It's A Small World

Look at those little wooden shoes. These children are Dutch, obviously. They are also a cliche. I love a good cliche, therefore, I love this Disney ride as it's ripe with cliches. For instance, the french kids are doing the can-can, irish kids are leprachauns, middle eastern kids are riding magic carpets outside the Taj Mahal and the asian kids all look the same! No, I'm joking, Ro said that last part and she's asian, so it's all good.

There's not much else to say about the ride. You get in a boat and sail through different rooms with dancing, singing children of different races. The problem is these kids sing the same damn song for eternity, so you're bound to get this tiresome tune into your head. For an added bonus, the boats get all backed up towards the end and you are likely to be stuck in one room for 5-10 minutes. Staring at the same creepy wooden creatures and still listening to that damn song.

Still, it's a Disney classic and one that they haven't tampered with, so I give them credit for that.

3/5 stars!

KStew Slays Me

I just read this quote on people.com from an interview with Kristen Stewart (of Twilight fame) regarding filming of her new movie New Moon:

"I always had a really hard time figuring out 'Am I doing enough? Do I look like I'm going to die?'"

I'm pretty certain I know the answer here. It's no, right? I mean, I have cinder blocks in my basement that emote more pain than she could on a good day.

Side note (and sorry about this one, I can't hold it in). I've always had a question about Bella and Edward's relationship. What do they do at Bella's special time of the month? Seriously. Think about it.

Lawyers At Their Finest

Behold this gem from our Florence hearing the other day:

Defense atty: So, you can't give specifics on any of the specifics from the interview with the Defendant?
Homicide detective: Could you please be more specific.

This is what advanced doctoral degrees get you.

Africa, Kansas, Detroit

I read three extremely different books in the last couple of months. I will review them for you now so that you don't have to read them.

What is the What - This is an amazing book. It follows a Sudanese refugee as he walks across Sudan to get to a refugee camp in northern Kenya. The book is heartbreaking as people are dying all around the hero. With all of this darkness, there is also a lot of light. This is a story of survival and the strength of humans. It makes you want to go out and save the world. Anything else that I could write about this would dwarf the story and it was too beautiful to do that. So...5/5 or 10/10 stars. Best book I've read all year.

In Cold Blood - I sort of had a different idea of what this story was going to be. I thought it was going to be a real life murder mystery a la one of those 48 hours reports. It's not really so much of a mystery as we know what happens at the very beginning, so that was kind of disappointing. What wasn't disappointing was the actual story. It follows killers in Kansas and enters their psyche to see what drives someone to commit murder. Capote is an amazing character writer. He makes you feel sympathetic for one of the killers. He makes them people, not monsters...and it's disturbing. It makes the reader feel terrible for thinking that these people are anything other than monsters. The one thing I couldn't get behind was Capote's knack for extremely long sentences. Sentences that go on for lines and lines with no punctuation. I get to the middle of the sentence and have no idea how it started. RUDE! 3/5 or 7/10 stars.

Middlesex - When I started this book, the only thing I knew about it was that it dealt with hermaphrodites. But that's really simplifying things. What it's really about is family and immigration, growing up and realizing who you are. The story unfolds in gorgeous layers. First in Greece/Turkey, then in Detroit and Berlin, then in New York and California. What I loved most about this book was that you couldn't see what was going to happen next. There were many times when I thought, Damn, that's a shock. I was nervous about the book too because while I love The Virgin Suicides, I'll be the first to admit that it was a little bit boring at times. Middlesex is not boring, it's fine storytelling. 4/5 or 8/10 stars.

The Bucket List

Did anyone see this movie? I'm sure even if you did, you fell asleep about 5 minutes in. Old people have that effect on the big screen.

Every time I think about this term, I giggle. I think it's because I hear Morgan Freeman saying "...before you kick the bucket." And then laughing like dying is HIGH-larious.

But I love lists, so I've often secretly loved this idea. I decided to make a "lifelist" because I don't plan on dying soon. I want to have at least a thousand things on this list and then I will chart their progress on the blog.

Does anyone have any idea how effing difficult it is to think of 1000 things to do?? I'm up to about 75 and my brain wants to explode.

I just re-read this entry and WOW! Most boring entry ever. I must officially be a blogger, where I'm rambling on about things no one cares about (and before blogs were just relegated to people's own heads where they damn well belonged). My blog has become like ambien and old people in movies and tv shows.

Look at this...

I want this in my life. It's whimsical and nonfunctional...everything that I adore. If anyone sees something like this whilst furniture shopping, alert me immediately. I'd give a finger for this chair.

New Month Eve Success!

Remember when I asked you all to help me with NME resolutions for August and wish for warmer weather. Well, looks like it worked. For the past few days I have had to take off my sweater or jacket while I am walking the 4 (or so) blocks from my car to office....in the morning. Now that's something to be happy about this summer.

I'll celebrate my contribution to the world with sangria this evening.

Meet Ramsey

All summer long, my dad has been promising he'd get a new puppy. This weekend he made good on that promise and got this little cutie. This is the calmest puppy you have ever met. And he already loves me, so I know he's a keeper.

Tower of Terror

It's scary right. Very ominous and foreboding. Listen, it scared my mother so badly she refuses to go on this ride, so it must be scary!

The Tower of Terror is a trip down freaky deaky memory lane. It takes you back to the Twilight Zone (which, btw, I've begun renting via Netflix and it's pretty damn good) where bizarre things happen and that creepy music is played. You know what I'm talking about. Typed out it's all "Ne nu ne nu ne nu ne nu"...right...I know, scary.

They really play up the theme on this one, the peeps that operate the ride are even rude to your face. When you get on the ride they're all like "Enjoy your death" and "Wave to your family members, you'll never see them again". I have been stuck in that elevator car with way too many young kids who end up terrified and crying for the first 15 minutes of the ride (yes, it's that long). Then, because the ride's long, they get bored until...HOLY SHIT THE BOTTOM OF THIS ELEVATOR JUST DROPPED OUT!

And down you go. Then you shoot back up. Then the bottom effing drops out again. AHHH! The bastards got me.

When the ride first opened it dropped a couple of times and the second time was kind of a half drop. It continued like this for awhile until the operator peeps noticed that kids were coming off the ride being all like "Bitch please, that was nothing". Then they shook it up and now there are something like 20 patterns that your elevator car could take you on. Sometimes it will hold you up at the top and the doors to the outside open up so you can see the park and you're thinking when is this damn thing going to drop...crickets...more crickets....even more...then it drops a bit and stops..crickets and then BAM! It also goes up and down at least 4 times. That was when my mom said she was done and would never go back on it.

I miss the ride, but I feel like this is one of those where Walt's in his frozen cryogenic chamber thinking "We could've done better".

So, 2/5 stars.