Pixar movies

Since there was a new Pixar movie released, I thought I’d summarize my feelings toward their other creations. I think I’ll do the ‘short, only a couple sentences’ style that I did with my mass of book reviews. We’ll do this in chronological order, and I’ll give it a one to five star rating (one being horrible, two being not good, three being average, four being good, five being excellent). Note, Laura may not agree with me on these.

Toy Story: *****. Excellent movie that can be watched by kids and adults. Full of heart. It really is about losing one’s religious convictions and finding a much better world in secular humanism. No, I am neither joking nor reading too much into it.

A Bug’s Life: ***. Yeah, I know it was based on the Magnificent Seven (which was based on the Seven Samurai), but it didn’t seem to really do anything new. I disliked the inconsistent application of realism (One of many examples: the ants only had four limbs, which is fine, except they decided to make the grasshoppers have six. Why?), the demand that the main character be a male (A male worker ant? Really?), and the way it was too cutesy. What really jumped out at me while watching was that it was actually relatively boring.

Toy Story 2: *****. Wow, how did they do that? A sequel to a great movie that (probably?) wasn’t planned that turned out to be just as great? Again, excellent movie that can be watched by kids and adults. Full of heart. It really is about facing mortality and realizing life is to be worth living and if we were immortal, than nothing would be worthwhile. Again, seriously.

Monsters, Inc.: **. Ugh, how I dearly want to give this one star, but it has its moments that are entertaining. The voice acting is too obviously actors that it is distracting, and the resolution that laughter is more powerful than screams is a bit silly. The premise that they set up is actually pretty good, but then it gets weird. And creepy. Seriously, this is a freaking creepy movie, and not in a good way. You know, whenever I see a movie, I like to think ‘what is the point of the movie?’ You know, not just ‘a bunch of stuff happens’, but what is the movie trying to say? Even if you don’t look deep into the Toy Story movies, you can see that there is something there, and A Bug’s Life is based on an old story already. But Monsters, Inc.? Does it have something to do with energy or the environment, because if it does, then the layers of symbolism are lost on me. Does it have something to do with love? Probably, but that makes it creepy. Here we have an adult, single monster who spends less than a day with a little girl he can’t really communicate with, and when she goes back home he PINES for her, even keeping a drawing by her and a piece of her door with him at all times when he works. Ok, I’ve written far to much on this now and in the past, but this movie is weird and creepy in a bad way. I actively dislike it.

Finding Nemo: *****. Wow, again. Just a superb movie, cartoon or not. Ignoring the animation (which is god amazingly beautiful) and the voice acting (top notch) and the fact that both kids and adults can watch this, and you still have a movie that has a wonderful heart. It has a REASON, unlike Monsters, Inc. above. Just a fabulous movie.

The Incredibles: ****. Kestian LOVES this movie, which is funny because I swore up and down to Laura that they couldn’t handle it because all the action and stuff. My wrong there. I did get annoyed with Holly Hunter’s voice, and there are other things I can’t remember now that I didn’t like, but overall it was fine.

Cars: **. Again, what is the freaking point of this movie? Oh no, a highway destroyed the livelihood of people that were living large on Route 66. Huh? So what? Things change, and about 50 years before I-40 was built, Route 66 wasn’t even there, so I’m sure that ruined other livelihoods too. Yeah, there is stuff there about being not a jerk and all, but overall this movie is badly paced, has voice acting that is distracting because you can recognize the people, and booooooring. Even moreso than A Bugs Life. Lots of the gags and stuff tend to be ‘look, they are cars!’ Also, we bought a copy on eBay which is obviously a Chinese forgery.

Ratatouille: ****. See, there you go, that is better. It is poorly paced and slow, but overall it is fun. I don’t buy the ‘tug on hair to move’ aspect (they made me take one too many leaps of faith there), and the Linguine character (Pixar tries too hard in naming, and they often suck, like this!) isn’t likable, but that is partially due to his voice actor (not the direction I would have taken it). It had heart, though.

WALL-E: ***. Granted, I haven’t been able to sit down and watch this all the way through with only adults (and no distractions), but it seemed very bland. I won’t get into detail (or else I’ll get too much like in Monsters, Inc. above), but the beginning was ok, though not as amazing as others said it would be, and the second half was lame. You know, I am a biologist, some would say part ecologist, by training, and I didn’t buy a lot of their environmental stuff. Too heavy handed and too missing the point. It tried too hard to have a strong center, but it felt like a shallow individual trying to be introspective; it only exposed the shallowness. It is fine entertainment, but a piss poor showing from the makers of Finding Nemo and Toy Story.

