We managed to fit in some movie watching this week while the kids are with Grandma, and I was attempting to put them all together in a clever blog post title, but it wasn’t to be.  Probably my lack of sleep with the new baby and my recovery process has inhibited my creativity.  I hope to be back in full swing soon, but it will probably take a few months, especially because once I’m feeling better, I have lots of stuff around the house I need to catch up on and as much as I would like blog posting to come first, it doesn’t.  As people keep reminding me oh so helpfully, a c-section is major surgery 🙂  Don’t I know it. 

So the 3 movies we saw this week are Hellboy 2, American Psycho, and Fortress.

I did not like Hellboy 2.  I actually would have left the theater, but I never got around to asking my husband if he wanted to and that was a good thing because he liked the movie.  It gave me a good laugh when we were walking out of the theater and he told me he liked it because we always have the same taste in movies and I really didn’t like this one.  That also means I don’t have much to say about it except that the Abe fish-like character reminds me of C3PO from Star Wars, and I can’t believe the actor who plays Hellboy, Ron Perlman, was also Vincent the Beast in the old Beauty and the Beast tv show from the 80’s with Linda Hamilton.  I thought he was going to be some Andre the Giant huge guy wrestler type, but it turns out, he is just a regular actor.  I suppose my impatience with this movie had to do with the fact that my infection flared up and I was raging with fever yet again in the movie theater.  So even though I felt crappy and wanted to leave, I could not pass up a night out with hubby while the kids were away.  Even if it was to see Hellboy 2…  I’m just glad one of us enjoyed the movie.

Next up is a movie from the early 90’s called Fortress.  It’s set in the future – and it’s always fun to see what people thought the future would be like when the movie was made over a decade ago – and revolves around a corporate owned underground prison (think Walmart does Alcatraz).  The main characters are sent there when they break the “one child per couple” rule.  They had lost their first child, and now they’ve been caught trying to have another, so they are both sent to prison, even though she is pregnant.  This is a fun action-packed movie.  When I looked it up on imdb.com after we watched it, I learned that it is actually a kind of cult classic movie and there are actually multiple endings.  Our version was the less happy of the endings, but I still liked the movie.  It’s kind of violent for early 90’s, and if you look it up on imdb.com, don’t let the keywords fool you.  Let’s put it this way, if I had seen the keywords first, I wouldn’t have watched this movie, but in retrospect, I don’t think there was really much adult stuff in it – just violence and gore, but they didn’t overdo it like they do in some movies nowadays, like the Saw movies for instance.  American Psycho on the other hand…

I will start by saying that Christian Bale was excellent in this movie.  I wasn’t so impressed by him when he was Batman in The Dark Knight, but he definitely shows versatility and depth in this movie.  He plays a Wall Street executive who is just about as big a jerk as one can be.  Also, he has blood lust and likes to kill people in his spare time.  The movie is very strange for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on.  For one, I was confused about what the movie was trying to be.  I guess it’s just a story about this man, an American Psycho.  But at times throughout the movie, the music was strange, and it just didn’t play like a normal movie.  And then there were the constant 80’s references.  I guess it was supposed to take place in the 1980’s, given the characters’ huge cordless phones and constant talk of musical artists such as Phil Collins, Huey Lewis, and Whitney Houston.  Why they would change the time period of the movie, I don’t know, but they did a good job because if Reese Witherspoon (who is about my age and would have been a kid in the ’80’s) wasn’t in it, I would have been convinced the movie was actually filmed in the ’80’s.  And I have to say the end confused me a lot.  I won’t say more because I don’t want to spoil anything, but if anyone who reads this has seen this movie, maybe you can answer a question I have.  I don’t think I’d recommend this movie since there are many disturbing scenes and it didn’t seem worth it to me to sit thru them for what you get from the rest of the movie.  I don’t think I’m going to put it on my list of baddies however, but then again, Hellboy 2 isn’t going on there either.  Just 2 movies I didn’t really like and wouldn’t see again, but I don’t feel like I wasted my time watching either of them, and that’s always a good thing.   

