Twiggy the water skiing squirrel

This is the cutest thing I have seen in weeks!

Carrabba's Italian Grill

This is one of my favorite restaurants and definitely my favorite Italian restaurant.

Most of the menu is fantastic.  They also introduced me to my favorite drink, the Amaretto Sour!  They make them perfect here!

First off, they start you with some fresh baked bread and olive oil for dipping. 

I recommend trying the Caesar side salad for an appetizer.  It's light and simple, yet delicious.  It just has Romaine lettuce, a little Parmesan cheese, big croutons, and some tasty dressing.

I've tried the Calamari and if you loved deep fried squid, this is the calamari for you.  Served with a little side dipping sauce of marinara or a spicier Italian pepper and lemon butter sauce.

The mozzarella marinara is not bad either. 

If you like soups, I haven't had one there that I didn't like.  Try the minestrone first for a classic.

I am normally torn between two entrees - the Pasta Carrabba, and the Mezzaluna.  Mmmmm mmmm mmm!
Pasta Carrabba is Fettuccine Alfredo with grilled chicken, mushrooms, and peas, but I have them remove the mushrooms.  It's very filling and creamy comfort food.

The Mezzaluna is half moon ravioli's stuffed with chicken, ricotta cheese, and spinach in a tomato cream sauce.  I can easily finish this off and have room left for dessert.

I've also had the Chicken Bryan, Chicken Parmesan and Grilled Chicken.  All are regulars on the menu and tasty.

The only thing I haven't been crazy about was the pepperoni pizza.  It was just ok.  If you want good pizza go to a real pizzeria.  This place is just good for traditional italian entrees.

The best dessert they have to offer is the John Cole - just plain vanilla ice cream laced with caramel sauce and roasted cinnamon rum pecans.  Oh those pecans!!!!

The service has always been great and the prices moderate.  My only complaint, besides the pizza, is that they don't open until later in the day.  Noon at the earliest on the weekends, and 4 pm on most weekdays.  Occasionally I'll find one that opens earlier, but it may just be on a holiday or a particular restaurant only.
Try it out if you haven't already.

4 1/2 forks out of 5 only because of the short hours and the mundane pizza.

The Skeleton Key

Released: 2005
Horror
Starring: Kate Hudson, Peter Sarsgaard, John Hurt
Director: Iain Softley
Running Time: 104

I thought this movie was going to suck bad, but it didn't.  It wasn't great, but it was ok.

The breakdown:
Hudson plays a hospice nurse who's looking for a better job.  Sarsgaard plays a family attorney that is running interference between applicants and the wife of John Hurt's character.  The wife is reluctant to hire Hudson, but eventually agrees and Hudson moves in with them to be a full time nurse.  Hudson begins to get suspicious of strange things going on in the house and starts investigating into the world of old Southern HooDoo culture.

The movie is full of dark creepy night scenes, but sometimes so dark, I couldn't see what was happening.

The story is somewhat predictable midway through, but entertaining.

I give it 2 1/2 stars for Sarsgaard being so sexy and good acting, with an interesting story.

Hoarders

I have to admit I'm addicted to watching shows about hoarding.  There are two that I try to catch regularly.
One is titled Hoarders on the A & E channel, and the other is titled Hoarding: Buried Alive on TLC.  I also try to catch Confessions: Animal Hoarding on the Animal Planet channel.

The reason why I like watching these mentally ill people?  Well, for one thing I have a strong passion for psychology (I really should've majored in it in college) and it's interesting to see how the mind works, or doesn't in these cases.  How it adapts to accept that things that are terribly unhealthy and unsafe become comforting and normal for these people.

There is a typical pattern for these hoarders.  They are fine and nice, normal and healthy, but then something traumatic happens.  A death, a divorce, robbery, etc. to start them hoarding and avoiding dealing directly and openly with their feelings over the incident.  Some people can admit they are hoarders, a lot of them can't even do that, they say they merely collect things.

Oh, I should mention what hoarding is too.....A mental illness where people amass items, trash, animals, anything and everything over the course of time where it completely takes over their home or property.  They can't throw things away and they can't see that trash has no value.  It usually makes the home unlivable and unsafe in a lot of instances.  They push people away to keep their items and often they are reported to adult protective services or threatened with losing their house before they decide to start cleaning up.

I like the fact that I get to see things that I wouldn't otherwise if it wasn't for these shows exposing people's homes and properties, but often the show is just sensationalizing the problem and exploiting people's feelings and problems.  I'm not sure why the hoarders even agree to be on the show, since it's pretty embarrassing to tackle any mental illness in front of America, but I know they get free help and free counseling to some degree. 

I've seen hoarders that I can genuinely feel bad for.  There was a man who lost his wife suddenly when they were young.  He began collecting dogs to fill the void in his heart over the loss of her, but he never properly grieved the loss.  He was a true lost soul that I felt terrible for.  He was willing to get help and never lied to himself about the process and really made strong positive steps to getting better and healing himself.  That was someone I could root for, and I was glad to see his story had a very good outcome.

Other people I want to punch in the face.  There were quite a few older people (a few young ones too) that were so stubborn and reluctant to admit there were any problems.  They refused to do little things, they dug their heels in and went kicking and screaming along the way to help.  A lot of them never gave themselves over to the process and ended up going nowhere in the show.  They ended the way they started and faced losing their home or going to jail for ignoring warnings from the state.  The worst of these was an animal hoarder that kept a ton of animals on her property that she barely fed and neglected horrifically.  I felt terrible for chickens that were kept by the dozen in tiny wire cages where they could barely move and couldn't lift their heads.  Lots of birds died and she said she was taking care of them.  She was a horrible, mean, old ignorant woman who suffered from great medical problems.  The world will be a better place once she dies and her animals can be freed.  Unfortunately at the end of the show, the humane society could not get all the animals out of there because our justice system is a joke and animal cruelty is not more severely punished as it should be.

The item hoarders I hope, get help, but if they don't and they suffocate under a pile of their stuff falling on their heads in the middle of the night, oh well, but animal hoarding.  There's where I get really pissed off.  Collect crap all you want, but animals need to be loved and protected.  People shouldn't be allowed to get away with having 100's of animals that are often sick, neglected, and mistreated due to mental illness of people.  The government, the country, and we as a people, need to put our foot down and demand that animals be treated humanely and that cruelty has a stiff punishment.  People in a society that mistreat animals can easily transfer those acts to human beings, and the courts need to recognize if a person doesn't have respect for animal life, they will not stop there, but move into hurting people as well.

Things that are out of date....Some are still ok by me.

So, on Yahoo.com I opened up my home page to see this story.  I wanted to repost it here so I could discuss some of this stuff.  The article is from Wired.com written by Nathan Barry.  The article is about how some things from the past are either already out of date or soon will be.  It's a trip down memory lane for me in some cases, others I have no experience with at all. 

I've also somehow lost my normal font and I can't find it, so this is all way out of whack.  I will try to fix that in the future.  The article part is in red and my comments (hopefully) will show up in black.

