Movie Review - Alice in Wonderland

3.67 stars out of 5

Someday I'd like to live inside Tim Burton's head and make sweet, sweet love to his brain all night long.

Like with his other movies, the world he creates in Alice is fanciful and amazing. The creativity that man exudes is a force to be reckoned with.

But the problem I have with Alice is that I know the story. It is nobody's fault but my own that I prefer to watch movies that are original to me. This is why no movie I have ever seen that is based on a book is EVER better than the book. I mean, sure, Tim Burton has put his own magnificent, glorious spin on the story... but, still, it remains a story that I have seen before.

The Tim Burton movies that I've enjoyed the most are the ones he comes up with himself (Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands). Not only does he create the universe that those characters reside in, but he creates the characters as well. That is where he really shines.

Lent - Day 10

One of the things my husband and I would do together, since the beginning of time, was to watch a bunch of the Oscar nominated movies together in the weeks preceding the award show. (Don't ask me how I am doing this now... I am not going to tell you.)

The other day, I watched Avatar without him.

Vern is not interested in watching the Oscar movies this year because he is busy doing other things. Which is okay. But I miss sharing them with him.

I like sharing a good movie with Vernon. It makes the movie itself that much more enjoyable to be watching it with someone who can appreciate it in the same way. Vernon is my kindred movie spirit. We've always liked and admired the same kind of movies. We appreciate independent, documentary, good-quality, and creative films... films like In the Bedroom, Magnolia, Little Children, Boys Don't Cry, Life is Beautiful, Crash, Sling Blade, Hoop Dreams, Memento, American Beauty, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and the like.

Watching a good movie with Vernon is better than having sex. (Well, maybe not SEX, but definitely better than foreplay.)

But now, Vernon will never know how freaking amazing Avatar is, which makes me just a little bit sad. 

Which, like I said, is okay. Vernon is busy with other things because he has a purpose. He is not a paralyzed lion, and I love him for that. Vernon has a passion and he is pursuing it, and, I will tell you right here and now that it is changing him for the better. It really is.

I used to be the type of person who wanted to spend every waking moment with the love of my life. I wanted to model our relationship after Paul and Linda McCartney. I read something about them once where they said that they had only spent one night apart in their almost 30 years of marriage. At the time, I liked that idea. I REALLY liked that idea. There was something very romantic about the idea of Paul and Linda McCartney (or Vernon and Allison) never being apart. I didn't want to be apart from Vernon for a night... ever.

But lately, I'm starting to think that there is value in living our own lives. And what I mean by this is in living our own lives separately, but together (if that makes any sense). I think what I'm trying to say can best be described in the poem On Marriage from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. The last lines of the poem say:

And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Vernon is the oak and I am the cypress. We can grow, but not in each others shadows because then neither of us get any light.

I like that poem.

So, even though Vern isn't watching the Oscar movies with me (of which I have three more that I need to get watched by next weekend: The Hurt Locker, Crazy Heart, and Up In the Air), I am okay with that. Because that is what allows us to grow. And that is a good thing.

So, today, I am filled with love for Vernon. For all of what I've listed above and for this:

 

Because there is nothing sexier than a man wearing a sling. I repeat: There is nothing sexier than a man wearing a sling. NOTHING.

Open

My hold for the book Open by Andre Agassi finally came through at the library the other day. I got the book, and I saw that I only had two weeks to read it because it was a new release. And, I was, like, "Frick. Now I have to read this book under pressure." Which I don't like. I don't like to have to read a book under pressure.

I mean, sure, I did just read Kathy Griffin's latest book (that's right, I read Kathy Griffin's  book, people. Whatever. It was awesome) in only two days, but I don't like going into something with some external pressure telling me what to do and when to do it (story of my life, right?).

So, I thought, maybe I won't even bother with Open. Too much trouble. I'll just read a page or two to determine that I'm not missing out on anything and then I'll return it.

I start reading it, and by the first page... literally, the first PARAGRAPH, I am hooked. It is freaking awesome, that's what it is. Agassi is a surprisingly amazing writer. I'm serious. It is really, really, really well-written. And it is really, really good.

I've been talking about the book all the time. To Vernon, when he's nervous about starting something new... "You know, Andre Agassi was really nervous the first time he went to the U.S. Open. He felt like he didn't fit in there, but look at him rule those courts now."

"Did you know Andre Agassi used to start things on fire as a way of dealing with stress?"

"Andre Agassi actually hated tennis, you know."

"I like these pancakes. You know what Andre Agassi liked? Crack."

"Hey, Andre Agassi's father made him hit 2,500 balls a day, 17,500 balls a week, which equals nearly one million balls a year. His father said that a child who hits one million balls each year will be unbeatable."

Pretty much everything that comes out of my mouth right now has something to do with Andre Agassi. (Except for the part about how it hurts when I pee after having sex.)