I am a reader.  I have been a reader since I was a child, especially of science fiction and fantasy.  I remember back when I was around ten, reading a book series about an alien called a “Martinean” who everyone called Martin E. Ann, assuming that was his name.  Except for the boy who knew he was an alien of course.  I don’t remember anything about that series aside from that, but it shows that I have been reading for awhile.  I have read some Isaac Asimov, Ben Bova, Piers Anthony, Terry Goodkind, Terry Brooks, Terry Pratchett, Alan Dean Foster, Robert Jordan, and more.  Currently I picked up a new book at the library from Timothy Zahn, called The Third Lynx.  Noting this was the second book in a series, I also picked up Night Train to Rigel from the non-recent stacks and read it first.  Now before I continue, I should say that there are a few types of books.  There are those that you take one look at and then leave on the shelf.  Then there are those that you read for a bit and then realize that reading that book is just a waste of time, so you either force your way through it just so you can say you finished it or you stop reading it.  I actually had a book of this type recently, a Star Trek Titan book part of a post-Nemesis movie about Captain Riker and his starship, Titan.  I read one by a homosexual author who put a scene in the book that served no purpose other than to say that he believes in homosexual relationships.  In fact, you could remove those pages entirely and no one would ever realize it was missing as it had no bearing on the plot.  Anyway, I digress.  After finishing that one, part of the third category I have yet to mention, I checked out another one where they found entire groups of the giant sentient “spaceships” Captain Picard and company encountered at Farpoint way, way back in the very first Next Generation episode.  After getting about halfway through I realized that the book was just not my type of book so I stopped reading it.

The third category included those books that you read and finish, but are just not memorable.  You finish the last page, close the book, and go, “meh- whatever.”  The last category is the book you just can’t put down.  Timothy Zahn is one author who writes books like these, at least in my view.  Star Wars fans might find his name familiar as he had the first books out in the newly approved-for-writing post-episode-VI universe.  This first trilogy consisted of the books Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command.  Leia and Han Solo are now married and give birth to twins Jacen and Jaina, and later Anakin (you know who he’s named after…).  Luke starts taking on students would would become new Jedi.  I read this series about ten or so years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it.  When he wrote a couple more Star Wars books I was quick to read those as well.  He introduces a new enemy known as Grand Admiral Thrawn.  He was an extremely brilliant alien strategist bent on keeping the Empire alive after Palpatine was gone.

His new books star a character who bears some resemblance to Thrawn in that he is is quite brilliant in his own trade, as an investigator, or spy.  Once employed by a government agency, Frank Compton had a falling out and was fired, though not for lack of competence.  He has just taken on a job for someone when another one falls in his lap in the form of someone who dies just as he finds Frank.  Frank picks from his pocket a quadrail (futuristic train that travels interstellar distances) ticket in his name, and leaves immediately to discover an answer to this mystery and is led to the one who would hire him, leaving the first job on the backburner- or did he?  The employer for the first job is only revealed later in the book, and the job he was hired to do not until the very end.  There are some imperfections in the books, but overall they are also books that I can’t put down. I will definitely be adding Zahn to the list of authors I will be keeping an eye out for, and I will have to read the other books he’s written as well.

My boyfriend has asked me to marry him and it was in a way that totally surprised me. He took me to George Bible Park and handed me a lightsaber. We started to fight and after killing him many times, my friend Monica and her boyfriend, Jesse, came at us from both sides of the bridge we were on. I went after Monica and killed her, along with Jesse. As I was killing Jesse, Tony asked me to marry him! I cannot believe that it has happened, but I’m not going to say it was a bad thing. I couldn’t be any happier at the moment.

