There are Hotdogs in the Fridge

Last night Mitch and I came home from a weekend at the lake and discovered that while we were gone Sam cleaned the house and did a bunch of chores because he was home alone.  The house was literally cleaner when I got home than it was when I left. " Now THAT's how to raise a child!  GOD I'm a fantastic parent!"  I thought smugly to myself.  After Sam told me that he put my clean laundry in my room and that the dishes in the dishwasher were clean, he went to bed.

I put in the movie Chasing Mavericks about a kid who wants to surf monster waves and gets a pseudo foster father to help him do it.  I was watching the movie, still feeling pretty satisfied about what an OUTSTANDING parent I am, when I saw that the kid in the movie had the world's shittiest mother.  The first time we see her in the movie she is drunk, sleeping a bender off, totally oblivious that her kid almost died in the ocean and got a ride home from a strange man in a VAN.  When the kid came home he tucked her in and she rolled over and said, "There's hotdogs in the fridge," and passed out again.  Then he poured her booze down the drain.  "Oh.  That's too bad," I thought.  "He's not as lucky as Sam."

And then later in the movie the kid, who is about the same age as Sam, was heading out the door and he said something about how he washed the laundry and the dishes, and his mom's uniform was pressed and on her bed.  "Hmm,"  I thought, "I'm having a feeling of deja vu.  Weird."  Then I thought back to before I left my baby for my weekend of leisure while he stayed here and worked and cleaned the house, I actually said the words, "There are hotdogs in the fridge!"

"Oh. My. God,"  I thought.  Is Sam so good because he has to be?  Am I the shitty mother from Chasing Mavericks?  Is Sam the parent in our relationship and I'm so shitty I never even realized it???  Memories started flooding back:
~The time when he was a toddler and we played with a tiny plastic Sammy and Mommy dolls and he always wanted to be Mommy:  at the time I thought it was because he loved me so much.  I now suspect he was modeling proper Mommy behavior for me.
~The time when he was about five and was telling me a story about my dad and said, "...and then Grandpa (you know, your dad) said I could...."  At the time I thought he was a good story teller, but now I suspect he thought I was an idiot because I couldn't put together that his grandpa is my dad.
~When he would always insist on holding my hand in the grocery store parking lot; at the time I thought it was because he loved me so much.  Now I think he was guiding me safely to the store.

My child has been raising me for his whole life and I never even realized it.  Holy shit.  What does this mean?
I think it means I should write a parenting book because HOLY SHIT, I AM AN AWESOME MOTHER!!! Have you SEEN how good my son is?  IN YOUR FACE!  (That will be the title of my parenting book - In Your Face! or maybe Holy Shit I am an Awesome Mother!  or maybe There are Hotdogs in the Fridge)  I'll have Sam start working on a first draft.

Now that we are all clear on who is doing the parenting and who is being parented in this house, I have some bones to pick with Sam about how Kira is turning out.

Movie Review: Oblivion

We went to see the movie Oblivion last night.  Mitch and I are always a little wary of Tom Cruise movies because they are all ©TOM CRUISE movies, know what I mean?  It's not so much Tom Cruise acting as another character, because Tom Cruise never transforms himself into another character.  He instead turns all the characters he plays into ©TOM CRUISE and a person can only stand so much ©TOM CRUISE.

Anyway, it was another ©TOM CRUISE movie but it was pretty good despite that fact.  Before the movie begins, Earth apparently was in a war with an alien force who destroyed our moon which caused a lot of problems.  The planet was destroyed but Earth won the war.  Most of the people of Earth moved to Titan, a moon of Saturn, but Tom and his beautiful partner Victoria are stationed on Earth to watch over these giant machines that are sucking up sea water and converting it to energy.  Tom is on "drone maintenance" and Victoria is "control" so she sits in their tower and works a giant iPhone and tells him what to do and where to go.

Tom keeps having dreams about a different beautiful woman on Earth before the war but that's just stupid because he was never on Earth before the war!  Where is this coming from?!  Then one day a capsule crashes to Earth and Tom goes to investigate.  It's a bunch of pods containing humans, one of which is the beautiful woman from his dreams.  Confusion ensues.

It was an entertaining movie, and beautiful to watch.  Here is the gist:  Earth - Amazing; Drones - dangerous and unsafe for humans.  I loved the little helicopter plane that Tom flies around in the movie, but if I were to actually ride in it, it would be a barf-o-rama.  What I didn't like is that women chosen to play Tom's love interests seem to be played by beautiful eighth graders.  The man is 50.  That's just gross.  

"Hey, little girl, I lost my dog, will you help me find him?  Hop into my van and we'll drive around and look.
Want some candy?"

"Oh, sorry mister, but I have to go home and finish my science project."

"Hey, little girl, you're parents have been in an accident, I was sent here to get you and bring you to them.
Open the door."  

"But my mom just texted me and told me to finish my chores.  I'm calling the police, you old pervert." 

Movie Review No. 2: Les Miserables

I know I already wrote a review of Les Miserables, but I don't feel like I did it justice.  I really REALLY loved this movie.  In case you've never seen a production of the musical, it's about a group of people struggling through the French Revolution.  Hugh Jackman is Valjean, the main character.  Russell Crowe is Javert, the policeman and antagonist to Valjean.  Anne Hathaway is the single-mother factory worker-turned syphilitic prostitute. Valjean promises to take care of her daughter when she dies.  He raises her but is always on the run from Javert.  And so on.  If you don't know the rest, go see the movie.

I LOVE Hugh Jackman.  And it's not just because he's so handsome.  Or that he is Wolverine.  I like all the movies he's been in (except maybe Van Helsing).  And he has a real-life wife who seems normal and sensible who he loves.  That's pretty cool.  He was a fabulous Valjean.  His voice gets a little too Kathryn Hepburn-quavery for my taste sometimes though, but what do I know?

I've heard a lot of criticism about Russell Crowe playing Javert.  I don't get it.  I thought he was fantastic.  Javert is a tough, no-nonsense, black-and-white hardass, and Crowe played that perfectly.  I liked his singing too.  What was wrong with it???  I don't get your beef, Adam Lambert, so just shut it.

Anne Hathaway has always kind of bugged me because she's such a beautiful doofus.  Despite that I thought she was outstanding. OUTSTANDING. She has earned any and every award she gets for her part in this movie, no matter how annoying her acceptance speeches may be. (Blerg) The woman starved herself and lost 25 pounds in a few weeks, had her gorgeous head of hair chopped off onscreen, and sang that song how it's supposed to be sung (I'm talking to you, Susan Boyle) with her whole face filling the screen.  She was awesome.

