I Feel Compelled to Discuss Literature and Menstruation

Since I’ve been going through A Tale of Two Cities and changing the genders, I can’t help but keep rolling my eyes at how Lucie (who will become Lucas, I believe) is treated like a child, yet I’m sure that a male character of the same age and experience would be treated like a an adult (a male adult). I keep thinking about how women have been displayed as weak, silly, and unable to face danger, or even mild unpleasantness in literature, and then movies and television, since forever.

And here’s where there might be too much information for some readers: When I last got my period I started thinking about how women have been menstruating since the dawn of humans. Menstruation is messy and can be painful. Anyone who says women can’t handle pain or who accuses them of being squeamish must not be aware of the discomfort, and sometimes pain, of menstruation, not to mention the managing of all the blood. No matter what a woman is doing to manage her period, whether it’s pads, tampons, or cups, there is blood involved.

So, squeamish my ass.

It doesn’t matter if she gets up and goes to work in an office, a school, a factory, with her period or if she goes running or if she parents all day. The next time you’re tempted to think of women as weak or silly, remember that they get their periods. And they go to work, and they workout, and they parent through all the discomfort and blood.

When women are in situations where a man is pressuring them into sexual activity or else he’ll get “blue balls,” I’d like women to start saying, “Well I get menstrual cramps once a month and I manage to survive.”

We still have this societal notion of women being “the weaker sex.” And it’s nonsense. Women shouldn’t have to talk about their periods of they don’t want to. But men are not going to understand what actually goes on down there unless some women do because we’ve relied on pop culture for too long and pop culture hasn’t educated people properly on menstruation.

I’m almost done with my first full edit of A Tale of Cities. I think I might post chapters here on my blog as I finalize each one.

Book Review: The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

After you've read something, please consider leaving a line or two on Goodreads and Amazon. The authors appreciate it!

Here's my review as it appears on Goodreads.

The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was a little disappointed with this book. I'm not quite sure what I expected. But the main realization that Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford had an affair during the filming of Star Wars had been released with the book and there were no other real surprises within. Some readers have said they're disappointed to learn that Ford was so quiet and aloof, but I already figured that about him. He's always been a fairly private figure. Have you ever seen him on a talk show?

Thirty-three-year-old Harrison Ford took advantage of a nineteen-year-old Carrie Fisher. Maybe there's even more to it than Ms. Fisher revealed but from her telling of it I can't see Mr. Ford in a more flattering light over the affair. I know affairs happen. I'm not naive. Ms. Fisher tells us that Mr. Ford isn't a bad guy and that we should take her word for that despite all the evidence she provides that leads me toward not having any sympathy for Mr. Ford in that situation.

I also found the actual reprinting of her journals written when she was nineteen years old to be as tedious as any other nineteen year old's journals, including my own. I'm not sure what they added other than the thrill of voyeurism. I didn't find any deep insight in them.

I didn't hate the book. I found some of the personal details interesting although I found myself skimming through many paragraphs to find one of those interesting details. I'm still a fan of Carrie Fisher and of Princess Leia. I'm just maybe not a fan of Ms. Fisher's writing.

View all my reviews

30 Day Movie Challenge Days 5, 6, 7, and 8

Day 5: Your favorite drama
This is one that I had to think about. I was this close to naming something else after going through my DVD collection and scrolling through Netflix and Hulu to remind myself of all the movies I've seen. Somewhere I saw an ad for Terms of Endearment and I realized this was my favorite drama. It was the first movie I remember being a "grown-up" film that made me emotional, rather than a children's film (like E.T. or Old Yeller). I don't own this film in any of its forms and I always relied on finding it on television randomly. I'd plan afternoons or evenings around watching it, or I'd be flipping through and find it halfway through and drop everything to watch. Now that I do less channel flipping I need to find a source for watching this on demand.




Day 6: Your favorite comedy
I debated this for a long time and, see below, where Day 7's film could easily have been switched with The Royal Tenenbaums. Despite some bizarre and low moments in this film I always find it funny, whimsical and irrelevant in just the right spots.