Of all the places to find fun, who would have thought that middle of nowhere, IN would be such a sight?  Every summer, we meet my mom there about 4 times to swap the kids.  She’ll take them for a week, twice a summer, so because South Bend just happens to be about as close to halfway for each of us to drive, that is where we meet.  We used to meet at a Wendy’s just off the expressway, but our horizons have broadened, and my husband and I have been venturing off the beaten path to discover new things to see and do in the area.  We found a good restaurant called Eleni’s with amazing gyros and saganaki, two of our favorite dishes.  We also found an authentic Greek restaurant called Elia’s right down the street, but oddly enough, they are almost never open.  They have more exotic Greek food like stuffed grape leaves, moussaka, and baklava, YUM!  Their food is excellent, though we’ve only been able to eat there once because of their strange hours and seemingly constant family vacations.  After eating and getting the kids back from my mom, we headed to the Potawatomi Zoo.  The zoo is a really cool size, perfect for our family of 3 small children and a now VERY pregnant woman.  Not much walking to do at all, yet it has a good amount of animals, native and exotic, all types and sizes from lions, tigers, and bears, to monkeys, bison, alligators, parrots, and red pandas.  I wil have to mention that the Potawatomi Zoo did not seem very well-kept.  A gardener in that place could have done wonders as there were many overgrown weeds, trees, and shrubbery, some even blocking what could have been better views of the animals!  One tree was so untrimmed it was blocking a drinking fountain!  But as I said, it’s a very cute little zoo, and they reciprocate with our home zoo, the Toledo Zoo, so our admission price was free and they don’t charge for parking.  I was surprised to see that the zoo wasn’t very crowded seeing as how it was a Saturday in June under 90°…  That zoo could really use a Jack Hanna to fix it up and get the publicity rolling – I see a lot of potential for it, but it does need some work.

After the zoo, we had kids begging for ‘one more fun thing’ (remember, they had been used to the fun of Grandma’s for just short of a week!), my husband whips out Mr. GPS, and apparently he has a phone book feature on him, so from your car, you can find gas stations, restaurants, and most importantly, fun places and attractions to visit!

So KUDOS belong to Mr. GPS this time!  Instead of getting us lost and chuckling at us electronically, he led us right to this strip mall that was like a step back in time, it was really strange.  It looked like it was right out of 1983.  I don’t know how to explain it – we should have taken pictures.  It would have been a great place to film a movie set in the early ’80’s, took me right back to my childhood.  Anyway, in this strip mall was a place called Mega Play.  From the outside, it looked closed down – they really need to get themselves a big bright ‘open’ sign.  But once inside, it was a huge space where they had tons of video games, pinball machines, indoor minigolf, bouncy castles and tunnels for the kids, lots of ride-ons for toddlers, and right out of 1983 – a ball pit!  The ball pit had a pyramid in the middle of it that the kids climb up with ropes and once they got the hang of it, they had a ball – cheesy pun intended.  That pyramid gave me a flashback of playing on the same thing when I was little.  I think they used to have them in KMarts, and my husband agreed.  It was neat to see vintage video games and pinball machines also.  The arcade ATARI games they had in one bouncy castle area were free to play – they had Kangaroo, Pole Position, Asteroids, and some shooting game I hadn’t heard of.  I walked over to the pinball machine area because days earlier, we visited this cool pinball shop in a suburb of Toledo.  The guy started it as a hobby, but it grew into a store, and he had all kinds of pinball machines, new and mostly vintage.  He had titles on display like Demolition Man, Star Wars, The Shadow, and Hercules (an older game – it was HUGE!).  He even had this Looney Tunes racing game (not pinball) that was really vintage and one-of-a-kind…  it was cool to see.  I wonder if the pinball guy outside of Toledo is familiar with Mega Play?  But anyway, back to Mega Play…  it was a huge, wide-open strip mall space that had tons of games, ride-ons, and bouncy castles packed into it – lots of fun there, but still spacey so you didn’t feel closed it.  It was the exact concept my husband and I had in mind for our own business of the same type we started a few years ago.  We ended up having to sell the business because it was too labor intensive for the time and staff we had however.  Too bad Mega Play is all the way in South Bend, or we could challenge our putt-putt-ing friends to the mini-golf course 🙂

After Mega Play, it was time to find something to eat, and before we knew it, we were out of South Bend and into the country.  The kids started getting crazier and crazier, and we vowed to stop at the very next restaurant we found before someone passed out or went insane – and some of us were close to either condition!  So, we stopped at a restaurant called Dakota’s in Elkhart IN, and I highly recommend it if you’re ever out that way.  They had the best cornbread, and their steak and cheese sandwich was simply AWESOME!  They also have barbecue items, and they happened to have karaoke the night we went…  it wasn’t too intrusive though.  They were in another room and we didn’t even know it was karaoke at first until the audience began applauding.  The DJ hosting the karaoke was singing a few songs also, and he was pretty good, so he actually sounded like a recording with a live quality.  I don’t how often they have karaoke there, but their food is great, prices reasonable, nice atmosphere, and the staff is amazingly friendly.  Keep in mind I say this coming from a super-friendly town myself, so we’re used to the usual chit-chat when we go out to eat –  but people in Elkhart were exceptionally friendly.

