Don't Be A Turkey, And Eat Some!

Happy Thanksgiving one and all!  Hope you are enjoying the big fat bird, the Butterball, with friends and family today.  It is a time for thanks and giving, so let's step it up and do both.

I love Thanksgiving because it is a time of sanctioned overeating, and lets face it, we love food and eating.  No guilt on Thanksgiving, just stuffing ourselves til our tummies pop out, Uncle Vince asleep with mouth agape in the worn Bark-O-Lounger in the corner while the in between pizzas are on their way to keep us going until the 2nd turkey is out of the oven for the "Fourth Meal" around midnight.

Taco Bell was so astute to coin that phrase, cause that really is what happens late at night at my friends Chicago family's home.  A whole entire turkey meal with all the trimmings, after they have already picked apart the carcass of the first bird and then ate tons of pizza.  Yahoo....gluttony at it's best, and approved as a national holiday.  Why don't we just rename it EatingFoodDay or BeingAGluttonDay?

Where else on the planet, where people are starving daily....even here in the good old U.S of A many are without daily food....can they even dream of having not one, but two full-on turkey dinners with all the trimmings, and pizza in between in one night?!  Reminds me of a King Henry the 8th movie I saw years back.  Gluttony, I think that's what they call it.

But I guess that's our right as consumers.  To spend our money on what we want at that whimsical moment, instead of giving some of that overabundance to others in need, as in the "Giving" part of Thanksgiving.

And we wonder why a hug percentage of Americans are overweight.  Maybe we should just stop maligning those poor turkeys and start calling ourselves "Butterball"!
Enjoy the feast and thanks for everything.

Didn't Everyone See Paranormal Activity As A Comedy?

I don't like feeling taken.  Most people don't.  But the people over at Paramount certainly didn't mind taking our money at the box office for one of the stupidest YouTube-like videos I've seen in a long time.  To set the record straight, I actually didn't pay for the movie since I go to my local theater for free (with SAG Card), so I was able to walk out of there smugly thinking "thank God I didn't spend $12 for that piece o' silliness (okay, my local cineplex only charges $9, but still).

This piece of somewhat scary fluff was made in San Diego in about 7 days for somewhere around $11-15 K (depends on which source you read, but let's just say a really small budget funded by the director Oren Peli).  His two main actors Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston, novice actors, did the shoot for something like $500 each several years back.  And then it got shopped around to festivals and such for a while.....enter Steven Spielberg and some execs at Paramount who snapped up this little "gem" for around $350k with some "back end" for the Director (which he is purportedly sharing with his actors...hey, nice guy!).

Then Paramount decided to do a Blair Witch Project on us and started internet marketing the crap out of it.  Tweets and all the rest.  With slogans like "See The Movie Everyone's Talking About" and "Be Part of The Phenomenon".  Look, I just don't do well with these messages.  I mean, who wants to not be part of something that's going to be water cooler Facebook talk for the next 2 months??  So I decided I would go and spend my precious time to see a "scary" movie (for the record, I don't like "scary" movies, which is why you will never see a review from me for one of the Saw or Hostel franchised movies).  Besides, it's free for me :)

So I go late at night thinking to myself, "If it's really scary who would be fool enough to watch it right before bedtime, right?".   The theater is pretty packed; not full, but alot of people.   There is this African-American couple sitting in front of me, to the left a couple of seats.  I only bring them into this because the guy, who was big enough to be a bouncer at the Key Club, kept saying his thoughts to his girl throughout the movie, and his thoughts just happened to be my thoughts, as if he was streaming from my brain to his mouth.

Okay (BEWARE Spoiler Alerts ahead:), so the movie starts and yes, it looks like one of the new-fad hand-held-camera documentary shows (trying to fool us into believing its "real").  And this happy couple, living in a very, very nice two story house, decides to put the dudes expensive camera in the bedroom cause the chick hears sounds and thuds at night.   Only after about 20 minutes (and God knows how long together) does she admit to being stalked by your unfriendly neighborhood Casper.  I mean, who doesn't tell their significant other that they have phantom stalkers?  And when he does find out, mid-movie, who wouldn't ask their chick to leave, like now!  But no, they see sightings of shadows, hear thumps, doors moving back and forth.  The paranormal spirit even starts hogging the sheets, drags the chick out of bed and more kinda scary stuff.  And yet they continue to go back to sleep in the same bed every night.  And the guy in front of me can't believe how stupid this all is (that's what he said AND I was thinking).  Then the dude in fronts does the unthinkable.....he starts laughing......and so do I.  I mean, gut wrenching laughter.... it was THAT corny!