Day 7: A movie that makes you happy
I almost put this one for Day 6 but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that The Big Lebowski makes me happy when I'm feeling down, whereas The Royal Tenenbaums makes me snicker in places but can also leave me feeling low in places. The Big Lebowski, despite any greater message you try to find it in, ultimately is smart and silly at the same time.




Day 8: A movie that makes you sad
I considered another Jake Gyllenhaal film for this category, Donnie Darko. I realized, though, that while Donnie Darko makes me feel pleasantly melancholy, Everest makes me cry my eyes out. I've read the book Into Thin Air twice and I've seen Everest several times and even knowing who died before I'd read the book the first time, I still bawled. Every time. Climbing season started on Everest this week. While I have no desire to climb the mountain myself, I always keep an eye on news from there. And I'll probably watch the movie again in the near future because I'm a sucker for a good cry.

30 Day Movie Challenge Days 2, 3, and 4

Day 2: The last movie you watched

I used this prompt as an opportunity to watch something new that I've been meaning to watch since it was released several months ago: Hidden Figures.


I'm so glad I took the time to watch it and I can't wait for Muffin to see it. Over the spring break we took a Virginia road trip and learned a few things about civil rights history in Virginia that were really brought home by the film.

Day 3: Your favorite action/adventure movie

Hands down, Raiders of the Lost Ark. And since I'm pretty sure you've all seen it, instead of a clip I'm going to show one of my favorite GIFs.


via GIPHY

Day 4: Your favorite horror movie

I don't watch enough horror movies to really have a favorite. I don't care for them much. But the most recent horror-like movie I've seen that I really liked was The Witch.


I wasn't going to bother watching this film until a friend posted about it on Facebook, saying he needed to turn on the subtitles because the seventeenth-century New England English was too difficult for this California boy to understand. I exclaimed that seventeenth-century New England English was practically my second language and he replied I would probably really enjoy this film, for reasons other than the language. He was right. I appreciate how they incorporated so much of the folklore and the different reasons given for episodes like the witch hysteria in Salem, such as the children faking it for fun, or the mold on the rotten corn. (Rotten lamb stew is also used as a reason for Lizzie Borden's activities a couple hundred years later. So if you live in Massachusetts, make sure your food is always fresh and free of rot or you'll be held responsible for some horrible stuff.) There's also a creepy rabbit and a creepy goat, which makes me feel betrayed because I love rabbits and goats so much.

30 Day Movie Challenge Day 1: Your Favorite Movie

Because I don't have enough challenges in life I decided to take on a new one. (I'm kidding. I'm just not blogging or tweeting or Facebooking about every single challenge.) I've seen a number of friends on my Twitter feed doing a 30 Day Music Challenge lately, and I may do that one, too, but when someone suggested a movie challenge yesterday I realized it was much more my style. I'm not going to blog my movie selection every day but I will be tweeting it daily and maybe I'll follow-up with weekly posts or every few days.

Number 1 on the list easy. My favorite movie is The Philadelphia Story, starring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and James Stewart. It's got fast-paced, witty dialogue. Comedy. Romance. Strong, independent women, some of them wearing pants. Reading. And drinking. So many things that make a perfect story for me.

I can't remember when I first this film it but for many years it's been my absolute favorite. I watched it last night, thinking of this list. I watch it every six months or so. I always want the ending to be different even though I know it's not going to be and it ultimately does have the right ending. This moment always has me on the edge of my seat in anticipation even though I know exactly what's going to happen:

This may seem like a spoiler but it's not. And really, the film came out in 1940 so the statute of limitations on spoiler alerts has pretty much run out.

If you're in the mood for what I consider to be one of the origins of romantic comedy in cinema, give this a chance.

Here's what's to come in the following days:

How to R2-D2

This year for Halloween we had a three year old who wanted to be R2-D2, accompanied by a Princess Leia mommy and a Han Solo daddy. Leia and Han seemed easy. Buy, borrow, or steal appropriate clothing and get a fairly popular wig. R2 was going to be more of a challenge because I wanted something more charming than store bought. I searched Google Images and pinned to Pinterest. I came up with a plan:

We spent an afternoon at a craft store trying to find just the right materials: foam, felt, glue, and something to craft the headpiece from. For the headpiece we ended up with a plastic army helmet glued to the inside of a salad bowl, both from a dollar store.

