Twilight

Last summer when I was visiting my sister in LA, I picked up the first book in the "Twilight" series. I couldn't put the damn thing down the whole time I was out there. I started a book club when I got home and, because I knew my friends C&G would love it, it was our first book.

The book(s) are terrible (by which I mean poorly written, ridiculous and insipid) and yet they hold some strange stranglehold over both teenage girls and thirty-somethings like myself. I've heard people say it's because the teens love the drama and us oldsters are just trying to recapture it. I suppose that's possible, although for me, I found that so-called “drama” in the book really dull – it was all that teenage moaning and obsession I was very happy to leave behind.

Anywho, the four of us that attended that first inaugural book club went to see (complete with t-shirts!) the movie together, and I have to tell you, it was totally ZOMGWFTBBQSRSLYSCREAM!!! It was a fun movie to see in the theatre – it was us, and the expected audience (teenagers and thirty-somethings, throw in a few boyfriends) and we all enjoyed it in the spirit in which it was intended. It's corny and silly (I mean, it's about a girl who falls in love with a vampire) and hilarious, but it's also pretty damn sexy (I mean, it's about girl who falls in love with a vampire).
The vampire, Edward, is played by Robert Pattinson. Pattinson was Cedric Diggory in the last Harry Potter movie. I hate to tell you, I had a very pervy, come-to-momma crush on that kid back then, and he's like, 100 times hotter a few years older and a vampire.

One of the best things about the movie was that 800 pages of angst got condensed into 122 minutes. Director Catherine Hardwicke (a lady director? Woot!) and the writer (not S. Meyer! Woot!) did a great job of finding the more dramatic bits and less of the mooning and kvetching. Even parts I thought might be lame, like when Edward saves Bella from getting hit by a run-away van and when he takes her out to dinner (after saving her [again!] from would-be rapists), were pretty cool – mostly because Dreamy McDreamerson was gazing so intently at our girl it could curl your toes.

As when I saw Sex In the City, the audience was laughing and hooting and shouting out encouragement (Take it all off! - wait, that was me...). We were all just having a ball laughing at dopey lines like, “Be quiet, stay behind me!” (uh, that's not exactly what I want to hear from my man). Like the book, I think it would have benefited from more sex (make that any sex at all) but all the books persist under some pretty heavy-handed no-sex-til-marriage ideology. The movie was silly, but I'd say actually a good story about teenage obsession, was ably acted and way more fun than it deserves to be. I'm sure all fans (ironic or otherwise) will love watching it.

Thanksgiving, The Day After

Well, we had a simply fabulous Thanksgiving, although today we are paying for it a little today in the form of over-stuffed bellies, dirty dishes, and a certain husband who is very testy.

We had quite a menu and stuffed ourselves silly over the course of many hours - here's what we ate:

Fromage
Mushroom and gruyere tartlettes
Crudite
Mike's Agreeable Pickles

Creme d'asperges

Salad with Pears and Almond Slivers

Camilla's Sweet Corn
Sage ad Cornbreak Stuffing
Broccoli Gratin
Mashed Potatoes
Greta's Sweet Potatoes
Roast Turkey with Herbs
Rolls

yum... Hope you all had a terrif Thanksgiving!

Quantum what?

This weekend we saw Quantum of Solace - it's a fun show, although it didn't make much sense. I won't even bother trying to summarize, because it was never quite clear to me exactly who he was chasing/fighting. It has some crazy good action sequences that are really exciting to watch. It's essentially one action sequence after another, really. The choreography is impressive, let me tell you. It's the kind of movie that's best to see in the theatre, preferably with a raucous audience. I like Daniel Craig as Bond, although there's not much (imho) that's Bond-like about these movies. This one, for example has absolutely zero gadgetry, and he only has sex with one woman.

Last night we got the old band together and rocked out Pretty. Hard. I bet if we had real instruments, we could like, seriously play them.

Just got back from seeing Happy Go Lucky - it's a little English indie flick about a woman who's eternally cheerful. I'm going to process it a little, but I really liked it.