Audio-Visual Entertainment

1. Inserting a VHS tape into a VCR to watch a movie or to record something.  This I did all the time and I don't miss at all when the tapes got stuck in there and you ruined the whole tape and possibly your VCR.
2. Super-8 movies and cine film of all kinds.
3. Playing music on an audio tape using a personal stereo.  Hell yeah.  Made mixed tapes all the time!
4. The number of TV channels being a single digit. I remember it being a massive event when Britain got its fourth channel.  When I was growing up, I went to the tv often to change the dial.  I remember we had channels: 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, 15, 21, 22, and that was it.  21 and 22 were religious channels so they didn't count anyway and the Hispanic channels were in there somewhere too?  Maybe 34?
5. Standard-definition, CRT TVs filling up half your living room.  For a long time we had a huge tv with a wooden frame finish around the screen.  But in the late 80's we got a Zenith that fit into a corner.  It was a very big deal, saving a lot of space, and it was plastic, not wood encased. 
6. Rotary dial televisions with no remote control. You know, the ones where the kids were the remote control.  I was the remote, I remember that....getting up all the time.  I think we should go back to this one, unless you're sick or injured too many Americans need to get their butt off the couch more often.
7. High-speed dubbing.
8. 8-track cartridges.  I remember my uncle having a TON of these, but I never did. 
9. Vinyl records. Even today’s DJs are going laptop or CD.  Of course, these were going out of fashion when I was little so I only owned 1 that I had won off a contest. 
10. Betamax tapes.
11. MiniDisc.  Yeah, I had a minidisc player while I was in college.  I also won that in a raffle, so at least I didn't buy it.
12. Laserdisc: the LP of DVD.  My uncle again, had a lot of these. 
13. Scanning the radio dial and hearing static between stations.  I still have radios that I can do this on, so I'm not sure why it's listed here.
14. Shortwave radio.
15. 3-D movies meaning red-and-green glasses.  I was so excited if a commercial, tv show, or movie came out on tv where you got to use those glasses!
16. Watching TV when the networks say you should. Tivo and Sky+ are slowing killing this one.  This has been dead a while, I used to tape my shows back in the early 90's so it's really no different now.  Just a different medium. 
17. That there was a time before ‘reality TV.’  Thank God!  Those were the good old days for me.  Most of the "reality" tv stuff today is absolute crap I wish I could take off the air.
18. I really have to add one of my own here - The days where MTV and VH1 used to show actual music videos all day and night long.  If they had a show - it was to countdown the most popular music video's of the week.  I miss that. 

Computers and Videogaming

19. Wires. OK, so they’re not gone yet, but it won’t be long.  I'm not sure about this one at all. 
20. The scream of a modem connecting.
21. The buzz of a dot-matrix printer.
22. 5- and 3-inch floppies, Zip Discs and countless other forms of data storage.
23. Using jumpers to set IRQs.  Don't have any idea what this means.
24. DOS.
25. Terminals accessing the mainframe.
26. Screens being just green (or orange) on black.  Yes, remember those days well.
27. Tweaking the volume setting on your tape deck to get a computer game to load, and waiting ages for it to actually do it.  Don't know this one.
28. Daisy chaining your SCSI devices and making sure they’ve all got a different ID.  Huh?
29. Counting in kilobytes.
30. Wondering if you can afford to buy a RAM upgrade.
31. Blowing the dust out of a NES cartridge in the hopes that it’ll load this time.  I haven't thought of doing this in years!  Thanks for reminding me! 
32. Turning a PlayStation on its end to try and get a game to load.
33. Joysticks.  Miss them!
34. Having to delete something to make room on your hard drive.
35. Booting your computer off of a floppy disk.
36. Recording a song in a studio.  I think they still do this a lot in the industry don't they? 

The Internet

37. NCSA Mosaic.
38. Finding out information from an encyclopedia.
39. Using a road atlas to get from A to B.
40. Doing bank business only when the bank is open.
41. Shopping only during the day, Monday to Saturday.  One of my favorite things to do on the internet is to shop, but it doesn't beat doing it the old fashion way at the mall. 
42. Phone books and Yellow Pages.  I'm glad these are gone.  Killing too many trees for those.
43. Newspapers and magazines made from dead trees.  I still appreciate a good newspaper though. 
44. Actually being able to get a domain name consisting of real words.
45. Filling out an order form by hand, putting it in an envelope and posting it.
46. Not knowing exactly what all of your friends are doing and thinking at every moment.  I'm still not on Twitter or Facebook so this is still how I function everyday. 
47. Carrying on a correspondence with real letters, especially the handwritten kind.  I definitely miss this one, especially when it's a letter from a sweetheart.  Nothing beats that.
48. Archie searches.  No idea what this means?  The funnies in a newspaper maybe?
49. Gopher searches.  Again, no idea?
50. Concatenating and UUDecoding binaries from Usenet.
51. Privacy.  This is partly why I don't use Twitter and Facebook.
52. The fact that words generally don’t have num8er5 in them.  Yeah, this trend bothers me outside of text messages. 
53. Correct spelling of phrases, rather than TLAs.  What's a TLA?  An abbreviation I'm guessing?
54. Waiting several minutes (or even hours!) to download something.  Still waiting minutes to download stuff. 
55. The time before botnets/security vulnerabilities due to always-on and always-connected PCs.
56. The time before PC networks.
57. When Spam was just a meat product — or even a Monty Python sketch.  Spam meat isn't bad for breakfast, I grew up with it. 

Gadgets

58. Typewriters.  Totally used to play on my parents when I was little.  Hated getting my little fingers stuck inbetween the keys!
59. Putting film in your camera: 35mm may have some life still, but what about APS or disk?  I remember my first little blue camera with rolls of film.
60. Sending that film away to be processed.  Exciting!
61. Having physical prints of photographs come back to you.  Even more exciting!
62. CB radios.
63. Getting lost. With GPS coming to more and more phones, your location is only a click away.  I've never had GPS so this is still a common occurance for me.
64. Rotary-dial telephones.  I remember going down to the mall with my mom when I was little to pay the phone bill, in person.  They used to have all the latest phone models on the wall.  They were all push button except for a few rotary dials and all had the bells in them.  That means when you slammed the phone or just the receiver down you got that satisifying ding!
65. Answering machines.  I guess most of them are built into home phones now huh?  But they still exist in some capacity to me, just attached to a phone.
66. Using a stick to point at information on a wallchart.
67. Pay phones.  I miss these.  Always good in case your cell phone dies.
68. Phones with actual bells in them.  See 64.
69. Fax machines.  These are no more?
70. Vacuum cleaners with bags in them.  Still have one.

Everything Else

71. Taking turns picking a radio station, or selecting a tape, for everyone to listen to during a long drive.  Remember this one.
72. Remembering someone’s phone number.  Totally remember trying to remember people's numbers. 
73. Not knowing who was calling you on the phone.  That was so frustrating when I started dating. 
74. Actually going down to a Blockbuster store to rent a movie.  Last time I did this was probably last year, or no, that was a RedBox.  Almost the same thing. 
75. Toys actually being suitable for the under-3s.  Somebody doesn't have kids.  They always make toys for all ages, or age specific, come on.
76. LEGO just being square blocks of various sizes, with the odd wheel, window or door.
77. Waiting for the television-network premiere to watch a movie after its run at the theater.  That was an exciting night at my house.
78. Relying on the 5-minute sport segment on the nightly news for baseball highlights.
79. Neat handwriting.
80. The days before the nanny state.  Uh? 
81. Starbuck being a man.
82. Han shoots first.  Uh again?
83. “Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.” But they’ve already seen Episode III, so it’s no big surprise.  Star Wars, forever a classic.
84. Kentucky Fried Chicken, as opposed to KFC.  I still call it Kentucky fried. 
85. Trig tables and log tables.
86. “Don’t know what a slide rule is for …”
87. Finding books in a card catalog at the library.  That was a PAIN! 
88. Swimming pools with diving boards.   Why wouldn't swimming pools have diving boards anymore?
89. Hershey bars in silver wrappers.  Yeah.
90. Sliding the paper outer wrapper off a Kit-Kat, placing it on the palm of your hand and clapping to make it bang loudly. Then sliding your finger down the silver foil to break off the first finger.  Never thought to do this, or saw it done.
91. A Marathon bar (what a Snickers used to be called in Britain).  Always lived in the States.
92. Having to manually unlock a car door.  My power door locks stopped working years ago so I still do this all the time.
93. Writing a check.  I can't remember the last time I wrote a check out. 
94. Looking out the window during a long drive.  Still do. 
95. Roller skates, as opposed to blades.
96. Cash.
97. Libraries as a place to get books rather than a place to use the internet.  Hopefully they are still quiet there.
98. Spending your entire allowance at the arcade in the mall.  Whew! Hell yeah! 
99. Omni Magazine.
100. A physical dictionary — either for spelling or definitions.  Still got 'em. 
101. When a ‘geek’ and a ‘nerd’ were one and the same.  Aren't they still? 

