Bestill My 12 Year Old Heart...

Percy Jackson and the Olympians is a youth book series that I fully enjoy. Yes, I realize that I read more kid's lit than adult lit now (Harry Potter, I blame you), but what's the fun in life if you can't regress?

This movie looks pretty good, but I have a few beefs with it.

A)... Percy Jackson (the kid with the pen) is TWELVE YEARS OLD in the first book. His age plays a pretty significant part in the series plot, so the fact that this young man's testes have undoubtedly descended gives me pause.

B) Steve Coogan is Hades? Boromir is Zeus? Well, Boromir I can handle. (yes yes, Sean Bean, I KNOW his real name)... but Steve Coogan isn't... hmmmm... EVILLLLL enough to be the God of the Dead for me, which is really just a symptom of a larger issue- NONE of the casting looks like I imagined them. I will confess I hold this to the gold standard, Harry Potter, in which most of the characters are realized the way I imagined them back in 2000. Jesus, I'm old.

C) This guy is Ares (who should also have more of a role than "uncredited" suggests). While I expected most of the gods to be, well, older (many are not), this guy? God of War? More like God of Donuts and Looking Sorta Like William Shatner.

I don't know, folks. In a period in which Where the Wild Things Are and the Fantastic Mr. Fox are generating Oscar and nostalgia buzz, could we have given this more effort? Am I overthinking it?

British Farmers Have a Lot of Time On Their Hands.

To the enjoyment of us all. Kudos to Big Bro for the find!

Sheer Poetry

I really like Christopher Walken, despite really weird stories a friend of mine from junior high used to tell about him (Like that he actually filed his teeth down to points... which must have come in handy in Sleepy Hollow...). She used to lie a lot though, so I took everything with a grain of salt. Please. This man was in a Fatboy Slim video for cry-eye!!

PS- doesn't this interpretation remind you of this version of Rocket Man from Shatner at the 1978 Science Fiction awards (do they still have those? turns out they do)? I have loved this since I first saw it as my poetry final in college. I miss ya, Clewell.

PPS- this just proves how awesome Shatner was...

I Love Cats I Don't Live With

So You Think You Can Bore Me

I never thought I would have done it, but I moved So You Think You Can Dance to the bottom of my Tivo Season Pass List, which means it'll only get recorded if nothing else is on. (This is totally my first step to deleting you all together, SYTYCD. Time to step up.)

Is anyone else kind of over it this season? I kind of don't care about the show right now... it's almost like work to watch the shows that backed up on the Tivo in the past few weeks. There's a few things I can attribute to my apathy.

1. Dancer Hype. They have been touting the dancers of Season 6 as THE BEST dancers ever, and frankly, I'm not seeing it. Once Billy Bell left (before the first episode!), I couldn't see anyone that could hold a candle to Katee and Joshua from season 4, or Travis, or Brandon from last year. I feel cheated.

2. Choreographer Burn-Out, or Where the Hell Is Mia? Mia Michaels left the show in rather abrupt fashion, and the dances from the remaining choreographers seem a little...tired. Wade and Travis are still good, but Stacey Tookey's last dance (that I saw) looked like a pale re-make of Travis' heart dance from last season, Sonya is just being Sonya, that woman with the headphones just annoys the heck outta me, and no one likes the Quick-Step. Do I just not know enough about dance to notice when something is plain but technically brilliant? Or do I just not care? This sort of leads me into the last category...

3. Too Soon!! Beginning Season 6 on the heels of Season 5, with overlapping auditions certainly seems to have worn out the judges, and it is apparently beginning to wear on me. I can't tell if So You Think You Can Dance is a show I love in the summer simply because nothing else is on, or if I'm just tired of eating the same meal every night, so to speak. I believe it's a mix of both... my expectations of summer programming are much lower in than fall (it's the difference between watching Merlin and FlashForward, or eating Hamburger Helper vs Filet Mignon- hungry? yes. I am.). I expect repeats, trashy reality tv, and throw-away series that the network decides to give a modest chance. In the fall, I expect new episodes of favorite shows, creative shows with teams of clever writers, and the shows the networks feel are their best bet for a hit. So You Think You Can Dance falls into the mindless summer trashy reality for me.

As for eating the same meal every night...it's too much!! SYTYCD has a run time of 3 hours per week, if you add in the results show. With scores of new programming on each network, devoting 3 hours of my time to one show EACH WEEK is excessive, and has been putting the show last on my tv "to do" list (yes, I actually have one).

Anyone else feel the same?

Time to Celebrate!

Today is World Toilet Day!! It sounds funnier than it is. It's actually a day to bring awareness to sanitation problems in Third World countries, blah blah blah.

However, I think we should celebrate our porcelain thrones the American way... binge drinking.

PS... this is the scariest toilet I have ever seen. I would hold it.

GUESS WHERE I'M GOING TOMORROW?!?!

EEEEEEEEE!!! I'm so excited. Storytime! Ahhh London... a place of mystery, a place of wonder, a place where you can STILL see Cats.

Which we did. And then bought the soundtrack on tape. And played it in our room all the time. One particularly giddy night, BFF and I were skipping down the hall of our dorm singing Jellicle Cats. I wish we could say we were drunk or high, but we sure weren't. Just made of awesome.

Our dorm was weird, and had 2 steps up in the middle of the hallway, then 2 steps down about 20 feet away for no reason. As BFF and I tried to skip up the steps, I made it and kept dancing down the hall. BFF... didn't. I turned, because she was no longer by me, and watched in horror as BFF pinballed down the hallway: hitting one wall, and then, desperately trying to right herself, caroming off the other, only to fall in great somersaulting fashion.

I swear TO THIS DAY it happened in slow motion. BFF's eyes never left mine; her face horrified and her head shaking as if to say, "There's no way I can get out of this one." I did nothing to help her... I was too far away. And laughing WAY too hard.

Moral of the story? Never dance down the hall in your shower shoes.

Don't feel too bad for BFF. Later that night, during our only round of blood-sport Frisbee with our friend Gabe, I took a frisbee to the face (I'm not... coordinated). I also fell off the 3 foot garden wall as I was trying to make a super-sweet jump to get the frisbee that had fallen over the side. Didn't quite stick the landing.