I posted a Thanksgiving-themed Top Five - check it out!

Agnot, who do you think you are?

M's been playing this Star Wars video game where he plays the bad guy. That's lame, right? He kills Jedis. That's not right. We'll see if he justifies it over on his blog. I have already predicted the end, and I'm 100% sure it will happen like this: M's guy will be up to his nuts in hot lava, and then he'll be all, I repent! I wanna be a real Jedi! And then we will curse Spielberg's name.

I just finished a terrific book: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I'll write about it on my book blog soon. What to read next...? I've got three movie dates for the next week - 007 tomorrow, Happy Go Lucky on Sunday, and Twilight (OMG!) next week. It's going to be frickin' awesome. Oh, speaking of OMG, yesterday I found out that kids these days are writing ZOMG. Have you all heard of this? Apparently it means something along the lines of "OMG, ironically". I asked my student employees if they pronounced it "zahmg" and they looked at me with a mixture of contempt and pity. Like I was Amish and riding around in a horse and buggy. They were like, Duh. You don't say it.

Tonight we had a mini-blizzard - what a day! I was late, rushing my precious little one over to the vet, in a friend's car because ours didn't start up this morning, and it started snowing like crazy! Oy, it's something, I'll tell you, living in the hinterland.

Had a pretty great weekend. Attended a young friend's 3rd birthday party. She's beyond remarkable, that one. Couldn't be any more charming. Rocked out pretty hard on the ol' PS3 with some friends, discovered "dinosaur kale" and got closer to recreating this terrific soup we had in Italy. Discovered the LOLCat Bible, where some genius has translated the entire effin' bible into LOLCat. Hi-larious, srsly. Lately I'm like, vaguely into the idea of the venn diagram, and in this case, anyone who was forced through intensive bible study against their will as a teenager and anyone who gets a real kick out of LOLcat are going to LOVE LOLCat Bible translation. Take a gander. I'm been thinking about picking up LOLCat myself.

Hey, speaking of internet phenomenon, did I ever tell you about my brilliant idea to create FailDads? It's like FailDogs, only, you know, with dads. I got the idea when we were standing in the customs line at the airport and this dad was winding up his kids, and everyone was tired and grouchy, and staring at this dad like, "Dude, will you just settle down, you crazy nutbag?" Then he made his kid fall down, and acted like the kid tripped. All I could think was: Dad, ur doin' it rong.

Sometimes FailDogs makes me laugh, but sometimes it makes me really sad (I mean really sad). I guess that would be the same story over at FailDads.com, too. Oh, Pathos...

Oh, so, turns out Kaya's fine - M & I are just very overprotective parents. The car's a different story, although a certain husband did notice that we had no antifreeze, whatever THAT is/does, I have no idea.

How DARE she?

Oh, it's ON. Everyone knows pajamas improve blogging.

Nothing pleases me more than Palin scuttling back to Alaska with her tail between her legs. Nothing, that is, but the ridiculous things she's been saying ever since she and McCain lost the election. First, we heard her decry her own aides who ratted her out for not knowing Africa was a continent and because she forced them to put her $150,000 wardrobe on their personal credit cards by saying, "That's cruel. It's mean-spirited. It's immature. It's unprofessional, and those guys are jerks if they came away with it, taking things out of context, and then tried to spread something on national news. It's not fair and not right." Ho-ho! I'll SHOW ya mean-spirited and immature!

Dang, I wish I could find the source, but sometime after the election, I read/heard that Palin figures she'll be around in politics for good now (which I find completely ridiculous because she's a complete joke) and that the next time around, she wants to be involved in a cleaner campaign. Uh.... WHHHHHAAAAAT? Ms. Obama-fraternizes-with-known-terrorists wants to be "involved" in a cleaner campaign? She friggin' CREATED the dirty campaign! Even NOW she's still ratting around, bringing up the Ayers thing:

Well, I still am concerned about that association with Bill Ayers. And if anybody still wants to talk about it, I will, because this is an unrepentant domestic terrorist who had campaigned to blow up, to destroy our Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol. That's an association that still bothers me.