So, some of these for me aren't old or out of date since I still do them.  Some I really haven't thought of in years, so it's nice to be reminded. 

I think it's a bad thing that society is progressing so fast in technology that even I'm nostalgic at a young age.  Technology is far surpassing anything I thought it could be, but people are not having the same deep connections with people that we need to communicate.  Very few people are friendly on the streets it seems, to me.  Half the time when you say hi to a stranger on the street, they ignore you.  I think technology may be making a lot of hermits out there.  People who are afraid to go out of the house at all, and/or make new friends, etc. 

I've said it before, "friends" or "followers" on Facebook/Twitter that you've never met aren't really your friends or even acquaintances.  I love the internet, and my cell phone, don't get me wrong.  They are very helpful and it's nice to have a way to contact people so easily, but I wish technology would just slow the hell down sometimes.  The more that we, as a society, have things that do things for us i.e. remote controls, car washes, dryers, dishwashers, drive through fast food, drive through banks, etc. the less we have to physically move.  America is the fattest nation in the world.  Americans need to move, need to exercise, apparently, anyway they can.  Americans have exchanged health and mobility for convenience.  It's a slippery slope, that's all I'm saying.

Let me know what you think?

Are you drinking enough water?

Do you ever wonder if you're drinking enough water to stay healthy?
So many reports out there about 8 glasses a day at 8 oz. each, or drink only when you're thirsty, or if you are thirsty then it's too late, you're already dehydrated.
Well, here's a simple rule.
If you are drinking enough water, your urine is clear or close to it.
Kinda' gross to talk about I know, but it's true.
Oh, and tea counts as water.
Drink up and stay healthy!    : )

Dinner for Schmucks

Released: 2010
Comedy I guess
Starring: Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Ron Livingston
Director: Jay Roach
Running Time: 114 minutes




Ok, so I have to admit that the only reason I was watching this movie in the first place was that I have a crush on 3 of the guys in it.  Take them out of it and there's no reason to watch it.  It wasn't very funny.  It was based on the French film  Le Diner De Cons "Dinner for Cretins."   The director also did the Austin Power movies so that gives you a clue to his sense of humor - terribly unfunny.


Rudd plays Tim a guy on the 6th floor trying to get an office and promotion to the 7th floor office that just became available.  His boss likes one of his proposed ideas and decides to invite him to their regular dinner.  You must bring an idiot with you so they can all laugh at them and decide who's the best one.  Rudd finds Carell by hitting him with his Porsche.


High points of the film: Carell makes dioramas of mice doing things as people would including wigs, wearing clothes, and eye glasses.  The mice do things like take a hot air balloon ride, eating dinner, getting married.  That was so cute, I love those!  All the guys I have a crush on, Paul Rudd, Ron Livingston, and David Walliams (of Little Britain fame) are easy on the eyes and in almost every scene.
Low points: Zach Galifianakis is a stupid character as usual.  A lot of the movie is just goofy in a bad way and not funny at all.  I think I smiled a few times (at the mice) and tittered out loud maybe twice.


You can skip this one even if you like Steve Carell and cute stuffed mice.
1 out of 5 ticket stubs for the mice and hot guys.

Of Mice and Men

Released: 1992
Drama
Starring: Gary Sinise, John Malkovich
Director: Gary Sinise
Running Time: 115 minutes

The breakdown:
This is based on the 1937 John Steinbeck novel of the same name.  I have not read the book, so I do not know how close the movie follows the book.  This is a review of the movie only.

Lenny and George are friends trying to make enough money during the depression to fulfill a simple dream of owning a farm of their own.  Lenny (Malkovich) is a simple minded man who needs to be looked after or else he'd certainly be killed or in prison.  George (Sinise) is the man who's decided to give up a normal life and help Lenny make it by in this world.  They work on farms together throughout California trying to save up money for their dream of having no bosses and just living on the land.  Lenny is constantly getting into major trouble through a series of misunderstandings.  To explain his character - he used to be given live mice to play with and pet, but he would always kill them because he was too rough.  George is a smart, kind man. He genuinely cares for Lenny's safety and is incredibly big hearted considering he could have a normal life with friends, a stable job, and a woman if it weren't for him taking care of Lenny.  Due to Lenny's troubles, George is constantly moving them around from farm to farm to get away from the consequences of Lenny's trouble-making.

They finally find a large farm that takes them in and they fit in well with the other farm hands.  Just when they get a plan together to save up enough money and everything is looking up, the bottom drops out and Lenny does something tragic.  Their dreams are obliterated and George has to make the ultimate decision to help Lenny.

It was a very well done movie, and it kept me engaged.  I thought Sinise did a good job of both acting and directing this one.  The movie is heartbreaking and I can see why the story is a classic.  Seeing the movie makes me want to read the book of course, for comparison.  If I do, I'll post it here.

4 out of 5 ticket stubs for it's drama filled thoughtfulness.

Supernova

Released:  2000
Horror, sci-fi
Starring: James Spader, Angela Bassett, Robert Forster
Director: Walter Hill, Francis Ford Coppola (uncredited), Jack Sholder (uncredited)
Running time: an agonizing 90 minutes

This movie might be on my list for top 10 worst films I have ever seen.  I only watched it because James Spader was in it and I think he's cute.  He was shirtless in a few scenes and he did bulk up for the role so that was nice, but by no means worth seeing this piece of cinematic crap.  I'm not sure how the whole 3 director thing worked out, but I can see why 2 of them wanted their names dropped out of the credits.  I wouldn't want it on my resume.

The breakdown:  Man, I don't even want to talk about this one for long.  Spader, Bassett, and a few other crew members are on a search & rescue medical space ship waiting for distress calls.  They get one from a mining facility in far off space and have to jump there.  They lose Forster in the jump and I think he got out of the movie just in time, lucky him!  They get there and find one strange survivor who has found an alien relic of unknown origin.  The stranger slowly picks them off one by one with his superhuman strength and regeneration capabilities.  At the end only Bassett and Spader have survived and it's a happy ending, well, I wouldn't say I was happy at the end, but there's no question the movie is over and the 2 crew left are going to be fine.