The kid that played Gavroche was fantastic.  The first time I saw the movie I watched him with my jaw hanging open.  He's so good.  His part is small but man, he was good.

I liked Sacha Baron Cohen as Thenardier too.  He was a smooth con-man.  He was great.  So was Madam Thenardier played by Helena Bonham Carter.

Samantha Barks was a name I never heard before this movie but she was another one that I watched with my mouth hanging open.  She's a perfect Eponine.  Perfect.  When she sang "Little Fall of Rain" with Eddie Redmayne I was weep-choking.

I'm not really one to cry at movies but this one had me crying in several spots.  Usually I avoid movies that can do that to me because who wants to cry in public?  Not me.  This was a good cry though.  I cried during Anne Hathaway's raw rendition of I Dreamed a Dream.  No, I didn't cry.  That implies that I had a single solitary pretty tear flowing down my cheek.  That's not how it was.  My face was contorted and my nose was running.  It would have been embarrassing if I was the only one who was doing it, but every other person in the theater was sniffling too.  The other place that got me was when Marius (Eddie Redmayne) sang "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables."  Weepy bawling.  So good.  And of course, when Eponine died and sang "Little Fall of Rain."  Weep-choking.

"A little fall of rain can't hurt me now.  (Because I've been gut shot and I'm going to
bleed  and die here in the rain next to a boy I love who loves someone else. )"

I bought the soundtrack which is wonderful but is lacking some key songs from the movie.  I'm hoping there will be an additional volume coming out sometime or else I will have to wait for the movie to come out on DVD and just play that all the time.

If you haven't seen it, you should.  It is one of the best movies I've seen in a very long time.  Except for the sewer part.  That part still bugs me.

Movie Review: Les Miserables

I went to see Les Miserables on New Year's Day.  It. Was. Awesome.  You should see it.  The only part I had a problem with was when Jean Valjean dragged an unconscious and flesh-wounded Marius through a fully functioning sewer.  Not very hygienic.  The people of revolutionary Paris needed more fiber.  Yuck.  It reminded me of the time when Sam was five years old and he broke his leg.  He had an external fixator that he had to wear for a couple of months.  It was an external bar that was screwed into his femur in three places so he had open wounds that I was responsible for keeping free from infection.  Talk about stress.  The doctor only made it worse by saying, "If there is any redness or fever bring him to an emergency room IMMEDIATELY!"  Needless to say I was frantic most of the time for those couple of months.

During that time Sam was invited to a birthday party for one of his little preschool buddies.  It told him I would take him because he needed to do something fun.  I knew the mother from picking up and dropping off the kids at preschool.  She was a very nice lady.  What I didn't know about her, and never would have suspected, is that she lived in abject squalor.  Her house was a nightmare.  There were piles of what I hope was animal poop in various stages of dryness on the floor.  There were food stains all over the walls of her kitchen as if there had been a cafeteria food fight, and she had upholstered dining room chairs that were covered with crusty stains. How do people spill that much food?  Some of the kids were outside playing with the hose and thought it would be funny to squirt it into the kitchen window.  The mom laughed and didn't tell them to stop it.   I almost started crying when I carried my baby with open wounds into this figurative sewer, much like Jean Valjean must have felt when he dragged Marius through the actual sewer.

I told myself that we would stay for half an hour and then I'd make some excuse to get the hell out of there.  I sat on the very edge of the filthy couch and tried not to smell the smells I was smelling when a disgusting little wiener dog walked into the middle of the room and peed the longest pee in the world right on the floor next to the kids.  I jumped up and said, "Your dog is peeing!"  and the nice filthy lady just laughed and waved it off like, "Oh, he's always doing that."  NOBODY CLEANED IT UP!  It just sat there, saturating the rug and the carpet pad.  I told Sam it was time to go.  He didn't fuss much about it like I thought he would, instead he said, in front of everyone, "Okay, but I have to poop first."  I was going to have to take my open-wound boy into the bathroom of the dirtiest people in the world.  I said, "You can hold it til we get home," and he said, "Nope, I really have to go."  I couldn't decide if he really did have to go or if this was just another stop on his tour of every strange bathroom in the world, and then I had to decide what would be worse, holding my son six inches off the toilet in what was sure to be a biohazard bathroom, or having him crap his pants.  I opted for the biohazard bathroom.  I suppose that is much how Jean Valjean felt when he had to decide whether to leave Marius at the barricade to get killed by the French army, or drag him through the sewer and save his life.

Beauty is in the eye tooth of the beholder

Mitch and the kids and I went to see that movie Here Comes the Boom with Kevin James as a teacher who goes on the ultimate fighting circuit to raise money for his school.  It wasn't a good movie, but the kids liked it.  Salma Hayek was in it and was gorgeous as usual.  I said something about how pretty she is on the way home, thinking Mitch would be all over that and he said, "Her teeth are weird.  It's like her molars are only about a millimeter long."

He sees a picture like the one above and now I know that he's not looking at anything but her back teeth and judging her negatively on their shortness.  Luckily for Mitch and I, my back teeth are looooooong..... ooo baby.....

I never have to watch Lethal Weapon again!

I finally finished!  Well, technically, I fell asleep before the big ending of Lethal Weapon IV, but I was present while it was playing, so it counts.  Here's a review:

Gas station explosion...Riggs haircut... Murtaugh abused... house explosion... car explosion... boat explosion... another car explosion... Murtaugh is too old for various forms of shit... pregnancy... babies... Chinese people...shooting... laughing gas... promotion... Chris Rock's big teeth... blah blah blah blah...

Don't be fooled.  He IS too old for this shit.

Streaking! OMG!

I had to call this post streaking because if I told you what it was really about you wouldn't have read even this far, but I promise that if you read til the end, you will get a surprise.  Okay, I know you guys don't like my reviews of old eighties buddy movies, but too bad.  I can't just stop at two Lethal Weapon movies. I have all four movies (on VHS) so we are in this for four reviews.  Live with it.  

First of all, let me say that I'm really getting sick of watching Lethal Weapon movies.  Mel Gibson is a dick and so is his character, Martin Riggs.  I love Danny Glover but how in the world could he stand working with Mel Gibson?  And also why does his character, Roger Murtaugh, love Martin Riggs so much?  He's an inconsiderate maniac freeloader.

Okay, let's get this over with.  The plot this time is that Murtaugh has eight days until retirement.  Every day he gets closer to retiring, Riggs puts Murtaugh's life in danger in some ridiculous way.  He almost gets them both blown up in a building because he didn't want to wait for the bomb squad (who we know from the last movie can't actually prevent explosions, they can just delay them for one second.) He got them into a car chase with two armored trucks.  One day when Murtaugh was making lunch for Riggs from the lunch truck he apparently works at during lunchtimes, Riggs started a shootout with some gangbangers and Murtaugh had to save him by shooting a teenage boy.  Thanks a lot, Riggs, you dick!

