The Blind Side (the movie)

Do you know what the term "the blind side" means?  If you don't, you still won't after seeing this movie.  It's never explained, which I think is kind of strange, because IT'S THE TITLE OF THE DAMN MOVIE!  I read this book about five years ago, which I know is a bad way to start a review of any movie, but i can't help it, it's true, the book is better.  Not a LOT better, but still better.  At least it explains what the blind side is. 
The movie is about a wealthy white southern family taking a poor, hulking, black teenage boy into their hearts and home.  Good formula, true story.  The kid starts out with a terrible grade point average, he barely speaks, and clearly has some kind of torrid past.  He acclimates with the family, they teach him to play football, (left tackle--protecting the blind side) his grades get better, and he goes on to play football at a great university.  If that sounds kind of terse, and if you like it, go to this movie. Because that's how they tell the story.  It's like a flat rock skipping on a lake.  Why does the mother suddenly pick the boy up from the side of the road?  Don't know.  Why doesn't the wealthy white family feel afraid of having a large black kid from the projects live in their home?  Don't know.  What motivates the black kid to get better grades and play football?  Don't know.  No matter what happens in this movie, you never get to know why it's happening.  No character development whatsoever.
And then there's the cast.  Sandra Bullock does a wonderful job in this role.  It's a departure from her ususal whimsical roles, and she does it well.  However, she looks terrible as a blonde. Which is too bad, because the only reason to see a movie with her in it is because she is usually pretty hot.  In a suburban mom kind of way, which my friends will tell you, I tend to like.  The worst cast member is the little boy who plays the young son.  I think they tried to cast a little nerdy boy who is supposed to come across as endearing.  That did not work.  The kid could not have been more irritating.  Weird crooked teeth, cowlick in his reddish hair, and WAY TOO MANY lines.  He is like a fly buzzing around your head while you are trying to eat a sandwich.  They made that boy more of a main character than the main character himself.  God, he was annoying.  (no offence to his parents, i'm sure he's a great kid in real life)  Then, randomly, Kathy Bates played the black kid's tutor.  Love her, right?  NO.  She looked dumpy and fat, and for some reason I just kept noticing that her forearms looked like overstuffed sausages.  I don't think that was the plan, but I could not look away.  The most interesting thing about this movie was the white watch that Sandra Bullock wore in most of her scenes. It looked just like the one my manager Megan at work got from her boyfriend for Christmas.  I kept trying to get a better look at it too see if it was the same one.  Blind side, indeed.  More like blindsided.

Under the Dome by Stephen King

About a year ago, my friend Kelly came back from a weekend in Miami, and was really excited to tell me about her trip.  "Tina, I spent the whole weekend lying on the bed with the patio doors open reading Duma Key, Stephen King's new book!  It was so good!"  It was December here, and I could think of a few better things to do in Miami than read ANY book inside, much less a Stephen King novel.  It had been years since I had picked up anything that he wrote, but I really do trust Kelly's book taste, so I tried it, and it was great.   I was so glad to have liked it, that I tried some other Stephen King books, and hated them.  So when "Under the Dome" came out, I was wary.  For one thing, the book is so thick I could drop it in the center of my dining room and serve lunch to my friends on it, and that scared me a bit.  I circled around the idea of the book cautiously, looking at it out of the corner of my eye when I was in a bookstore, or reading a review or two online.  Last week, I was in the Barnes and Noble at the Mall of America, and there was a display as high as my head of this book in the store.  I picked one up, and started to read.  I had to move to some chairs, because I couldn't put it down.  Forty-five minutes later, I forced myself to pay for the book and go home.  Three days and four hours of sleep later, I had done it.  I had read all 1,075 pages.  It was worth every minute.  I'll tell you a little bit about it.
An invisible dome clamps down around and over a small town in Maine (surprise, it's Maine!).  Before long, the people on the inside and the people on the outside figure out it's there, and the people on the inside soon realize that the dome isn't going anywhere for a while, if ever.  Things are not looking good for this town in Maine. The rest of the story is about human nature:  how people deal with themselves, with each other, with power, with greed, with fear, with hunger, with hope, with hopelessness, with death, with pets, and all kinds of other things that you normally don't have to think about every minute of every day under normal circumstances.  And, of course, good versus evil.  King peppers the story with catchy adages and with a million bible verses (who knew the bible would come in so handy for the bad guys), and some fun facts like how the chevrolet bowtie was born.  As long as it is, the book is fast paced, and it is imperative that you find out what happens next, page after page.  However, if you are going to Miami soon, I recommend leaving the book at home and reading it when you return.  It wasn't THAT good.