Where do I start?  There's 2 crew members who are only interested in having sex in zero gravity.  One who has named the A.I. computer on board "sweetie" and makes everyone else call her that.  I guess he confesses to her that he loves her before he gets killed.  Awkward.
Spader is a rehabilitated drug addict.  Bassett is a bitchy doctor who's not friendly.  The captain, Forster, was working on his thesis and seemed like a good guy before he got all messed up in the jump. 
The plot is uninteresting and lacks any originality.  The acting is poor by some of the little known actors.  I'd say it was good for about the first 20 minutes and then it all went to hell.  If you're at all familiar with Mystery Science Theater 3000, this would be a fantastic movie for them to watch.

This movie was just laughably bad.  Bad, bad, bad.  If you get the chance to see it, DON'T!
I can barely give it 1/2 a ticket stub for James Spader's hotness.

Despicable Me

Released: 2010
Starring: Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand
Director: Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud
Running Time: 95 minutes


Well, you can certainly see a French sense of humor to this film.  It relies a lot on bathroom, immature humor, and just wasn't funny enough to make me laugh out loud.  I cracked a smile a few times though at the minions.

The run down:
Gru wants to be the worst most well known villain in the entire world.  He wasn't shown affection by his mother as a child and never got much of her attention or approval.  Who knows where his dad was, that wasn't explained.  Anyway, he needs to go to the bank to get a loan for his next big project, but meets with some resistance since he is getting older.  He needs to outdo the younger, more bad, Vector, who just stole one of Egypt's Pyramids.

Gru and his minions work together to try to steal the moon.  In the way are 3 orphaned children Gru decides to adopt to use as a cover to get into Vector's house and steal his shrink ray weapon.

I love Steve Carell and he did do a good job of voice acting.  The minions were my favorite part of the movie by far.  The animation was good and visually interesting, but this is no Cars, or A Bug's Life.

In the end, it shows how you can learn to love and accept people even if you didn't think you had any room in your heart for them.  A sappy, but formulaic cartoon - mainly for kids as adults will probably not like it as much as some wittier Pixar movies.

2 out of 5 movie ticket stubs for the minions and Steve Carell.

If your pet store sells puppies, please don't shop there for ANYTHING.

I thought this was an important bit of information to pass on.  As an animal lover, I am devoted to helping animals that cannot speak for themselves.

This is from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals website: aspca.org


On the ground, in state legislatures and even in Congress, the ASPCA is fighting puppy mill cruelty across the nation and working hard to put the worst of these large commercial breeders out of business. But we realize that taking on the mills directly is just one facet of the battle, and not the whole war. If we can raise public awareness about the suffering of puppy mill dogs and get people to stop patronizing the stores that sell them, this appalling industry will die—and that’s where our new campaign and website No Pet Store Puppies comes in.
According to a newly released poll, nearly 80 percent of consumers would not purchase a puppy if they knew he or she came from a puppy mill. But the poll also revealed that 78 percent of consumers are unaware that most puppies sold in pet stores come from puppy mills. “The ASPCA’s research shows that people know puppy mills are bad, but they don’t realize most pet store puppies come from puppy mills,” says Matt Bershadker, ASPCA Anti-Cruelty Group Senior Vice President.
The goal of No Pet Store Puppies is to highlight the direct connection between puppy mills and the puppies sold in pet stores. And it’s not enough to refuse to buy a dog from a pet store—we’re asking you to not give these stores any of your business at all! By purchasing anything—including food, supplies or toys—from a store that sells puppies, you are supporting a business that, in turn, supports the puppy mill industry.
Please visit NoPetStorePuppies.com and take the pledge to not shop for anything at pet stores if they sell puppies. The fun new site also hosts a blog, great general information about puppy mills and the first in a series of funny videos starring our mascot, Larry the dog. Check it out today, and use the social media tools on the site to spread the word to friends and family!

The Pianist

Release date: 2002
Biography Drama
Starring: Adrien Brody, Frank Finlay, and an excellent supporting cast
Director: Roman Polanski
Running Time: 150 minutes you will not soon forget

First the breakdown of the movie and then my soapbox moment for Roman Polanski.

The breakdown:
This is an adaptation of an autobiography of the same name about one man's survival of the Warsaw ghetto during WWII.

Polish Jewish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman is living a normal happy life playing piano until September of 1939, when Poland is invaded.  Szpilman is successful playing piano on the radio and lives with his family of 6 in a nice looking home.  Over time the German Army allows the Jewish population less and less rights.  First they can only have so much money, then they have to wear armbands in public identifying them as Jewish, and ending in November of 1940 when all Jewish people are herded into the terrible Warsaw ghetto to live.  While in the ghetto they are constantly terrified by the SS and threatened daily with starvation, death, and torture.  The family witnesses terrible ends to many people in the ghetto on a daily basis and do all that they can to stay out of harms way.  Soon they are rounded up, as well as most others, and prepared for extermination at a nearby facility, accessible by train.  Szpilman has to watch as his family is taken away on train and he only narrowly survives because a family friend, who is a Jewish Ghetto policeman, shoves him out of the way at the last moment. 

The rest of the movie is Szpilman trying to survive by hiding in homes, the streets, and anywhere he can to make it through another day.  I don't want to spoil most of the movie, because it should really be seen instead of described.  Hollywood itself, couldn't have written a more intense, heartbreaking story if it tried.  The things that this man had to go through for 4 years are nightmarish and unbelievable. 

I can see why this movie received multiple Oscar nominations and won 3.  One for best directing, best adapted screenplay, and best actor (Brody).  I just wonder how Adrien Brody could win an Oscar for this caliber movie and then take a role like he played in Splice.  It's a terrible arc for him.  He needs to be more picky about his movie choices. 

It was an engaging film with great writing, great acting, and a movie that you will not regret seeing.  Watching someone suffer through so much makes me realize how many things I take for granted, and how lucky I am. 

In 1933, there were 9 million European Jewish people.  By 1945, nearly 2 out of every 3 were dead due to the Germans and their allies acting on the Nazi policy "Final Solution."  So, that's almost 6 million people, slaughtered for nothing, for senseless hatred.  The term Genocide didn't even exist until 1944.  If you want to learn more about the Holocaust visit ushmm.org which is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, also where I got the facts for this post.  

It's a difficult movie to watch, since you know that all of it is true, but it's a story that I think everyone should see.

This is very easy for me to give it 4 1/2 ticket stubs out of 5.   

I can also understand why Polanski was the one to direct it.  He actually has a lot of terrible things in common with Szpilman since both suffered through WWII Poland being persecuted for years.
Polanski had to watch both his parents get ripped away from him on the street after living in the Jewish Ghettos.  His mother perished at the Auschwitz concentration camp while his father survived the Mauthausen-Gusen camp.  Polanski escaped capture by hiding in a small crawl space in a building just off the street, but had to survive on his own until he was 12 and the war was over.  He suffered near-fatal beatings, and was target practice for German soldiers at one point.  He tried hiding in Roman Catholic families that would house him and pretended to be a Catholic church goer, but got called out a lot by suspicious people.  He was reunited with his father after the war and concentration camps were liberated. 