Overall, not a bad place to spend a day – fun and very inexpensive to boot.  Too bad with gas prices the way they are we can’t consider South Bend for a normal day trip for our family – there is plenty to do!  Maybe we’ll wander around some more the next time we meet Grandma there in July…

I’ve been reflecting this evening about the things I think about. While watching Jeopardy, I noticed (again) there are some subjects I’m very good at, others (opera, actors/actresses, TV shows) I’m not as good at. If you do specific actors, If I like them I will know most of there works, if I don’t well none of it sinks in even if they are in one or more of my favorite shows.

Anyway, I was trying to determine what type of information that takes root in this brain of mine. Computer stuff, most of the time. Math– well it used to, some is still there. Science– A lot, mainly the physical sciences (Earth Sciences, Astronomy, Physics, some Chemistry). Things dealing with logic (math/word puzzles). Politics, current and some historical. Some history, geography. Comic book heroes, well some of them anyway. Science Fiction and Fantasy books I’ve read (short list, I don’t read everything). Some movie trivia (mainly Disney, Lord Of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek, Comic Book Movies, Harrison Ford movies, Mysteries, some comedies). Word play (taking and twisting words/meanings for fun). Some things of religious nature, especially the odd and frequently outside of common knowledge stuff.

Things that don’t take root. Anything about TV sitcoms (exceptions Mash, Barney Miller). TV shows in general (I don’t pay attention to much on TV anymore). Theater/Movies/Plays/Opera (except as noted above, or I’ve been in a specific show). Musical Groups/artists and Song titles. Artists and their work with a very few exceptions (I know the common stuff, who painted the Mona Lisa or the Sistine Chapel). Spelling/grammar (who knows, who cares sort of thing).

Other than that things come and go in my knowledge base quite frequently. If I’ve been playing Trivia games, I tend to keep trivia in my head. If I’m working on an intense project at work, that information needed there is front and center. Discussing Politics frequently, well that information becomes available.

Somethings stay in my head all the time. I can tell you when each daughter was born (it may take a second or two). I can tell you the day and time I proposed to my wife. I never forgot an anniversary. I remember the birthday of my first crush. I know what my last words to my wife were, I know hers to me, and her last words (that weren’t to me).

It seems like sometimes there shouldn’t be much room for anything else in my head. I do tend to keep some information that is no longer needed (Do I really need to remember the favorite color of a girl I dated in 1981?). Some I wish I would have remembered better (sending things in the mail at the right time). If I could only figure out how to store and keep the information I want/need and get rid or archive the information I don’t need/want. If I could figure that out I could write a book and retire…

Does everyone remember this boy band from the 80’s?  I remember them well because being a young preteen girl at the height of their popularity meant that their marketing was pointed directly my way.  I went to 3 of their concerts, had my bedroom wallpapered in New Kids posters, and had everything from tapes (for younger readers – that’s what we played music on in those days), buttons, t-shirts, books, magazines, and stickers to trading cards, shoelaces, and even a Joey McIntire doll.  Yes, it was ridiculous and more than a little embarrassing.  But girls will be girls, and the group had a clean-cut, boy band image, so my parents willingly obliged my fanfare.