Ellen does Oprah

Did you see Ellen DeGeneres on the Oprah show?  Before I even get started, let me say, for the record, that I like Ellen.  Now I can get started.  First of all, she did not look so good.  Her new, boyish(er) haircut was trimmed above the ears, and someone should have told Ellen that her ears are pretty big.  Doesn't she have people?  I know that it's not nice to make fun of something people can't help about themselves, but I'm lamenting the haircut, not the ears.  She was funny and charming for the first half of the show when she and Oprah laughed about Ellen's quest and realization of the quest to appear on the cover of O.  Then Oprah asked her about what it felt like to have the Ellen Show cancelled, and I had a hard time sympathising at this point.  It hurt her feelings that after six years, her show was cancelled, and no one told her until her assistant did.  Probably because she is gay, she thinks.  (i am paraphrasing in this post, no direct quotes).  Really?  Because no one else's show has ever been cancelled before.  Everyone else gets treated so well by Hollywood executives.  And then she almost ran out of money.  She actually did say that.  Almost ran out of money.  And then there was this little sad face that she made. Personally I have almost run out of money about a million times. In fact, I am almost out of money right now.  I'm sure it's because I'm gay.  Come on, Ellen.  Then, after the cancellation, no one would pick up her talk show, or even call her back.  Probably because she's gay.  No one will call me back, either, or pick up my talk show.  Probably because I'm gay.  (fine, i don't have a talk show, but i'm sure it's because no one would call me back if i called them, because i'm gay.)  She talked about those hardships, and how she just learned that she had to be herself, and then she would be happy, and that's why she now has a beautiful wife and a successful television show.  Uhm, no.  It's because you are famous, and have whole boatload of money, and are even more famous now than you were before because you are gay.  Then we got to see some home video of Ellen and Portia's wedding, which was amazingly beautiful.  The bride was beautiful, the flowers were beautiful, the way they looked at each other was beautiful, and the helicopters hovering overhead taking pictures were beautiful.  I'm happy for you, Ellen, I really am, but I just can't feel sorry for you.  Please just stick to jokes.

Drop Dead Diva

Yeah, I know, Lifetime.  I know who watches that channel.  Fat old ladies who have a lot of cats.  And a few other people.  But mostly the ladies with the cats.  I can't even remember how I found this show, but I did, and here is what I think about it.  I think it is freaking awesome.  It stars Brooke Elliott who had been working on Brodway for several years before this show.  Brooke plays a woman who was a young, aspiring model who is killed in a car accident.  In death, she finds herself in heaven's admitting room, and refuses to accept that she has died.  She pushed the "RETURN" button, and returns.  But not as herself.  She returns as Jane Bingum, an overweight lawyer without much of a social life, who died at exactly the same time taking a bullet for her boss.  Suspend disbelief.  But it works.  Jane finds herself with the memories of her old self, and the brains of her new self.  She starts taking cases that the old Jane would not have bothered herself with, (as you would expect--slightly odd, off kilter, never going to win type of cases) and finds herself winning.  But her fiance from her old life works at her firm, and she loves him so much, and of course he thinks of her as good old Jane from the office, not knowing who she really is.  Two story lines, I guess.  The cases wrap themselves up neatly in each hour long episode, but the angsty love story continues throughout the season.  I know this sounds kind of lame, but the show really pulls it off.  Jane, despite her socially unacceptable extra weight, is really very pretty, and she has a compassion that doesn't seem contrived, even for Lifetime.  The show has managed to secure quite a few notable guest stars including Paula Abdul, Rosie O'Donnell, Tim Gunn, Jorja Fox, and Liza Minelli to name a few.  Margaret Cho is also a supporting cast member working as Jane's assistant, and even though she is toned down from her usual flamboyant self, she is still fun to watch.  Although she does spend a little too much time in pants that give her a camel toe, which in my opinion, is unfortunate.  It reminds me of that stupid movie, "Run, Lola, Run" where that girl wears those ugly, tight, green and white pants.  But I digress.  This show plays on your emotions a bit, but not too much, it has made me laugh out loud a few times, and more than once has made me cry a little bit. But the crying part might have something to do with me feeling sorry for myself, not attractive, NOT ATTRACTIVE!  I have even bookmarked the Lifetime website on my computer just to watch this show, but if you want to catch the whole season I recommend that you find it on Casttv.com.  No downloads, no sign-up, no payment. Just shared streaming video.  Don't take my word for it, watch it yourself.  Just don't tell anyone.