And now, my soapbox moment for Roman Polanski.
So this whole story played out mostly before I was born or worldly aware of things going on.  Polanski, 43 at the time, was arrested in March of 1977 for sexual assault of a 13 year old girl, named Samantha Geimer.
He was facing 6 counts of criminal behavior including rape.  He pled not guilty, but Geimer's attorney worked out a plea bargain where 5 out of 6 counts were dropped and Polanski accepted, pleading guilty to "unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor."
Judge Laurence J. Rittenband sentenced Polanski to 90 days in Chino State Prison for psychiatric evaluation.  On release, only 42 days later, Polanski was expecting the judge to give him probation, but the judge had different ideas.  Allegedly the judge told Polanski's attorney that he might suggest more jail time and possible deportation.  Polanski fled to France on February 1, 1978 and has been living there ever since.  Since he can avoid extradition, he's never faced sentencing in the United States and still has pending charges here.  The victim, Geimer, sued Polanski in 1988, but in 1993 Polanski settled with her for a large sum of money.  I'm guessing if you can't get the courts to get justice for you, money is just as good?  As of 1996, Polanski still owed her $604,416.00 but somewhere after that everything got settled and finalized. 
In September of 2009 Swiss police arrested him at the request of the US and he was kept in jail for 2 months in Zurich (where he just happened to finish a movie he was directing).  Then he was put on house arrest in Gstaad while awaiting the decision of his extradition appeals. 
Finally on July 12, 2010 the Swiss rejected the US requests and declared him a free man and released him. 
Geimer gave a tv interview in March of 2011 where she blames the reporters, media, courts, and the judge for causing way more damage to her and her family than Polanski could ever do.  She says the judge was using Polanski and herself to get as much media exposure for himself as possible, running his courtroom like "a show".

So, I'm a bit on the fence about this.  If you were raped, wouldn't you want justice instead of money?  I mean, Polanski did have 9 films under his belt at the time of this crime so maybe the girl, or girl's family wanted money and lied about the attack.  But, Polanski did plead guilty after the plea bargain was offered so if you were innocent would you ever say you did it when you really didn't?  I know all he pled guilty to was the unlawful sex with a minor, but it leaves the door open for rape.  Unless she was willing at first and then changed her mind in the middle or after it was all over.  I mean, she's 13 at the time.  What 13 year old wants to have sex willingly with an unattractive 43 year old man?  It's not like he was Harrison Ford.  It's also strange that the victim says the media and courts did worse things to her than getting raped.  That's an odd thing to say isn't it?  I really can't imagine too many things worse than getting raped.  I guess there are no other witnesses to this, so it's purely he said/she said as is all rape claims.  I suppose no one will ever know what really happened but the alleged victim and Polanski.  Polanski did have a terrible childhood and then his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate was killed by the Manson family in his house in 1969; so there's a lot of trauma that happened to him to support an unstable mind.  It's an interesting situation to analyze, and one I have no good answer for.

Valkyrie

Released: 2008
Drama
Starring: Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Eddie Izzard
Director: Bryan Singer
Running Time: 121 minutes

The breakdown:
Based on a true story, this is the last attempt to assassinate Hitler and it fails, as have all the others, 15 in total.

Cruise plays (with no German accent I'll remind you) Colonel Claus Von Stauffenberg, a German Army officer who is recruited to join a secret group of Germans determined to kill Hitler and take over before the country is defeated in WWII.

Unfortunately, everything works against the group and the final plan is unsuccessful, and they are all found out.

Tom Cruise produced this movie and it shows.  First off, the only way he's going to be in movies now is if he produces them himself, obviously here, he gave himself lead.  Second, he saved all the good lines for himself and hogged the spotlight.  The supporting cast of this movie is excellent, there are so many good actors, it's too bad that the movie wasn't better.  The director just didn't know how to handle this subject matter.  I think this could have been a great film, one maybe even nominated for an Oscar had it been done differently.  I think Cruise and Singer had a lot to do with the failings of this film.  It's an interesting and heartbreaking story where only a few brave people tried to stand up against one of the most evil human beings to walk the planet.  You can't help but care about what happened.  It's just so sad that all the heroes of this movie fell short of their plans that would've done so much for the entire world.  It's frustrating to think about what could have happened, had they succeeded....how many lives could've been saved.

It's a sad movie to watch for its true story content and deaths of the good guys, it's also hard to watch for me, because Tom Cruise himself, didn't try to do a German accent, nor did he let any other actor on set do one.  Very distracting to me if you're playing a true life German hero.

Anyway, I give it 3 1/2 tickets stubs out of 5 purely for the fascinating story presented and the supporting cast doing a great job.

Why is Twilight so popular?

I watched an excellent program on Vampires and Zombies in history, film, and pop culture to find out more about these monsters.  The show's titled "LoveLust" and it airs on the Sundance Channel and is available on ITunes.  This post will cover the Twilight series alone and vampires & zombies in an upcoming post.

This essay is a mix of my own thoughts, and some information from the show.  "LoveLust" is cited when facts have been used from that source.
The Twilight series of books and movies has become so successful that you've had to been living under a rock to not know something of it.  I think the books have been translated into something like 39 languages.  The movies have grossed over 1 Billion dollars worldwide, and I wonder why?  Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly calls the Twilight series the, "Phenomena of our decade."  For the past 2 years the most popular baby names have been Isabella and Jacob, according to the show "LoveLust".

I'm not a fan myself, but some of my family and friends are.  I usually have debates, and discussions with them, trying to figure out why this franchise is so popular.  From what I've seen the typical vampire love story has been altered so heavily that it really isn't a vampire story.  It's a weak, uninteresting plot, with boring characters who have no depth.  At the end of the first movie I realized, I didn't care how the story ended.  I didn't care if the characters ever got together or had sex.  I just didn't care, and I don't see the reason for popularity.  Perhaps it's just some gay men, vampire die-hards, and little girls that are propelling this hysteria over the boys acting in this film, and not really the story itself?  I mean, let's put Jesse Eisenberg, Emily Browning, and Jay Baruchel in the 3 leads and see how well the movies do then?? Heh?
From what I understand there are 4 books and maybe 5 movies devoted to this vampire/human teen love story that is momentarily a triangle (sort of) with a werewolf Native American boy.

This century old vampire doesn't kill people by sucking their blood, he drinks refrigerated blood (I guess?), fights with other factions of vampires that do kill people, doesn't like werewolves, and sparkles in the sunlight instead of dying. Unfortunately for him, he got stuck at age 15ish and looks constantly stoned and creepy.

I have a lot of issues with this story/movie.
1.) I could barely sit through the 1st movie because they directed it in a way that would appeal to children who suffer from A.D.D.  It seems like some scenes are cut abruptly and others are too long.

2.) The actors are terrible.  The lead male vamp looks stoned on possibly more than just weed, but he looks creepy as well.  If he's supposed to be all head over heels in love with this teenage girl (pedophile) why does he look at her like a mental patient looks at his psychologist?  Perhaps he has mommy issues, maybe he hates being stuck in eternal high school, I can't imagine.  The girl has a hard time convincing me she's able to play anything else but an angst filled teenage girl.  The lead werewolf looks to be 14 at best, even with all his muscles, he's not attractive, and not convincing.

3.) The vampires are sparkly, not scary.  They are not very threatening, unless you're a diamond ring and don't want to be outblinged.  Twilight has diluted the core vampire story and taken all the edge out of it, all the drama is missing.  The "LoveLust" program I watched poses the question, "what happens when your monster is so close to being human, and not your enemy that you don't want to kill it?"  The basics of a "I'm in love with a vampire" storyline needs a balance of fear and sex.
One of my favorite ways that the main vampire, Edward Cullen, has been described by full grown women is that he's the "My Little Pony" of vampires - pretty, sparkly, and deeply attractive to very young girls.
Nobody's really afraid of these vampires, and I hear they don't have sex for a long time.  Plus these actors (even though they are dating in real life) have no chemistry together on screen.  The most dead thing about the entire story is their acting.  "LoveLust" calls Edward sanitized, and Kate Harding, an anthropologist on the show says, "He's a vampire who isn't a vampire anymore.  He's been conquered by love."


