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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: banned in Decatur*

Today, my wife, my home-from-college son and I went to a movie. A Series of Unfortunate Events. Neither by son nor I were familiar with the books the movie is based on by “Lemony Snicket” (Daniel Handler). My wife’s an elementary/jr hi librarian, though, and has read/reviewed the books. I went primarily just to go to the flick with her. Our son? Well, he’s a good guy.

🙂

I have to tell you, though, we all loved the flick. Of the movies I’ve seen i n the last year—in theaters and on video—I’d rank it easily in the top 5. Surprised me. Imagine, if you would, a kind of Gothic “Boxcar Children” (and if you don’t know who the Boxcar Children were, shame on you. Look them up and read. 🙂

First, the good. The children. As I said, I haven’t read the books, but I cannot imagine better casting of the children. (My wife agrees, and you’ll recall she has read at least some of the books). Each of them were gems, and the twins who played the youngest child, Sunny, actually had me believing the subtitles that appeared over their baby talk. The staging, direction, sets, costumes: all were wonderful. And the rest of the casting? With one small exception, among the primary and secondary players, unbelievably great. Billy Connolly and Meryl Streep were particularly delicious in their respective roles. The only exception to great casting in the primary and secondary roles was Cedric the Entertainer as the detective. Completely unmemorable.

Tertiary actors? Competent. (And a cameo by Dustin Hoffman was slightly fun.)

Oh, and casting Jude Law as Lemony Snickett narrating the tale? Not as bad as I had feared. At least he was barely seen (and then not readily recognizable), and his voice was only an occasional distraction.

The bad? Well the plot, like the Harry Potter books and movies, was utterly predictable. It just goes with the genre. Kids books, no matter how they attempt to be surprising, are almost never anything but predictable and formulaic. No matter. When you relate to the story within its own genre, the predictability disappears as a problem. An underlyinmg theme is a problem, and I might most succinctly deal with it by contrasting it with an underlying theme found in a situationally similar set of books already referred to.

The Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner featured a destitute family of orphaned children who set up household on their own in an abandoned boxcar. The underlying theme was one of overcoming great difficulty (similarly to “Lemony Snickett’s” Baudelaire children), but often with the (usually) anonymous help of adults who admired their “pluck” and self-sufficiency. In A Series of Unfortunate Events, without exception, all the adults are stupid, dense, fearful, incompetent or evil. Some are well-intentioned, but the well-intentioned adults are all stupid, dense, fearful or incompetent—and all of them pay not one bit of attention to the children, who are all brighter and more competent than they.

It’s this silly Rouseau-ian view of children and adults that, of course,appeals strongly to kids, but which does nothing to aid in encouraging kids (or adults!) to mature.

The really bad? On this, the third day of its release, there was only a house of 17 viewing. Counting us. Not good.

That aside, great flick.

Oh, the ugly? Jim Carrey, of course. Finally a role he seems made for: the evil, though thoroughly incompetent, Count Olaf. Carrey is type cast as a sock puppet of evil incarnate, and he carries the role as only a sock puppet of evil incarnate could. Of course, that his perfect role is as the paper cutout of an evil villain in a series of children’s books pretty much says it all about this sock puppet of an “actor”.

I could wax prolix about the title graphics, the music, etc.(all terrific), but why not just go see it yourself?

*OK, it’s the Lemony Snicket books that’ve been banned in Decatur, Georgia.

Miracle in Maryville

[Yeh, strictly speaking, the story isn’t in Maryville, but the line scans better than “Miracle in Skidmore”.]

This story is all over the news. Little Victoria Jo Stinnett was “from [her] mother’s womb/Untimely ripp’d”* and will never see her mother, Bobbie Jo, because her mother was strangled to death by a monster. (A monster who, strangely, continues to draw breath… )

Joyous occasion, indeed, that she be reunited with her father.

The ambivalence? Noted above: That her kidnapper, the murderer of her mother, hasn’t already been converted to a rotting corpse, hanging from a pole and serving as target practice for every passing kid with a .22, her soul now serving a sentence of eternity in hell.

