Happy Birthday to the Hot One, Funny Stuff, and Two Movies

Today is the hot, 38-year old, hairdresser wife's birthday. And, yes, at 38, she is still amazingly hot. Can I get a witness? Amen. We went to the McCarty farm (End of the Road Farm where the owner brews a hell of a nut brown ale) Saturday night for our annual celebration with the farmer family and the Nerudas (Cheeks, actuall, but we prefer Neruda). For whomever is acting as my conscience this week, I had a couple glasses of wine and then stopped drinking so that I could drive the wife home. She had enough margaritas that she jumped on top of Leanne and gave her noogies (nuggies? Who knows?). I wish I had a picture. Anyway, we're celebrating all weekend, and she'll happily accept gifts as late as Halloween that will still count toward your "worship and adoration" as she calls it.

As we were leaving, Micah gave us a copy of Patton Oswalt's Werewolves and Lollipops. He then warned us, "You'll have to pull over when he talks about the bowls at KFC." I thought Micah was overstating his case. In fact, we had not made it off their dead-end road before I had to pull over because I was laughing hard enough for tears to be running down my face. I had to pull over twice more on the drive home. I was laughing too hard to drive safely. I'm not kidding. This is one of the funniest routines I've ever heard, especially "America has Spoken," "The Miracle of Childbirth," "Physics for Poets," and "Wackity Schmackity Doo." Don't miss him "dealing with a retarded heckler" either. What is it about people that makes them believe they will do well against a professional comedian?

We went to see Stardust yesterday. It was the second Gaiman book I ever read. I loved the adaptation. It felt a bit long in places, but Robert Deniro and Michelle Pfeiffer were perfectly cast. Every once in a while the British humor snuck in, very dry, very subtle, and I found myself laughing, along with three other people in a full theater. Ahh, Oklahoma, how I love thee. I also tried to watch The Lives of Others, the film that the Academy inexplicably awarded the Best Foreign Film statue last year instead of the far superior Pan's Labyrinth. Folks, I watch some pretty slow movies; I even survive some of them, like Gus Van Sant's tediously slow, grossly anticlimactic, Columbine film Elephant. I fell asleep three consecutive nights trying to wade through The Lives of Others. The Academy must have been feeling all anti-Bush and anti-wiretaps when they decided to make a political statement by voting for a stupendously ridiculous choice. If it's on your queue and you haven't seen Pan's Labyrinth, replace it immediately. In the future, I hope the Academy will simply not vote for Bush, rather than screw an excellent filmmaker out of a much-deserved Oscar just to make their painfully transparent protest.

Comments

[emergentninja]

hey there theater fags and english queers...

science... all about coulda, not about shoulda.

and of course, the always classic "rape stove"

happy bday to susan, and i pray that she does not get cancer of the AIDS of the leukemia of the eye.

[bobstevens]

Have you seen Little Children? It was very well done.

Haven't seen Pan's Labyrinth, but did pick up The Lives of Others. I'm not sure whether I expect to like it or not... I probably won't even get around to watching it for a long time. No idea about the other nominees, but the Denmark one looks interesting if only for Mads Mikkelsen's work. (You never will, most likely, but if you get a chance to see Adam's Apples with Mikkelsen and Ulrich Thomsen... it's one of the most memorable quirky comedies I've seen in a very long time.)

My own 27th bday is this week. Happy wishes to your family on this occasion.

[Dave Rattigan]

What??? The Lives of Others was *wonderful*. I can't wait for the DVD. :)

[greg]

I did see Little Children, and I thought it was one of the best movies of last year. Happy birthday to you as well.

I think the most annoying thing about The Lives of Others was the predictability of Stasi guy's transformation. At no point in his interference with the couples' lives was I surprised by his actions. I think it was supposed to be a psychological study of wire-tappers and politicos, but I simply didn't care about the character. I did like the tension created by the woman's predicament with the Minister, as well as the resolution of the relationship, but I simply couldn't see it as anything other than a transparent message movie, much like a The Life of David Gale sort of thing.

[Leighton]

Pan's Labyrinth won a Hugo this past week. Woo!