But, for serious, I'm really ready for Palin to disappear into relative obscurity. And I have to wonder why Ayers hasn't filed a defamation of character suit against her. I mean, seriously, if you ask me, she's an unrepentant domestic terrorist.

I'm Special K, and I wrote this message in my jammies.

Role Models

Last night M and I saw Role Models - with Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott. It's about two guys that have to act as "Big Brothers" to a couple of difficult kids. It's pretty raunchy and dern funny. It kind of looks like your average take-it-in-the-nuts comedy, it actually is kind of smart, in a Wet, Hot American Summer kind of way (it was written by "those guys" as they say now). William Scott is really hilarious as the devil-may-care dude who teaches his young charge how to check out "boobies" inconspicuously, pointing out one girl's breast, and then another, standing beneath a ridge, and then says something like "and even the ridge itself, its two, soft, grass-covered mounds gracefully undulating..."

I do wish there had been less gay-jokes, which I think are (or should be) becoming non-grata these days. Wanda Sykes has a great video out recently about the subject:

Today I was mowing our grass, which I imagine looked similar to what Lewis and Clark saw as they crossed the great plains many years ago. It started snowing on me! Eek!

Right now we're watching The Good German with George Clooney and Cate Blanchett. It's ok, but I think Soderbergh is something of a hack. It's like he regretted not being born 80 years ago so he could've made The Third Man.

I gotta update my map!

Boo ya! Rock it, North Carolina! I love this map - it's so much less isolating than it's been the last, long, 8 years. I got my eye on you, Missouri! And, you can suck my balls, hate states!

In silly news, what seems to be all over the news is what kind of dog the Obamas should get for their kids. Now I can barely wait to find out if they adopt a rescue or not. I'm quite anti-breed dog, if you didn't know. One time my boss asked me, Wouldn't we completely lose breeds of dogs if people stopped breeding? I guess they would, I thought. But, I don't care.

All week I've been trying to recapture that Ol' Wednesday Feelin'. The black-spot on the election for me is that Prop 8 passed in California. Supposedly the Mormon Church was a major financial backer of lobbying for that amendment. I'm also anti-political churches, although I think it's nearly impossible for most churches to remain neutral. Anywho, churches that preach politics really should lose their tax-exempt status.

When I'm not occupying myself with this very important information, I've been reading Postcards From Yo Momma - maybe my mom will leave a comment that I can send in. (It might have something to do with balls...)

That's my president!

Oh, what a night! I am just so happy right now. What a win! Could you believe the crowds in Grant Park? I wasn't down there (Hello, Agoraphobia) but it was like I could feel their energy way up here on the north side of town.

Yo! Where my Indiana peeps at? I am so proud of you! Doesn't it feel good to be blue?
Last night as I watched more and more of the map get painted blue, I let wash away some of the animosity and resentment I've held toward my fellow americans for the past 8 years. After such a landslide win I believe this country really does want peace and change and is as hopeful as I am that Obama is the person to help us get there. Also something that really moved me was watching so many African Americans talk about how meaningful it is to see this happen, and what a difference it will make in their lives and their children's lives.

Very hopeful...

Dare I hope?

VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!

You'd better be voting!

Beer then liqueur...

Last night we had our annual Halloween Party - the theme was: That Which You Despise. True to form, there was a large contingent of various types of uber-conservatives, including a right-wing pundit, a televangelist and a south-side Irisher. (I heart my friends!) M was a mosquito, and I think one of the best costumes was my friend G who was badly sunburned.
Not long ago my neighbor was throwing aways all kinds of stuff in the alley and I scored a couple of cool things like a chair I'm going to recover one day and this little, bright orange, plastic faux coo-coo clock. The minute I saw it I thought, that would make an awesome Halloween decoration if it were totally spray-painted black! And, it did. I'm kicking myself for forgetting to take a "before" pic because you would not believe how ugly this thing was!
We also found these nifty stickers to put on bottles at the dollar store - aren't they great? Oh, check out Top Five to put in your two cents about Halloween Costumes!