4.) Other stories have addressed the issue of the age gap successfully.  Buffy and Angel on the series, "Buffy the vampire slayer" was one of my favorite shows ever.  I'm not biased towards or against Vampires.  I enjoy any kind of story as long as it is done well. 
Buffy was a 16 year old cheerleader in the series pilot.  Angel is more than 200 years old.  It didn't seem like pedophilia, like it does in Twilight, because they made jokes about it.  They drew attention to the fact that Angel is MUCH MUCH older than her and has seen a lot of other women and vampires.  Angel, of course, is attracted to Buffy at first because she's pretty, but through repeated exposures, he realizes she is beautiful on the inside as well.  Angel is a more well defined, more fleshed out character, specifically because the show makes efforts to show what he was like before he was a vampire, and what bad things he did immediately after turning.  They show his change, his very bad behavior, and they show that he is different now, but still struggling with his need for fresh human blood.  The writers of the show are very good at pointing out constantly that Buffy and Angel shouldn't be together, but you want them to be together.  They do a good job of showing Angel struggling with being a good reformed vampire and fighting off his terrible black past.  He is trying to atone, trying to be better.  Plus the actors had an intense sexual chemistry that flowed off them like fire, granted, both actors are talented, experienced, professionals at the time of filming this series, but it was so much better than Twilight.

5.) The storyline of Twilight was to be an anti-pregnancy campaign for teens (snooze).  The author wrote this to show young teens to avoid sex at all costs, sex is the true monster in this story.  I think her motives for writing these novels get in the way of creating a good story.  Write a good vampire story or write a religious-inspired anti-sex book.  It's one or the other.

6.) Don't make vampires your friends.  You take away the basic foundation of what vampires are supposed to be.  Stick with the original ideas - they suck blood, they're dangerous, they are dark, they can't be in sunlight, they're not friendly, they like to seduce and trap women, they DO NOT and I repeat DO NOT sparkle - that's the silliest part of all of this.  For a likable bad, dangerous, sexy vampire see the character Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, HE was such a rich character and well played by James Marsters.  Which reminds me, Buffy had a lazy susan of hot young men to lust after for the entire show.  That's another reason to watch!

7.) I think this Meyer woman has done the opposite of what she intended (other than make a ton of money).  She should have made a strong female lead, instead she makes the classic damsel in distress character who needs a man to protect her and give her everything.  She tried to make an anti-sex story, but the movies are propaganda typical of teen love movies where the couple wants to have sex and is completely consumed with the idea of sex, along with casting actors that are now huge sex symbols and lusted after by t'weens everywhere. 

My final suggestion and comment on Twilight is that if you like a good vampire love story, watch the series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, from the late 1990's.  It runs in syndication, on the Logo channel if you have it.  Otherwise, just buy it, you won't regret it.  Not only is it sexy, it's funny, touching, and shows a strong female lead that doesn't get attacked in the alley, she does the attacking.  Joss Whedon is just a genius.

Jackie Brown

Released: 1997
Starring: Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert De Niro, Michael Keaton, Bridget Fonda
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Running Time: Way TOO Goddamn long - 154 minutes

The breakdown -
Pam Grier is Jackie Brown, a flight attendant whose life is in the shitter.  She smuggles drug money for Jackson's character from out of the country on her flights, and eventually hatches a scheme of her own to steal his stash of $500,000 and run away.  Jackson kills his drug minions when he thinks they will lead the police to him.  The police bring in Grier for questioning and she makes a deal with them to get Jackson.  She tricks the police and Jackson for the money and by the end of the movie, you're supposed to care.  The plot is unrealistic and you almost care about some of the characters, but as soon as the movie ends, you forget about it.  Personally, the only character I liked was the bail bondsman played excellently by Robert Forster.

This movie is much, much too long and I see several points where scenes could've been shortened or deleted.  For one thing, Tarantino constantly has characters by themselves, doing nothing but walking around or singing to themselves for minutes on screen.  There's no GOOD reason for this.  It is not showing anything about the character, it's not pushing the story forward, and it's not interesting.  I don't care if they like to sing in the car!  The only thing that it does do is waste my time.  Tarantino is so egotistical since his first few movies, that he thinks he can't do anything wrong.  I have a problem with his movies since Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs.   Both of those were good, and interesting to watch, but they were also some of his firsts.

At least for this movie, instead of Tarantino taking a large role for himself to play like he did in Reservoir Dogs, he only does the voice for an answering machine greeting.  Like all of his other movies though, there's a LOT of swearing and some violence.  There's a lot of predictable scenes and really no surprises.

Grier was good, as well as Jackson, Keaton, and De Niro.  Some of the scenes were interesting to watch, but overall, I can't recommend this movie in good conscious.  At the end of this movie, I was saying to myself, that's it?  That took 2 hours and 34 minutes to show me?  Why even bother to make this movie.  If you want to see a tricky criminal movie that's entertaining, try, Lock, Stock, and 2 Smoking Barrels instead.
1 out of 5 ticket stubs for ridiculous length and Robert Forster, who was the most believable.

Weird, Scary & Unusual

Ah, so I just finished this little gem this week.  I purchased it cheap at 1/2 price books.  If you haven't gone to 1/2 price books, you're missing out.  They buy old books, cds, dvds, as well as games and even records and resell them.  It's a great way to make a little extra dough instead of throwing such items away.

So the book is a little bit of everything.  It includes things like presidential ghosts in the white house, UFO sightings, strange animal facts, mob stories, murders, haunted houses, boats that have disappeared, the Bermuda triangle, etc. 

I learned some really interesting things and seriously doubted other stories being true.  The good thing is, it's broken up into tiny little sections so you can read a couple pages at a time and then put it down and do something else.  It took me about 3 months to read everything this way, but I also started it on vacation while driving across country.

3.5 out of 5 bookmarks because some of the stories in here are just plain not true, and purely speculation.

Dying Young

 Released: 1991
Starring: Julia Roberts, Campbell Scott
Director: Joel Schumacher
Running Time: 111 minutes

The breakdown:
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Oh, sorry.  This movie wasn't anything special.  My expectations for this movie were high.  I remember seeing previews for it decades ago and just barely got around to watching it on cable last night.  I expected an epic love story with someone dying at the end.  Didn't happen.  I know this movie is based on a novel, and perhaps that is better, but I haven't read it.

Scott plays a rich terminally ill cancer patient looking for an "attractive" nurse to take care of him.  Roberts is a freshly cheated on jobless woman looking for a new start.  She goes to his mansion and gets rejected for the job by his dad (the rich mogul) but Scott sees her and has his butler chase her down before she leaves.  She's hired.  She doesn't have any nursing skill or knowledge but does well to take care of him while he's going through his chemo.

He gets tired of hanging around the mansion and tells her to go away with him to the upper California country near the beach to have a safe adventure.  He's been slowly making the moves on her, but she won't have it.  So, they go, while daddy is away on a business trip, and rent a beach cabin.  They make friends with the locals, and eventually kiss and have sex even though, they don't show any of the good stuff.

Scott says he's getting better, but he's lying.  He's getting ready to die and just wanted Roberts around to comfort him in his final days.  She finds out and pleads with him to go back to the hospital and get more treatment.  Don't give up, live with me, blah, blah, blah.  No one dies at the end.  I didn't really care at the end either.

