Hilarious review of the most recent -- and apparently, drecky -- M. Night Shyamalan movie, "The Happening."

Warning: Spoilers abound! But they are funny, funny spoilers. That Christopher Orr has a way with words.

aawhitewood came over today and babysat BOTH girls for SIX hours, which totals up to approximately 12,000 karma points, give or take a few. (Side note: Why don't you switch to username "councillour"? I bet more people would look for you under that nom de plume.)

I dressed up more than might be strictly appropriate for a Sunday brunch date with my very own husband. Sometimes it's fun to dress up in pretty swirly dresses and nice shoes!

Today I am kind of deaf.

I have a very very good reason. The reason is NEW MODEL ARMY, a band that must be written in ALL CAPS, because they are a VERY LOUD BAND.

What? What? I can't hear you. Speak up, sonny.

I did not complete a book in March to review for your delectation. What can I say. There were Things going on. Lots and lots of Things.

I may have set myself up for failure, though. I attempted to read Godel, Escher, Bach, which is not fiction, is extremely long, and is (to put it nicely) challenging.

Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying it -- when I manage to read parts of it. I ought to enjoy it, after all -- a few months ago I took some random OK Cupid test (which I don't seem to have saved here on my LJ, for some unfathomable reason), and I tested "as" this book. (Again, for some unfathomable reason.)

So I figured I ought to eat this book up with a spoon.

Last night was one of our rare "free" evenings to spend as a couple. After both grrlz were in bed, finally, Andrew and I collapsed from exhaustion.

No, just kidding -- we wanted to collapse from exhaustion, but we were too tired.

In February I managed to finish Children of God, the sequel to The Sparrow, which I read in January. Woo hoo; go me!

I didn't like Children of God nearly as much. I think there were several reasons, but they can be boiled down into trying to do too much in one book. I feel she should either have truncated and shrunk the plot -- which I don't recommend-- or else broken the action up into two books, thrown more nuances and wrinkles and action into the plot, and in general spent more time doing things a bit better.

And now for the spoilers.

 

I managed to read a novel in January, "The Sparrow," by Mary Doria Russell, thus tying my entire consumption of novels for 2007. (From here on, it's all gravy!) As promised, here is my review.



There's a sequel, "Children of God." I've been assured that it redeems some of the tragedy suffered by the characters in "The Sparrow." I hope I can find the time to get started on it in February, because I hate to leave things this way in my mind. 

At this point, having committed literally scores of children's books to memory after reading them hundreds of times, I consider myself a conissieur of the genre. And I'm here to tell you that some truly dreadful writing somehow makes it into print. Come on, people, just because it's a book for kids doesn't mean you can just phone it in! Put some effort into it!

We own a big thick book called "Fisher-Price Reader Readers: Stage 1: Preschool - Grade 1." I forget where we got it; it may have been handed down or bought at a thrift store. It seems to be a compilation of stories that weren't good enough to be published on their own. I suppose it's unfair of me to pick on a book like that, but honestly -- come on, Fisher-Price! Don't buy 10 bad children's stories and publish them as a compilation and expect not to get mocked. Not when the stories are this bad.

I Big-Pink-Fluffy-Heart the new Asian supermarket near the Oak Tree Cinema!

Prices: Really really good. I bought a 3-oz. jar of chili powder for $1.59, a big jar of toasted sesame seeds for $2.59, Fuji apples for 99 cents a pound, fresh poblano peppers for $1.69 a pound, a package of tortillas for $1.69... the list goes on.

Don't go there for dairy. Then again, don't go to any Asian market for dairy products.

Seriously, I should start shopping there as my main grocery store. I would save beaucoup bucks, and have much more exposure to healthy foods like soy cakes. Then again, I'd also have much more exposure to POCKY, so it might end up being a wash, health-wise.

Selection: An amazing variety of exotic processed foods. I wandered up and down the aisles with a cheesy grin on my face, lost in a pleasant dream of pickled fruits, soy paste, bean noodles, cheap Nutella from Bulgaria, jarred Greek-style eggplant, fresh duck eggs, dozens of kinds of chile peppers -- fresh, dried, flaked, and powdered -- devotional Mexican candles, 50-lb. bags of rice, fried dough sticks...

Produce: I would call the selection of produce "substantial," and the prices "cheap." They did have some exotic produce -- tamarind pods, fresh curry leaves, that kind of thing -- but not the crazy amount of variety that Uwajimaya has.

Still, "substantial selection" plus "cheap prices" is a much better combination than the QFC where I've been getting all my produce. The QFC sells beautiful-to-look-at produce -- produce that would look great if you bought it merely for decorative purposes. It doesn't contain any actual flavor.

I picked up a devotional candle or two, and a "praying bowl" showing an Asian goddess, and am currently trying to figure out who she is.

Jen took my entire "team" out to lunch -- paid for by the company, no less -- to celebrate what amazing work we did in October. She chose Andaluca, a rather posh place in downtown Seattle.

