movies and mobiles

after coming home from the king of prussia mall last night* at 11.00, karl and i were hunting for a parking space around my house when we encountered something strange. a movie being filmed. at 47th and osage. in west philadelphia.

anyway, there were loads of big trailers, huge floodlights up on cranes, police tape roping off the whole area, and (what really gave it away) a catering table. all of said equipment seemed to be congregated around one of the nicer houses in the neighborhood. the hunt for parking took longer than usual, because much of the street space was taken up by all these movie trucks. grrrrr.

i'm not sure why people film in west philly. i suppose they're trying to lend a bit of veritas to an otherwise studio-shot production? whatever. i intended to investigate further on my run this morning, but all that equipment was gone. poof. it was a little bit creepy, like i had dreamed it all.

*you may be wondering (i would, if i knew me) why i was at the king of prussia mall. why i was at a mall at all (hey! that rhymed!). i hate malls. they suck all the energy from me with the recirculated air heavy with the smell of new clothes chemicals. the slow walking that hurts my back. the woman who can't get credit at the cell phone store because she declared bankruptcy two years ago but still stands there taking up the time and attention of the only employee with her pathetic pleas that she's got credit cards and even bought a house so could't they just please give her a cell phone today and not make her pay the $500 deposit please? [pant pant] yeah, i know that wasn't actually a sentence. deal.

right. so i was at the mall, investigating cell phones (or, as karl calls them, 'mobiles,' pronounced MO-buy-lz). i've finally broken down and decided to get one. generally, i don't like them. don't like people talking in their cars. or on the train. or in line at the supermarket. or in restaurants. or anywhere where they ignore the people they're *with* to talk to someone somewhere else. grr. but, i have noticed an increase in times when one would be, at least very handy, if not absolutely necessary. to justify this all to myself a bit, i plan to get rid of my regular phone, and just have a cell. i mean, how many ways to do people need to be able to contact me? currently: home phone, lab phone, other lab phone, office phone (but i'm so never there), email, other email, third email, postal mail to my house, postal mail to my office, postal mail to my lab, postal mail to my mom's house... anyway, i plan to just substitute the home phone with the cell phone.

after an exhausting cell phone search, during which i mostly got my questions answered, but came up with new ones as well (what about radiation? is the n*kia 8260 a crappy phone? what about the new ericsson/sony phone?), karl took us out to the cheesecake factory. have you been there? they have yummy cheese cake. i'm eating leftovers right now, for lunch. this time i got the chocolate silk and satin cheesecake. layer of regular cheesecake over a layer of chocolate cheesecake over a layer of brownie. yummy, but i prefer my cheesecake without other cakey textures (e.g. brownie). favorite so far: chocolate raspberry truffle cheesecake. mmmmmmm.