We crafted.

I bought a full Princess Leia costume, complete with hair-buns wig and ended up hating everything about it. So I Freecycled it and started from scratch, changing my concept to Hoth Leia. White yoga pants on sale for $5 and a beautiful white vest and snow boots that I'll wear this winter anyway paired with a long-hair wig that my mom helped braid. Han had to buy a henley shirt and black vest, supplying his own pants and boots. We bought $5 blasters and decided to keep them fake looking by not painting them black.

Star Wars family complete!

This was Muffin's first Halloween in the United States so we had to go the extra mile for her. Although, she's only three so the extra mile didn't have to be too far. We drove to a nearby neighborhood where a friend of ours was having a small party. We trick-or-treated at about five houses then went to our friend's for pizza and "grown-up" treats. Muffin ate too much candy but she didn't have school the next day so we could have a later night than usual and manage her the next day without too much difficulty. (Friday night she slept for twelve hours.)

I'm going to skip over Thanksgiving this year -- dinner is at my aunt's house and Mike most likely won't be home for it anyway -- and jump right into Muffin's First U.S. Christmas.

And I Thought Our Case of the Mondays Was Bad

I don't even remember now what happened on Monday to prompt me to write the Facebook status, "This family as a serious case of the Mondays." (By the time I finished writing this post, I remembered. In the hour between Mike leaving for work and Muffin leaving for school, Mike lost his wallet and Muffin simultaneously peed on the floor and spilled strawberry-banana smoothie on the dining room table. From 7:30 to 8:30 in the morning is a magical time of day in our house.)

This morning on the way home from dropping off Muffin at school, I noticed a person laying on the ground with another person standing over him or her and our driver pointed out that it was a woman being beaten by a man. I wanted to stop and help. I think he wanted to stop and help. But instead I asked him to call the police and report it. I knew it probably wouldn't do much good, but I didn't think my stopping would have helped the situation much, either. She probably would have just been beaten even more later on. I was torn up all morning about not doing more. I hate feeling so helpless. I can't help thinking, though, that if the reports keep coming in then eventually the police will have to do something.

After lunch and after Muffin went down for her nap, I was reading in the living room when our housekeeper limped in, crying. She'd slipped in the laundry room and had severe pain in her hip / lower back / tailbone area. I gave her an ice pack and some Tylenol and told her to sit or lie down for a few minutes, whichever was more comfortable. By the way she was crying and wincing I was afraid she may have actually broken her tailbone. It became evident that even if nothing was broken, she was uncomfortable and didn't have the physical ability to baby-sit Muffin later this afternoon when I went out for my dentist appointment. I told her our driver could take her home. But she couldn't stand up. So I had our driver take her to a local hospital for x-rays. The driver and I had to carry her down to the car. Thank goodness Muffin was napping and didn't have to see all of that. The driver is staying with her until someone from her family can join her.

I'd really like to crack open a bottle of wine right now and throw in the towel on this day, but there's still the matter of my dentist appointment. I was able to push it back from 3:00 to 6:00 in hopes that Mike will be home in time to stay with Muffin. It's the fourth, and hopefully final, visit of a multi-visit root canal. Real fun. It might hurt less and I'll be more relaxed if I've had a drink or two, but it somehow feels inappropriate.

And there was no hot water for my shower.

And  Top Gun was on TV and I turned it on just in time to see Goose die.

I should have known what kind of day this was going to be when two Smiths songs in a row came up on the iPod shuffle this morning.

This Week

This week I also posted at What I Eat.

Sophie goes Mobile a video by girl_in_bleue on Flickr.

She's Like the Wind

Sophie and the Wind a video by girl_in_bleue on Flickr.

A Mike and Muffin Project

Burundi's Biking Bananas!

A friend of ours has created a short film about bikes in Burundi. He and Mike ventured out many times together to trailblaze the mountain biking scene there -- at least, mountain biking as a leisure sport, not as a means of getting your cargo up and down the mountain. Joe's film was shown at the Filmed by Bike international film festival last week in Portland, Oregon.