Anyway, a dirty former cop named Travis is using his knowledge of police procedures to steal weapons collected as evidence.  There are a lot of guns collected by the police department.  Like, warehouses FULL.  So the story is that they are trying to find this guy and stop him.  Renee Russo is an internal affairs officer on the case.  She stores her gun in her pants.  The police in L.A. in the eighties had to use their own cars and they couldn't even afford holsters so they had to stick loaded weapons in the back of their Guess jeans.  Nice.

Murtaugh's real estate agent, Joe Pesci, tells them that they will be able to find Travis at a hockey game because he has season tickets so they go to the game but they don't know what seat Travis is in (good police work!) so Riggs gets on the speaker system and tells Travis that they are there and that they are after him, I think hoping to flush him out but guess what, it doesn't work.  Riggs gets Joe Pesci shot.  Nice going!

In the middle of the movie, Murtaugh is feeling bad for killing the teenage gangbanger so he gets drunk on his boat.  Riggs is worried so he goes to check on him.  He throws Murtaugh's booze overboard, punches him in the stomach, and then yells at him.  He is a TERRIBLE friend.  They hug it out and Murtaugh ends up apologizing to Riggs!  Hey Murtaugh, get out of this relationship, it is abusive.  You are too old for that shit.  If Murtaugh was a woman this would be a Lifetime movie.

At the end Travis kidnaps the captain of the department and goes right into the belly of the beast, which I guess is the main evidence locker for all the guns that are confiscated.  Riggs, Murtaugh and Russo figure out what is going down and they take a young whippersnapper who is turning 22 TODAY(!).  He is wearing a red star trek shirt.  Just kidding, he's not really wearing a star trek shirt but you know what I mean.  No reason for him to be introduced at this point in the story other than to make us feel bad when he gets killed, which he does. (Happy Birthday!)

More happens. Specifically a needless inferno caused by Riggs to finally capture the bad guy which he barely does.  Finally it's retirement day for Murtaugh.  He celebrates by shooting Riggs in the face.  Just kidding.  I wish.  But really, he has changed his mind about retiring because he can't bear to leave Riggs because Riggs really needs him so he is going to give it ten more years.  Roger, you're an idiot.  Riggs is going to kill you.

Okay, time for your surprise.  If you can answer the following questions about this post, I will send you my VHS copy of Lethal Weapon III:
1.  What three things can't the L.A. police department afford?
2.  What kind of pants does Renee Russo like?
3.  Who is the worst friend in the world?

One more to go!

Lethal Weapon II

Last night Mitch and I watched Lethal Weapon II.  You know what I figured out?  I figured out why the movies are called Lethal Weapon.  Mel Gibson IS the Lethal Weapon.  Is he crazy?  Or is he just crazy good?  We still don't know.

I think I saw Lethal Weapon II when it came out in the eighties because I remember the iconic "toilet scene."  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  This film starts with Murtaugh (Danny Glover) and Riggs (Mel Gibson) in a car chase in Murtaugh's wife's station wagon.  Murtaugh drives this big woody station wagon throughout the whole movie which makes me wonder why the L.A. police department would allow that.  It seems a little unprofessional to have a detective driving around in car chases in a grocery grabber, but hey, what do I know, I live in fly-over country.  And also, isn't Murtaugh's wife a little put-out that her husband is using her car every day?  How is she getting around?  Why doesn't Murtaugh use his own car for work?  Anyway, Riggs and Murtaugh and a bunch of other rag-tag, lovable detectives are chasing a guy who eventually crashes and a bunch of gold treasure comes out of his trunk.  That's not a euphemism either.  Literally, a bunch of gold coins spill from the trunk of the bad guy's car.

It turns out that the bad guy with the treasure is a South African diplomat and the South Africans are running some kind of illegal drug trade in L.A. and are getting paid in gold coins, apparently; and they are dodging law enforcement because of their diplomatic status.  Riggs is on to them and starts to sort of stalk the main South African bad guy because if Mel Gibson hates anything, it's racism and apartheid and those South Africans are all about apartheid.  He will not put up with that shit. Riggs meets a South African hottie that works at the embassy(?) and he starts up a relationship with her, if you can call practically kidnapping her and bringing her to his crappy trailer and having marathon sex a relationship.

While Mel is with this woman, the South Africans start assassinating all of the rag-tag police team that chased them down and discovered their plot.  A house where a poker game is being played is blown up with what looks like a million pounds of TNT.  That took care of five or six.  Another one was going to do a few laps in her pool before her shift and when she jumped on the diving board it blew up and flung her end over end across the whole neighborhood.  Didn't seem like a very practical way to kill someone because she might have been able to tuck and roll her way out of death, but apparently the South Africans have a flair for the dramatic and a lot of explosives laying around collecting dust.

Which brings me to the plot to kill Murtaugh.  Somehow, they got in to his house and wired his toilet so that after he had a good poop and stood up from the pot, it would explode.  They stupidly gave him a hint about what would happen by writing, "Boom, you're dead!" on the toilet paper.

I'm so glad they spelled "you're" right.

Why did they do that?!  Nobody will ever know.  Murtaugh tried calling Riggs all night to tell him he was stuck on his toilet, but Riggs was too busy to answer his phone.  When he finally went to check on Murtaugh he discovered him on his toilet and they had a good laugh.

"It really stinks in here."

They called the bomb squad and the plan was to freeze the bomb with nitrogen to give Murtaugh enough time to jump in to the bathtub to avoid the blast.  That's why we are paying big bucks for bomb squads, so they can buy you one second before the bomb goes off and tell you where to jump while it explodes.  If this is really the way bomb squads work, we need to rethink bomb squads.  Anyway, Murtaugh has been sitting on the pot all night and he can't feel his legs anymore so Riggs decides to stay and help him into the tub.  The bomb squad guy tries to talk Riggs out of it, but Riggs is not moving because he and Murtaugh are soul mates.  Before the big jump into the tub Murtaugh and Riggs tell each other they love each other in their manly way and then they make the big jump.  They survive.

Actually, I think I have my chronology messed up somewhere there.  It doesn't matter.  Oh, I also forgot to tell you that Riggs can get out of a standard straight jacket by dislocating his own shoulder and wriggling out.  Okay, now that you know that, I can tell you that the South Africans kidnap Riggs and tell him that they are the ones responsible for killing his wife in a "car accident" four years earlier.  Then they put Riggs in a makeshift straight jacket and throw him into the ocean.  He gets out, of course, because he can dislocate his own shoulder, but while he is down there he sees his new South African babe.  She got the whole straight jacket treatment as well.  Riggs loses his mind.  He is going to avenge  his wife and girlfriend by taking on the South Africans on his own.