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

What a strange book.  Written by the guy that wrote "The Remains of the Day", I expected something very different than what I found.  Mr. Ryder, the main character, arrives in a European town that reamins unknown throughout the book.  He is a celebrated musician, and is clearly there to give a performance in a few days.  From the first page, which begins at his arrival, to the last page, which just ends, this book read like a dream.  Not like a dream as in, "oh, that was so amazing, it was like a dream!" but more like Mr. Ryder's whole time in the town seemed like it was taking place in a dream.  People, places, and things shift around him in a very unlinear way, and he moves within it, semi-conscious of its being strange, but taking it all in stride anyway---kind of.  That's all you need to know about the plot.  Each of the 38 chapters has the feel of a run-on sentence, and the 535 pages seem to get yourself and Mr. Ryder nowhere, but I found that I still wanted to read on.  If you like to spend very little money on entertainment, and if you are a slowish reader, this book could keep you company for up to a year.  Not bad, not bad. 

Oaksterdam

I want to sell pot. Legally. And grow it. Legally. And now I can, if I just move to California and take some classes at Oaksterdam University. Oaksterdam University is a trade school that teaches students how to grow and distribute marijuana.  If you don't live near one of the three cities where the campuses are located (Oakland, Los Angeles, or North Bay), or if you can't take time out from work to attend the regular semester classes, you can attend roughly fifteen hours over a weekend in the basic course.  The weekend course will only set you back $250.00, which I think is pretty reasonable.  I suppose it helps if you have someone in town that will let you crash at their place, like I do (sorry Jennifer).  Still.  The weekend course includes instruction on politics and legal issues, horticulture, extaction methods and what to do with the extractions (food and drink), and how to responsibly distribute your product.  They even offer a glass-blowing class.  I have been looking for a reason to visit California for a long time, and what better reason than this?  Eventually, Minnesota will legalize the use of medical marijuana, right?  And if not, what better reason to move to Oakland or Los Angeles (surely, Los Angeles) than to take the advanced classes at Oaksterdam University, and set up shop?

the girl with the dragon tattoo

Nothing happens in this book until approximately halfway through it. There was a lot of character development of the two main characters, and they both kind of annoyed me.  There were long lists of who begat whom that kind of reminded me of the first few books of the bible, and were quite confusing.  Mikael Blomkvist, the male lead, is an easy-going, unassuming kind of guy.  He is an honorable, honest man who doesn't think too much of himself, nor does he think too little of himself.  Naturally, every woman in the book wants to sleep with him.  Seriously?  If that's all it took, then a lot of people would be getting laid.  That's what I found irritating about him.  Lisbeth Salander, the female lead, is an arrogant, anti-social, type-cast punk at age twenty four.  But wait--she is also emotionally wounded, and has been taken advantage of by men, and  is very tender inside (of course).  That's what i found irrititating about her.  Here's the thing, though.  As annoying as these two are, I still wanted to know where their paths would take them, and hoped for a good ending.  Which is why I kept reading until three in the morning.  I'm glad I did, because in spite of itself, this book managed to be good.