There you go…

The New York Times said the same thing about “The Wedding Date”, by the way.

Haven’t written much this week, because our idiot president’s rhetoric has me so pissed that my thoughts are constipated. I have this to say about privitizing Social Security though: NO. I hate that the administration uses the fear smear to push every agenda they’ve got. Maybe if they were straight JUST ONCE, I could agree with something. But as soon as they start with the bullshit hyperbole, I just shut down. Seriously though: Privitizing Social Security: NO.

Ossie Davis died today. This has made me really sad for some reason. Liked him. He was the best thing about Joe Vs. the Volcano. He played Marshall, the chauffeur.

Marshall: So, what kind of clothes you got?
Joe: I got the kind of clothes I’m wearing.
Marshall: So, you got no clothes.

And also, of course, he was great as the Mayor in Do the Right Thing. It was he who uttered the title line.

OTHER MOVIE LINE OF THE DAY:
Wrigley: Do you have a green salad?
Waitress: What the fuck color would it be?
– INTOLLERABLE CRUELTY –

Movies

Went the the movies the other night with the man, and there were several previews for upcoming films that I’d like to give a review of. Here goes:

THE WEDDING DATE – Single girl hires a gigolo to be her date for her sister’s wedding, and (hope I’m not going out on a limb here) the two fall in love. This sounds a lot like Pretty Woman with the gender roles reversed. It’s PRETTY MAN!

THE HONEYMOONERS – Remake of the classic sit-com with a racial twist; the cast is African American. I think both Jackie Gleason and Thurgood Marshall are spinning in their graves over this one. Not only is it an awful premise, but it looks as though it sets the worst African American stereotypes back about thirty years.

ICE PRINCESS – Ugly duckling figures out how to ice-skate a triple jump using calculus and thus finds her own inner beauty. Is it me, or is this a chick flick?

MOVIE LINE OF THE DAY: I’ve seen better film on teeth! – GET SHORTY –

Calgon, take me away!

Just having a rough one. The kids were up before the sun. My oldest one…I think he believes we are farmers or something. Then, after getting him off to school and the man off to work, the little one and I had our breakfast and played a bit. Around 9:15 I started to get him ready for his tumbling class at the Y, but he was uncooperative. He wanted to play in his room, so he fought and kicked the whole time I was dressing him. Somewhere in there, he hit his head on a drawer and screamed even more. It took lots of cuddling, bouncing and belly raspberries to calm him.

Then I washed and dressed, and we came downstairs. He fought putting his coat and hat on, screaming the whole time. Finally got him outside, and when we got in the garage, he broke free of me and ran around the car. He cried and screamed, twisting and becoming invertibrate the whole way into his car seat, somewhere in there, his ankle got twisted and he screamed even more. Finally got him in there, and turned on the engine. The clock said 10:34. His class had started at 10. What was I thinking?

So, we went to a certain donut place that makes little donut holes he likes, and we had a nice time. Picked up the older one, came home and I made them lunch, burning my arm on the toaster oven in the process. Now they are eating from their paper plates, the little one humming the Zoo Pals theme.

Is it nap time yet?

Oh, by the way…

I had my ultrasound the other day, and the baby’s not due until September. It’s exciting, though it’s going to be a long, hot summer.

Still emotionally on edge. I’ve been crying a lot at while watching TV. I think even the end of a crappy movie like Kangaroo Jack could set me off….

Refusing the Refuse

I have a new neighbor, who for three weeks now has been leaving his trash on my property, blocking my walkway and generally creating an ugly vista in full view of my kitchen windows. I have tried to give him a hint by moving the trash over to his property, but he seems to be a bit of a thicky. What’s my next move? (yeah, yeah, I’ll talk to him…..)

but for now….

MOVIE LINE OF THE DAY: I’m a mushroom-cloud-layin’ motherfucker, motherfucker! – PULP FICTION –

Wringing Out the Reality of Spongebob

Last week most of the mainstream media picked up a “news” story about conservative Christian groups who are up in arms over the alleged promotion of gay values by Nickelodeon’s Spongebob Squarepants. This is not the first time the debate on this subject has been so animated. Spongebob has always been popular in the gay community, and these same allegations have surfaced several times since the cartoon’s inception. The renewed focus on the title character’s sexual orientation came after Spongebob’s inclusion in a video that is to be distributed to schools across the country to promote multiculturalism and tolerance.

The conservative Christian group Focus on Family fears that Spongebob may be gay because the character is not afraid to hold hands with his starfish friend, Patrick. Focus on Family’s founder, James C. Dobson, is urging parents and schools to boycott a pro-tolerance video campaign by the We Are Family Foundation as part of a “spiritual battle” for the country. The video also features the Muppets and Clifford the Big Red Dog, among others, and makes no specific references to homosexuality or gay rights in general. The conservatives may have a point about boycotting Spongebob, but I believe their focus is in the wrong place.

Focus on the Family’s main objection to the character is his suggested homosexuality. The ridiculous reality of Spongebob’s sexual orientation is this: he’s a sponge. Whether he’s been manufactured by 3M or grown naturally in a peaceful seabed, being a sponge negates his existence as a sexual being. Sponges are not creatures to which one can apply any kind of morality. Sponges, as they occur in nature, are hermaphroditic. Scientifically, that means that sponges possess both of the genitalia that nature typically assigns to males or females. Theoretically, nature has not gifted the sponge this way to double its sexual gratification so much as to increase its chances for survival and reproduction. It doesn’t matter whose hand he holds, it’s physically impossible for a sponge to be gay.