He calls Murtaugh and tells him, and Murtaugh, of course, agrees to help him out. They go to a ship where the big wig South African bad guy is making some kind of shady deal and they get in a shootout. It's bad.  The bad guy shoots Riggs but before he does he holds out his ID badge and says "Diplomatic immunity! HA HA HA HA!"  Then Murtaugh shoots him because he doesn't give a crap about diplomatic immunity.  After he does he says, "It's just been revoked."  BADASS!  Then Murtaugh goes to Riggs and holds his head in his lap and gives him the will to live.  He keeps saying, "Do not die until I tell you to," which I thought was weird.  And then Riggs wakes up and says, "You're a beautiful man," and they both have a good laugh.  I didn't see what was so funny.  I thought it was weird.  What were they laughing at?

I thought the second Lethal Weapon was better than the first.  Mitch had some problems because the Murtaugh family house was having some construction done and the nail gun worked without being attached to a compressor.

Mitch thinks the compressor probably didn't have a very good agent and that was the point at which Mitch could no longer suspend his disbelief.  I give the movie an A- and the minus is only for the weirdness in the last scene.  Mitch gives it a C- "at best" he says.  I think if it wouldn't have been for the lack of compressor, Mitch would have given it a solid B.  SO much happens!  I didn't even cover half of it.  Riggs chases cars on foot again! Joe Pesci is in the movie!

Murtaugh kills some South Africans with the nail-gun-with-no-compressor and then says, "Nailed 'em!"  You should see it.  In fact, if you want my VHS copy, email me your address and I'll send it to you.

Movie Review: Lethal Weapon

Last year my sister Beth thought it would be hilarious to give my kids a box the size of a camper van full of her old VHS tapes.  She taped a note on it that said something like, "Have your mom sort through these first because some of them are rated R and are incredibly inappropriate for kids.  Enjoy!"  My kids were ecstatic.  I was not.  You know why?  Because I already got rid of my VHS tapes and it wasn't easy.  Now I had about a thousand more to deal with along with trying to explain to the kids why they couldn't watch Strip Tease and American History X.  And Beth saw to it that I had to deal with it because she presented it as a gift to the kids.  Nicely played, Beth. You go ahead and laugh for now.  I have a line on getting your girls a beard-of-bees starter kit for Christmas.

Four of the movies in the box were Lethal Weapon, Lethal Weapon II, Lethal Weapon III, and Lethal Weapon IX.  Beth is nothing if not thorough.  I don't know how she could bear to part with these gems.  She probably has them on Blu-Ray now though.  Every time there has been nothing good to watch on TV after the kids go to bed for the past 15 months or so, I say to Mitch, "Wanna watch Lethal Weapon?" and he always says, "No!"  But last night he was out in the garage so it was my chance to watch it.  And watch it I did.

In case you have forgotten, it starts out with a scantily clad, drugged out babe jumping do her death from a high rise building in L.A.  Danny Glover (Murtaugh) is assigned the case.  He is a family-man detective with the police department and it is his 50th birthday. He goes in to work and is assigned a new partner, Mel Gibson (Riggs).  Riggs is a loose cannon.  He recently lost his wife in a car accident and is being evaluated by the department shrink because he might be suicidal, but he might be faking it to get the many societal benefits a person gets when they are diagnosed with a mental illness.  We soon learn how crazy he is when he goes to the top of a building to talk a potential jumper down and instead of talking him down he handcuffs himself to the poor guy and then forces them both to jump.

If you didn't know what a great actor Mel Gibson is, you'd swear he was really crazy!

They jump into a big air bag and aren't hurt but at that point Murtaugh is worried that this new partner of his might not be just faking it, he might actually be crazy.  He brings Riggs to a private place and yells at him and demands to know if he really wants to die and he gives Riggs his gun and tells him if he really wants to die, to put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.  Riggs is just about to do it when Murtaugh pulls the gun away.  It is at this point in the movie when they, newly acquainted partners, forge a bond that usually takes years to forge.  They look deep into one another's eyes and their souls say to each other, "Hey, you're my brother, man.  I know you."  Then Murtaugh says, "I'm too old for this shit," for the first time.

"You complete me."

Soon they learn that the girl who jumped from the building was murdered, but it wasn't just a run-of-the-mill hooker murder, it goes deep.  Really deep.  All the way back to Vietnam and the heroin trade. And Gary Busey is in the movie too and he is at his absolute prime.  His name is Mr. Joshua.  He's nuts.  He gets burned with a lighter for the fun of it.  Murtaugh thinks he is way too old for that shit.

I don't really remember what happens after Murtaugh and Riggs forged their bond with the gun in the mouth scene because to tell you the truth I was emotionally exhausted from watching Mel Gibson's tour de force perfomance and the love not only between Murtaugh and Riggs, but I suspect between Danny Glover and Mel Gibson as well.  You can't fake that.  I know there was some shooting, a car chase where Mel Gibson was chasing cars on foot with a machine gun, and there was a helicopter/limo chase.  Oh, and Murtaugh's wife can't cook for shit.

The movie ended with a fist fight between Riggs and Mr. Joshua in Murtaugh's yard.  Riggs won, barely, and when the uniformed officers were cuffing Mr. Joshua after the fight he somehow got one of their guns and was going to shoot Riggs, who was having a good hug with Murtaugh and somehow, I think because of their highly tuned bond, they could feel what was coming so they both turned around and shot Mr. Joshua before he could squeeze the trigger.  Holy shit.  It was so close.  After that Riggs was a part of Murtaugh's family.  In the very last scene he comes over to the Murtaugh's house for Christmas dinner and he brings his dog, who gets in a fight with the Murtaugh cat and Danny Glover says, "I'm too old for this shit," but you know what?  I suspect he is exactly the right age for that shit.

I apparently wasn't the only one who could see the iron-clad bond of soul-melding brotherhood between Murtaugh and Riggs.  The movie producers saw it as well so they made three more movies.  Mitch and I can't wait to watch them.

Movie Review: Young Adult and Sarah's Key

I saw two movies this weekend, Young Adult and Sarah's Key.  They were both very good but kind of sad.

Charlize Theron is in Young Adult.  She is a fiction writer who writes a young adult series kind of like The Babysitters Club or something like that.  She thinks she's a really big deal because she moved from a small Minnesota lake town to Minneapolis.  She gets a birth announcement from her old high school boyfriend (he and his wife had a baby) and she is perturbed.  She goes back to her hometown to win him back because small town + marriage and family = boring.  She thinks of it as rescuing him.

