit perfectly well on one. All of these folders will fit on one screen. But I DO love the concept of a folder titled "My Top 8." And I may be stealing it as soon as four seconds from now.

Are you a Christian with an iPhone? I apologize in advance if you're not able to sleep tonight without rearranging your apps, because you're about to experience a crisis of conscience for the ages.

Have you devoted a perma-spot to Jesus? NO?

BOOM.

I have some bones to pick with some iPhones

Last week my friend Rachel texted me a picture of her iPhone screen. Little did she know that it was going to make me practically apoplectic.

I've told you guys before that when I hold someone else's phone, I hold it like I'm handling TNT. I mean, even if it's an iPhone, another person's phone is so intensely personal that I feel as though it can explode at any second. Her screenshot reminded me that I had an outstanding opportunity to show you all why I feel that way ... if I was willing to put my mental health at risk.

Which, as it turns out, I WAS. I asked my Twitter followers to email me screenshots of their phone screens, and they responded quickly. So today, without naming names, I'm just going to tell you what I think about each one ... my random, unfiltered thoughts. And I'm going to get my own screen out of the way first:

I have two screens. One has my Utilities and lesser-used apps on it, but this is my main screen ... and I have several folders for group consolidation. It's still a work in progress. I've customized my background (I love a good chevron), and the bottom four apps in what I think of as the "perma-spots" are the ones I use most often (phone, mail, Tweetbot and text). Full disclosure: I didn't know until about eight months ago that you could move those four around. I thought Safari and Music had to stay down there with Phone and Mail. NOPE!

This next person almost caused me to abandon my "project" altogether. She was one of the first to submit her screenshot. She has six pages of apps, none of which are in folders. She only has three of the four perma-spots filled at the bottom of the screen.

I think she knew -- being a longtime reader -- that I would be having a complete come-apart once I received her screenshot, so she sent me a follow-up email to say, "All my other app pages are in alphabetical order. Does that help calm the stroke?" UMM, NO. Every time you add a new app and put it in alpha order, it would then shift all your apps over one spot. Then nothing would be where you were used to finding it anymore. GAHHHHHHHHHHH!

I'm intrigued by this: Two calendars, two map apps, two weight-loss apps. Thirty-four unread emails. I WOULD DIE. Also, he has three more pages of apps, so it looks like he could benefit from some more folders ... but my number-one question has to be: Does he only have the ONE Angry Birds game? Just Star Wars? Or are the other ones on a different page? (Which would be totally unacceptable, BTW.) (In my world.) (And in his wife's.)

Question, Internet: What's the word for a person who downloads the Emoji 2 app? I did not know such a thing existed. AND NOW I CAN'T UN-KNOW IT. And here's ANOTHER person who only has three of the four perma-spots on the bottom row filled.

There's a special place in Heaven for people who are so creative that they have a folder titled "Misc" and a folder titled "Misc 2" on their phones.

This submitter's phone has the most colorful background AND the most apps I'd never heard of. She also apparently uses Facebook so often that she's one of only two submitters who moved FB to one of the perma-spots at the bottom. NOTED.

Seeing this submitter's screenshot made me wish there were two rows with perma-spots. I wish I had room for the camera and the photos down there -- but I don't want to give up the other four I have down there. Hmm.

When my phone grows up, it wants to look more like this one. Except it won't lie to itself by putting the Blogger app in the "Productivity" folder.

Another chevron fan! Holla! Have immediately decided that I need that Podcast app and whatever Pocket does, based solely on how cute its icon is. HOW CUTE IS THAT POCKET?

A Foursquare sighting! I see people check in on Foursquare on Twitter all the time, but I've never known what it was, really. So here's someone who has it on their phone. I feel like I've seen a unicorn.

I am fascinated by these phones that are full of apps I've never seen or heard of. Puppy? Logos Bible? Tornado? Colormania? Lep's World? All new to me. Forty-five unread emails? ALSO NEW TO ME. Cannot even imagine that.

ANOTHER FOURSQUARE SIGHTING! So you people really are out there. I knew you had to be; I just didn't know who you were. Also. I just learned from this screenshot that LinkedIn has an app. I repeat, Internet: LINKEDIN HAS AN APP. I'd tell you to download it, but I have a feeling that if you're ON LinkedIn, you're receiving all the news you need from them in your emailbox. If you bother to read your emails, unlike this submitter.

I asked this person, "Why don't you have any apps on your phone?" He answered, "I work for a living and have six kids. And it's a work phone. I use it for email, e-reader, and GPS." Those are good reasons. So, Internet, other than the background picture, if you were wondering what an iPhone looks like when you pull it out of the box, it looks a lot like this.

I seriously took one look at this submitter's email inbox and I died. I. DIED. Seven pages of apps and 6,600 unread emails. My stress levels would be off-the-CHARTS.

And just when I thought I'd recovered from THAT, I got this one. More unread emails. And pages and pages of uncorralled apps.

Who knew there were apps you can download that will customize your app icons? NOT I. But now I do.

Here's one from a crafty person. Look! Stitcher, Hobby Lobby and Michael's apps. Looks like EVERYBODY has an app now.

Can you light your cigarette from your iPhone now?!

This submitter said that she WANTS to move Twitter from page 2 to this page, but she hates visual change, so she can't move it. I know what she means ... I still haven't gotten used to the fact that I moved Tweetbot to one of the perma-spots a month ago, but I stuck with it. Baby steps, T, baby steps.

Lastly, this submitter wins the Most OCD Award. There are no errant apps, no stragglers. A place for everything, and everything in its place. I love it. My ONLY issue with it is the phone and text icons being directly adjacent. I briefly had mine like that, and I had to separate them, because the two greens are too similar and my eye kept confusing them. But other than that, good eye, R.

So, Internet. What say you? Did this entire post give you the heebie-jeebies, like it did me to write it? Or does looking at other people's phone screens not turn your brain upside-down?

I know one thing ... I'm going to have to take a trip to the App Store to check out some apps that look interesting to me today!