You may have heard that the band has reunited.  Yes, I’m serious, and yes, I’m talking about now, in 2008, when the members of the group are over the age of 30 and some are pushing 40.  Why now, you ask?  Probably because pop culture has a way of recycling itself.  They often resurrect fads decades later when people who were kids at the time of the fad can now enjoy them again as adults (now that they have their own money to spend) and share them with their own kids.  They did this with a number of fads from the ’80’s – My Little Pony, Cabbage Patch Kids, Strawberry Shortcake, Transformers, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and now, The New Kids on the Block.  What perplexes me most of all about this whole thing, is that they didn’t change the group at all.  They are out there, singing the same songs they sang as teens and early twenty somethings, about dating girls and “Hangin’ Tough”.  They are attempting to perform the same dance moves they made popular decades ago, and results are not pretty.  I was one of the biggest fans of the group way back when, and now I say they’re terrible.  I don’t like the music anymore (it was of a genre they used to call bubblegum pop – and it’s definitely the type of music you grow out of), they sound terrible singing it, the lyrics are ridiculous, if not downright creepy, coming from near-middle-aged men, and the dance moves are horrible.  They are actually going to tour this (circus) act come fall.

So why now?  Why do we need an updated version of New Kids on the Block?  Actually that’s not even right.  There’s nothing updated about this group except their ages.  Everything else is EXACTLY the same!  An updated version would be better musically and probably make a whole lot more sense.  There’s what I talked about earlier – the fad revival tactic.  I guess that’s why they did it.  But I find it amazing that they found enough people who thought this was such a good idea that they made it happen – inlcuding the 5 original members of the group.  Some have gone on to mildly successful movie or solo music careers.  Some have raised families.  But how someone got all 5 to agree to resurrect the New Kids on the Block circa 1991 is astounding.

If you don’t believe me about how terrible they are or if you just like to watch train wrecks in action, check this out.  Help me figure out who looks more ridiculous – the group or the fans.  This video is part one of three, but you’ll only want to see the first part, if that, trust me:

When does a collecting hobby cross the line?  I’ve heard of people who collect things and sometimes get kinda crazy about it…  Like this one guest on Dr. Phil who collected Star Wars stuff.  No problem there, but once he started talking about the details of his obsession, it became obvious he had an unhealthy problem.  His wife felt like she came in second place to the Star Wars stuff all the time, and he even had a storm trooper costume he wanted to be buried in.  When Dr. Phil pointed out the fact that the guest would never fit into the costume, he insinuated that he would be dismembered or whatever it took to get his body into the costume for burial.  I guess it’s easy to say you’ve crossed the line when your spouse or the people you live with start to get annoyed and ask you to give them more room for their  stuff and to get rid of the things you collect.  Or maybe it’s obvious you have an unhealthy addiction when you start to spend more money on your collection than things you should be spending it on to ensure a healthy lifestyle, like food or clothing.  Anyway, the reason I’m bringing this up is because my husband and I are developing an extreme board game collecting hobby.  It started years ago when we visited a few garage sales and saw some games we both had as kids, so we picked those up.  Then we started visiting thrift stores in the area, and we enjoyed doing that so much that we visit often and pick up several games each time we go…  it’s kind of like treasure hunting – you never know what you’ll find.  Games are anywhere from 25¢ to $3 and since they usually have all the pieces, it’s a pretty fun hobby to check out all kinds of different games.

Now, we’ve moved to a bigger house and have allowed ourselves a big game closet.  The problem is, we’re getting so carried away that we’ve outgrown the game closet – there are games now stacked on the floor since we’ve gotten so many that they no longer fit on the shelves.  When we go out to thrift stores, I can’t even remember what games we have and I’m always tempted to buy more, but my husband says, “we already have that one”.  It’s really not that big of a problem, I guess we just need a bigger closet…  we do invite friends over nearly every weekend to play games, so we are getting use out of them; it’s not like they just sit on the shelves (or floor!) collecting dust…  And the only family member whose living space is getting crowded because of all the games is the parrot.  He’s been screaming at me while I fold laundry so much lately that I don’t mind if he gets crowded out!  But I can just tell that it’s becoming an addiction because when we’re at the thrift stores, I always feel like getting new games, even if we already have them apparently…  I don’t see an end in sight, but I think it’s still in the collecting stage; it hasn’t graduated to hoarding yet.  After all, the duplicate board games we have are only for spare parts, and the other day, I had a brainstorm:  If we knock out one of the walls in our game closet, we can combine it with another large closet and have more than twice the space for all the games!  For some reason, my husband doesn’t share my enthusiasm for this idea…

Sorry but no “American Idol” post tonight. I grow continuously disenchanted with it the more I watch. Pure and simply, it is nothing more than a popularity contest with the teeny-bopper who happens to have the quickest finger choosing the winner.