Charlize Theron is so good in this movie.  She is gorgeous and funny, but you can tell her character is depressed.  She drinks a lot and she seems to be stuck at about 18 years old or something (The movie is called Young Adult, get it?).  In the movie we learn why and it's kind of sad.  It's a good movie.  I'd recommend it.

The other movie was Sarah's Key.

It's two stories that converge around an apartment in Paris.  The first story is about a family who live in the apartment in the 1940s.  They are Jewish and they are rounded up by French officials and brought to camps.  When the officials come, the mom is home alone with her two little kids.  The girl, Sarah, can tell how afraid her mother is of these officials, so she hides her brother in a concealed closet in the bedroom and locks it.  She keeps the key.  The mother and daughter are taken to a stadium with the father where they are kept for days.  Sarah is frantic because she made her little brother promise to stay in the closet until she came back.  She is desperate to get back to him.

The other story takes place in 2009.  An American ex-pat is about to move into the same apartment.  She is a journalist who is writing a story about the rounding up of the Jews in the 1940s.  She learns that her new apartment was once part of the Jewish section of town.  She is disturbed that her apartment may have been stolen from a Jewish family by her husband's family who have owned the apartment since the war.  She goes on a quest to find out what happened to the people who lived in it before her husband's family moved in.

Guess what?  This movie is sad.  In case you didn't know, WWII sucked.  Especially if you lived in Europe and especially if you were Jewish.  My father-in-law is reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich right now and the other day he told me, "Hitler was a jerk.  I mean, a REAL JERK."  And you know what?  It's true.  Hitler was a jerk.

Other than the movie being incredibly sad, it was very good.  If you don't mind getting depressed, I would recommend it.  

Magic Mike

A few of the bookclub ladies and I got together last night to see the critically acclaimed, sure-to-be-a-classic movie, Magic Mike.  

Not to sound like a snob, but the movie wasn't very good.  Surprised?  I was too because although I was expecting a plotless excuse to show a male review nationwide on the big screen, it was worse than I thought.  The movie attempted a plot which was so bad it made me wish it was only a male review show.

Mike (the guy in the center) is a gifted stripper with big dreams of making crappy furniture out of garbage he finds on the beach.  He works odd jobs during the day, one of which is as a roofer where he meets "The Kid," a nineteen year old hunky loser who lives with his sister.  I know he lives with his sister because he tells Mike he is living with his sister and also because all the dialogue throughout the entire movie between "The Kid" and the sister goes like this:

The Kid: Hey Sis, thanks for letting me bunk on your couch.
Sister: No problem, Brother, that's what sisters are for.
The Kid: Remember when we were kids and had the same parents?
Sister: Yeah, the same mom and the same dad... good times.
The Kid:  Sis, can you spot me 20 bucks?  I got fired from my job for stealing a pop.
Sister: Oh, baby brother, what am I going to do with you?
The Kid: Well, whatever you do, don't forget I'm your brother! Ok, Sis?

Get it?  They are brother and sister, dummy.  Mike gets The Kid into the lucrative business of male stripping which The Kid LOVES.  I mean, who wouldn't?  You know who doesn't?  Mike.  He's been doing it for six years and he's sick of it.  When is he going to admit that his life is going nowhere, and he's NOT the crappy furniture maker he wants to be, and he is just an aging (and gifted) male stripper, shaking it for ones every night of the week?

The Kid gets into drugs and his sister gets mad at Mike about it because Mike said he was going to take The Kid under his stripper wing and take care of him but he didn't. (shocker)  The big dramatic moment of the movie is when the sister goes to Mike's house looking for her brother who didn't come home.  Mike says he is upstairs with a girl and the sister goes up and finds her brother passed out on the floor and there is a pot-bellied pig eating his puke.  Gross!  She rails against Mike for not keeping his promise and calls him a loser which really hits Mike right in his heart (of gold) and makes him come to terms with the path his life is on.  I'm not going to tell you the rest of the plot in case you haven't seen it and want to see it (don't bother), but I'm sure you can guess what happens.

Matthew McConaughey is in the movie.  He is the owner of the male dance club.  He does an outstanding impression of Matthew McConaughey throughout the whole movie (he says, "Alright, alright, alright!" about 50 times), and he does not wear a shirt in even one scene.  I don't think he ever wears a shirt in real life either.

Matthew McConaughey as Uncle Sam.
Remember when he was in Amistad?

I saw my Mother-In-Law yesterday and told her I was going out with my ladies to the movies.  She asked what movie and I told her and she said, ".....Oh..... Well.... Matthew McConaughey is in that.  He's a good family man."  I said, "Yeah, that's why we're going."

My favorite line from the movie is where Mike and The Kid are sitting on the beach talking about the stripper life and how much they have to look forward to and The Kid says, "I'm having a ball...  I'm having. A fucking. Ball."

An Open letter to Stephen B. Oates, Author of Lincoln's Biography

Dear Stephen B. Oates, author of With Malice Toward None, A Biography of Abraham Lincoln,

I got your book because it got really good reviews on Amazon and on the back there was a blurb from The Washington Post that said, "The standard one-volume biography of Lincoln."  Perfect, I thought.  I want to know about Lincoln because I find presidential biographies interesting, but mostly because I like to know just a little more about common topics than average people so I can feel smug about it.

I read your book.  I liked it.  I was feeling smug.  That is until last night, when I went to see the documentary Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter and I realized that you left out a LOT.  Maybe that is why The Washington Post made a point to say that yours is only a one-volume book.  Maybe all the necessary information about the the vampire hunting goes into volume two.

Never mind that you left out little details that bring a story to life like the fact that Lincoln's vampire hunting weapon of choice was a silver tipped axe (the "rail splitter," ha ha; my ass), and that he was a martial arts master, was strong enough to cut down a big tree with one swipe of his blade, was a parkour enthusiast, and could twirl his axe better than any beauty contestant in the seventies could twirl her batons; you didn't even mention his motivation for doing all the vampire hunting:  Vampires killed his mother!  You said she died of "fever."  Boring.

You went in to great detail to outline the political shape the country was in during the time of Lincoln.  The 1850s was a tumultuous time between the South and the North because of the "peculiar institution" of slavery.  You kept saying that phrase "peculiar institution," which I just assumed was something it was called back in the old days and I didn't think twice about it.  Now I know why it was so peculiar, no thanks to you.  The South was full of vampires, feeding on slaves!  Were you afraid to tell me that because you thought it might make me think even less of the old South?  Are you from the South and don't want to make your ancestors look any worse than they already look?  Are YOU a vampire?  ARE YOU?!