Check it out! It's a nice little capsule of daily life in Burundi.

Joe's biking his way through Ghana now. You can follow him at his blog Going Ghana.

Careful, there's a beverage here

Last night we had our much anticipated and much planned La Fete Lebowski, a celebration of all things Big Lebowski. We wore robes, we (Wii) bowled, we watched the film, and we made white russians (which we call mzungus here), a drink with which no Lebowski celebration can be without.

We stockpiled vodka and Kahlua for months. When I traveled through Nairobi earlier this week I grabbed an additional bottle of each from the duty-free shop and it's a good thing, because we opened those last two bottles. They can both be purchased here but can be quite expensive and may not be top quality.

When making white russians in a country where you can't run down to the Ralphs for some half-and-half, it's important to test your recipe ahead of time with the different milks you have available. As far as I'm concerned, white russians made from irradiated pouch milk are utterly disgusting. We decided to use our fresh milk source and everyone raved about how great our white russians were.

In a place where beverage options can be mind-numbingly limited at parties--Coke, Fanta, Primus, Fruito, Amstel grande and Amstel petite--expect that more people will choose to drink your signature drink than, well, you expect. We bought a lot of extra milk for the party and didn't think we'd go through it all. We assumed that the cream, sugar, and alcohol content would keep folks to one or two white russians each. (I certainly couldn't have had more than two without yakking.) But a novel beverage choice was extremely popular and by the time the movie ended we were out of milk; folks were adding dry milk powder, Lebowski-style, to straight Kahlua.

Mike and I took turns tending bar and used a simple, basic recipe:

1 part Kahlua

1 part vodka

1 part full-cream milk

over ice

Some people added additional splashes of their favorite ingredient.

Vodka and other distilled beverages are widely regarded as gluten-free. However, if you're unsure, find a potato-based vodka with no additives. Most sources state Kahlua as being gluten-free. (It sneakily contains dairy, which is what gives some people a reaction; however, if you're drinking white russians I certainly hope you are dairy-tolerant.)

I actually didn't get to drink much white russian. The one that's in the photo is one I made earlier in the day, while we were prepping for the party and testing proportions. I only took a few sips because I didn't want to be wasted before the party even started. Then, later, I made one to drink while watching the film but I put it down on a table for a minute and it disappeared. After the film I tried for the third time, just to discover we were out of milk. And I didn't relish the thought of milk powder so I gave up for the night.

We have enough Kahlua and vodka so that the next time we buy milk I can make a white russian to sit and enjoy quietly.

Cross-posted at What I Eat

Harry Potter and the Land of No Movies

There's one thing I'm really jonsin' about this year. I'm going to miss the new Harry Potter movie this summer. I've seriously been thinking about a July vacation in the United States or Europe just so I can see the movie (we have no other reason to take a vacation in July; in fact, Mike can't take a vacation at all until September). I've loved all the Harry Potter movies and there have been no other films in recent years that I've really wanted to see right away.

But Burundi has one movie theater, and the movies are almost exclusively shown in French. Maybe two or three times a year they'll show an English-language film (and so far they haven't been ones I've wanted to see). Since I really can't afford a vacation just to fly home and watch a movie here's my plan B: Befriend the guy at the theater who orders the films and lobby for an English-language showing of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. 

It's starting to work already! Mike works with the brother of the theater manager. The manager and I have exchanged emails. I just have to convince him that there are enough English-speaking Harry Potter fans here to warrant this being one of his few selections this year.

Movie -- Young@Heart

Last night we saw a truly heart-warming film, Young@Heart. It's a documentary about a senior citizens' chorus from Northampton, Massachusetts, that changed its tune from more traditional "oldies" pop music to classic and modern rock songs from artists like Jimi Hendrix, the Ramones, Talking Heads, the Clash, and Coldplay. The film opens a few months before their next big tour and the exasperated chorus director is trying to teach the group some new songs. We follow the chorus's progress over those months as they struggle with Sonic Youth and James Brown. Can they pull themselves together in time for the big show?