Last night, one of the three shows I try to make it a point to watch every week had the obligatory “Special Edition.” “Deal or No Deal” featured a fantastic Star Wars themed game. The contestants who played were both huge fans of the series. The first was a woman who was a Vietnamese refugee whose youngest memories involved seeing Episode 4 in the movie theatre. Instead of the 26 delightful models who usually hold the cases, there were 26 Stormtroopers (yes they were members of the 501st Legion). As an added bonus, Carrie Fisher
(her royal highnessness herself) appeared to root the contestant on. Man, has she aged!

The second contestant was treated to an appearance by the eight-foot walking carpet, Chewbacca and everyone’s favorite astromech droid, R2-D2. Both contestants had to face the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader as the banker. The voice was no James Earl Jones but not a bad imitation.

I almost forgot to mention that in the second half of the show, the models appeared with their cases dressed in replicas of the slave girl outfit worn by Princess Leia in Jabba the Hutt’s palace in Return of the Jedi.

A very entertaining episode. I wonder why they did not procure the rights last year for the 30th anniversary of the original film.

I have been thinking about how the authors are killing a lot of the more popular characters off more and more often in Star Wars. Chewbacca, Grand Admiral Thrawn (though Timothy Zahn didn’t know he was going to become a favorite), Anakin Solo, Mara Jade Skywalker, and I’m sure there are more that I’m not thinking about. I believe that once they kill off the some more, mostly Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Leia Organa Solo, they will have to stop going forward into the series. They will have to go back and work from there. Though I might be wrong because the Solo children (Jacen and Jaina) and the Skywalker boy (Ben) might have cought the younger generation. They might want to continue reading about what happened to them, but so many who  have grown up with Star Wars will most likely stop reading once at least when those three are gone. I might continue reading to see where they go, but it seems like they are redoing the movies (prequels). One of the Skywalkers is turning to the Dark Side trying to save something. In this case, Jacen turned to save the galaxy from war. Instead, he has just made it worse!

Yesterday I was talking with my friend, Rachel, about Star Wars, which is reall weird, since for the longest time she didn’t even like having it mentioned. But yesterday, she was willing to listen and participate in my talking about Mara and how I didn’t think that a poison dart should have been able to kill her. She was the Emperor’s Hand for goodness sake! She was one of his personal assassin and knew so many tricks to the Sith, though she never was one herself. She didn’t fall for Jacen’s trick that he tried to pull when she had the roof fall on top of him. Why should she be kiled by something as simple as a poison dart? If the Karen Traviss insisted that Mara had to die, than couldn’t she have thought of a way to do so that was fitting to the character?

 Rachel and I have deciced that Mara really wasn’t killed, because in the Legacy of the Force series, Mara wasn’t acting like herself at all. She was all passive and not willing to believe Luke when he tried to tell her that Jacen was turning to the Dark Side. Mara had seen the Emperor, had known Vader, she should have been the first one to believe Luke on this, and yet, for some reason, she wasn’t. She didn’t believe him until six books into the series. How can Mara change so suddenly in the books, from the woman that Timothy Zahn had created, to some different kind of woman, that someone else made her? Sure, she had a son, and yes, I agree that Mara would be protective of him, but the way I have seen Timothy Zahn write about Mara, she wouldn’t become passive and almost scared to do things. She would be active, ready to do whatever necessary to protect him. She had sent him off while he was just born to safety and continued fighting against the Yuuzhan Vong, to keep the galaxy safe. With all this, Rachel and I came up with the clone idea, though of course Tony doesn’t believe me. 🙁 Just because they had her funeral and she became a force ghost! Though we have been talking, and his friend said that we could bring her back with a Dark Jedi turning to the Light Side and sacrificing himself to bring her back, using the Force. That would be really nice. I could always write a fanfic and put it on one of those Star Wars fanfiction sites. I wouldn’t get money from it, but at least I would feel like I had some say in the way the authors are writing. Timothy Zahn wasn’t even told by Del Rey that Mara was going to be killed off. Talk about a shock when he read it.