When I was a teenager I was gifted a big leather bound folio of Shakespeare's works. I loved reading it the way other people read romance novels. I thoroughly enjoyed the witty insults and the comedies, and got a sense of history from the tragedies. I read a LOT of the plays, maybe 80%. You'll find me unusually well-educated in things Shakespearian ( Read more... )

I went to Mary Poppins Returns last night (yes, for New Year's Eve.) I quite liked it overall. Basically, that's about as violent as I like my films to ever be (i.e., with zero violence, and almost no threat of peril, either.) I could go on about the good song and dance numbers, or the sweetness of Lin-Manual Miranda, or how good *all* the actors ( Read more... )

Our parakeet appears to have OCD. All he wants to do is eat the earrings out of my ears and bite the glasses off my eyes. I am constantly under attack from a determined (but not actually damaging) pest whenever I sit in the room with him ( Read more... )

I feel so unsatisfied after seeing Brave.  I wanted it to be such a bigger story than it was.  I expected a "coming of age" story, but instead I got one about how a little girl successfully held onto her mommy-focused childhood despite pressure to grow up.  Mothers everywhere will leave holding their six year old's hand saying "See, I'll *ALWAYS* ( Read more... )

I enjoyed the movie "Rango" way more than I expected to.  It was unexpectedly existential in a trippy sort of way.  It would have been improved slightly by marijuana, I think.

J.K. Rowling is not a good writer.  She is a supernaturally good writer.  She floors me with how readable she is, and how much she captures with her broad strokes on the page.

I've just sat down to reread the 759 page "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows".  It's been over three years since I gulped it down in one 13 hour sitting.  I recall being ( Read more... )

We walked downtown shopping for Black Friday.

( Not one dollar was spent out of town, no gas was consumed, and no bank credit cards were used. )

Since we were unexpectedly all together today, we decided to take this chance to go see "Avatar" in 3D in a nice theater.  This means we had to drive a distance, pay outrageous ticket prices, and the movie itself is nearly 3 hours long, meaning this took most of the day.

Yeah.  Do that.  It's worth it.

Did anyone see "2012"? The opening scenes show tea-party-like protests against the national debt in the background. A minute later there's a scene where a rich person is offered something they want and told it costs "a billion". They seem relieved until told it's a billion EUROs, not dollars. Ouch, a billion in REAL money ( Read more... )

I never actually read a review of Slumdog Millionaire.  I just felt I had to make some time to go see it because everyone said it was so great (in four word reviews: "it was so great!") and it got impressive number of Oscars.

At the Oscars they had a happy little upbeat Bollywood dance number.  I like Bollywood dance numbers.  I even like cricket - ( Read more... )