Silly Kids

You've been desperately waiting for me to update this damn blog with something other than a book review.

And you're in luck!

Kids stories it is!

Also, for children's safety sake, I'm going to refer to the wee ones (to steal Laura and Carrie's phrase) from here on out as Big Man and Little Man. Quick catch-up: Big Man is seven, is in first grade, likes to pretend he doesn't love that I give him a kiss on the cheek every morning before I go to work and every evening when I get home, and is kinda my favorite of the two. (What? I didn't birth them. I'm allowed to have a favorite. We have a bond.) Little Man is five, is a walking sound-effects machine, is so skinny you can see every one of his ribs, and likes to beat up the puppy something fierce.

Ok, so the story involves me painting my room last Wednesday, picking Big Man up from school, and letting both boys play in there while I finished up. (Which really just meant that at the end of the day I ended up with a homemade Lego Tie Fighter sitting on my dresser. )

Anyways, I left the boys in my room while I went to wash paint off my hands and, as I was standing there at the sink, I heard a pretty tinkling noise. I quickly realized that Spoon's "The Underdog" was blaring from the i-pod hooked up to the speakers in my room and all made sense. That is, until I remembered that there's really no chimes or bells or anything in that song. Brass horns? Yes. Chimes? No. So, I popped my head into the room only to find Little Man, sitting on the floor with his head against the speaker, playing along to the song on his toy xylophone.

Yeah, I said "toy xylophone." You're head totally exploded from a cute overdose, right?

Seeing as that toy's a "baby toy" he grew out of years ago, the song must have just warranted it.

Yeah. Seriously. Too fucking cute. He does shit like that all the time, too.

TV Karaoke Kills Us With Awesome

Yeah, I ran across this clip and had to post it because it is, in fact, one of the best moments in Gilmore Girls history. And, really, that's saying a lot. Also, I've been pining and yearning for Gilmore Girls pretty intensely since it went off the air (oh, nearly a whole damn year ago) so you're likely to see a slew of other related entries by me in the future. Because this blog just wasn't fucking girly enough already.

Anyway, yeah, here's the clip:

I mean, at first it's just a cute little bit where Lorelai drunkenly sings a song at Karaoke night to her daughter who is about to graduate from college. Lorelai is all awkward and stumbling and happy and cute and the whole thing's pretty realistic yet adorable. Then, you add in the fact that she's singing a Dolly Parton song, and the awesomeness quotient starts to sky-rocket.

Then, Luke walks in. And Lorelai suddenly finds herself trapped on stage in front of the entire, and incredibly nosy, town while drunkenly singing "I Will Always Love You" in front of her ex whom she's extremely emotionally attached to and has complicated feelings for. And you can see her totally freak the fuck out. But it's Dolly, and you can't escape Dolly, and she just keeps on trucking through that beautiful, bittersweet little song, pouring her heart out.

Dude. So damn amazing.

Book Review: Recent Reads #8

Title: Flipped
Author: Wendelin Van Draanen
Genre: Young Adult

Context: This book has been sitting on my shelf for over two years. I picked it up at a bargain book store when I first got out to Indiana. It sat. I read the first two chapters. It sat again. Then it sat some more. It made it through approximately five apartment moves without getting tossed, simply because it had a cute cover. And then I finally read it. I swear! I really did! Hence the review! No lies!

Summary/Review: The book's a young adult he said/she said involving two fifteen-year-old neighbors. Overall, the whole thing was pretty "meh." I just didn't care for it. The gimmick got old, there was lots of cliche, and I really didn't get drawn in to either of the characters. An actual young adult would probably enjoy it. It's not a bad book. It just didn't hook me in any way.

Best Part? The Cover. That cover is adorable. I love that cover. I am going to keep this book forever, because it has a cute cover. Because I am that shallow. Oh yes.

Book Review: Recent Reads #7

Title: Manhunting
Author: Jennifer Cruisie
Genre: Romance

Why I Picked It Up: I had a Barnes and Noble gift-card burning a hole in my pocket, had spent an hour browsing without any luck and found this early Crusie novel I had not yet read. And it had a cute cover. I'm a sucker for a cute cover. So buy it, I did.

Plot: Well, Crusie's got a good little intro over at her website on this one.