You know, come to think of it, I should have known about the South's history with rampant vampirism.  I read all the Twilight books and Stephenie Meyer mentioned that when Jasper was turned into a vampire during the civil war, that the South was teeming with vampires.  My bad.  I should have paid better attention.  But still, you could have at least mentioned it.  HUGE oversight on your part.

What I am most disappointed that you left out of your book is the part of Lincoln's young adult life where he finally, finally hunted down his mother's killer and chased him with his axe amongst a bunch of stampeding horses, actually running across the backs of running horses, chasing a vampire.  Oh My God, I bet you feel so stupid right now.  Did you just slap your forehead?  You should have.  That was a MAJOR part of Lincoln's life.  He could have been killed by those horses, OR by that vampire.  It was pivotal, PIVOTAL! 


When Lincoln got in to politics he put his vampire-killing axe away in a trunk because he thought it was better to fight the epidemic of vampirism with words instead of with the axe.  He became a politician and we both know how that turned out.  But you didn't mention that in the dark days of the civil war, when he realized that vampirism couldn't be defeated with only words and he went in to that dusty old room with his old trunk and he opened it and got out his old axe and started twirling it like an old pro.  That was poignant.  I don't know why the lady sitting behind me was laughing.  You missed a real opportunity there for some good writing.

And how about when Lincoln realized that the South was winning battles with less men and inferior supplies because they were using vampires?  If it was left up to you I wouldn't even know that it was Lincoln's idea to bring artillery made of pure silver to Gettysburg!  That is not only a major part of Lincoln's life that you just totally glossed over, but a major part of  our national history.  And you call yourself a professor emeritus of history?  Do you really think you deserve that title?  The Gettysburg address has always been a powerful piece of writing, but it means so much more when you know that the entire night before he gave the speech he was fighting vampires on a train.  Holy crap, he must have been tired!  No wonder the speech was so short!

So anyway, "Professor," I just wanted to tell you that back before I knew the whole truth, I liked your book but it would have been way better if you would have mentioned what a kick-ass vampire hunter Lincoln was.  I think it might be time for volume two.  Get busy.

Sarah Lindahl

Anatomy of a date (married couple version)

Mitch and I went on a real-life date last night for the first time in months and months.  Maybe years.  It is hard to remember that our kids are old enough to leave alone.  Sam is 15 and Kira is 12.  They can take care of themselves for an evening, right?  Right.  We told them we were going out on a date (gross) and they were on their own for dinner and entertainment.  We suggested they make a pizza and that they go to bed around 9:30.  Right before we walked out the door we said, "Oh, btw, Kira is in charge!  Bye!" and we laughed at the look of horror on Sam's face.

First we went to dinner at Timberlodge Steak House.  It was alright.  We saw a little girl about 8 years old with a tiny top hat on her head, tilted at a jaunty angle, held on with a chin strap.  She was taking a picture of the Timberlodge sign with her iPod.  Weird.  

Then we went to see a movie.  We were going to go see Cirque Du Soleil but when I called for tickets, all they had were two seats on the upper decks, in the corner, on bar stools (???).  No thanks.  So instead we went to see The Five Year Engagement because we kind of like Jason Segal.  You know why they call it The Five Year Engagement?  Because the movie seems like it's five years long.  It was good but we both thought it was badly in need of an editor.  They could have easily cut about two and a half years out without hurting the story.  At about the four-and-a-half year mark of the movie, there is a scene where two sisters are talking about the give and take required in a successful long-term relationship, and one is speaking in a Cookie Monster voice, and the other is speaking in an Elmo voice.  And they both had English accents.  Mitch and I both agreed that maybe that scene would better serve the movie on the cutting room floor.  Also, Jason Segal spent some serious screen time without a shirt on, and Mitch and I both also agree that he should never be more than a five minute commute away from a dermatologist with good scalpel skills.  The man is about 75%  moles.  When the credits finally started rolling, Mitch asked me, "What time is it?" and I said, "I think it's tomorrow," but it was only 9:00.  We couldn't go home yet.  The kids were home alone for one of the first times in their lives and we wanted to give them time without us.  (We just didn't want to seem lame.)  So we went out for dessert.

Even with driving across town, having dessert and talking about things like Downton Abbey (I loved it, he doesn't know how anyone could watch it without falling asleep), and how Dick Cavet was an olympic gymnast (Mitch says he won a gold medal, I have my suspicions to the contrary), we got home at 10:00.  The kids were actually in bed, but I suspect they saw the headlights on the car and ran in their rooms and pretended they had been there for some time.  Kira wanted me to tell her every detail of what we did "without her," and to complain that Sam didn't cook their pizza long enough and it slid down her throat like clams (which is curious because she would never in a billion years eat a clam) but I told her I had to go because the most important part of the date was about to begin - the making out part.  She was disgusted.

Then we watched SNL with Eli Manning (who was funny) and Rihanna (who is obviously trying to make her daddy mad with all the crotch patting she does. We get it, you have a vagina.  You don't have to keep pointing to it and patting it.  We know where it is.  Nobody is going to forget about it if you stop touching it for five seconds.)  Then we went both fell asleep in our chairs and decided to go to bed when Mitch started snoring.  (He says it was me who was snoring, but I don't snore! Geez!) 

Movie Review: Sharktopus

You know how I love animal hybrids?  I saw this movie and HAD to get it. It finally came on my Netflix and the kids and I watched it.

Eric Roberts plays a military scientist who, along with his sexy sexy scientist daughter, creates a half shark half octopus hybrid for the navy.  He is a killing machine and they only have control of him with a shark-helmet that sends signals to his brain.

Sharks HATE helmets.

On Sharktopus's maiden voyage into open seas he proves he works by saving a woman from a shark attack because the doctor told him to do it through his helmet. I'm still not clear on how the scientist knew a woman was about to be attacked by a shark.  I probably just don't understand the science behind it.

Almost immediately after he proves his worth, Sharktopus pulls off the annoying helmet.  It's easy.  He has arms.  He then goes on a killing spree along the Mexican coast.  He really likes resorts.

rar rar rar

The daughter/scientist takes off after him with a rag tag team of shark/octopus hunters.  She tracks him on his smorgasbord, just missing him every time.  She is going to kill him with some special kind of sciency dart.  BUT, she only has two of these special darts so she has to make them count.  She doesn't understand why Sharktopus is so homicidal.  That's not the Sharktopus she designed.  It's like she doesn't even know him anymore!  But then her father admits that he might have tweaked Sharktopus's brain just a tad to make him more aggressive.  Shit.

Just as they are getting closer to finding and killing Sharktopus, Eric Roberts insists that he must be captured and not hurt in any way because he is still valuable to the Navy.  This is a heartbreaking revelation to the daughter and she insists that Sharktopus is put down. He was a crime against nature.  They went too far.  The dispute is about to come to fisticuffs with the toughs for each side, but unfortunately they had this conversation right next to the water and Sharktopus made a very unwelcome appearance.

