Summer Movies

With Roger Ebert recouperating, I thought I'd give my version of thumbs up/down for a few summer movies.

An Iconvenient Truth

It's been described as one of the most important movies of our time. Personally, I believe it is one of the most enlightening, frightening, and paradigm shifting movies you'll ever see. I give it a definite green thumbs up!

Who Killed the Electric Car?

Holy conspiracies batman! The oil and auto manufacturers are actually in bed together? These titans of industry huddle together on golf courses and club houses to figure out ways to make more money? No, come on that's just pure paranoia. Right? They don't really care about profits just making sure you and I have safe affordable clean transportation and save our limited natural resources. Well if you are wondering why technology in computers and every other industry has advanced, yet we have done little to change the combustion engine. Why have cars gone from 40mpg down to 16 mpg over the past 20 years? If you watch the film be prepared for the backlash of advertising and media rebuttals from GM. Thumbs up!

Disney's Cars

Eh. My thumb is some where between up and down. I really like Pixar films so it is difficult for me to bag on this movie. However at times it felt hypocritical that Disney, the king & kingdom of commercialization, was giving a lecture on the evils of commodifying. That said there were definitely cute moments and you couldn't help cheer for the heart string pulling moments. It was worth an afternoon matinee ticket price and the bucket of popcorn I shared with my boys. They loved it.

Pirates of the Boxoffice... I mean Caribbean II

The movie title is actually Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. But not only did I feel that I was rooked out of $25 dollars to see this dredge, after watching 150 minutes it felt like I trapped in a Deadman's Chest. This movie at best was a nearly 3 hour long teaser for Pirates of the Caribbean 3. At worst it was as if the cast was set before the script was then hastily written over too many mimosas. Trust me there were no rum drinks that inspired this movie. It was pure hollywoood, self-importance isn't this so cool with this special effect and this name, crappola. They opened so many plot lines and introduced and reintroduced so many characters that you were left wondering, how are they going to tie this all together? The answer, they didn't. They just shut off the camera and called it a movie. I didn't even find Johnny Depp's performance redeming. I felt like I had been held up at sword point and then told to walk the plank, actually that would have been at least heart thumping. There wasn't one bit of heart in the entire movie... not even in the Deadman's Chest. Thumbs down.

DVD Rental recommendations:

If you want to see a feel good movie with great acting but not a bunch of sappy formula writing, definitely pick up The World's Fastest Indian. Sir Anthony Hopkins was absolutely brilliant in this movie and I hope that at 80 I'm as spry as the character he portrays.

My second recommendation may make you feel like you just flashed back to a wild college party where someone passed around a funny cigarette or may make you want a funny cigarette. Either way it's one of those movies that will leave you thinking for days, What the Bleep Do We Know Anyway?

Okay, that's it for me and my movie reviews. I'll hand this back over to Ebert because, sheeesh I've got other things to do besides just watch movies all summer!

My Big Fat Italian Wedding

Ten years ago today, I walked down the aisle of Immaculate Heart of Mary church, looked at my smiling bride groom and wondered, “How much longer until we can split for the honeymoon?” I also was wondering why in the world I let my mother talk me into a long-sleeved completely beaded wedding gown, that made 100 children in Asia arthritic, in July… in the desert.

Why?

Because my wedding was the “Big Fat Italian Wedding”.

From the moment my future husband proposed I wanted to elope. I begged him to just elope with me. Attempted to bribe him with every naughty sexual favor I could imagine. But, he wanted a traditional wedding. He still seemed to get the naughty bribes though. ;)

He has a very large and close extended family. I have a very large and complicated extended family. Everyone seemed to push for this traditional wedding and I wanted peace and for everyone to be happy. So I was a flipping pushover. I caved and agreed to just about everything for the sake of peace among the families. My biggest mistake? Me living in Kansas at the time, but planning a wedding to take place in Colorado, the state where my family lives.

From the huge beaded dress, to the flowers, to the colors of baby blue & peach I had very little to say about how the wedding would proceed. Remember, I wanted to elope. When asked what wedding colors I wanted, I said “Navy and cream”. Everything showed up as baby blue and peach. My mother went to the bridal shop and changed the dress order for all my bridesmaids from a dress in navy crepe to the baby blue silk ones you see above. I have never worn baby blue or peach in my life and never would have asked my friends to either. The required printed napkins and all of the other wedding paraphernalia arrived with out my knowledge of it ever being ordered. Then the guilt, oh god, the guilt. “What? You don’t like it? Oh, I guess that’s just $500 down the drain.”

Sure, I can laugh about it now. Kinda.