The little letter is great. It's published in the front of the book too and it got me jazzed to keep reading. The plot summary before the letter? Not so great. See, I thought the wording was pretty misleading and that all of her dates were ending up dead at the hotel resort and the handyman, Jake, thought she was the culprit. They're not. They're mostly just assholes who Kate keeps besting in hilarious ways. Like tossing drunks into pools, starting bar fights, and maiming anyone who gets between her and an excellent plate of mashed potatoes (understandable, really). Hee, much more interesting than dead bodies, really.

Review: I maybe kinda loved it. And I usually like, but don't particularly love, Crusie's earlier/shorter works. But this one was really funny. With all of the disastrous dates and resort encounters, the mornings spent lounging on the lake with Jake (avoiding the scarily ambitious resort social director), the afternoons spent maiming jerks, and the evenings spent hanging out with new friends and helping the totally awesome owner of the town bar improve her business... Kate had a fun adventure. And I got to read it!

And Crusie's right, the best friend was excellent. As they always are.

Book Review: Recent Reads #6

Title: Devil's Cub
Author: Georgette Heyer
Genre: Historical Romance/ Regency Romance

Why I picked it Up: Jennifer Crusie mentioned it once in her blog in an entry about rape in romance novels. And it sounded awesome.


Review: Oh my god. So awesome. So awesome.

Mary Challoner rules.

I've decided, in lieu of an actual review, to pretty much go through the opening plot in "Tabatha Speak." You may remember previous entries in that series including "Tabatha Paraphrases the plot of The Cutting Edge from the back of Amy's Parents' Van" and "Tabatha explains Abraham Lincoln to her 13-yr-old Sister" and the copious entries of "Tabatha retells Grimm's Fairy Tales using "bitch" and "fuck" a lot" from the college years.

So, basically, smart and sensible Mary Challoner has a really big problem. Her younger sister, Sophia, is a stupid tramp and her mother is a clueless pimp. Sophia, stupid tramp that she is, thinks that she's important enough that she can run off to Paris and sex it up with rich playboy Vidal and he'll be forced to marry her. Mary is not a half wit, she knows that that won't happen.

So she devises a plan to piss of Vidal and make it so he'll never want to see her dumbass sister again. The plan is pretty much on the same level of Jack Bauer robbing a convenience store to delay a terrorist. She takes off her mask and pretends to be a brazen hussy who was just fucking with him.

Unfortunately, she didn't anticipate how royally pissed off Vidal would be, and he forces her, by threat of excessive intoxication, to board his yacht and travel to France with him. At which point, three sheets to the wind, Vidal decides it's time for the tramp to make good and have sex with him. Unfortunately, he's too drunk to take Mary seriously when she tries to tell him that she's, in fact, not a dirty tramp... so she has to shoot him.

And thus. True Love.

Vidal's bottom line is that he may be a womanizing, dueling, violent asshole but ruining respectable women is crossing his moral boundary line, and he's going to mary Mary whether she likes it or not.

Mary's bottom line is that she's willing to take the repercussions of her actions, but she will not willingly enter into a dangerously lopsided marriage with a man who doesn't love her but with whom she's, against all logic, appeared to have developed feelings for. Because she's sensible like that.

A hilarious romp involving the two stubborn leads, various adventures across the French country-side, Vidal's ridiculously awesome mother (who was, apparently, the heroine of a previous romance novel in which she dressed like a boy and had a propensity for shooting people), Vidal's drunk uncle, and assorted other characters ensues.

Final Thought: Dude, the women in Heyer's novels are some of the feistiest, grounded, sensible, ass-kicking ladies I have ever encountered. If I have to wade through the nonsense trappings of the genre (flowery language and incessant detailed descriptions of regency-era fashions and manners) I will gladly do so just to get to spend time with these ladies. Luckilly, Heyer wrote a bazillion novels, so I've got plenty left to explore.

Movie Review: 27 Dresses

I've been trying to write a review of this movie for about three weeks now with no avail. (But I have GOT to get this terrible back-log of unfinished posts alleviated.. so here we go).

I was really excited about it. I'm a fool for fun chick movies. They make me smile, and that, in my opinion is well worth ten dollars of my getting-bitched-at-by-customers-all-day-long money. Well worth it.

I went to an early showing the week before it opened, got into the absolutely packed theatre, wedged myself between two middle-aged women, and sat back. And enjoyed myself. It was cute. I smiled and laughed pretty much the whole way through. And so did the entire damn theatre.