The characters aren't fully developed, the plot's a bit boring, the acting's ok, but some of the shots are bordering on soap opera drama.  I guess that's what happens when Joel Schumacher tries to make a love story - it doesn't work.  Overall, I never got very involved emotionally with the characters, so their wasn't a reason to care about them.

1 out of 5 tickets stubs.  You can totally skip this movie and not miss a thing.

Newest batch of JC charms

So, here are the latest charms to come out.  They are only available for pre-order right now on shopbellabeach.com and won't ship out until mid to late August.

So first up, this cute box of cupcakes.  Top door opens up to reveal 4 individual different colored cupcakes on the inside.  Juicy definitely has an obsession with these sweet treats, since this is their 4th charm that has something to do with cupcakes.  Retails for $52.00

Red mushroom with pave butterfly.  There's actually 2 mushrooms there, it's just hard to see from this angle.  I'm sure this will be gorgeous in person.  I can't wait to see it.  Retails for $48.00

 I know I've already talked about this charm, but it's so cute, and I can't wait to see it in person.  A small slice of  Pumpkin pie with whipped cream on top and small crystals embedded inside the cream.  A spoon on the side, and a plate and napkin round out the charm.  Retails for $52.00

This poor little raccoon looks like he's already roadkill.  I'm not sure which of the JC charm designers mastered this one, but they messed up.  Unless it is MUCH cuter in person, I'm not too thrilled at all with this one.  This is the first time I've ever seen Juicy use googley eyes on anything.  I'm not sure it's right.  Retails for $48.00

                                                            

This little red robin is adorable and one of my must haves.  He's sitting on a little branch with his bright red chest covered in stones.  Lately Juicy's been putting out a lot of bird charms, and that's fine with me.  I love birds.  Retails for $48.00 

This orange pave Jack O' Lantern is going to be so beautiful in person.  I can't wait to have it in my hot little hands.  Though it is the most expensive charm I've ever seen that's a first time release (meaning, not on Ebay after its been retired) Retails for $78.00

One of my favorites of this batch - the Dracula Mouse!  It has 2 white fangs hanging down out of the mouth and a soft fabric cape.  The chest is covered in clear crystals.  I love it.  Retails for $58.00

                                                         

Last one on our list for August - the squirrel and acorn.  Juicy did already release a squirrel but it had a different colored body and no acorn with a pave tail.  This one looks a bit more realistic, but still very cute.  Retails for $52.00

Burlesque

Released: 2010
Starring: Cher, Christina Aguilera, Stanley Tucci, Kristen Bell, Alan Cumming, Eric Dane
Directed by: Steve Antin
Running time: 119 minutes

Wow!  This movie is no good.  So very laughably bad.

I love burlesque - the artform, I really do.  I love the visuals, outfits, the girls, the sex, the sound, the look, but this movie is just a huge waste of time if you like actual burlesque.  I actually fast forwarded through all the musical/dance numbers because they just weren't good or interesting to watch.  Perhaps a better name for the movie would've been, Dive Bar with Pretty Girls Dancing on Occasion.

Short version:
Aguilera is a small town girl with no family.  She's sick of waitressing at the local bar and leaves on a bus to L.A.  (cliche!)

There she finds a burlesque club that's struggling owned by Cher, of course, who sings occasionally.  Cher by the way is starting to mold.  Her plastic surgery and make up might cover some aging, but her eyes have collapsed into their sockets telling everyone her true age.  No amount of shinny eye shadow is going to fix those caverns honey!

Anyway, Aguilera works her way up from waitress, to dancer, to singer, and is the talk of the town.
Cher still cannot save her club until Aguilera tells her a real estate secret at the end.

Oh, yeah, there's supposed to be a romance between a buff guy and Aguilera but it fizzles at the start.  Nothing interesting there.  In fact, I was more interested in the gay one night stand that Stanley Tucci had with a DJ at a wedding.  Tucci picks up where he left off in The Devil Wears Prada with another fashion obsessed man who's gay.   His one night stand wasn't a big part of the movie, but that's how bad the movie was.  Aguilera ends up with the guy, not that you care.  Cher gets her club at the end, not that we care.  Alan Cumming floats around in just a couple scenes with no real reason for his character at all.  I adore him, I really like his acting, but I'm not sure why he was in this movie.  Did he own someone a favor?  Lose a bet, perhaps?  There was also this weird scene with Aguilera looking like an old Taylor Swift.  Her dress was GORGEOUS! But her styling was just weird.  I know they didn't have enough plot because they just kept sticking song and dance numbers in over and over and over again.  I know, it's a musical, but when the music isn't any good and the dancing isn't really interesting then what are you really left with?  A long movie with a skeleton of a plot with bad music all over the place.

Now, Aguilera isn't a terrible actress.  She certainly has a long way to go.  She needs a mentor and a lot of practice to get better, but she didn't totally suck her first time out.

Stanley Tucci was good, as was Eric Dane, but they weren't the whole movie.  The sets, costumes, wigs, and makeup were flashy, but you can't make a movie out of just that.

I think somewhere the screenwriter/director, producer, or both, were trying to make their own Moulin Rouge, but this movie is nowhere near as good as that was.

1 out of 5 ticket stubs for wigs, costumes, make up, and those sexy white Christian LouBoutin's that make a cameo.


Hot Damn!



10

Released: 1979
Starring: Dudley Moore, Bo Derek, Julie Andrews
Director: Blake Edwards
Running Time: 122 minutes

This movie is definitely not for children.  Lots of nudity, sexual situations, and coarse language.

The run down:
Dudley Moore plays a Broadway music composer who has just turned 42.  He has a stable yet boring relationship with a professional singer played by Andrews.  Together they struggle to make the relationship work as he is too busy to pay enough attention to her, and she wants more time from him, and less bickering.

Accidentally while driving, Moore spots Bo Derek in a car on her way to be married and he becomes obsessed with her.  He follows her to the church (hitting a police car head on in the process, but it's at very low speeds so no injuries) and watches her wed.
He finds the priest that married her the day after to find out her name and other useful information such as, Derek's father is a dentist.
He goes to the dentist just to do some investigating and finds he has some dental work coming to him as well as info.
He eventually follows her to Mexico where she is honeymooning, and he gets more and more drunk.
Now, obviously Moore is having a mid-life crisis and trying to regain some of his youth by chasing after this much younger beautiful woman, but the movie has a solid balance of humor, thoughtfulness, and serious moments.  There is a strong character arc shown throughout the movie and a meaningful ending.

One of the most funny scenes is when Moore initially arrives at his hotel in Mexico after drinking a lot of alcohol and taking some pain killers from the dentist.
I think this movie can make anyone laugh, and there's a lot of moments that anyone can relate to who's uncomfortable getting older.  It is a dated movie as far as music and fashion, but if you can get past that, it's still a very modern story.
4 out of 5 stars for being surprisingly funny and enjoyable.

Five Guys Burgers & Fries

My new favorite place for burgers, dogs, and fries is this place.  On the inside it looks like a five&dime old school diner.  You have peanuts to shell in baskets and you can just throw them on the floor, though, I don't.

They have a red and white checkered decor and usually, very, very loud music playing.  I personally, always sit outside and eat to get away from the noise.  I have eaten at locations all across the country and the quality is the same everywhere you go.

The menu is simple and small - a lot like In N' Out, but much much better.  I hate In N' Out overall.  I genuinely find their food to be lacking flavor and what flavor it does have I just don't care for.  Anyway, on to the good stuff.