Anyway, 80 minutes of that and I can't wait til the movie ends and I can get some sleep.  And then the ending comes.  The chick kills the dude downstairs (she is possessed by the demon) and manages to carry him upstairs and throws him toward camera (the viewer perspective) and then snarls demon-like into the camera....beat.....that was it?  That's what all the fuss is about??  Dumb, waste of time.  And, guess what, that's what the dude in front of me says as he laments spending some $20 for him and his girl to see this piece of crap.

I go home, sleep oh so peacefully, and the next morning see a link in one of my mags to see the original ending that Spielberg wasn't as fond of.  It was a little long of an ending, but at least it was credible...even if it wasn't as "scary".  In this original ending the possessed Katie kills Micah downstairs, comes up and rocks back and forth upstairs for, ooooh, about 24 hours, while a friend comes by and finds Micah's body, screams, comes back with police who end up shooting Katie as she wields a knife and lunges towards them shouting "where's Micah".   The article also mentioned another ending where the spirit has her committing suicide and then abandons poor Katie's body.   Yahoo!  At least that would be an end to the "franchise" that we're about to be burdened with.

Anyway, just my opinion (and the dude in front of me).  Save your money and wait for video, or not at all is what I really think.  Just use my crib notes and, trust me, you can sound like you saw the movie while remaining $12 richer!

Boo!

Being outdone by a rock band of 11 year olds

At a BBQ with a band composed of very confident 11 year old girls.  When did things start so early?  Will it be 4 year old prodigies forming a band next??
Not that I mind, being musically inclined myself, but is it the whim of the parents....like stage mom stuff? or do the kids wake up one day at 6 years old and say "hey parental units, I want to be a rock star by the time I'm 11! "?

Anyway, the kids were great and I salute the parents for recognizing their talent and encouraging the Chucky Cheeze generation to get up and play their hearts out. Rock On!

(the attached photo IS NOT the actual band :)

Why do we always "Fall Back" into a surprised state of mind?

Daylight Saving Time (DST) or as some may say, daylight shifting, occurs in the Fall and the Spring each year.  It was originally Benjamin Franklin's great idea (gee, thanks Ben).   It's initial purpose was not the farmers, as the myth goes, but to allow people to have extra light at the end of the day in the spring and summer months, and save burning candles in the dark of the morning.  What it boils down to is a lot of hassle for most of us, especially those who have to reset devices and excessive amounts of clocks.  It takes me days to catch up to the car, microwave, watches, computers, wall clocks and all the rest!  I'm sure you have all experienced the confusion when you relied on the "wrong clock", the one you forgot to reset, right?

At least we can thank the Congress under President Bush for one thing; for pushing back the descent into early darkness for some extra weeks each year....for shortening the period of early-onset dusk by about a month.  Supposedly it was based on some energy issue.  This year, with the change occurring on Halloween night, it gave costumed revelers the opporunity to feed at their favorite water hole for an extra hour....legally. 

Why does it irk me that people still act surprised each year that it is getting darker earlier than before?  Their ability to drive in the dark suddenly seems impaired (does no one drive at night if they work 9 to 6 jobs??).  And friends and strangers are often overheard saying "yeah, we gained an extra hour".  What the heck are they talking about?  Isn't that "extra hour" unceremoniously yanked away from us in the springtime as we "Spring Forward" in the other phase of Daylight Saving Time.  BTW, what kind of Daylight are we saving?  Isn't it just light outside for a digital-clock-hour earlier every day while our fun-in-the-sun hour is clipped off on the backside.  The way I see it we have exactly as many daylight hours every day, just shifted.   The days get shorter in the winter as the sun heads south for the winter solstice, which is around December 21st.  In other words, it gets dark early and stays dark longer in the winter anyway.

Come on people, wake up (earlier than before) and smell the coffee (if you remembered to set back the clock on your automatic coffee maker, that is).  When are the people going to finally stand up and demand that this nonsense, and all it's requisite clock-changing, stop once and for all, leaving us with summer hours all year long?!

enjoy the long nights!

Tansy

ref: Daylight Saving Time