The Notebooks

 This is a different sort of post from what I usually do but...it's my blog and no one's forcing you to read.

Movie Review: Klaus

When it comes to Christmas movies, I find myself sticking with the classics. It’s A Wonderful Life, Home Alone, A Christmas Story, The Santa Clause, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

On a recent plane ride I did check out the 1994 remake of Miracle on 34^th Street and found it a bit…bland. I don’t know what it was but a lot of it felt very forced and artificial.

By no means was it bad but I’m not overly fond of remakes and Mara Wilson’s character being wise-beyond-her-years got tiring very quickly. However, I’ll give high marks to Richard Attenborough as Kris Kringle in the film. The man made a remarkable Santa Claus.

 But last night after we finished dinner and my Dad decided to go to bed early, my Mom & I turned on Netflix searching for something holiday-themed that we could watch. Now I might have been tempted to see if Home Alone was available (It wasn’t) but then I remembered a Christmas film that came out last year that I had missed but told myself to catch the following year. That movie was Klaus.

Does This Suit Me?

Aaron and Katelynn's wedding is in less than three weeks. And while I spent an entire afternoon last weekend getting them wedding presents, this weekend I spent an entire day looking for clothes.

I'm not a fashionable guy. When I say that, I don't mean that I wear plaid on a daily basis and I know that if I'm going out to a nice restaurant that I probably shouldn't wear torn jeans and a shirt that has some retarded slogan on it. At the same time if you want me to pick out a suit, then you might want to put on a pot of coffee, get out your copy of Atlas Shrugged, because this going to take a while.

It's not that I'm stubborn or anything like that, it's just that choosing is hard for me sometimes. I want to look nice but I don't want to look like I'm late for the royal wedding. I want to be casual but not in a "I got this at Bargain Bin" way. I want a nice colour but I also don't want people blinded by my shirt.

Does anyone know where Spike gets his suits at?

Thankfully that problem has been solved. While I originally got frustrated and decided to take my revenge on the fashion world by dressing like Rod Roddy for the wedding, I came upon a tailor shop in the mall and within twenty minutes left with a nice blue shirt, tie and black pants.

I kept asking myself why such time had to be wasted on clothes that I would wear only once and would most likely never get the smell of booze off of.

"It's tradition," my father explained, sounding a lot like Tevye.

Right now, I'm just glad this is done and am looking forward to my vacation, the wedding, the food, the (hopefully) open bar.

Victoria Jackson: Hating Glee For All The Wrong Reasons

Does anyone else hear that theme from "The Omen" when looking at this picture?

I don't watch a lot of television and the shows that I do watch are viewed on my laptop screen before I go to sleep. One of the few shows that I watch on a regular basis is Glee. Yeah, yeah, laugh your ass off at it, I don't care. Surprise, surprise, but I was a theatre geek in high school and could act my ass off. It's fair to say that I was a pretty good actor. A pity I couldn't dance otherwise I might be in a totally different situation than I am now but...

Anyway, on the show there's a character named Kurt Hummel who is openly out, which you would kind of expect in a show about theatre geeks who love to sing and dance. Anyway, he's at this private school which is all boys (Doing my best not to make any jokes) and falls in love with another gay guy and in the latest episode to air, they both accepted their feelings towards one another and kissed. And a million fanfic writers watched their wildest dreams come true.

Does anyone else think he looks like a white Wilmer Valderrama?

So they kissed and out of nowhere and obscurity, Victoria Jackson from Saturday Night Live, way before my time, goes on CNN after making some rather mean comments about gays and the show itself.

I really don't want to get into a debate about religion. I have no problem if someone is Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu (Don't get too eager Jar-Jarvis) or atheist for that matter so long as they don't try to shove their beliefs down my throat when I don't want them. I come from a moderately religious family. I've been baptized, did my first communion and my confirmation and yet I'm still not guaranteed entrance to the kingdom of Heaven. I believe there's a God, and I believe if you're a good person when you die, you get into heaven. That goes for the gays, too.

 

Anyway, I watched the interview and after my ears stopped bleeding due to Jackson's dog-whistle voice, I realized that she was hating the show for all the wrong reasons. She shouldn't hate Glee because it has gay characters who kiss (I find it funny how she justifies herself by saying she has gay friends. Not for long, dummy.); she should hate it because this season sucks balls.

Well...not all of it sucks

For some reason, the writers have decided this season to make all the characters either unlikeable or just plain stupid. Everyone seems to be cheating on their boyfriend/girlfriend with someone else. I mean, if you're a guy and your so-called 'best friend' gets one girlfriend pregnant and makes out with your next one cause she's pissy again, wouldn't you have strangled that guy with your shoelaces? Or shanked him in the cafeteria? Hmm, maybe I shouldn't watch Oz right after watching Glee.

That and there doesn't seem to be any real character growth. Now I'm probably going to get some Glee fan who says, "Heyyy!!! That's not truuu!! Rachel broke up with Finn!!! That's growth!!!" No it's not. It's just something that happens to her. She's still the same selfish, diva bitch whom I'm surprised no one has punched yet. She reminds me of a girl I acted with once and thankfully it was only once, always demanding the spotlight and being a stage Nazi. How often do we see Rachel getting upset because she can't get a solo or something else that doesn't put her in the spotlight thus justifies her acting like a bitch the entire episode and getting a solo at the end to show she's sad.

Apparently the truth hurts...