If you're not feeling too hungry go for the:
little hamburger
little cheeseburger
little bacon burger or
little bacon cheeseburger
all of these with the word "little" in front of it just mean they are normal size for most people.
The hamburgers are not perfectly round patties like you see at other fast food joints, oh no, these are handmade and you can tell by the jagged uneven edges.  The patties also vary in size just a bit but they are robust patties that you might grill up yourself at the next backyard bar-b-que.

DOGS/SANDWICHES -
The kosher style hot dog
cheese or bacon dog
bacon cheese dog or
veggie or grilled cheese sandwiches
are other choices if you're a normal amount of hungry.

If you're really hungry:
hamburger
cheeseburger
bacon burger
bacon cheeseburger
are a bit bigger

The fries!
Five guys style or
Cajun
They come in regular (they fill up the brown bag they serve your food in)
or
large. (I just don't know why they offer large.  Regular size is enough for 2 people to share!)

So when I go, I usually get
a little cheeseburger with raw onions, ketchup, and mustard
A bacon cheese dog
and regular fries.
This I split mostly with another person, but if I was wayyyy hungry I could finish it all myself.

The prices are reasonable, the decor is certainly dress down, the atmosphere is casual, and the food is just awesome.  This IS the fastest growing fast food chain in the country and I totally understand why.

I'm not the only one who likes it.  This place has been garnishing a lot of attention lately, even though, they don't advertise.  They have received a lot of critical acclaim as well and they post it up all over the walls.

If you haven't been - you need to go.

5 out of 5 forks.  The best fast food joint around!

fiveguys.com

That movie made me sooooo sick

Splice
Released 2009
Starring: Adrien  Brody, Sarah Polley, and an assorted cast you've never heard of.
Directed by: Vincenzo Natali
Running time: 104 agonizing minutes

This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen, next to Saw, and Quarantine.

I don't want you to waste your time like I did mine so I'll tell you everything.
WARNING: If you still want to see this movie and be surprised at the end, do NOT read this review.  I go over the entire movie and tell everything all the way to the end.  BUT I'M BEGGING YOU - DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE - IT SUCKS!!

2 scientists, and I use the word "scientists" loosely because the actors never convinced me that they could be scientists, start tampering with DNA and try to MAKE a new species of animal.

The first creature they make are a pair of slug like, flesh covered, blobs that don't have eyes, mouths, faces, hair, or appendages of any kind.  They are disgusting, but have cute names like Fred and Ginger!
Anyway, the company that funds their "work" tells them they need to start working on some new protein so they can make mad mad money off of it.  The "scientists" say they are interested in working with human DNA to make cures for cancer and other deadly diseases.  The company says no, do as we say or else you're shut down.
The pair get upset and decide to do a secret experiment with human DNA and a little of the slug things to see what happens.
Well, they are successful, but the creature grows fast.  Pretty soon they have a baby pop out of this rubber womb in their lab and they start to raise it.  Brody expressed concern that they should stop, but his girlfriend, the other scientist, really wants to keep it.  So they do.
It grows into a child/animal thing.  Humanoid shape with no hair anywhere, arms kind of, with 4 fingered hands, and 2 legs more like a chicken or ostrich, oh and a poisonous tail.
She skewers a cat and that's how you find out she has a mean streak.  She doesn't speak, she does understand English though and she can spell things out with her scrabble board.
The company wants to meet with the scientists to see their progress.  The company is glad the blobs are doing well and they decide to go public to their shareholders.
At this big announcement, the scientists bring their 2 blobs on stage so they can mate in front of everyone.
Well, instead of mating, they shoot out their stingers and kill each other with lots of blood and gore, spraying all the shareholders.
The scientists say that one of them changed sex, turning male from female and they didn't know how THAT happened.
Unbeknownst to everyone else, the little child/animal/wrong thing is growing into a nice young lady at the home of the scientists.  I guess, they live at the facility they work at somehow?  The couple decides to move little miss bald girl to an abandoned family farm on the outskirts of town.  At this point they have learned that she likes to wear clothes, put on make up, breathe underwater, pet kitty cats, and eat candy.  Oh, she also has some sort of lizard webbed spikes and wings that come out when she wants them too.
Brody finds out that when the thing was created the woman scientist used her own egg for fertilization.  She loves it.  Brody has wanted to kill it off and on again, but doesn't for some reason.
One night Brody goes out to check on her after fighting with his girlfriend and ends up having sex with it.  Yes, I said they have sex.  Even though he's played a surrogate father to this creature and it has part of his girlfriends DNA in it and it's not totally human, he had sex with it.  How hard up do you have to be?
Anyway, cue the girl.  She walks in on them as the quasi-human is about to puncture him with her tail.  She's hurt and confused (the girlfriend).  They fight back at their new apartment and realize they are both really messed up.
The woman goes to the farm and almost gets killed by the stinger of this humanoid thing and she decides it's best to cut off part of her tail and remove all things that are human possessions like a necklace, clothes, and the pet cat.
Eventually, they decide they need to kill it before it escapes and kills someone.  They go to do that when it seems like she has died of old age.  Remember she ages really fast.
They bury her in the ground and are going to burn all the evidence when they are rudely interrupted.  Brody's brother, I know I didn't mention him, but it really didn't matter much.  Anyway, the brother spilled the beans to the boss that they were up to something and that he was the only one outside the couple to have seen the thing and almost got killed by it.  I know I didn't tell you about that scene, but it still really doesn't matter because this movie is just so bad.
The boss wants to see it and when he threatens the couple, you see the winged thing come and fly off with him.  Next thing you know, he's dead in a tree.  Then little miss sunshine swoops down on the brother and takes off with him too.  Brody and the woman run off into the forest to find his brother and the humanoid, but then Brody drops his flashlight into the river and has to reach down to get it.
The humanoid pops up and grabs him dragging him under the water.
He comes to the surface and it's winter outside so he's just laying there freezing while the woman looks helpless.
I guess she gets scared and just leaves Brody there to die while running away back towards the farm.
BUT the winged thing we discover has changed into a man humanoid like the blobs did and he's now attacking his "mother?" 
She asks it what does it want and he can speak two gravely words, "inside you."  Uckkkk
Is anyone else ready to vomit?  Man this movie is so all kinds of wrong.  So anyway, he starts raping her and then we see Brody come up behind them and he puts a steak/pole through it's midsection.  It turns to him and stingers him to death.  Then mommy gets a rock and finally kills with it with whacks on the head.
So, cut to darkness.
Last scene opens with the head of the company funding the scientists speaking to just the woman, of course, since Brody died.....and she is signing paperwork being told she can never speak of this to anyone, ever.
She stands up and we see the female scientist is pregnant.
Thankfully that movie is over.

So, I understand what this movie was supposed to be about.  It was supposed to be a modern take on Frankenstein.  It was supposed to say, don't mess with mother nature, scientists, don't do weird experiments on humans and animals, don't play God.  I understand that statement, but the way they went about it, was completely horribly wrong in so many un-entertaining ways.

The main characters had no chemistry, they were not believable as a couple, nor as the people they were supposed to be portraying.  The writing was weak, the story was boring, the storyline itself is revolting.  I want to be entertained, not sick to my stomach, and not saying to myself wow, can this movie get any worse?

If you like movies, or horror stories, or Adrien Brody, don't see this movie.  Even HE can't save it.
I give it my worst possible rating:
0 out of 5 possible ticket stubs because there is nothing entertaining about genetically-engineered humanoid incest.
By the way, if you've already seen this movie and liked it;  I would really be interested in hearing how anyone could enjoy this film.  Please leave me a comment.