Having said my peace on the homosexuality issue, I’d like to point out that I don’t advocate the viewing of Spongebob Squarepants for children, especially young ones. Spongebob has been a multi-million, perhaps even billion, dollar cash cow for its parent company, Viacom. The show appears on Viacom’s cartoon outlet, Nickelodeon three, sometimes five times a day. The production values are cheap and the merchandising lucrative. Kids of all ages as well as adults have bought into the Spongebob hype. This character is made for exploitation.

But what bothers me about this ubiquitous sponge is not his sexual orientation. It’s that he’s a smarmy, nasty little guy in the midst of a mean-spirited undersea world. Characters regularly cut each other down, and friends just aren’t really friendly. They do things, not for altruistic purposes, but out of fear for themselves or guilt. To me, the show promotes homosexuality less than it does selfishness and bullying, and are those really the values we want children to have? Would that not ultimately be the thing that would bother Christ about Spongebob?

When you get to the heart of it, Spongebob Squarepants, as a show, is nothing if not just plain weird. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if the homosexuality accusation is nothing but a misinterpretation of the “imaginative” plot twists (and I use that term with passionate irony), which make little sense, and in the minds of knee-jerk reactionaries could certainly be hyperbolized. The show is just “out there” (the main character lives in a pineapple under the sea and works as a fry cook flipping burgers), and that is why it’s inappropriate for young children whose ability to interpret the bizarre is too immature to distinguish how far the show strays from reality.

Perhaps those with concerns in the conservative Christian movement suffer from a similar inability to distinguish reality from imagination.

God is Good

That’s what the scrolling message on a gas pump told me the other day. That, and the lotto jackpot is up to 7 million.

Got an ultrasound coming up on Thursday. Should find out when this baby is due then. I know the hormones are raging because today I was brought to tears by Bob Marley. What’s up with that??

Anyway, just trying to keep warm….

Saw Code 46 on DVD last night. It was pretty good, though I think my favorite part was seeing Mick Jones playing a karaoke patron singing the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go.”

I called it first….

It’s been a while since I’ve felt normal. At the beginning of December, I felt tired an nauseous, and though I suspected I might be pregnant, it was too early to tell. When I first missed my period, I started doing home pregnancy tests, and they came out negative. Three of them, spread out over the course of two weeks. My husband started teasing me. If I so much as said, “I’ll be right back,” he would ask if I was ducking out to do another test. He looked into EPT stock. He kept telling me that there was no way I was pregnant.

But my body was sending different signals. I was hungry all the time. Sure, it was the holiday season and tasty treats abounded, but why could I no longer resist the temptation? I’d been on a strict “no fat” diet since the summer and had lost 12 pounds. I hadn’t really missed butter or cheese or ice cream. Even the call of chocolate, my dark master, no longer drew me. But once the holidays hit, I couldn’t help myself.

When my period was more than two weeks late, I called the doctor to schedule a blood test, reportedly the definitive factor. No more fooling around with peeing on a stick, I wanted a real answer. The day after the blood test, the doctor called. It was negative. She told me it was probably normal to miss a period, after all, I’m 40, and that’s going to start happening more often in the coming years.

I began to worry that something else might be wrong with me. My mother had died of ovarian cancer at age 35. Could something hideous and too imaginable be happening inside me? My husband helped to curb my tendency toward hyperbole, reminding me that it was probably just a normal occurence. Perhaps the stress of the holidays was messing with my system, he said.

So, the holidays passed. On New Year’s Eve we got a sitter for our two other kids and went to the symphony. It reminded me of when I was pregnant with my first baby. When I was five months along we went to the symphony for New Year’s Eve, and the baby went crazy inside me, kicking up his heels throughout the performance. My husband and I laughed at the memory. After the show we went out to dinner, and I closed out the year with an incredible dessert: white chocolate gnache wrapped around a delicious carmel center, all covered with a delicate layer of hard dark chocolate, drizzled with white chocolate and raspberry sauce. I vowed to return to my diet the next day.

And I did….for the most part. I slowed down on the between-meal snacks. I stuck to healthier choices, but when I stepped on the scale, the weight continued to mount back on. I had put back all twelve pounds and was very disturbed by that fact. Then, on Tuesday, I was passing a mirror in my bedroom, and I caught a glimpse of my profile. My belly was sticking out, and I thought, “Oh, my God, I look pregnant!” I went to the bathroom immediately and tried another home test. It was positive. The next day I had a blood test, and that confirmed that we are expecting baby number three.

I have no idea how pregnant I am. Could be eight weeks, maybe less. I suspect I will find out on Wednesday when I go see the doc. We are excited, kind of like when you ride a roller coaster. It scares the hell out of you, but you are thrilled just the same.

Weather or not

All day the news was about the hurricane….My great-uncle used to say about people he couldn’t understand: “He [or she] doesn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain.”

And that’s the state of news today.

Idiot Nation

I’ve been watching a lot of close-caption TV lately. The baby usually wakes up to nurse around 3 a.m., so I watch the CC TV while nursing so as to not wake up the spouse. (Not that he would wake up; we’re talking about a guy who slept through two fire alarms while living in the dorms at college.)

Anyway, the other night, I noticed that MTV’s “Cribs” is close captioned, and the CC is paid for in part by the U.S. Department of Education. Does something about that strike you as odd? I mean, we’ve got lots of schools in this country that are lacking basic things like books, heating, other repairs, not to mention everyday office supplies; or while I’m at it, what about all the schools that lack drama or music departments because of the lack of funding? Yet, as a nation, we can bring the world of “Cribs” to those who cannot hear.

Then last night, The Discovery Channel was running this great documentary about the building of the Panama Canal (that’s right, I’m a nerd, but at least I’m educated!) and there was NO close caption on the documentary. What’s up with that??