"We have ways of making you squawk!" Nyuk, nyuk.
So, I saw "Valiant" today with the babycousins (one word, yes) and my aunt and uncle. I didn't realize I could be so bored by a film involving not just one, but all of:
a) animals as protagonists;
b) pastiching an old genre or style;
c) a war movie;
d) Ewan MacGregor, Tim Curry and John Cleese
and be so goshdarned bored. It was just so ... uninspiring. Though in other contexts, the subject line's pun might have been fun in a stupid way. Just ... it was so remarkably bland, I can't even get righteously indignant.
The babycousins are getting to the age where you can see their personalities really shaping. Oldest kid S-1* is a bit like me, clever and quick but flighty, bookish and having trouble finding her niche. Formerly sullen S-2, her younger sister, is going to grow up with quite a sardonic wit, you can tell already. She's also a karate maven. And baby T, the only boy ... okay, he's a precocious but still innocent six-year-old, I have no idea what he'll be like. S-1 is ten but already in sixth grade, and I have a great deal of fun torturing her about it. "Oh, you think this is a lot of work? You'll get more and more and more and have to get up earlier and earlier, and teachers will stop trying to make learning fun and make you suffer, and then just as you get used to it all people start making you think about college." Score one for evil cousin (I also bought her junk food when we went roller skating together yesterday, while her sister was earning her purple belt.)
Speaking of school, their dress code is terrifying. When an administration starts going into such painstaking detail as "tank top straps must be at least four fingers wide" and "shorts must go down to the fingertips when arms are resting relaxed at the sides, or longer," then I start wondering whether it says way more about the skewed priorities of the writers than of the students. Gee, we're not obsessed with sex, oh no! At least kids have the excuse of being, well, kids, with inflated perspectives on fashion and fitting in. How about just "no spaghetti-straps" and "shorts must be at least mid-thigh length," huh? It's a dress code, not Ulysses, connotations fully intended.
The letter to the gerbil people was finally sent yesterday, but the novella is still to be plotted. I have these threads to untangle and if I can do it in time it'll be a blast, and if not ...
* I need to keep track of who the hell all my abbreviations are, really. Is my closest high school friend M, or M'? Which of the Rebeccas I know is R and which is R', or is R' a Rachel? Sigh.
a) animals as protagonists;
b) pastiching an old genre or style;
c) a war movie;
d) Ewan MacGregor, Tim Curry and John Cleese
and be so goshdarned bored. It was just so ... uninspiring. Though in other contexts, the subject line's pun might have been fun in a stupid way. Just ... it was so remarkably bland, I can't even get righteously indignant.
The babycousins are getting to the age where you can see their personalities really shaping. Oldest kid S-1* is a bit like me, clever and quick but flighty, bookish and having trouble finding her niche. Formerly sullen S-2, her younger sister, is going to grow up with quite a sardonic wit, you can tell already. She's also a karate maven. And baby T, the only boy ... okay, he's a precocious but still innocent six-year-old, I have no idea what he'll be like. S-1 is ten but already in sixth grade, and I have a great deal of fun torturing her about it. "Oh, you think this is a lot of work? You'll get more and more and more and have to get up earlier and earlier, and teachers will stop trying to make learning fun and make you suffer, and then just as you get used to it all people start making you think about college." Score one for evil cousin (I also bought her junk food when we went roller skating together yesterday, while her sister was earning her purple belt.)
Speaking of school, their dress code is terrifying. When an administration starts going into such painstaking detail as "tank top straps must be at least four fingers wide" and "shorts must go down to the fingertips when arms are resting relaxed at the sides, or longer," then I start wondering whether it says way more about the skewed priorities of the writers than of the students. Gee, we're not obsessed with sex, oh no! At least kids have the excuse of being, well, kids, with inflated perspectives on fashion and fitting in. How about just "no spaghetti-straps" and "shorts must be at least mid-thigh length," huh? It's a dress code, not Ulysses, connotations fully intended.
The letter to the gerbil people was finally sent yesterday, but the novella is still to be plotted. I have these threads to untangle and if I can do it in time it'll be a blast, and if not ...
* I need to keep track of who the hell all my abbreviations are, really. Is my closest high school friend M, or M'? Which of the Rebeccas I know is R and which is R', or is R' a Rachel? Sigh.