Try to unsee that, kids!

Science Dad got killed and in his final moment he admitted to Science Daughter that there is a kill switch that she can access somehow, but he dies before he can tell her the details.

I'm not going to tell you anymore because I bet now you are all dying to see it so I don't want to ruin the ending.  But I will tell you this:  Sharktopus can roar, walk on dry land, and ink.  He's super scary.

Movie Review

A few of my lady-friends and I went to see the American version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo last night.  Well, it wasn't last NIGHT, it was 5:00 in the afternoon, but the movie takes place in what seems like real-time so we were there for a LONG time.  (It's a long movie).  If you haven't seen the movies or read the books, you might want to skip this post.  You won't know what I'm talking about and then you'll get frustrated and think to yourself, "What in the hell is she talking about?  Doesn't she know I don't CARE about this stuff?" and then you'll stop reading this blog.  We don't want that to happen. 

I saw the Swedish version of all three of the movies made from the Millenium Trilogy.  I loved the Swedish version because I thought Noomi Rapace did a fantastic job as Lisbeth Salandar. 

Swedish Lisbeth

The only problem with her was that she wasn't waifish enough.  The American Lisbeth, played by Rooney Mara was very waifish.  She did a good job and was a very convincing Lisbeth, but why did she have blond eyebrows?  Why? 



American Lisbeth

Nobody looks good with blond eyebrows.

I liked that the American version was very detailed, as was the book, but it didn't follow the book as well as the Swedish version.  (Harriet was supposed to be in Australia, not London!)  And was Hans-Erik Wennerstrom killed in the books?  We couldn't remember but we didn't think he was.  The American Martin was very good.  Robin Wright as Erika was a good choice.  When we first saw her one of my lady-friends said, "She looks ROUGH!" but Erika is supposed to be in her fifties and look like she's in her fifties, and although Robin Wright probably is in her fifties, being an American actress, she looks like she's in her thirties, but for this movie she actually looked like a beautiful woman in her fifties.  Oh, never mind, I just looked her up on IMDB and she's only 45.  I guess living with Sean Penn will do that to a girl.

What I didn't like, well, no, I guess I can't say I didn't like anything about it, but what made me kind of say, "wha?" was the fact that the little northern island where Mikael goes to write about the Vangers is supposed to be freezing, freezing, arctic cold and they tried to convey that by shivering and bundling up, but right behind the people acting their asses off was a big lake that was obviously NOT frozen.  They did that in the Swedish version too.  Don't their lakes freeze?  Because here in Minnesota people are out driving cars on lakes.  Come on, Hollywood.  I also was a uncomfortable with the graphic rape scene, but I suppose that's the point of the scene anyway, isn't it?  It is integral to all three stories in the trilogy, so we have to know the details of it, don't we?  Yes.  But we don't like to see detailed rapes, do we?  No, we don't. 

Oh, and Mikael was supposed to go to a cushy Swedish prison for 18 months and THEN go live with the Vangers, but in the American version, he never went to prison.  Why didn't he go to prison?  They made a big deal about him getting convicted of libel but then he didn't go to prison.  The whole story was wrapped up inside of one year.  Not so, Hollywood.  It is supposed to take a long time for Mikael to get revenge on Wennerstrom.  Then the revenge is sweeter, isn't it?  Yes, it is. 

The American version didn't even really show the dragon tattoo on Lisbeth's back.  Of course, we got glimpses of it, but it was never really the focus. 

Oh, you know what I thought was curious?  The actors spoke English throughout the movie but with a sort of Swedish accent, but all the signs and writing (except for what we, the audience, were supposed to read) was in Swedish.  I kind of liked that. 

The end of the American version kind of drags on.  The screen went black between scenes and I kept expecting the credits to appear, but then there was more movie, and then more movie, and then a little more movie.  I thought they were setting up the big reveal that Harriet really was in Australia, but they never did.

For the most part I liked the movie.  Not as much as the Swedish version, but I thought it was very good.

Movie Review

I saw three movies this past weekend:  We Bought a Zoo, Limitless, and Source Code.  The kids and I went to see We Bought A Zoo together on Friday mostly as an excuse to eat candy.  The movie was a formulaic bawl-fest.  Dead mom, sad kids, grieving husband, financial devastation etc etc.  Matt Damon is in it so that makes up for a lot, and the little girl that plays his daughter is A DOR A BLE; but still.  I don't go to movies to cry.  

Oh yeah, the tiger dies too.

Speaking of bawl-fests, while we were there we saw previews for that Tom Hanks movie that is coming out later this month, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, about the wonderful father who dies in the twin towers on 911 and his family is devastated and traumatized.  FUN!  I cried during the preview.  Why do they make movies like that?   

Sam and I watched Limitless on Saturday night.  

It's about a loser writer who takes a pill and is able to access all of his brain power.  His thoughts and memories are suddenly organized and easy to access and he thinks clearly and he is brilliant.  Wouldn't that be great? I often think that I would be an uber-genius if only I could organize my thoughts better.  I feel like everything I ever learned is somewhere there in my brain but it's like a file cabinet and all the individual nuggets of knowledge are just randomly stuffed into the drawers instead of organized into a neat filing system.  Anyway, problems arise when he discovers that the drug is illicit and in demand from some shady characters, and also that people who go off of it die.  Then the plot kind of spun out and I don't really know what happened (because I was lying on the couch and I might have fallen asleep) until the end when he has reverse engineered the drug and fixed the quirks and was running for senate.  The end seemed a little too neat and happy and all that it taught me was that illicit drugs may cause you some problems in the beginning, but in the long run make your life way better, and that I need to try some.  

Last night Mitch and I watched Source Code. 

That was the best movie of the weekend.  Jake Gyllenhall is an air force pilot on a special mission for a program called Source Code where they are able to put a soldier in the body of a person in the recent past to find clues to a crime.  Very Quantum Leap-y.  In this case, Jake gets put on to a train that will soon blow up from a terrorist attack and his mission is to find the bomb and the bomber.  He can't prevent the bombing, but he can find and identify the bomber who they suspect will do another bombing in downtown Chicago.  He has to relive the eight minutes prior to the train bombing over and over and look for the bomber.  I am not going to tell you what happens because I don't want to spoil it.  But I will tell you this: The train they are on is really cool.  It's big and roomy (double decker) and it has a Dunkin' Donuts shop RIGHT ON THE TRAIN.  I recommend that you see this movie, it was really good.  