But at least Victoria Jo Stinnett lives and has a father. 1/2 of a Happy Dance… (And, of course, would have been an over-the-top Happy dance if Bobbie Jo had also siurvived. Better yet if she had been “armed and dangerous”—dangerous to Lisa M. Montgomery, the monster who ought to have died, instead of Bobbie Jo… )

Little Victoria jo will never know her mother’s arms, her mother’s voice, her mother’s love. But she will live and have her father, and in this marred, sinful world, that must be miracle enough.

*Apologies to The Bard for corrupting the famous line from Act 5, Scene 8 of The Scottish Play…

Miss hearing good Advent sermons? Try this

Be sure and check Donald Sensing’s Sunday Sermon, tomorrow, for today’s Advent sermon. Today’s the fourth Sunday of Advent. His last three Advent sermons have been worth reading.

It’s good to find someone who both knows how to preach and has a sense of wonder about the Incarnation. I hope he posts his fifth Advent sermon (for Christmas Eve) a little early. It’d be nice to use it with family.

We Red Staters can get offended, too

Dave Oliveria, writing in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho’s Spokesman-Review is offended by easily-offended blue staters, among other things.

Excerpt:

“…I’m offended that Dan Rather wasn’t fired as the CBS news anchor after his bald-faced attempt to smear the president with bogus documents. By “I support the troops, but I’m opposed to the war.” By hard-lefties, like cartoonist Ted Rall, who use racial terms and stereotypes to attack Condi Rice and get away with it….”

Just read it.

“The Things We Do for Love…”

Ya know me, ya know I’m cheap. Yep. Way beyond frugal. Recent remodeling efforts are a good example: a large—no, LARGE—portion of the materials have come from, well, junk piles, dumpsters, etc. Amazing the amount of very good, high-quality materials people toss out just because something does not work as originally designed. Good parts. Every single one of the computers on our network at home are combinations of bits and pieces of cast-off computers (with the rare highly-discounted part bought on closeout, etc.).

So, it should come as no surprise that yesterday, thinking of animal crackers and almost simultaneously seeing an off-brand bag really cheap I picked up the off-brand bag and brought it home with me (after reluctantly paying for it. It’s not the cost of the product; it’s the sales tax that gripes me. 🙂

Well, in spite of the fact that I have very much liked other offerings from the same off-brand food packager, these turned out to be a little strange.

First, taste. Not bad, just not to my taste for animal crackers. So, I’ll eat ’em anyway. (Dunk ’em in coffee. That’s the trick.)

But the appearance… College son, home for the holidays, holding up an animal cracker:

“Dad, what’s this supposed to be?”

“Son, they’re not animal crackers; they’re animal turd crackers. Just try one.”

“When a stupid man does something he knows is wrong, he always insists that it is his duty.”—the Centurion in Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra.

Ample evidence of this can be found nearly every time a “public school” administrator opens its mouth (yes, I said “its”).

“Take the recent case of Chloe Smith, 14, an eighth-grader in Mustang kicked out of school after drugs were found in her locker.

Smith wasn’t in possession of marijuana or cocaine, but prescription hormones she takes for a chronic condition, polycystic ovarian disease.”

That’s the lede in a story in The Enid News about the magisterial idiots (apologies to common idiots everywhere) running amok in the Mustang, OK “public school” (AKA “prison for kids”) system. No further information needed. No thinking person (or person capable of thought) need even consider that the school “has a policy” that makes having a prescription medication requisite for a person’s ongoing health and well-being punishable by expulsion. Some administrator with lower intelligence than a rock made the stupid rule and another administrator, no doubt with even less intelligence, decided to enforce it.

To call such persons idiots is an insult to idiocy.

The girls’ parents ought to sue the pants off ’em (and each and every scholl board member, no matter what shield laws there may be) for endangering the girl’s health.

And afterwards, their rotting corpses should be hung from poles outside the school as a reminder to future administrators to either get a clue or a productive job. (Oh, you noticed I left out the part about angry mob, pitchforks, torches, etc? Yeh. Didn’t want to offend the sensibilities—such as they might be—of thesupremely idiotic nannies that comprise the population of busybody administrators tasked with making “public education” a complete and abject failure… as education, that is. As indoctrination against learning, it’s a remarkable success.)

(Thx to James Taranto for the link to the story that spurred this mini-rant.)

