In addition to bees, I particularly love cats, dogs, cows, alpacas, and giant squid. Really. I’m not quite sure how my fascination with giant squid began, but I find them such interesting creatures.

While sitting around with the fam post-Thanksgiving this past weekend, we stumbled across the Discovery Channel re-airing of their special on the first-ever live sighting of the elusive giant squid. I thought that everyone would be impressed with my giant squid trivia, but much like my bee facts, no one seemed to care that I knew that the first live giant squid was seen off the coast of Japan, or that the giant squid’s enemy is the sperm whale.

Anyway, did you know there is now not just a giant squid but a colossal squid?  What’s next, the “Venti Squid”?

Tags: Totally random by janine
1 Comment »

Freerice.com is kind of addictive, especially if you’re a vocabulary geek. Plus for each word you define correctly, 10 grains of rice get donated through the U. N. to help world hunger. There are 50 levels of vocabulary words - so far my record is level 45. I am ebulliant.

Tags: Totally random by janine
No Comments »

In today’s New York Times Science section, there’s an article called “In Hollywood Hives, the Males Rule” . The article, by Natalie Angier, points out all the inaccuracies about bees in Bee Movie. First of all, male bees don’t have stingers, as Barry B. Benson does in the film. Ms. Angier further explains the role of the male bee in the hive - and of course, as I’ve already pointed out, it is vastly different than Barry’s life as portrayed in Bee Movie. “For male ants and honeybees, time is brief, their numbers briefer,” she says. Ah, that ought to be enough to give a male honeybee existential angst, no?

Tags: Bees by janine
No Comments »

I finally saw Bee Movie this weekend! Needless to say, I loved it, but then again I am “beeish” as some of the characters in Bee Movie would say.

I drove my husband crazy by identifying the many bee inaccuracies in the movie (”Bees only go to one type of flower at a time”, “The females leave the hive, not the males”). My husband, of course, pointed out “Bees also don’t talk or wear sweaters.” Bee realism aside, I enjoyed the bee puns and bee jokes and of course the scenes with Sting (he’s offensive to bees!) I appreciated how in the end, the movie conveyed how important bees are to our planet. I also loved how most humans were portrayed as having a completely irrational panic around bees - it’s so true. Naturally I identified with the human heroine who appreciated bees.  

I’d like to say I give this movie a  “B” but I give it an A, or, in the Temple of Sting rating scale of one to five bees, I give it five bees.

Tags: Bees by janine
No Comments »

I saw Sufjan Stevens perform at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this weekend, and I could not have loved it more. The performance conisisted of the symphony that Sufjan Stevens wrote about the BQE - that’s the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to you non-New Yorkers - followed by a set of Sufjan’s songs with a full orchestra.

During the BQE symphony, a film was shown filled with images of the BQE and hula hoopers also performed in the film and live onstage during parts of the performance. It was brilliant. It was about Detroit, and Brooklyn, and the automobile, and the 50s, and the present, and hula hoops, and plastic, and Robert Moses, and transportation, and wheels. And Sufjan’s songs were just gorgeous - the acoustics were amazing, and during the quiet parts, the audience was so rapt that you could have heard a pin drop.

I was really inspired by the hula hoopers, who were AMAZING. I’ve always been good at hula hooping myself, but now I want to learn more advanced hooping techniques and do it more often! I’m already looking into taking hooping classes in Brooklyn.

Tags: Music by janine
No Comments »

OMG OMG BEE MOVIE.

Needless to say, I’m so excited.

Also, today’s review in the NY Times notes:

“When Barry discovers that honey is sold in supermarkets, and that it is harvested from captive bees held in smoky, shoddy fake hives, he sues the human race, going after some of its notorious bee abusers. These include Ray Liotta, who sells his own brand of honey, and Sting, whose name is obviously offensive to bees.”

Ha! It’s like this movie was made just for me. Well, me, and other people who worship bees and hate Sting. Who knew that was an actual market…

Tags: Bees by janine
1 Comment »

 The NY Post’s Page Six reports:

November 1, 2007 — STING unwound after his reunion gig with the Police at the Garden in the wee hours of yesterday morning with entertainment by the ecdysiasts at Scores East. The singer and two male buddies arrived at the mammary mecca after midnight and were quickly sequestered in the Champagne Lounge with six private dancers dressed festively in sexy little Halloween costumes. The group then moved to a private room to keep the party going.

 When is Sting not partying with strippers? This is news?!

Tags: Sting by janine
No Comments »