There is nothing bad to say about this film. It's innocent fun. You'll laugh, you'll cry... all that good stuff.

I've been trying all day to embed the trailer from YouTube but either something's wrong with my copy/paster, Blogger, or YouTube. The next best thing is a link to the trailer: Click Here.

It's still playing in D.C. at the E Street Landmark Theatre, next to Metro Center.

Cartoons! Persepolis and Oscar-Nominated Short Films

Last Thursday we had hoped to see a special screening of The Princess Bride but it sold out. So we turned to Persepolis. It is amazing. It's funny, whimsical, and tender, yet tells a very serious story. It's the autobiography of a young woman growing up in Tehran in the 1980s and 90s, during the Revolution. She struggles with her veil and her manners. She covets Western punk and pop music. Girls in their teens are being arrested and imprisoned (and often executed) for wearing lipstick and nail polish and letting too much hair show from the veil. Eventually Marjane's parents decide to send her to boarding school in Europe because she is too free-spirited to live safely in Tehran. She struggles in Vienna as well, unable to fit in anywhere. She returns to Tehran, where the political situation isn't any better than before, but at least she has her friends and family surrounding her.

I was almost finished with Reading Lolita in Tehran when I saw Persepolis and what strikes me is that these are not unique, isolated stories of a handful of women. This is the way of life for thousands of women. Women who want to go to university and read any books that they want. Women who don't want to be molested or raped and then be arrested because they broke the law by tempting men. Women who want the choice of wearing the veil as an expression of their religious beliefs.



We saw it at the Cinema Arts Centre Theatre in Fairfax. (It's a decent little arthouse theater. Good hot chocolate!) It's still playing there and at a handful of other theaters in the metro area.

On Sunday after witnessing the robot uprising we went to the Landmark E Street Cinema to see the five animated shorts that are nominated for the Academy Award. (They also have screenings of the live action short films.) One of the stories, "My Love," a Russian film, left us wanting to tear our eyes out. The animation was cool at first, in the style of a Monet painting, but was headache inducing by the end. And the story was so sappy and sentimental. I also think it was the longest of the five. Maybe it just felt like the longest. "Madame Tutli-Putli," "Even Pigeons Go to Heaven," and "Peter and the Wolf" had fantastic animation. "Madam" and "Pigeons" had bizarre stories though. And now that I think about it, the ending of "Peter" was a little lame. But I still really liked all three of them. The last one, "I Met the Walrus," had simple pen and ink-type doodles, but it was an awesome concept. Many moons ago, 1969 I believe, a 14-year old met John Lennon and recorded their discussion. The film is this conversation animated. When you stop and listen to John Lennon in context, he sounds perfectly reasonable and rational in his message of peace. I really can't decide which of these I'd pick for the Oscar winner. For message, "I Met the Walrus." For animation maybe "Madame Tutli-Putli." However they made the eyes for those puppets was completely creepy.

The Landmark E Street Cinema is about three blocks from the Metro Center stop.

"No Country for Old Men"

From IMDB: Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon some dead bodies, a stash of heroin and more than $2 million in cash near the Rio Grande.

There's a little more to the story than that.

I thought it was beautiful. This was a great Coen Brothers film. It was a little too suspenseful for me; I like to know who lives and who dies before I see a movie so I can relax a little. But I didn't know that about this one and it had me on the edge of my seat and peeking through my fingers.

This is more like Blood Simple than the fast-talking witty films they've done. Of course it is a visually stunning film with wide shots of the desolate desert. Every frame of a Coen Brothers film is perfectly put together.

I'll note that there were a lot of groans at the end of it; I guess my fellow audience members didn't like the ending as much as I did. I thought it was appropriate.

If you watch a lot of movie trailers and start thinking, hmmm the guy in No Country for Old Men looks a little like the guy in Love in the Time of Cholera, like me, you'd be right. Javier Bardem is the perfect scary, creepy psychopath in NCFOM. I don't think I could watch him in anything else now without being frightend. (I feel the same way about Clive Owen.). He cleans up real nice, though. Check out some photos.

Hipsters Are Wii

This post could also be called "Dorks R Us," subtitled "It fell off the back of a truck".

