I know you're up there 'cuz I can smell your brain

We've been watching more movies than usual, lately.

It all started last weekend when I went to GameStop to pick up a copy of The Incredibles (Pixar, 2004, Collector's Edition) for Tim, and ended up buying two other movies along with it in order to take advantage of their "three for $19.99" sale.

With the exception of Cars, Pixar can be counted on to regularly crank out some pretty great entertainment. (Sidebar: Hello, Pixar? I'm going to assume that Cars was the trick you had to turn to keep pimp daddy Disney from roughing you up in an alley and taking all your crack; therefore I'm willing to overlook that one indiscretion. You had to do what you had to do... but now you'll never do it again. Right? RIGHT?) Even though I've seen The Incredibles approximately 823,742 times (thank you, children), it is indeed full of all kinds of geekgasm-inducing technology which makes owning it worthwhile for just that reason alone. But that wasn't the reason; it was because Tim made The Face, and The Face is how Tim gets whatever Tim wants... which here means "Tim and his Face wanted The Incredibles on DVD".

The other two purchases: Bourne Supremacy and The Aviator, neither of which I'd seen.

Bourne Supremacy: The second installation in the Bourne franchise (imdb tells me there is a third in production), was good and enthralling and mind-candy-esque and enjoyable. I liked it, and I don't regret spending $6.67 to own it. And just FYI, as I typed that just now I was all 'damn, dude, that's less than the cost of a movie ticket!'.

The Aviator: I expected to dislike this film strenuously, or at the very least, fall asleep while it was on. Neither happened, actually, and in fact I enjoyed it quite a lot. Listen, I have to say that it annoys the crap out of me when I am forced to go against my natural loathing of certain celebrities, and that's what happened as I watched this film. Screw you, Scorsese, you bastage. This is the second time in as many months I've seen a film in which you've managed to pull a beautiful performance out of DiCaprio, totally ruining my perfectly comfortable sense of contentment with being unable to tolerate him whatsoever. Feh.

Anyway. The Aviator? Great movie. What a great character Hughes was in life, as if he lived so that he would be immortalized in film. Really, I've always been fascinated by brilliant, odd, bizarre people (have you met my husband?), and Howard Hughes took those characteristics to the extreme and then kept right on going until it ultimately killed him. Killed him dead.

After watching the film, I began noodling around the web for more information and then yesterday ended up at Books-a-Million to purchase _Citizen Hughes: The Power, The Money, and The Madness_. It isn't very often that a film will motivate me to go out and obtain more information on the topic/characters/etc., but I totally love it when that kind of thing occurs. It's just so rare for me, to have something new come along and catch my jaded, old, uninterested eye. When it all clicks, though... oh how sweet it is. When something sparks my serious interest, I want to get right down and wallow in it. Roll around, writhe, get it all over me, soak it all in, learn as much as I can about every little last bit on the topic. Mmph. It's times like this that I remember just how dearly I love to learn. Thanks, Howard.

And so, bringing our week of movie gluttony and this behemoth of a post to a close, I move on to talking about how we went to see Apocalypto after Friday's bomb of a dining experience. Otherwise known as "I am Jaguar Paw. You killed my father. Prepare to die.", Apocalypto is the movie I was referring to when I said I just don't think I'm old enough for R rated movies, anymore.

Maybe it's age. Maybe it's motherhood. Maybe it's hormonal. I don't know what it is; it seems to have come on suddenly, and now it's standard me-ness: I can barely tolerate movie violence.

Used to be, I could take in whatever violent media came my way. Horror movies? Alrightie. Scary books? Bring 'em on! And here I am, still ultra-interested in the psychology of serial killing and everything that goes along with that; you'd think that with the amount of media I consume on said topic I'd have built up a tolerance. Or something.

Apparently, not so much.

I spent the majority of this ultra-violent movie with a) my eyes closed, b) my face buried in Tim's shoulder, c) a lump in my throat, and/or d) the urge to make this the first movie I've ever walked out of. It was gut-wrenching... and it made an impression, that's for sure. I won't be forgetting it any time soon. Is that the earmark, the benchmark, the somethingsomethingmark, the magical special flobotsam of a worthwhile film?

I just don't know.

Fire Mountain

Yesterday evening Tim and I were deeply and passionately engaged in a fantastically implemented course of lazing. That which one might call loafing, or perhaps even lollygagging. Lounging. We were just really lethargic, and.. ok, wait a second...

Sidebar: Why do so many words for doin' nuthin' start with L? This is going to bother me for awhile, and you should know that.

Right, so we were deeply and passionately engaged in the lackadaisical (again with the L!), as is our wont, and we were attempting to gather ourselves up to go take in a show (more on that in another post). We distracted ourselves for awhile (there's this one word Tim can say which sends me into utter fits of uncontrollable laughter - it's one of his super powers, and he doesn't wield it lightly. Having time to kill, though, he trotted it out.), and then circled around to the inevitable "so what do you want to do for dinner?" topic. We go through this a lot. Often. Daily, even. And whenever anybody asks that question, the answer is typically one of two things: 1) Donkeys 2) Donkey toes.

Shut up. You knew what you were getting into.

So we went through this litany and then ended up with an "I don't know", even though I was formulating a plan to suggest a particular restaurant. That's when he did that goddamned thing he does; that thing where he looks at me and tells me precisely what I'm thinking (Seriously? Why can't he manage this about important things? It would save me so much of the wanting to kill him). Which here means he stated the name of a restaurant where we'd never been, which we often mock, and months ago decided we'd eventually try just because the name entertains us so.

