BTW, "pie goo" is not a technical baking term

For my yearly Thanksiving pecan pie, I got inspired and tried a little kitchen improv. I melted a square of baking chocolate and mixed the results into the pie goo. It turned the whole thing dark and fudgy.

Pardon me a moment while I admire my own brilliance...

I blame my neighbor's decorations

For some reason, I can't get the song "Christmastime Is Here," from A Charlie Brown Christmas, out of my head.

It's WAY too early.

Let's see... So, I'm writing a review of a movie about Alexander the Great, and it isn't very good

"Alexander? Not so great" --Globe and Mail (Canada)

"Alexander the Not-so-Great" --Ottawa Citizen

"Stone's 'Alexander' turns out not so great" --Boston Globe

"Alexander Not So Great" --Hartford Courant

"Not So Great" --Newsday

"'Alexander' is far from being great" --Kansas City Star

"Not exactly great, but not bad" --Miami Herald

"'Alexander' the Great: Barely even mediocre" --USA Today

"Review: 'Alexander' far from great" --CNN

"Misconceived 'Alexander' is far from great" --Philadelphia Inquirer

"'Alexander' the Great disappointment" --ASU

"Stone's mistake: 'Alexander' the grating" --Charlotte Observer (OK, that one made me laugh)

"'Alexander' the great loser" --Philadelphia Daily News


Sorry to bore my loyal readers (yes, all four of you) with these collections, but 1) I love movies and 2) I hate lazy writing.

And while we're at it, Happy Easter

My neighbors, who put up the Giant Inflatable Turkey the day after Halloween (the Giant Inflatable Witch and Giant Inflatable Ghosts went up sometime around Oct. 1), took down the turkey on Nov. 17 and transformed the yard into a veritable Winter Wonderland: Santa riding a bike (um, why?), reindeer, elves, giant (uninflatable) snowflakes, and approximately 500,000 tiny light bulbs.

Poor Giant Inflatable Turkey. It must really hurt to not even make it to your intended holiday.

What are you thankful for?

I'm thankful that I've not yet killed any of my co-workers and landed in prison. (I'd never last--I'm too pretty.)

"What do ya mean, where am I calling from? I'm near a waterfall."

There's a guy in the last stall in our men's room carrying on a conversation on his cell phone while he poops.

I find this deeply disturbing.

Or, Why we can't all just get along

From that great philospher, Emo Philips:

I was in San Fransisco once, walking along the Golden Gate Bridge, and I saw this guy on the bridge about to jump. So I thought I'd try to stall and detain him, long enough for me to put the film in. I said, "Don't jump!" and he turns... You've heard of the elephant man? He was kind of like that; he had a, well, you could say he had the head of a horse. And my heart went out to him. I said, "Why the long face?" ...

He said, "Nobody loves me."

I said, "God loves you, you silly ninny."

He said, "How do you know there's a God?"

I said, "Of course there's a God. Do you think that billions of years ago a bunch of molecules floating around at random could someday have had the sense of humor to make you look like that?"

He said, "I do believe in God."

I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?"

He said, "A Christian."

I said, "Me too. Protestant or Catholic?"

He said, "Protestant."

I said, "Me too! What franchise?"

He said, "Baptist."

I said, "Me too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?"

He said, "Northern Baptist."

I said, "Me too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"

He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist."

I said, "Me too! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist or Northern Conservative Reform Baptist?"

He said, "Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist."

I said, "Me too! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Eastern Region?"

He said, "Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region."

I said, "Me too! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879 or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?"

He said, "Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912."

I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over the edge.

Yet another sign of the coming apocalypse (and not a minute too soon)

Description, from MTV's web site, of a new program. No, I'm not making this up, though I wish I were.

MTV is taking dating to a whole new level with Date My Mom. Each episode features a different brave guy looking for love in the weirdest place...on dates with three different moms. He's not looking to hook up though, he's spending time with the moms to discover everything he can about their daughters. Our brave guy's job is to try and guess just how far the apple did fall from the tree. He won't be able to see a picture of the daughters on his dates, so he'll have to work hard to get the truth out of the moms. In the end, everyone meets up on the beach to hear his decision. This is the spot where he'll finally get to see what these daughters look like. Will he pick a hottie or will he be hurtin? Check out all of the action on Date My Mom.

Sigh. This is wrong on so many different levels.

(By the way, when I wrote a few months ago about an idea for a reality show called Who Wants to Hump My Mom?, I was kidding.)

Ouch!

From Manohla Dargis's review of "The Polar Express" in today's New York Times:

"...Most moviegoers will be more concerned with the eerie listlessness of those [computer generated] characters' faces and the grim vision of Santa Claus's North Pole compound, with interiors that look like a munitions factory and facades that seem conceived along the same lines as Coketown, the red-brick town of 'machinery and tall chimneys' in Dickens's 'Hard Times.' Tots surely won't recognize that Santa's big entrance in front of the throngs of frenzied elves and awe-struck children directly evokes, however unconsciously, one of Hitler's Nuremberg rally entrances in Leni Riefenstahl's 'Triumph of the Will.' But their parents may marvel that when Santa's big red sack of toys is hoisted from factory floor to sleigh it resembles nothing so much as an airborne scrotum."

But, to paraphrase a Mad magazine piece that my friend Grammarian reminded me of yesterday, the producers can easily use the quote in ads with judicious editing:

"Most moviegoers ... will be awestruck! Parents may marvel!"

I'm like Ed Wood meets Emeric Pressburger!

"It's like 'Cinema Paradiso' meets 'It's a Wonderful Life'!"

"It's like "Pretty Woman' meets 'Notting Hill' for teens!"

Ugh. Those two quotes come from a New York Times article on the low-budget film market. (What does that second quote even mean?)

If it's that easy to get a film made, I humbly suggest the following ideas:

It's like "The Sound of Music" meets "The Dirty Dozen"!

It's like "Jaws" meets "Deep Throat"!

It's like "Clueless" meets "Emma"!

It's like "Gone With the Wind" meets "There's Something About Mary"!

It's like "Die Hard" meets "Die Hard II"!

It's like "SpongeBob SquarePants" meets "The Virgin Spring"!

If any of these get made, I demand 10% of the gross, plus points. Whatever that means.

Thoughts on the election

Shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT, shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

Well, I just got back from Canada. Anything happen in the U.S. while I was gone?

WHAT???

Shit.