One thing about working with computers all day is that you never know when another e-mail will come in, and so you end up at your desk constantly, feeling that if you step away for even one! second!, you will miss responding to some vital issue. This symbiosis with one's computer fosters twitchiness, an over-reliance on coffee, and a vastly inflated sense of the importance of the average business e-mail. It also makes it so difficult to step away from the desk and get out and do something, like have lunch. Usually I eat lunch at the desk, hunched over the keyboard, obsessively toggling between my 5 applications and monitoring e-mails as they come in. The average e-mail lasts only a few seconds in my inbox before it is deleted or flagged for later response. Good grief -- that's no way to live.

At Andaluca, they don't huddle over computer monitors, eating substandard food without really tasting it. No, at Andaluca they know how to live -- or at least, they know how to feed you, which is practically the same thing.



The food was simply amazing, and the experienced lasted a long, long time. Our reservation was at 11:30, and we only got back to the office at 1:40 or so -- just long enough for me to start twitching as I tore through all my e-mails before leaving at 2:00.

Last night, I met up with some of the other moms from my old PEPS group for a "girls' night out."


It's nice to do this kind of thing once in awhile! :-)

Our friend Sean brought over the Korean movie "The Host" (Gwoemul) and watched it with me Saturday night while Andrew was off at a Call of Cthulhu game. I enjoyed it so much that I then showed it to Andrew on Sunday night. So, I've seen it twice in two days.

Basically, a family has to band together as impromptu monster hunters after one of their own is snatched up by a strangely graceful yet horribly deadly giant river squid / tadpole / frog thing.

This movie was widely viewed in South Korea; apparently about 20% of the population saw it.

From this movie, we can learn:

• Don't pollute. The river monstrosity's origin lay in a white doctor ordering his Korean subordinate to pour huge amounts of formaldehyde directly into the Han River. (Boo! Hiss! Scum!)
  
• When you see something huge in the water, it's not friendly. Don't feed it. Just run.
• Government officials are incompetent and actively unhelpful.
• Never get out of the truck.
• It's good to have an Olympic archer in the family when the crap hits the fan.
• 7th graders are surprisingly competent.
• In the end, food and family are the most important things.
• But just in case, keep the rifle handy.

Hosted a 5-hour game of "Twilight Imperium" yesterday. Five hours is nothing  for this game. It was so short because there were only four players.
polytrypos says sometime he'll put together an entire weekend of Twilight, with all eight races and various expansions and whatnot. Yes... that will be something.

On Saturday night we watched the pilot of the new SciFi channel series "Flash Gordon."

Last night Andrew and I watched an episode of "Dead Like Me," a quirky and offbeat show starring a teenage girl who was killed by a piece of the Mir space station that fell out of the atmosphere on top of her. That happened in the first episode. The show is about her new, afterlife job as a "Reaper" -- souls who aren't ready to leave the world yet, and who help assist others in their passage to the great beyond.

So, the show's entire premise is kind of a downer. There's a team of "reapers" with their own little quirks, and every episode, one or more of them has to go assist in deaths so the people's souls can safely leave their bodies and pass on.

The rule is that you should never ever try to go back to your old life and see how your family is doing, because that will lead to nothing but pain.

The boss, Rube (played by character actor Mandy Patinkin), was a man who had died in 1927. In his new "reaper" life, he had tracked down the daughter he'd had during his mortal life. She was now an old lady, and in last night's episode, it was her time to die.

I found myself BAWLING MY EYES OUT, just crying totally uncontrollably, at the scene where he was singing "I'll Be Loving You" to this old lady, who was really his little girl. Andrew was concerned. I just couldn't stop crying... it was so, so sad. Actually, now it's the next day, and just typing about it, I'm crying again.

I need to stop watching downer shows, no matter HOW good they are.

Well, so Man of La Mancha was very good, and we really enjoyed it.

(It's not really Culture with a capital C, is it? I've never seen the movie -- all I knew was that it was an adaptation of Don Quixote, so I think I expected something with a bit more complexity to it, especially the music... catchy, but kind of fluffy, you know?)

But still, sometimes culture with a small c is good stuff too. As a dyed-in-the-wool idealist who truly believes that one must attempt to Do The Right Thing even if no one will ever know, even if it half-kills you, and even if what you're attempting is absolutely impossible, I was very touched by the mad knight's insistence on creating his own reality... creating a reality for himself the way it ought to be.

-- The title of this post comes from a trait of mine that I've observed in Vivian recently. When she cries, the first 5 or 6 seconds are silent. Her face screws up and turns red, little tears squirt out of the sides of her eyes, but she is completely silent until the first breath has all been expelled, and a new breath drawn in. Then on the second breath out, she will start to cry with sound. (I've actually trained myself not to make any sound at all when I cry.)

In her, silent tears are just so darn cute. I know she's upset, but I can't help smiling at her. (Especially when the tears are over some rather silly thing, like having dropped her Cheerio. Um, sweetie? Just bend over and pick it up.)