But, if I could go back in time, I would say to myself “Elope!” Then I would tell myself, it doesn’t really matter what kind of wedding you have or what you or anyone else wears. And that, she’s right, he is the *one* and there is nothing to be nervous about. I would also tell her, in ten years you will love this man more than you ever thought possible. And that the love drunk giddiness will ebb and flow but there is a deeper more sustaining current of love and respect that will carry you forward. She might not see it or fully recognize it yet, but it is there. The disagreements and difficult times aren’t something to blaze through, but will test, change and pull at the bond and when you want to push further away that’s exactly the time to cling on tighter. She would probably tell me to shut up and quit talking so much or maybe she wouldn’t believe me because at the time she cannot understand that her love could be any stronger, any more passionate, and any deeper. But it will be and does exceed her wildest dreams.

Creeeeeaaaaaaak... opening the door

*Tap*
*Tap*
*Tap*
Hello?
Anyone still out there still checking in here?

Hi. It’s me. Yup. A rare and ever so elusive KK blog sighting.

Thought I’d pop my head in and give a quick post, you know, just in case someone out there was wondering if I was abducted by Bigfoot or eaten by an 80 foot alligator or something.

Ah, yeah… no. Nope. I’m still around. Letsee here um the last time I done posted was waaaaaaaay back in the spring of 2006. Lawd, so much has happened where’s do I begin?

You know, no one really talks like that in Iowa. I don’t talk like that and I’m not really sure who does except in Hollywood scripts that make me mourn the poor tree that lost its life to that senselessness. But I digress. Back to me, since you can’t really talk about you on my blog. Or at least not until the comments are enabled and then you can post away.

So, as you can see I’m bored. I have a moment to myself to post. Why, you might ask is Mrs. Dulce at home on the night of the 4th of July? Why isn’t she taking in the fiery display of gunpowder in bloom across the summer night sky with her wide eyed and hyped up on ice cream children? That would be because two of the three are with Mr. Dulce partaking in the summer ritual, while I’m at home watching bambino Dulce who has been running a fever since Friday.

He started running a fever as soon as I had put the last bag into the happy mini bus headed for Colorado and a much anticipated trip to the mountains for a 4 day camping trip. After finishing a mountain of work, shopping, organizing, packing and enduring many familial phone calls to arrange all the details… in the two hours before we were to leave… “Houston we have a problem”. I called my husband who was still at the office working frantically to wrap up loose ends and proceedings and still be able to make the trip. All week it’d been like living with Ethan Hawk from Mission Impossible as he’d described the mountain of work he had to wade through in order to go. So, when Friday came and he was only an hour from leaving the office after successfully conquering the paperwork pile and I was on the phone telling him our 15 month old had a 102.4 fever. He didn’t talk. He didn’t say anything for at least 10 minutes. I was tempted to hang up and call his secretary to go check on him.

Jumping to the end result… we didn’t go to Colorado. Bambino Dulce’s fever topped out at 105.5 on Sunday night and I was grateful to be in a urban area with electricity and flush toilets and 24 hour access to a pediatrician.

And so… here I am. Home with a sleeping and on/off again feverish baby. Who the doctor definitively said, “I’m 90% sure it’s a virus. Unless of course it is just a delayed reaction to the measles vaccine. But most likely a virus.”

Yeah, I love that. It’s like the get out of jail free card doctors carry around – “It’s probably just a virus”. Yeah, well ebola is just a virus too. How about a little help here doc? Throw a poor sleep deprived prone to panic mom a bone here. Anything I can do to make it better? Yeah, no. Same answer as any mother ever gets – it just has to run it’s course and try not to worry. Uh-huh, and while I’m trying not to worry I might as well just quit breathing too. 105.5 degrees Fahrenheit! Come ON! I don’t even get into hot tubs that hot!

Can you tell sleep deprivation has sunk in a bit? I’m just a tad cranky around the edges.

If you are still reading and want to know a brief version of what I’ve been doing since my last post. Here is a link to a brief photo documentary of “What I’ve done on my summer vacation so far”. (Pictures)

If you do happen to get the chance definitely check out the King Tut exhibit. It's in Chicago at the Field Museum until Jan 1, 2007, then it will be off to Philadephia. Another exhibit that is worth it's weight in gold is the Evolving Planet it's not just a bunch of dinosaurs, it is the single most incredible exhibit I've ever seen of how life has adapted to earth.

And that’s what I’ve been up to… besides the normal cook, clean, drive kids, and put in 30+ hours a week trying to write evaluation and research summaries on youth who have aged out of foster care. Anyone want to help me revamp the foster care system in Iowa?

I’ll try to check back in again at the end of July. :D Maybe I will try to write a few brief entries instead of these novellas.