THOR and Twilight: Movie Reviews

I didn't think I'd ever see Thor because it looked so stupid.  Then I saw that Natalie Portman was in it and she doesn't usually steer me wrong.  And Kenneth Branagh directed it and he's pretty good, so I thought I'd give it a chance.

Thor is a space god; nay, a NORSE space god.  His dad, Odin, wants to retire and make Thor the king but on the very DAY that Thor is going to assume the throne, King Laufey, a space frost god/giant gets in to Odin's weapon's room and tries to steal some glowy blue thingy that everyone is in love with.  Thor wants to kick ass and take names, but Odin wants to avoid war so he banishes Thor to the human realm on earth for being impetuous and arrogant.  BUT, just to give Thor some hope, he sends his super-duper hammer down too. I don't know if you knew this about Thor, but to him every problem is a nail and his hammer is always the solution.  He's heavy handed.  He falls in love with Natalie Portman and to save her life and to save earth he has to destroy the rainbow space bridge to earth.  With his hammer.  Of course.  Natalie Portman, you let me down.

I also saw Breaking Dawn Part I this weekend.  It was a must-see for anyone who has read the books and already invested time and money in to seeing the other movies.  It got horrible reviews, which I can understand because there were some parts during the movie where I was hanging my head and pretending I was doing something else because it was especially embarrassing.  Like when the werewolf pack got together in a tense meeting and telepathically yelled/real-life growled at each other.  It reminded me of the old Transformer cartoons that I never watched when I was little because they were so ridiculous.

In this movie Edward, the 100 year old vampire stuck in the body of a 17 year old boy, finally marries the love of his life, human 18 year old Bella Swan.  They have a gorgeous wedding and then go on a honeymoon and finally consummate their relationship which, if you don't know this about vampires, they are super strong and so Edward is wary of doing it with Bella because he's afraid she'll get hurt, which she does.  She gets all bruised up but she's totally in to it because she's a masochist.

Soon she finds out she is pregers with a demon/vampire baby that is consuming her from the inside out.  Edward is shocked that she got pregnant because he didn't know that sex sometimes results in pregnancy even though he's been taking high school health classes for about 80 years. Way to go, Edward!  He is worried about Bella because the baby seems to be killing her which was disturbing to watch because Bella really did look skeletal and deathly for about half the movie.  The gestation only lasts a few weeks because fyi: vampire-human embryos/fetuses/infants/children grow at an astronomical rate.  The baby is breaking Bella's bones and when she finally has to deliver, the baby breaks her spine with a kick or something and they can't get the baby out because the birth sac is made of vampire skin and so is impenetrable by anything other than vampire teeth so Edward has to chew the baby out.  Literally, chew the baby out of Bella's stomach. Bella is dying from blood loss and trauma and shock so Edward has to try to save her life by plunging a syringe of vampire venom directly into her heart to change her into a vampire which will heal all her injuries and make her immortal.  It works.  The end.

Breaking Dawn Part II comes out next year and then we find out what Bella's special vampire talent is (she's a shield) and there is the ultimate vampire/werewolf war.  Will the Cullen's come out on top?  (yes) Will Edward and Bella be happily married? (yes) Will their baby go nuts and kill every human in a 200 mile range? (I wish)  We'll see!

Proof that Gwyneth Paltrow is Horrible: Contagion (spoiler alert!)

I went to see the movie Contagion today because I'm depressed and I decided that watching Gwyneth Paltrow die, even if it is pretend, would make me feel better.  And it did.  If you don't already know, Contagion is a movie about a flu-like new virus that kills millions of people throughout the world in a matter of a few months.  It starts with Gwyneth in an airport in Chicago and she's coughing a little and gets a phone call from the man she just crawled out of bed with (who was not her husband, Matt Damon!)  The movie is supposed to be realistic and scientifically-based, but right away I had to suspend my disbelief by trying to wrap my head around how anyone in the world would cheat on Matt Damon.  Right!  Like that would ever happen! So anyway, if you can get past that, the movie is pretty good.  Gwyneth dies a horrible death almost right away but thankfully, Matt is immune to the virus so he is okay!  Whew!

The movie solidified my misanthropy and made me happy that I live in the woods and rarely socialize because you know what?  People are really gross.  People touch their face between two and three thousand times a day and in between digging in their noses and rubbing their eyes and licking their gross fingers in order to more easily open plastic produce bags, they are touching absolutely every gross surface in the world that everyone else has touched.  The movie really drove that concept home and as soon as the credits started rolling I went to the bathroom and washed my hands.

The people who work at WHO and the CDC work diligently trying to find where the virus started and to find a vaccine.  Jennifer Ehle, who was in Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth (Mr. Darcy!) played the doctor who comes up with the vaccine.  I really liked watching her.  She's very attractive in the same way that Meryl Streep is attractive, but with none of the weirdness that Meryl Streep has.  Meanwhile a blogger (Jude Law) is throwing a monkey wrench into the mix by writing that the government is hiding the cure so the pharmaceutical companies can make a "vaccine" and get rich when the cure is something called Forsythia which is an ancient Chinese herbal remedy that is cheap and readily available.  What I like most about Jude Law is the crazy hazmat suit he wears that reminded me of Bender from Futurama,

and his giant fake front tooth.  That's how they make handsome movie stars look like regular people.  Giant crooked front teeth.  I wish I had giant front teeth.

The movie is pretty good.  I would recommend it but bring a bottle of hand sanitizer with you because you will be glad you did.

Viola Davis is Fantastic

I just saw the movie The Help which I was dying to see since I read the book, which I loved.  The movie was very VERY good, and I'm not going to write a review because I can't really write reviews about movies that are actually good.  (Not that the X-Men movies aren't good, mind you. They are super, but for some reason, they beg for a review. Hmm, I don't really get the logic. Just go with it.)

What I really want to say here is that Viola Davis is brilliant.  I'm serious.  I don't usually rave about movie stars (unless they are put together like Hugh Jackman, know what I'm sayin'?) but she deserves a rave.
Her character in the movie is named Abilene and she is a maid for a snotty white lady in the sixties in Jackson, Mississippi.  (The perfect storm of bad jobs.)  I don't really know how to put in to words what makes her so great, except to say that when she's on the screen and she's smiling, I'm smiling.  When she's crying, I'm bawling.  When her character feels like she's been defeated and broken, I'm bawling.  When her character finally gets recognized for being brave and wonderful and she feels proud yet humbled, I'm bawling.   I guess what really makes her a great actress is her ability to make me bawl.  Hardly anyone can make me bawl.  (Especially since I've been on my post-partum medication.)  I'm like an emotional robot, except when Viola Davis is on the screen.  Then I'm feeling every single thing her character is feeling.  I hope someday she makes a movie about a woman who feels like being nice to strangers and getting a lot of work done.