Here's some of his words that I particularly enjoyed (from page 7):

"One things I've learned in 29 years of playing tennis: Life will throw everything but the kitchen sink in your path, and then it will throw the kitchen sink. It's your job to avoid the obstacles. If you let them stop you or distract you, you're not doing your job, and failing to do your job will cause regrets that paralyze you more than a bad back."

Love it.

Superfreakanomics car seats

Okay... who wants to talk about that car seat section in the book Superfreakanomics? This is big news, people! Why aren't more people talking about this?

It's an economist who co-wrote the book (thus no bias is intended or created) and what he did was compare a bunch of data on car seats crashes with and without car seats and this is what he came up with:

Children, older than age 2, are just as safe with a regular seat belt as they are in a car seat.

And then, the authors went and conducted their own children's seat belt safety test. But first they had to find a crash test place that would let them do the test (apparently, most of the crash test places are in cahoots with the car seat manufacturers so none of them wanted to do it). They finally found one who would do it for them (under the conditions of curiosity and anonymity on their end) and they again found that seat belts were just as safe.

So why are we all putting our kids in car seats? (And, yes, I still do, because I am required to by law... so don't go getting your panties in a knot people. But the minute my daughter turns 8 or grows taller than 4'9", she is getting out of that booster seat.)

Larry Wachowski

I was leafing through a copy of People magazine at the library the other day, and I saw a picture of The Matrix director, Larry Wachowski, dressed up as a woman.

I was very fascinated and excited by this news, so I told Vernon about it right away when he got home. And he's says, "Yeah, I knew that, like, two years ago."

I was floored by this. Not by the fact that Larry Wachowski has been dressing like a woman for years, but by the fact that I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT IT. I should officially have my KNOWER-OF-ALL-THINGS-POP-CULTURE card revoked. I don't deserve to be a member anymore.

(There was also some more conversation between Vernon and myself where I got upset with him for not telling me this information two years ago so I wouldn't feel so out of the loop now.)

Big Love

It's been three years since Big Love first premeired on HBO, and I've finally started watching it. I've been hacking it off the internet for the past eight days now, and I've gotten through the first nine episodes of Season One.

Wow. What a show. The character development is amazing. Everything about it is just so incredibly well done.

In case you're not in the know, Big Love is that show about polygamists in Utah. Interesting concept, right? Well, it makes polygamy seem kind cool and not any more dysfunctional than a traditional family (at least the modern polygamists, not the ones at the compound... they crazy). They all just seem so happy with their family situation that consists of three wives, one husband, and seven children between them.

Who are we to judge whether that is right or wrong? I mean, Kevin Federline is the father of several kids with different mothers, and nobody cares about that. I repeat: NOBODY CARES ABOUT KEVIN FEDERLINE. Why should our society be so quick to judge the lives of polygamists (not the ones that are marrying the 14-year-old girls, but, you know, the "normal" ones), if we're not judging the sex life of K-Fed? Of course, polygamy is not a lifestyle that I would choose, but I would also choose not to have sex with Kevin Federline.

Speaking of sex, they sure do have a lot of sex on this show. I think Bill Paxton's naked butt has made an appearance in at least eight of the nine episodes that I've seen. He just really, genuinely loves all of his wives, and they really, genuinely want to have sex with him. Seeing them have that much sex makes me want to have sex more with my husband. (On a sidenote: I wonder if I ever watched clown porn if that would make me want to have sex with clowns?)

The only thing about the show that seems a little bit off is the characterization of the teenage boys in the show. I mean, do teenage boys really talk about boners THAT much (if so, I would fit right in, hardee, har, har)? There was one scene where a teenaged boy was pretending to steer the car with his hard-on (and he was in the car with a bunch of other boys). I don't get it. Unless that's how kids now-a-days are acting. It's been awhile since I've been a teenager, and it's been even longer since I've been a teenage boy, so I don't really know.

Matt Saracen

There was this amazing scene in Friday Night Lights this week. (Occasionally, I will get struck by the awesome-ness of a certain scene in a movie or television show, as I've done before, and the scene will resonate with me for weeks / years to come... this was one of those times).

In the scene, Matt Saracen was looking through the window of the house that he shared with his mom and grandma, and they were quietly arguing over whether they should get a new television set. Awesome, right?

Okay. Maybe you had to be there. But it was so poignant because he was thinking of leaving town and leaving them, and the scene just showed how ready he was to do that, and how trivial his life in Dillon had become.

And then, at the end of the show, he left town and that made me very, very sad because I've had a crush on Matt Saracen since the first episode. He reminds me of Vernon. And Matt's relationship with the coach's daughter reminds me of my high school relationship with Vernon. Their relationship brought me back to my old courting days with Vernon, back when we were both weird little teenagers with nothing better to do than to talk about Margaret Cho's new TV show, All-American Girl. Oh, them were the days. Them were the days.