Ted...seriously, yes... Ted :0)

Ok kids are going to have some much needed Daddy time and I’m going to have some much needed movie time.

I already have a plan...

Beasts of the Southern Wild ….Beasts of the Southern Wild. I am so excited I have been waiting for this...finally a phenomenal film with a child actress....and it isn't playing on the shoreline.  This movie art house advertises before it knows for sure they are going to send the film.  The manager and I already had this fight once over The Skin I live in.  I won't yell at him again, I'll just find something in Branford to watch.

What to see?  My daughter texts me from her father's phone while I am searching my movie app. I hate it when a text pops up in the middle of something else.

Mommy... I need my teddybear...can you bring it it daddy's house? I left it across the street during the fireworks party.

Because she is my only daughter and I want her one day to tell a therapist that she loves me, I went over to my neighbor's house, got the bear, and drove it to her father's house.

What don't we do for our bears?  I mean daughters....

Sign from God as to which film would get the privilege of my undivided attention.  I need a bear.

Is there a movie out about a bear?

It isn't Winnie the Pooh, it isn't Paddington...I need a bear movie.

There is one bear movie out there...

Ted

I can't go see "Ted." I have rules, I have standards...I have one too many friends that will roll their eyes at me over this.  The last time I saw a comedy as such was The Waterboy when one of my 8th graders wrote an essay in Spanish about how she could watch it all day every day.  How could I not check that out? 

But back to Ted...hmmm I can't..I want to,  I can't....I want to..

Loop hole...loop hole there has to be a loop hole that will allow me, Page, the only sixth grader that fully appreciated Raising Arizona, to see Ted.

I have it....

Giovanni Ribisi is in it. I'll go see anything with Giovanni.  Lost in Translation, Boiler Room, Avatar, Cold Mountain...I got this.  I can't not see Giovanni on the big screen. I didn't realize there was an animated teddy bear involved too.  That's what I'll tell people.  It was for Giovanni.

The audience was mostly male. I have very rarely seen men sitting together in films.  That was awesome within itself.

A mostly male audience is not there for Giovanni Ribisi...at least I hope they aren't....

Ok...this is like David Sedaris or Avenue Q. You can divide the audience up by who laughs when.  Some people are going to laugh at the crude jokes and others are going to laugh at the more intelligent ones.  Everything is on a spectrum-autism, nutrition, and humor.

But I was RIGHT in my reasoning behind going to see the film.

Giovanni Ribisi stole the movie. I mean he might as well have said, "OK everybody, I'll take over from here and make this movie watchable."  and he did.

The end of it turned into a Romantic Comedy and those make me want to throw up, no matter how many drugs we see a teddy bear do.  This is America-we must have our magic rainbow happy ending. Fine. I knew that when I bought the ticket. 

Overall, I laughed enough to make it worth it.  Grazie Giovanni.  I need to take an Italian class.

Since I wasn't being the movie snob this time, someone else filled the position. I had a friend ask me what I thought of the movie, and I told him.

 Maybe I should have lied. Maybe I should have said I walked out after I realized that Mark Whalberg was 35 and working for a rental car place and smoking pot with his stuffed teddy bear and still freaked during thunderstorms. I most definitely should have said I only went because the Coen Brothers don't have anything new and I have already memorized the latest Woody Allen...

But I didn't say that, I gave my Giovanni speech.

Oops....

then was told, "The 13 year olds must be seeing it twice and three times because it is making crazy money.  I am annoyed by comedy movie conventions that seem to be there.  I will see it on cable probably."

Ouch-is this how I sound to other people when I don't like a movie that I haven't seen yet?  If I do, awesome!!!!!

I have a new movie snob hero to look up to...but in the mean time...

Go see whatever you want to see for whatever the reason you feel moved to see it.  Be prepared for others to want to see something else or wait for it to be in the free movie section on Demand.

I still prefer Boogie Nights...I'll bet one or two of the men there did too.


P.S.- I ran 16 miles..seriously, yes sixteen :0)

Ice Age and the next level

I firmly believe that if you want kids to do something, you have to make it part of who they are.  If you want them to eat in restaurants, you have to take them to restaurants. If you want them to read, read to them.  If you want them to behave in a theater, keep taking them to movie theaters.  This is not rocket science.

We can safely say that we have mastered the social setting of the cinema.  We have executive functioning and behavioral task analysis down when it comes to Hollywood and Independent art houses.  I don't have to take the earmuffs anymore.  We know the social story by heart and flow through the steps like any kids with a competent mom on a summer afternoon at a theater.