27 Dresses is a cute movie. There, I fucking said it. It's cute.

So why was I having trouble writing about it? The reviews. The reviews were all-around terrible on this one. Now, I know, mot people would just say "don't listen" but I am just not that sensible or mature. Plus, I personally read reviews to get a general feel for how a movie plays out. I've passed on a number of movies because I heard they were crap, and they turned out to be. Basically, the reviews were pissing me off and pushing my back against a wall.


What Worked: The main heroine was great. I liked her. I'd be friends with her. There's a reason 27 very diverse women asked her to be a bridesmaid, and it's not just because she's kind of a wedding doormat. She's also nice! She's nice and sweet and friendly and loves weddings. I didn't think she, or her obsession with weddings was at all cheesy. She's in love with the fairy tale, and until it happens, she'll be a part of other people's fairy tales.

My favorite bits involved Benny and the Jets, the cab driver, the hilarious best friend, the bridesmaid dress montages (I'm a montage whore!), and the continuous appropriate and warranted use of profanity. That last one? Yeah, whenever I found myself thinking What a bitch!" or "That guy's an asshole" the main character would go ahead and back me up. Out loud. It was awesome.


What didn't Work so Well: James Marsden was hardly cute at all. I know?! How is that possible?! (Side Note: One of the best parts of the film "The Heights" involves Marsden tearfully confessing to his fiance that long before he met her, he once had an affair with a notoriously slutty male photographer and she's comforting him and all "Honey, of course he wanted to sleep with you, look at you!" She ain't wrong. The man's pretty.)


The romance was pretty lame and underdeveloped. Also, the male lead was kind of an ass. A shabby ass too. At one point, the female lead is looking for him at a wedding and I'm just sitting in my chair mentally screaming "He's not hard to find! He's the asshole in jeans! He's always the asshole in jeans! He gets paid to attend weddings and he fucking always wears jeans! Because he's an asshole!" Which is not to say that I totally hated his character either, because I didn't.

Also, the title is really lame and that poster is just fucking terrible.


Overall: I thought it was cute, harmless, inoffensive girly fun.

Book Review: Recent Reads #4 and #5

Titles: Dairy Queen and The Off Season
Author: Iris Murdoch
Genre: Young Adult

Why I picked Them Up: I was browsing the library and saw Dairy Queen. I'd heard about it before and the cover appealed to me. It them sat in my car and room for a week and a half while I haphazardly browsed through it before actually reading it cover to cover. Then I ran to the library for the sequel.

Basic Plot: Both novels follow fifteen-year old D.J. Shwenk as she runs her family dairy farm (her father having thrown out his back the year before), trains the rival quarterback as a favor to a family friend (and because he's arrogant and stubborn and kind of cute and needs a lesson in hard work), learns to express and stand up for herself (and not "be a cow"), and deals with a devastating family tragedy.

Review: I seriously enjoyed these books. They made me smile (I've been saying that a lot lately but it's true none the less). it took me a while to get into the first one, but then D.J. started to freak out about how she's a [dairy] cow and how actually everyone she knows is a complacent, silent, do-nothing cow that I got hooked. And then she started making herself happy and I was a sucker.

The sequel is just as good as the original too. A serious family tragedy steers the last two thirds of the book, but it's not about the tragedy. it's about how, as a family, the Schwenks (primarily DJ, though) get through it. And how they do so is honest and complicated and painful and sad. But awesome.

Final thoughts: I don't know why, but I feel like I'm vomiting sunshine after this review.

The dark side of Matt Damon...

I've been writing blog entries! I have! I've got ten half-written blog entries queued up and idea after idea in the pipe-line. Unfortunately, I can't finish any REAL (this entry being unreal of course) entries because I just haven't got the time.

Because I'm reading Frederica and can't put it down! Can't! Not since the big lovable dog went rampaging about the park chasing cows! And now there's been a balloon accident!

Yeah... I'll explain later. For now, I bring you three hilarious Matt Damon clips.

First, Matt Damon brilliantly makes fun of Matthew McConaughey, who I cannot fucking stand. Right now, he's sitting on the bench next to Carey Elwes. The bench, of course, being for actors that most people don't feel very strongly about but that I just cannot fucking stand.

And here's Damon doing a pretty fantastic spoof of his infamous "Eurotrip" cameo. I usually can't stand Sarah Silverman in the slightest, but she gets a pass for this one.

And, here's the famous "Eurotrip" clip. For those uninitiated, affable Scott just got dumped by his seemingly perfect girlfriend that morning at his graduation. Rocking out ensues.