We're kind of odd, you see. The 'restaurant' in question happens to be called "Fire Mountain", and every time we pass it, one or both of will find ourselves incapable of resisting the urge to shake a fist in the air while bellowing"FIIIIIIIIRE MOOOOOOUNTAAAAIN!"

What? Remember "we're kind of odd", from a few seconds ago? Right.

So as he goes to hop into the shower, he says "Fiiiiiiire Moooountaaaaain!" to which I reply "oh, fuck you" (which, in point of fact, is what I had said to him after he trotted out that made up word. Only after ten minutes of guffaws.), and therefore we were in mutual agreement: dinner plans were now set.

The place was awful. Really bloody terrible. So bad that I do believe I stated "I never ever want to set foot in this place ever again. Ever!" after my first look at the buffet options. It wasn't a total failure, however, as the people-watching was plentiful (the helmet hair! The mullets! The gold dog tags!), and at least the honey yeast rolls (which comprised the majority of my dinner) were tasty.

After a smidge of time-killing (I really thought dinner would take us longer than the 30 minutes it ended up consuming), it was on to the theatre.

As it turns out, I'm not old enough for R-rated movies, and that's the forthcoming, not now, not this one, later on post.

Tasties

Following (the glorious wonderful fantastic hotness that is) beanmom's lead, I present to you the list of edibles I prepared this holiday season:

• Pretzels dipped in white chocolate, and then rolled in either Andes chocolate mint pieces, peppermint bark chunks, or bits of Hershey's chocolate mint candy canes.
• Fool's Toffee drizzled with white chocolate
  
• Yellow cake cream cheese cookies, cookie-press-shot into vague treelike shapes
  
• Coffee spoons, plain dark chocolate and and dark chocolate filled with Andes chocolate mint pieces
  

A sampling of each went into festive tins which were then presented to various co-workers and friends. It's hard to tell how people are going to react to foodstuffs as gifts, but I think they seemed to go over well.

Later, we decorated cookies with the kids. I think Tim may still be working his way through the cookies that were not given out. I could be wrong about this, though, as my boy loves him some cookie action.

I think perhaps I will NOT bake anything for awhile. Except maybe frozen cheese-filled garlic breadsticks. And cheese-stuffed-crust frozen pizza. In fact, I'm going to take a stand and say that pretty much anything with cheese that requires baking? A-okay. Other than, though, no baking. Honest.

Hippo... hippo... hippo... oooooh

My husband is adorable, and he occasionally executes meticulously calculated 'make wife happy' operations. In an example of just such an operation, on Christmas morning I opened my gift from him to discover a pair of awesomely awesome sterling Boynton hippo earrings. Did you know that I completely love hippopotamuses? Shut up, they had me at hello.

Now, loving them as I do, I am compelled to purchase any hippo plushies (or piggy banks, wall art, mirrors, figurines, ahem) I happen to encounter. Kind of like how Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory (a craptastical crapfest of a movie) is compelled to buy every single copy of Catcher in the Rye he finds? Like that, except with less paranoia and less of the crazy eye and yet at the same time, just a smidgen more of the sugar tits. I'm not sure what it is, but there's something about hippos that makes me ridiculously hap-hap-happy.

Of all the hippopotamuses in all the land, my very very favorite are from the Boynton cartoons (caricatures?). When my children were toddlers, board books such as _But Not The Hippopotamus_ and _Hippos Go Berserk!_ were big hits, and reading them aloud over and over (and over again) probably sparked the beginning of my hippo adoration.

Also, um, in going to fetch the Boynton site link just now? I have discovered that there is omg a Boynton plush Hippo, which immediately upon viewing I decided I absolutely must have or I will die. DIE.

I digress.

My husband. I love him. In short, hippos rule.

In which I relate observations

When I went to preschool as a child, I learned many things. How to tie my shoes, how to weasel out of naptime, how to write my phone number (and I still remember that number, today). Barry, the director, was one in a million; the sort of person my grandmother would and probably did describe as "such a character!"

"Bug," he'd say to me - yes, that's right... Bug. My childhood nickname. Shush. "Bug, keep your eyes peeled. You'll notice all kinds of things that you might be missing, things that are right under your nose."

I try to remember that. Typically I notice things, and then I think to myself "I should tell Tim about this". And then, usually, I forget. I'm good like that.

One of the things I saw which I did remember to mention was a hand-painted sign outside of a dry cleaning business. SEAMSTRESS AVAILABLE FOR ALTERCATIONS, it read. I had to resist the urge to go inside just to see if I could start a brawl.

I sat at a stoplight and watched a minivan pull out of the take-out Italian food joint near our house, the other day. As the van accelerated, two styrofoam containers of food went tumbling down the length of the roof and crashed to the ground. A complete waste of parmesan.

In the grocery store parking lot, a license plate which said "HTML". I considered hanging around long enough to see if the car happened to belong to somebody I know, but then decided against it. It's pretty likely, though.

This morning I headed over to le botique Target to procure a new office coffeemaker (the heating element died on the one we had... it was a crisis) and on the way back down through the Devine Delta, I spied seven police cruisers and a handful of onlookers, all gazing down over the guard rail into a creek. I can't help but wonder what was going on down there.

Starting fresh feels good

*nod*