In even BIGGER news-we have mastered the sharing of a popcorn bucket.  One child sits on my lap with the bucket while the other two are on either side of me and the whole thing is gone half way through the film. We don't add butter, not because I am uber super healthy mommy, but because Kenneth freaks if anything touches anything he eats-no butter, no ketchup, zilch.  Four people sharing a bucket.  That's two dollars a person. Proud of my math or what?


We decided on Ice Age: Continental Drift.  This would be the fourth installment and they aren't direct to video yet.  I am not big on these movies, but...Ok, Ok...let's do it.  I'll pretend every time I hear Dennis Leary's voice I'm watching Rescue Me.

Previews are spotty-Lowell hides under the chair for most of them.  We want to see the Hobbit but Mama is going solo to Frankenweenie.

Lovely, bravo...we did it...mother of three can leave the house every now and then without making a scene!!!

What do we do when skills are mastered?  We take it to the next level and re-write the family goals.

Now that I can leave the house and watch a movie, we are going to discuss the movie afterwards.

Rule number one I want them to always remember: movies are meant for the big screen-not the little one.  The point of a movie is to go BIG!  You are doing a disservice to the writer/director/actors if you wait for DVD.   I think they got it.


I made them answer these questions if they wanted ice cream for desert:

What happened?  Give me the plot of the whole thing.

Who were the characters? (It helps to have a poster or a picture or a McDonald's Happy Meal if you swing that way...)

What did we learn about friendship and family?

What were the funny parts?  The comic relief?

What was scary?

We went over all of this and I think they got it. I'm not putting down their answers because I really don't want to spoil the surprise of the film...ha.

I made the mistake of asking, "Did anyone else notice anything we didn't talk about?"

Why did I do that?

Kenneth had to pipe up.  I knew he would.  I asked the question and he isn't going to let anything go.  Maybe I should have just let them go run around the backyard and swat bugs with ice cream bars in their free hands.

"Actually mom, now that you bring it up, I don't think the science was accurate."

"No, probably not."

"I mean, I know that all seven continents were once one, but I don't think it happened that quickly and all the animals..."

"Want to ride your bicycle without training wheels some more?"

"SURE!!!"

Yes, I distracted him, I taught high school Spanish, not Earth Science.


The best part for my children to see was the end when they coupled the actors recording their voices next to pictures of their cartoon counterparts.  I didn't realize that Game of Thrones super star Peter Dinklage was Captain Gutt or I would have agreed to go much sooner.   If my children ever hope to get a puppy out of me one day, all they have to do is promise to name him Tyrion. :0)

New rule-we watch a movie as a team, we discuss it as a team.

Their mother is a freak that way.

P.S.- Up at Five am for a six mile run, although I forgot to hit the app on my phone to record it until half way into it, so my phone says I only ran three miles. They didn't have such things in the Ice Age anyway.

A Run through Rome....

Is it seven am already?

Coffee…..check…I’m not running this morning so the babysitter can sleep in. Kids are still asleep...hallelujah..I can say this as it is not Lent.

Coffee pod…push button…..this is so much freaking easier than an espresso machine.

Milk..milk…found the milk.. Caffeine going through the veins….bliss….I’ll just open the back door to get a cross breeze going…and....and...

and there is a pool in my backyard.

I’m just going to do that thing they used to do in the old school cartoons, where I get a knife or a safety pin and stab myself in the arm until I wake up.  Ouch…ok that hurt…one more time…oh crap that pool is still there.

THERE IS AN ABOVE GROUND POOL IN MY BACKYARD!!!!!

You know, I’m too nice. I’ll take the Phish music and I’ll take the unemployed men getting mad because they can’t throw a boomerang and catch it like my intelligent six year old, but a pool?  NO!!!!

I’m done…I’m over all of this crap. I need an outlet…I’m going to see a movie this afternoon.

Which one?  That’s a no brainer….To Rome with Love  it is…

I gave myself a little liturgical challenge last spring. I told forty stories about forty times I went to theaters and what happened when I got there. I did it-but one of my favorite directors was missing.

I didn't tell a Woody Allen story-and not for lack of them.


I have many a Woody Allen story. A lot of them include the nerds I went to high school with and a couple involve college beach trips, but maybe the neurotic Jew just didn't have space in a blog collection leading up to the death and resurrection of Christ. I'm sure he'd thank me if he cared.