Mike's home now, after 6 weeks of working in the Middle East. We both took the day off from work yesterday to have a perfect day for us. First we walked into Walnut Creek for coffee at Peets. Then we decided to check out electronics prices at Target. We have many Target gift cards as wedding presents and we knew we wanted a new TV and a new Bose sound system for it. While we were there, though, we both confessed "I kinda want a Wii." We looked around. You can't buy them at stores right now; there's more demand than supply. So Mike looked around on Craigslist and Ebay and he made a couple phone calls. We made a plan to meet a guy in the parking lot of a Firestone tires with cash in 45 minutes.

We felt so shady, even though we are the whitest white kids in town, driving our Subaru station wagon (also white), casing an empy mall parking lot with a handful of cash. It felt like a drug deal, but like on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, with us feeling like entitled suburban white kids.

Then we catch up with the guy selling the Wii, and he's a perfectly nice gamer-geek kind of guy. We make deal, exchanging a wad of cash for a brand-new Wii, still in the original packaging and all.

But we didn't rush home right away to try it out. Our original plan for the day was to see The Darjeeling Limited, and we wanted to make a 1:30 show. We loved the movie. It's perfect for Wes Anderson-ophiles like us. (Attention Arrested Development fans: Jason Bateman and Michael Cera are in a new movie together called Juno. We saw the preview yesterday and it looks pretty funny.) We want to live in a Wes Anderson film.

After the movie we went home and tried to hook up the Wii. Unfortunately we are not 17-year-old potheads and it took several hours, including a call to Nintendo support, before it was all set to go. We only got in a couple rounds of bowling before it was time to head out again. (By the way, it's so much fun!) We were going to yoga but wanted to stop by Target first to actually use our gift cards. We bought a Bose sound system and the Wii Lego Star Wars game. (For the big TV we'll keep an eye on holiday sales prices and maybe even battle the crowds on Black Friday.)

I went to bed as soon as we came home from yoga but Mike wanted to set up the Bose. I dozed off to the sound of hobbits, so crystal clear it was as if they standing over the bed yelling in my ear. Yay sound! (LOTR is a perfect DVD to test your new sound system with)

So, that's a perfect day for dorks like us.

Superhilarious

If you've read even just one review of Superbad, then you're probably sick of all the "super" adjectives. So I'm going to stop after just the one, superhilarious.

This move was 10 times funnier than we expected it to be. I love the series Freaks and Geeks, but I haven't been very impressed with the Judd Apatow-Seth Rogan movie-making machine. I find them to be mildly amusing with some funny highlights but some boring low points. Not so with Superbad. My face hurt from smiling and my abs hurt from laughing for two straight hours. And raunch has not been this funny since Animal House.

Lebowski Fest Edinburgh

When planning our trip, we decided on two absolute musts: Zakopane, Poland, and Leboski Fest in Edinburgh.

Lebwoski Fest UK

Lebowski Fest pays tribute to the brilliance that is The Big Lebowski. If you have to ask, you probably won't understand. Several years ago a couple fans decided to honor the film with a bowling party and screening in their home town of Louisville, Kentucky. Eventually these parties hit the road to Los Angeles, New York, Austin, and other U.S. cities. Hundreds of like-minded fans gather for bowling, white russians, costumes, and what have you. This summer, Lebowski Fest crossed the pond for events in Edinburgh and London.

Dudes in costume

When I first heard of the Edinburgh party it crossed my mind, "We've been wanting to visit Edinburgh for awhile now. Wouldn't that be a hoot?" And Mike made it happen. The night before our wedding he was online buying tickets. Then when planning our European trip the only hard date we gave the travel agent was for this day in Edinburgh.

Mike bowls

And we had a blast! We bowled and drank white russians. We made new friends. We both qualified for round 2 of the trivia contest, but neither of us qualified for the final round. We brought a marmot that everyone took pictures of. We wore our In & Out t-shirts and people proclaimed, "It's a real place?!" We won the trophy for furthest traveled.

Rikki, Deb, and me

Later, in London, we kept bumping into one of the organizers and his special lady. They were at a hotel near ours, we ended up at the same movie one night, and at Buckingham Palace one day. Weird. But hopefully we'll run into him at another Lebowski Fest some day.

