World War Bunny

We saw this trailer last night before World War Z*:



My son:  Wait. Is that like, a joke? The rabbit kills them...



...AGAIN???

I love that kid.

* Which I thoroughly enjoyed.  Funny comic about the movie here.

Try a little Toasted-ness

I may have mentioned something about Irish Soda Bread yesterday.

It's pretty good right out of the oven.  Tender and moist inside, with just the right hint of sweet and a nice whiff of whisky in every bit of fruit.  A fine, fine loaf, but not something I would commit to, exactly.

But...it's f%&@ing great when it's toasted, with butter and jam.

Honestly, if I'd known about the toast thing, I would probably have sung about it yesterday.

 

You got-ta, you got-ta, you got-ta...try a little...TOASTED-NESS! 
Ooh ooh ooh! Yeah!!* 

Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.

Gittes: A memorial service was held at the Mar Vista Inn today for Jasper Lamar Crabb. He passed away two weeks ago. 
Mrs. Mulwray: Why is that unusual?
Gittes: He passed away two weeks ago and one week ago he bought the land. That's unusual.

Somehow, this particular exchange really resonated, given that we were watching the movie outdoors in a Los Angeles cemetery.

Along with hundreds of other people (living and dead), blankets, lawn chairs, various smokeable substances, wine bottles, a DJ spinning atmospheric background music, and all kinds of picnic suppers.

The sun went down, the palm trees were silhouetted against the moon, and the side of the mausoleum lit up.

The crowd cheered as the opening credits rolled. John Huston, buried in this very spot, got an especially loud round of applause. As Morty (the coroner) says in the movie:

"Only in LA*."

Naturally, we had a theme picnic:

You've lost, you just don't know it yet

"You've lost, you just don't know it yet." 
-- Josh Waitzkin in the 1993 film, Searching for Bobby Fischer

I think that's why they call it "Chess Pie*."

To paraphrase another famous line from the movie:

"This pie is better than I've ever been at anything in my life. It's better than you'll ever be, at anything.  This pie is a gift. It's a gift, and when you acknowledge that, then maybe we will have something to talk about."**

I tip my king to this pie.

The Descendants

Even though I kind of knew, I never thought.

Always before I've been blindsided by the old Mom.
The mom that would have watched every minute of Whitney's funeral.
The mom that would have been so proud of her granddaughter's trophy from State Cup.
The mom that would have found the perfect dress shirt for her grandson's winter formal at Macy's*
The mom that would be lecturing Rihanna to stay away from that man.
The mom that would help me with the brunch.

This time, it was the end Mom.
The limp form under a quilt.
The flaking skin around the open mouth.
The family in a rage, in fear, in grief, in frustration with this maddening woman.
The pale, bony hands, curled up and clutching.

So much worse.

George Clooney was magnificent.  The writing was brilliant.
But I hated this movie.

* On special with an extra 10% off.

I'm a tiny bit offended

Things I took away from the new movie, Contagion:

1.  Like everything else about her, Gwyneth Paltrow's business trips look like a lot more fun than mine.  Except that hers are fatal, which is bad.
2.  One of the biggest problems that will face society during a global virus epidemic is the lack of trash collection in San Francisco.
3.  Doorknobs = harbingers of doom
4.  "Blogging isn't writing.  It's graffiti with punctuation."

Really? In the midst of a crisis affecting all humankind we need to demonize bloggers? 

Things that are scary but great

1. This movie*



2. Teaching a group of ten fourth and fifth graders to cook a multi-course Halloween feast in under three hours.

In both cases, the surprise ending is totally worth it**.

On the heels of my adventures with the Clueless Dads, another friend wondered if her daughter and a couple of friends could do a cooking class one afternoon. Picturing a version of making dinner at home with my kids without the annoying bickering and backtalk, I eagerly agreed. Next thing I knew there was an e-mail blast to the class, and I somehow found myself in a strange kitchen*** amid a sea of spastic tweens, armed only with my red apron, some mixing bowls, and a bag of mini chocolate chips****.

Oh boy. What in the world had I gotten myself into this time?

The Menu

We went in reverse order, making dessert first*****. Judging by the boys fighting over who got to lick the bowl and the dive bombing for spare chocolate that broke out, I was doing well so far. We moved on to working with bread. The crouton crew was on the "one for me, one for the pan" program, while the bread crumb group was mesmerized by the whirl of the food processor. There was general enthusiasm for dumping ketchup into a pan, followed by a dose of brown sugar. I barely held their attention through the chicken course******, as the lure of the play structure was strong, but when we moved on to squishing raw meat and grating piles of cheese, I had them back. Then the sprinklers went off. I couldn't compete with that.