We can all find a little Woody Allen in us. It's easy really. You just look around you and make observations and connections to other things in your life and past about everything you see. OUT LOUD..don't sugar coat it. Don't filter it for your grandmother. Just say it. And you can't be embarrassed or worried about what someone else is going to think. Just put it out there-and you have a Woody Allen film. He won't do bonus commentaries for his DVDs. He says the movie is all you need to know about the movie. He has a point.


The critics-the people who are paid to go see movies and tell other people what they think about them-are 50/50 this time with Mr. Allen. To Rome with Love is four stories in Rome going on at once-they never connect in anyway other than you can tell Woody wrote them.



I’ll spell them out:


1) One average working man gets a taste of the celebrity life style.

2) A small town couple finds out how much fun extra curricular trysts can be

3) A retired music producer discovers a mortician that can sing in the shower

4) An American arquitect wants to visit the country he studied in during his twenties


I don't have all day, so I'll just focus on my favorite vignette. Alec Baldwin is the architect stumbling around his old neighborhood looking for what was once his old apartment. He meets a twenty year old kid who happens to be in school for architecture and knows exactly where the apartment is and takes him there for coffee. OK, I was slow on the uptake during the Sixth Sense, but I figured this one out pretty quickly.  Duh...


I was loving the film and picking apart the dialogue and comparing Ellen Page in this to the time I saw her in Juno when we were both pregnant. Listening to her character name drop to the young architect cracked me up. She liked Gaudi and the Sagrada Familia? Always let the conversation go on a little bit longer to make sure they can keep up and aren't just telling you what they want to hear. Did she like Park Guell too? How about the Casa Batllo?  Everybody and their brother knows Gaudi and the Sagrada Familia.

She didn't even try to be adorable about her ignorance- I would have said:

 I only know Gaudi, Frank Loyd Wright, IM Pei, and Maya Lin. Four famous architects for a trivia game but I can't help my son put a Lego set together past the age of seven.

 As I was over analyzing the phone rang silently. Yes, I was that movie patron. My phone was making noise during a fine arts cinema production.

 The old me would have gotten irritated with this. But the new me has three kids at home and left the theater to answer it.



It was the property manager of my house.


PAGE! HOW DARE YOU PUT A POOL IN THE BACKYARD FOR YOUR CHILDREN! IT NEEDS TO COME DOWN!


I didn't put a pool in the backyard. The girls upstairs did. I am sitting in the hoity toity town of Madison, CT watching a Woody Allen film with possibly ten other people all way older than I am while everyone else is in Branford watching Ted or Magic Mike. This is my life. I can't go to a theater without something happening.

I tried to be polite and handle this quickly because with every second I spent on mundane stupidity I was missing brilliant self-depricating witty dialogue we only get once a year and Woody is pushing 80 so how many more of these movies do I have??? (sob)

I cleared my throat and channneled him, to my property manager.  I tried to think of what Woody would say if he were the 37 year old mother of three in a new life setting she didn't really plan.

UM, seriously, it wasn't me that did it. Yes, I have three children that would be more than happy in a germ filled pool without having to go anywhere strapped in a carseat.  Sadly for them, I enjoy taking them around other people to swim so that they acquire social skills they wouldn't get sitting in an above ground pool in my backyard swatting mosquitos.  God knows I have broken rules before and will more than likely break them again.  When I was eleven I got in trouble over Judy Blume books, just last year a principal accused me of sharing a porn DVD with another mother via our children's backpacks, and that one boyfriend in highschool almost had to go back to drug rehab over me,  but putting up a pool in a backyard that doesn't belong to me isn't on that list. OK I don't have time for this I need to analyze a film- Bye.

Then I had to quickly run back to my seat and not irritate the old ladies behind me.

ahhhhh wit again.

 I hate the word cute-so I'll say that the film is a quirky little romp through Rome that could have happened almost anywhere. Not his best, not his worst. If you love Woody Allen you will love this too. 

Other than Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters, this one stirred up some emotion in me.

Alec Baldwin and Jesse Eisenberg are ingrained in my brain forever-no kidding.  Kind of a post traumatic stress disorder moment, if you will.

I'd love to wander around Sevilla, Spain and see my twenty year old self. I would run into her on the tippy top the the Giralda tower. She would have this thick head of red hair and be wearing socks that match her shirt.  I would tell her three things:  1) Start learning about autism other than Rain Man. 2) You are writing all those letters because you love to write, keep doing it, and 3) buy hair gel.


Everything else she could figure out on her own-including how to be witty and get a pool out of her backyard.

Thanks Woody-see you next year!

P.S.-I ran 12 miles today in the heat.