Shall I rank them?
1. Finding Nemo
2. Toy Story 2
3. Toy Story
4. Ratatouille
5. The Incredibles
6. A Bug’s Life
7. Wall-E
8. Cars
9. Monsters, Inc.

I might be convinced to switch the Toy Story movies, 4 and 5, or 6 and 7. Note, this is not a detailed post or discussion about each one, so I may miss talking about good or bad things about each (I don’t discuss the ‘why is this movie?’ for each one, for example).

There are other digital animated movies out there by other companies, including Monsters vs. Aliens (3D!), which we saw in the theater (I would put that behind Wall-E but in front of Cars). I haven’t seen most of those because, even if I did have more movie-going ability, I tend to be a bit snobbish over movies, so no Over the Hedge, Madagascar, or Ice Age crap for me. I liked Shrek, and would easily put it up there with the Toy Story movies. Really, it is THAT good, and I should know since I’ve seen it dozens of times in the past year. Shrek 2? I used to think it was good, but after watching it a bunch lately, I have come to loathe it, putting it squarely in the same category as Cars and Monsters. As with the other animated dross, I refuse to ever see or buy Shrek 3.

5 Weeks, 10K, and ? pounds

There are two things my husband will tell me are perfectly fine and that certainly don't need changing: my hair and my weight. While I feel that I am in dire need of a haircut these days because the mane in unmanageable, it's futile to discuss it with him. I guess he would rather it be long and flowing. I can't fully understand what he wants it to be, but I think that if I don't cut it soon I will end up with something like this:


So I try not to bring up my hair because we just go round and round with "discussions" about how it's "fine" vs. it's "clearly out of control". We don't see eye to eye. But no matter. This is not what I really want to talk about here.

The other thing that my husband thinks is perfectly fine is my weight. I should be thankful (and deep-down I am) that he cares not that I am not the skinny person I once was when we met SIXTEEN years ago. (Oh my god, I just did the math. Is that right? We met in 1993, right?) Between aging and birthing, I'm not where I'd like to be anymore.

And here's the frustrating part: I work out twice a week at the gym, I mow the grass, I'm always chasing after two kids, and I am a pretty active person in general. Ok, ok. I do eat a few too many Oreos or pieces of cake. But surely my gym time counters all that. Right?

As I've watched the scale numbers creep up to what I think is an alarmingly high number, and I realize that aging is working against my once highly active metabolism, and having been inspired by my fellow blogger's recent accomplishment, I've decided I need to put in a new plan of action if I am ever going to counter this unwanted advancement.

So here is my short-term solution:


The Bluegrass 10,000 is a 10k race always run in Lexington on the 4th of July. So that's about 6.2 miles. No problem! Seriously. Since I do so much at the gym, I actually am in pretty good shape already. I just need to build up to the 6+ miles.

With 5-6 weeks until the race, I figure I've already got my training plan worked out:

Week 1 (May 28 - May 30):
Thurs - Run 2.5 miles (DONE)
Sat - 1 Hour Advanced Step; 30+ min of treadmill

Week 2 (May 31 - June 6):
Mon - 1 Hour Advanced Step; 30+ min of treadmill
Wed OR Thurs (depending on weather) - Run 3.5 miles
Sat - 1 Hour Advanced Step; 30+ min of treadmill

Week 3 (June 7 - 13):
Mon - 1 Hour Advanced Step; 30+ min of treadmill
Wed OR Thurs (depending on weather) - Run 4.5 miles
Sat - 1 Hour Advanced Step; 30+ min of treadmill

Week 4 (June 14 - 20):
Mon - 1 Hour Advanced Step; 30+ min of treadmill
Wed OR Thurs (depending on weather) - Run 5.5 miles
Sat - 1 Hour Advanced Step; 30+ min of treadmill

Week 5 (June 21 - June 27):
Mon - 1 Hour Advanced Step; 30+ min of treadmill
Wed OR Thurs (depending on weather) - Run 6.5 miles
Sat - 1 Hour Advanced Step; 30+ min of treadmill

Week 6 (June 28 - July 4):
Mon - 1 Hour Advanced Step; 30+ min of treadmill
WED - Run 6.5 miles
Sat - THE RACE!!

So yesterday I started my magnificent training plan. I decided that if I am going to run this race, I would "train" in the conditions of said race, as much as possible. Besides I hate too much time on the treadmill. With that, I mapped out a route on Google and hit the pavement. I ran the most awesomely slowest 2.5 miles you could imagine yesterday as Part I of Laura Runs the Bluegrass 10K. It took me 10 Amy Winehouse songs to get through my run...that's about 45 minutes...for an astonishing 18 minute-mile! Wow! (At that pace it will take me almost 2 hours to complete the race!!!) But I knew Round One would be slow. I was concentrating on getting through the distance. Speed will come later.