Or rather, re-habbing woes. A simple lil job turned into an engineering-on-the-fly exercise in frustration, head-whacking and, finally, semi-triumph. Easy job: take the bathroom medicine cabinet that’s been attached to the wall since forever and place it in the wall. Simple, really.

I really think I ought to turn the use of my electronic studfinder over to my wife, though. It seems to go haywire when I use it (too much stud for it? [heh]) Marked out position between two studs, foolishly based on sudfinder’s report, and went to town with my drywall knife.

[sigh]

Oh. Well. Took the mirrored door off existing medicine chest. Cut up some 1×4 to make framing, shelves, etc. Other scrap lumber, some screws, and one saw-dusty, drywall-dusty bathroom later, a nearly finished (except for a lil trim), a functional, moderately attractive (well, what was there befoere was plain flat ugly) medicine chest (mostly) flush with the wall, ready to paint, etc.

But that darned studfinder. All those false positives whenever I let it get too close to me…

Now, back to the real finish job. As Granddaddy always said, the job’s not done til you clean up the mess.

Next, of course, finish re-finishing the walls, etc.

Blogging? I ain’t got time for no stinking blogging…

Walter Williams has an easy job. He’s busy dishing dirt on American “education” in his two most recent columns.

Here’s a sample from the latest:

…Recently released findings of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) ranked U.S. high school students 24th out of 29 countries. American 15-year-olds demonstrate less math proficiency than their counterparts in Hungary and the Slovak Republic. With those findings, we shouldn’t be surprised by a recent U.S. Department of Education study finding that nearly half of all college students must take remedial courses in math and reading. According to National Center for Education Statistics, in 2000 close to 80 percent of colleges offered remedial services…

.Gee. It’s almost like stealing pencils from a blind man’s tin cup. In the land of the half wit (American “Public Education” or, as I prefer to call it, Prison for Kids), any wit at all is an unfair advantage…

Keep in mind that the lowest common denominator in government schools is the administrators, who regularly rank below the teachers they supervise in intellectual achievement (heck, in intelligence) and such measures as GRE test scores. No wonder administrators place roadblock after roadblock in teachers’ way: they are just plain flat too stupid (as a class) to be able to do anything else. The only people who have strong influence upon what is taught who are demonstrably more stupid than administrators are politicians and Mass Media Podpeople.

Michelle Malkin issues this warning to rhose considering Amazon.com for their Christmas shopping. Glenn Reynolds comments on another not-so-wonderful gift-giving “opportunity.” I’ll include the link for the truly sick among my readers (well, “reader,” more like :-), but I’ll describe the object and comment as well, so you don’t absolutely have to click on the link to the “gift”.

YEP, as my column yesterday suggests, you can take care of all your holiday, um, needs online. I don’t think that the “used or refurbished” model should sell very well, though. . . . Eew.

Yeh, it’s a “personal” vibrator… right. That kind. The truly troubling thing about the article wasn’t the link on the Amazon.com page to “two used or refurbished” examples of the article (as Glenn said, Eew!) but the link that reads, “Add to Wedding Registry.”

No further comment needed.

[Update: added the Michelle Malkin link referred to but forgotten when originally posted. 12/20/04]

OK, it’s time I dealt with a serious issue, for once.

Alchohol consumption. Preferably beer. On one side we have (the fictional) Dean Woermer saying in “Animal House” (1978), “Fat drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

OTOH, Cliff (a slightly less fictional character [heh] ) outlined the Buffalo Theory of Alchohol Consumption” on a “Cheer’s” episode pretty much thusly:

“Well you see, Norm, it’s like this… A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo and when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Now, as we know, excessive drinking of alcohol kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. And that, Norm, is why you always feel smarter after a few beers.” (Thx to DNW for the Buffalo Theory.)

Well, there you have it. The arguments for and against alchohol consumption. Diametrically opposed, neither one seems compelling. I fear the controversy is with us forever, given the chasm that gapes between these two intellectual giants’ positions and the near inmpossibility that we lesser mortals can reconcile the stances of these two great authorities on the effects of booze, glorious booze, hot sausage and mustard, While we’re in the mood…

Sorry. That’s another story.