It applies to all the characters. It looked like they were really going to make Sue change her ways from Season 1 at the beginning of this season but then she went back to her old ways about two episodes in with her trying to destroy the Glee club like a really shitty Batman villain from the sixties. But it worked in Batman because the show was a giant spoof/parody and it knew it. Glee is becoming a parody of itself and seems to think it's being fresh and original just because they seem to do a themed episode each week (Lady Gaga, Madonna, Rocky Horror).

Also, this one is just a personal preference, but the singing is too perfect. Take the Christmas episode, A Very Glee Christmas. Our first glimpse of the New Directions group shows them decorating the room for the holiday and they're singing...kinda what you expect on a musical show. I'm going to take a quick break to tell you about a friend of mine. She is a music teacher and very good one at that as is her husband. And as good as they are, I think they would even struggle to recall the lyrics from the soundtrack of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Seriously, it's not that the glee kids suck at singing the song, but it's just all so perfect. I mean, I know they're supposed to be good but...that good? Come on, I could go up to any choir in the country, ask them, "Sing me a song from an almost fifty year old stop-motion animated Christmas special and have the exact same rhythm and timing as the original", and they wouldn't be able to do it. I mean, it'd be funny if they screwed up the lyrics once in a while or just as they're about to start singing have someone raise their hand and say, "Sorry, I don't know that one."

"What makes you think I know the lyrics?"

That whole Christmas episode bothered me in general because the writers decided that they would take one character and turn her from a cute airhead to full blown retarded. I'm talking about the cheerleader Brittany. I know it's a Christmas episode, but did they really need to say that she still believed in Santa Claus and that she believed that he could get her paralyzed boyfriend, Artie, to walk? I mean, she's making Sue Sylvester's assistant, Becky, a girl with Down Syndrome, look like George S. Patton.

And what's worse is that at the end of the episode she gets her wish! Artie gets these leg braces or something that help him walk just a little bit which were bought (Anonymously) by the school football coach, Bieste, a character who has been underused in my opinion. So wait, if you're a high school football coach, you can afford experimental medical technology so that a person who gets lost in a revolving door can have a good Christmas? Huh, so I guess all those teachers who bitch about being underpaid are just greedy misers.

Hey look, everyone, Artie got a Deus Ex Machina for Christmas!

Oh and what also blows is that they decide to have Rachel sing Last Christmas, a Christmas song so terrible that I have put it on my enemies list.

Another issue I have with the show is that it doesn't know what it wants to say. It's a cast full of diverse characters: Asians, blacks, gays, paralyzed, athletic, fat, neurotic and at the end of each episode they want to drill it into you that it's OK to be original and not a stereotype. You don't need to have blond hair, big boobs and whore yourself out there to be talented. That's a great message.

They don't do themselves any favours though when they decide to pose for pictures and basically pretend that they lollipop they're sucking on is a human penis. I mean, they try to give you that standard, "It's who you are on the inside that counts" message. But in reality, the message they send is this, "It's who you are on the inside that counts...until you land on a hit TV show. Then you can get those implants you desperately need!"

For a show that promotes diversity, it's funny that they had only enough room for the good looking white people...

There are a lot of other points that I could make about this show but I have only so much energy. The show isn't terrible by any means and though there are some people who would disagree strongly with that statement, I still watch it in the hopes that it will get better because it can be. In closing, I say this to Victoria Jackson: Judge lest ye be judged; let she who is without sin, throw the first rock. And if you're upset that there's nothing for your kids to watch because Hollywood is pro-gay, then turn on Bugs Bunny. My Opa loves that stuff and Bugs Bunny never does anything gay.

Nope, nothing queer going on here...

Back Home...by that I mean Calgary

After a week in humid Ontario, I'm back in my comfortable basement apartment, munching on a late meal of Burger King. It was a nice, relaxing time with my family but it has made me come to the conclusion that no one in my family has much luck when it comes to flying. Now granted, I did have trouble getting into Toronto last Saturday but goddammit, I saw something on the wing trying to sabotage us! I don't care if William Shatner is the only one who believes me, it happened.

The next time Shatner looked at something this horrible, he watched Star Trek: Generations

Not much has changed in the neighborhood where I grew up except that there are a lot more windmills around than the last time I was there. In fact, there were no windmills. Holy crap were there a lot of them. Sad thing was none of them were moving.

"They look like TIE Fighters," observed my dad as we were driving into Essex.
Ooh, nice try to nerd it up, Dad, but to the more experienced and seasoned dork, these windmills clearly look more like Shuttle Tydirium from Return of the Jedi.

This looks like the windmills in Essex County...

...while this does not.

It was nice to see my whole family on both sides as well considering that closest I get to a family are the few glimpses I get of my landlords now that I work midnights and their two babies who will jabber non stop if you let them though when they do it's quite funny.

One thing that I really missed (to the amazement of my cousin who couldn't have cared less) was the discussions that my father's side of the family has with each other. It leads to arguments, clashes of ideology and philosophy, statements that if captured on film would prevent any member of my family from running for office. But in the end it all ends with us hugging, saying goodbye and treasuring the time that we have together.

Of course my mother had to cry at the airport. To throw fuel on the fire that was her sorrow I was tempted to bring along a baby picture to show off my divine cuteness but decided not to risk it considering she would claim I was an Al-Qaeda operative and that it wasn't an alarm clock I was bring back, just to keep me a little longer.

How could you say 'goodbye' to that face?

"I'll miss cooking with you," she sobbed. One thing about both sides of my family is that we know good food and we know how to make it. My last night consisted off a turkey dinner to make up for all the holidays I had misssed. However, I do plan to get back this December in time for Christmas.

Not your standard Saturday night dinner but that's why my family kicks ass