Time After Time, Time After Time

Strictly Ballroom

Napoleon Dynamite 

(about 20 second in ... alas, no good YouTube clips)

Romey and Michele's High School Reunion

Blast You Pinterest, Vessel of Spoilers!

I officially cannot get on Pinterest anymore until I have finished reading the Hunger Games trilogy.  I just saw a horrible, awful spoiler!!!  This is very upsetting.  I am going to go pout now.

Couch to 5k Self-Inflicted Torture

So yesterday I started the "couch to 5k" deal I've heard so much about.  Mostly, it was horrible.  I do not understand why people run for fun.  It does not feel good, and any sense of accomplishment I may have felt was trumped by my little heart trying to flee my body and a stitch in my side that made it impossible to suck in as much air as I really would have benefited from.

How much work did I actually do, you ask?  Five minute walk, 2 minute run, and another 5 minute walk.

Why yes, I am that out of shape, thank you for asking.  Now wipe that smug look off your face!  I will have you know that I am a marathon pleasure-reader!  And no, that does not mean romance novels.  At the moment it means cozy mysteries.

Anyway, I have a tendency to quit things pretty quickly.  (For example, I am not signing up for the Dollar Shave Club -- I'm a little too hippie to need that many razors a month, even if they are cheap.)  But I'm going to try really hard to stick to this, so feel free to taunt me and hold me accountable if I appear to be slacking.  Stephen is crazy supportive, as always!  Love that guy.

In case you are interested, here's the plan I found:


(chart from: http://runtobefit.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/couch-to-5k-training-plan.png)

p.s.  I don't actually plan on running a race.  All by myself is just fine, provided I make it that far.

Dollar Shave Club

I don't know exactly why, but I am in awe of this:

And it's real!  And it's f*cking hilarious.

I don't really care that it's marketed for men, I'm signing up for this!  I practically have a coronary every time I walk into the razor section of Wal-Mart -- $15 for 3 razor heads??  Let me count the ways $15 could be better spent:

1. 2 copies of Harold and Maude on DVD
2. 2 pizzas from Dominos and extra garlic sauce for Stephen
3. 15 movies from Redbox
4.  Student discount date-night at the movies with smuggled candy
5. 20 treats for my sweet pup from the local dog bakery
6. A shit-ton of homemade nachos
7. I could upgrade my subscription to Netflix, which I am too cheap to do
8. A book or two
9. A couple of pool noodles
10. 5 cans of tennis balls for Stephen
11. I'm running out of ideas, but razors are not ever on my list of things spend $15 on

Thankfully my father-in-law jacked a bunch of free samples of some fancy razor or another, and I haven't had to buy one for the last six months.  However, my hoard is beginning to run low.  Dollar shave club ... here I come!

Dog-Fighting Attire

I called my grandma, and she was telling me all about these special shoes she ordered.
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Grandma: So I ordered them online, but I couldn't see them before I got them.  It said they were brown, and I was hoping to be able to wear them with my tan pantsuit to your cousin's confirmation.

Me: Oh, that would be great!  Have you gotten them yet?

Grandma: Well, yes, and I tell you, I wouldn't wear those things to a dog fight!
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Poor g-ma.  The good news is that she was able to locate a place to get her special shoes where she can check them out beforehand.  And no, I do not believe my grandmother has ever attended a dogfight, although animals decidedly do not hold a soft place in her heart.
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Me: So we've taken our cat to the vet a few times now for his respiratory problems, and the vet says he has a chronic condition and will have to take steroids the rest of his little life.

Grandma: Oh for God's sake!  Put him down, it isn't worth all that!
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I assure you I did not take her advice, even though 99% percent of the time she is 100% right.  Just not this time.  Here is Oliver, alive and well, all shaved up in his leg-warmers and exploring the freezer while I'm trying to clean it:

Spoiler Alert! The Hunger Games

Spoilers galore!  I just finished the first book today and went and saw the movie.  So I will talk about them both!
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Obviously, the book was better.*  And yeah, yeah, I know that movies based on books can be appreciated "for what they are" and they can't replicate exactly everything.  But damn!  They can at least get some basic details right.  For example, Prim's cat was orange.  How hard is it to find an orange cat?  If they can dye a dog pink for a scene in the Capitol, they can find any ole orange cat and film it hissing.  They can find a red love seat for Peeta and Katniss to sit on in the final interview, and they could have had her slip off her shoes and cozy up to Peeta.  Don't make the parachutes beep!  Hello!  People are getting hunted, don't give away their location.  Duh?  Also, Peeta was dying of an infection, and some salve that will close the wound is not going to change that.  How long would it have taken her to inject him like she did in the book?  Katniss' dress at the first interview was not red with fire at the bottom, it was covered in jewels.  Also, the mockingjays.  They should have sounded just like Rue, not like a bird song.  That's their purpose.  These small things are really nice ways to reference the book without even having to say anything.  I appreciate those things.  I didn't like all the bits with President Snow and the creepy Gamemaker guy.  Maybe they're setting something up for the second movie?  (I haven't read the second book -- so don't enlighten me.)    Where are the Avoxes?  I thought they would come up later because Katniss says at the very beginning that they could have their tongues cut out when Gale suggests they run away.  And overall, it just felt really rushed--but that's the way movie adaptations go I suppose.

Aside from all the small bits they didn't bother doing right, there were two major things that really ticked me off.

1. Rue's character was not developed at all in the movie.  When I sat down at the beginning of the movie, I thought to myself, "I'm going to cry like a baby when Rue dies."  (I'm a crier!)  However, when the time came I just found myself mostly upset that they had spent so little time on her character.  Of course I was sad, too, but seriously, the attention to Rue was pathetic.  On a small side-note: Katniss was very aware of her face/actions/emotions throughout the book since she knew she was on camera and needed to be a tough broad to keep sponsors.  She was sort of a blubbering idiot for a lot of the movie (especially after Rue's death).  Yes, if there is a strong female lead, let's just make sure we make her a hot mess on film.  I'll bet no one's ever done that before!
   
2. Thing I hated the most: District 11 rioting.  What the hell?  If this was the 74th Hunger Games and they hadn't rioted over anyone else, why would they risk their whole district over Rue?  Oh yes, and since we've re-written District 11 as violent, let's make them mostly black too!  Just brilliant, I bet no one has ever thought of that before, either.  Aren't we on a creative roll?  Blubbering female lead, check, violent black people, check.  I was pleased that not every frickin person in the movie was white, but let District 11 do the classy thing and send Katniss the bread as a thank you.  That was one of the most moving parts of the book for me and was a much cleverer form of rebellion.
   
3. Okay, I can't quite stop at just two.  I'll make it three.  The ending.  I had imagined that the end of the book might not make a big enough hook for movie-goers who don't care to read the books.  So I kind of get the whole President Snow being pissed and the Gamemaker being forced to commit suicide via nightlock (second book or made up? - again, don't enlighten me.)  But they totally dropped the ball on explaining the state of Peeta and Katniss' relationship.  He loves her, she is a very confused 16-year old (romantically speaking).  His feelings are all crushed.  How sad!  That was barely hinted at in the movie.  Come on people!  "Are they or aren't they" was fundamental to the book.  Also, why Peeta even threw Katniss the bread back in the day was really poorly explained.  If I hadn't read the book I'd have been like, "What is she doing under that tree in the rain?"  I mean, she hunts, so she couldn't be that hungry, right?  It didn't explain that she didn't start hunting till later at all in the movie.  So she's pouting under a tree in Peeta's yard, and he throws her bread?  Weird.

There was one thing, however, that I like much better in the movie.  As soon as I finished reading the part of the book where Cato is mauled all.night.long by those hella scary wolf/tributes I was like, "Why didn't Katniss put him out of his misery as soon as he fell off the Cornucopia?"  That part of the book is a little gratuitously long for me.  So I was pleased that it happened just how I said it should in the movie.  As far as the creepy wolf/tribute "muttations" go, I was wondering how on earth they would pull that off in the movie and am frankly okay that they didn't try.  I think it would have been hard to make them look okay and then explain them.  So the scary dogs were fine.  I also thought it was clever how they used the announcers to explain things like tracker jackers and the mines.  (Stephen disagrees with me on this one; he says it was cheesy.)

 Anyway ... I'm off to start reading Catching Fire!


*The only time I have ever thought a movie was better was Forrest Gump.

Harold ... that's wonderful. Go love some more.

I just watched Harold & Maude for the first time today.

I'm not sure how I haven't seen it before.  It is everything that I absolutely love in a movie.  It's dark, and it's funny, and it has the most wonderful love story -- and really, there's something magical about it.  It's the kind I have to sit and keep feeling once it's over.  I can't just leap up and go work on the laundry or hit the books again.

What a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful story.