(Clicking on any photo will take you to the full size on flickr, where you can also access the full album.)

The Ten

To the people sitting behind us at the movies last night: Just because you think a movie is stupid doesn't mean you should sit there and talk through it. Get up and leave. The theater was empty, you could have moved to seats other than the ones right behind us and talked to your hearts' content if you really wanted to. Or was our continuous laughter interrupting your misery, so you had to interrupt our enjoyment? Every 5 minutes it was "This is stupid," "What a waste of money," "Again with the slapping," or loud sighs and yawns.

Mike thinks they stuck it out just so they could study us and try to figure out what was so funny about it. They were older, like my parents age or older, and I hate to play the "generational thing" card, but they just didn't get it. I wanted to turn around and say something to them but was afraid I'd miss some subtly hilarious joke in the 10 seconds it might take me to do that.

The movie was The Ten, and as fans of The State, we found it hilarious, like watching the long-lost episodes that they never could have shown on tv. But if you've never heard of Ken Marino, David Wain, The State, or Stella, you may want to familiarize yourself if you think of a $9.50 movie ticket as an investment in happiness. If you don't care about expensive movie ticket prices then by all means, jump right in and see if you like it. (Other movies by these folks include Wet Hot American Summer, Diggers, and The Baxter. Each movie is different though, so they really can't be compared. Just giving examples to see if you've heard of them.)

Ten short stories, each one based on a commandment. The stories and characters intertwine, so the lawyer that gets disbarred in Story #3 and is given the suggestion of getting a new job as a tour guide at the nuclear power plant, shows up as that tour guide in a later story. (But the intertwinings aren't as complicated as, say, Pulp Fiction.) All-star cast with some great cameos. They get Winona Ryder to be the central character of the stealing story, which is pretty funny, but unfortunately one of the funniest parts of that story. Overall, some very clever humor surrounded by a lof of silliness. If you like religious satire, then Story #2 is especially for you.

Proceed with caution. I would love for this movie to reach a new audience for these writers and actors because they work hard and are earning their laughs, but they're really not known for mainstream likeability. They've found a niche and are very good at entertaining that niche. Do the fans a favor and if you see this in the theater and hate it, try not to talk through it too much.

Spider pig, spider pig...

Does whatever a spider pig does. Can he swing from a web? No, because he's a pig.

We saw The Simpsons Movie last night. Thanks to the commercials being run approximately every 90 seconds whenever I turn on the tv, I've had Homer's spider pig song stuck in my head for weeks now. It wore me down. I wasn't sure I wanted to see the movie because the last few seasons of the show haven't been that funny. But we decided to go for it.
It was hilarious. For at least 75 of the 88 minutes (it's a short feature) we were laughing loudly, giggling, smiling. My face hurt by the end. The opening joke is the family's at the theater watching The Itchy and Scratchy Movie and Homer makes a stink over how stupid everyone in the audience is for paying money to watch something we can watch at home every day for free. It's a great note to get started with and it coincided with my thinking that it was weird to be watching something with so many people laughing around me when I'm used to watching it at home quietly on my couch. It turned out to be a lot of fun to have all those people laughing along.

The plot is pretty thin, but it didn't need substance. Homer falls in love with a pig ... disaster comes to Springfield. It had the great Simpsons irony and sarcasm and irrelevance and plain old silliness. It was just darned entertaining. Most of the citizens of Springfield make an appearance. There are some references to episodes, but there's also a lot that's independent to the film (I hope they make Lisa's new boyfriend a regular character on the show).

There's a PG rating and I expected a little more gratuitousness but it stayed pretty tame. We see Bart naked. Otto takes a bong hit. Marge finally gets mad enough to swear (she's earned it, she's put up with a lot over the years).

I hope now that the movie has finally been made, the writers will put their effort back into making the show funny again. Or else end The Simpsons now on a high note.

(At home now, we're alternating between singing "Grendel pig, Grendel pig" and "Spider Ellie, Spider Ellie" to ourselves.)

(Image from MTV.com.)