Dark fell, and their parents arrived. There was a veritable feast of food on the table. Wine was poured******* and the chefs proudly stepped forward to describe the dishes and all the work they had done. As the crowd dug in and the delighted sounds of "Yum!" and "I made that!" and "Can I have another meatball?" filled the room, I heaved a huge sigh of relief and wondered what on earth I'd been so afraid of.

I was thrilled.

G-Force for evil

When Jerry Bruckheimer is arming animated guinea pigs, you know it's not going to be a good thing. But according to The Associated Press, the sins of this movie extend far beyond being a piece of crap film*:

"LOS ANGELES — The Disney movie "G-Force" shows a squad of specially trained, computer-generated guinea pig spies coming to the world's rescue. After the movie comes out, though, animal activists say it will be real life guinea pigs who need rescuing.

Some guinea pig rescue groups have already posted pleas to those who might rush out to buy the furry little rodents. "I can tell you, every single rescue in the United States and abroad** took a look at that movie trailer and said, 'Oh God, here we go,'" said Whitney Potsus, vice president of The Critter Connection, Inc., in Durham, Conn."

The article goes on to dispel some common misconceptions that are propagated by the new film:

"In "G-Force," which opens Friday, Agents Juarez, Darwin and Blaster drive cars, parachute, use blowtorches, swim, talk, walk on two legs, live in tanks with mice and rats and use hamster balls, Lyn Zantow, a volunteer for the Orange County group, warns on her Web site.

In real life, guinea pigs are noisy, eat and poop all the time, require big and clean cages, don't swim and can be expensive to care for if they get sick, she said, adding that they should be kept out of the hands of young children."

That's right. They can't swim***. Hear that, you fly-by-night impulse purchasers? They are guinea pigs. Not GOLDFISH.

But they are unbelievably cute in real life, even if they are pretty damn boring. Way cuter than those faux fur balls could ever be.


* Which was #1 at the box office when it opened, and has made nearly $90 million in the U.S. to date.
** I picture a global chorus of jaded volunteers, some of whom might not speak English, but know enough to understand yet another threat to small defenseless animals when they see a trailer in at their local multiplex. Perhaps heard muttering in French, "Merde! We just recovered from Bedtime Stories! Now this???"
*** I am hoping that this spokesperson for guinea pig kind felt it unnecessary to say that they are unable to use blowtorches in real life either. But maybe she was thinking that the threat of violent outbursts would be a deterrent to the clearly gullible American (and international!) pet-buying public.

Yet another perspective

I thought my Mom would have the last word on the subject (she usually does), but the front page of today's LA Times food section featured an "inside scoop" from Russ Parsons on what Julia really thought of Julie. Apparently, she (Julie) was a bit of a whiner, something she (Julia) did not put up with in the least. Amen to that!

The best thing about "Julie & Julia"

According to my Mom, her favorite part about the new movie was not the beautiful food, the wonderful writing, the spot-on acting, or the compelling parallel stories of two women finding joy in finding themselves through cooking*. Nope.

"What I loved most was seeing two people in committed relationships. You know, I've just started watching Judge Judy in the afternoons, and those people get into a fight over a piece of paper. Between that and Dr. Phil, I'm telling you the couples in that movie were just a breath of fresh air."

She may have a point**. Which would you rather see?



or



* All of which were my reasons for enjoying the movie, as well as the book.
** It is more likely, however, that this is a sly part of her campaign to get a new TV for her birthday. When I asked why in the world she was watching Judge Judy, she said, "Well, you know I have to watch the little TV since my other one broke, and I can't get the channel that I used to watch when I didn't want to watch Oprah at 3." Other recent salvos in this campaign have included putting the phone down for 5 minutes when my sister called her, coming back to the phone and saying, "Sorry about that. The little TV doesn't have a remote, so I had to walk over and turn it down by hand." As in, walk the 10 feet across the carpet of her studio apartment. This after asking if we could get her old TV repaired for her birthday. Sly like a fox, I tell you. She's getting the TV.

What not to pull out of your Netfilx queue when you want to cheer up your husband after a tough day at the office

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead



Not a pick me up. In fact, it just makes everything seem so bleak that you wish the Devil knew all about these people and put them out of their misery when they were toddlers.

Now we'll need to go see Up twice.