So that's the plan. As I mentioned earlier, this is my "short term solution". Should this prove fruitful in shedding a few pounds, I may keep the weekly Wed/Thurs run (although not 6.5 miles each time) for maintenance. When I went running yesterday, by myself, for 45 minutes, by myself, it was such a nice break that I almost wanted to keep running in the other direction so as to not return to all things kids and cleaning. To have that each week - maybe it should be something more permanent.

The last four years

For no reason, other than the constant reminder that my babies are no longer babies, here is a "time lapse" of the kids - taken on (or around) this date for the last four years:

Today

Today

Book a Week: Six Books in One Post!

We’ll take a break from posting about our vacation to bring you stuff about books! I haven’t been writing posts for my ‘Book a Week’ segment, but that isn’t because I haven’t been reading. I just haven’t written much up for them. So, instead of trying to write a long insightful post on every one of them, here are short blurbs about each of the six (yes six) books I have read without posting about.


-The Dying Earth, by Jack Vance. This is the first in my ‘reading books that influenced DnD’ series. Yeah, Tolkien had a lot of influence on DnD, but really his influence was mostly cosmetic. Many things were taken whole cloth from Tolkien like hobbits (er…halflings), many aspects of elves and dwarfs, a few things about wizards (not much though), rangers (absolutely), and a bunch of monsters. But the feel of DnD was totally different (as were lots of other things). This is readily seen when reading the whole of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth books. They all feel like the classic DnD heroism and daring and episodic adventurosity and you can see what was really influencing its development.

So The Dying Earth was very episodic, betraying its ‘published in blurbs in magazines’ origin. But it is an enjoyable episodicness and things are somewhat connected. It sets the mood for the other books, where the fatalism of the sun about to go out permeates everything. The weirdness of ‘Vancian magic’ (the bane of all DnD players) is slowly introduced (it gets more weird in the last book), and the escapist fantasy element is in full bore. Funny how these books are so old, yet they could fit right in with modern fantasy books, except that these books are actually well written.

-The Eyes of the Overworld, by Jack Vance. This is a still somewhat episodic book, but is much more coherent in its flow, but again you can see how it was published in parts before assembled as a book. At first I was annoyed with the name Cugel because it is similar to the word cudgel (clubby like thing), but Vance won my love by acknowledging it with a fun play on words when Cugel picks up a cudgel to use. Thanks Jack! Cugel is certainly not a sympathetic character, but his adventures are fun to read despite you not really wanting him to succeed. Cugel is a jerk, and not in the charming, curmudgeonly way that I am. I loved the ending.

-Cugel’s Saga, by Jack Vance. A sequel to the last book, and one that was obviously written as a single set from start to end. Again, more somewhat frustrating but always entertaining adventures of Cugel. I probably had more to say about this, but it has been weeks since I read it, so let’s move on!

-Rhialto the Marvellous, by Jack Vance. No Cugel in this book, but that’s ok since I had just read many hundreds of pages about him and was good for a break. This is actually three separate stories (again, obviously stitched together from magazine publications) that shed more on the mechanics of the magic of the world (which are still confused in my head). The second one is the meatiest of them, and a bit more convoluted involving time travel wizardly rules, but the most interesting story. The last one seemed a bit too stretched. Overall, this one was the weakest because, while the first one was episodic, this one was only three stories that were too long to be episodes but too short to be books in their own right.


-Watchmen, by Alan Moore and David Gibbons. Hmmm, I have a whole thing written about this, though I am only part way there in reading it. This is a departure from the DnD inspiring books and also a departure in that it is a comic book…err…graphic novel. Great, fascinating, crappily put together ending, but overall engrossing. I still haven’t seen the move. I’ll put my rambling about this up sometime.

-Three Hearts and Three Lions, by Poul Anderson. Back to the ‘books that influenced DnD’ series with this. I had to find this in a used books store since it is no longer in print, and I am glad I did. Not the most groundbreaking book (at least not after I’ve read all sorts of fantasy dross over the years), but it was good. You can see lots that DnD took from it, and you can see the whole WWII/Faerie/Communism connection a little too well. It, like The Dying Earth above, has a feel that DnD took from, with a great adventure with companions, fighting things along the way with magic being rampant. Morgan le Fey seemed a bit tacked on, but whatever.

There you have it, six books without much insight into any of them!

I’m taking a few days break because I am in a reading group and we are reading The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. No, I won’t review it here since it is a separate thing (maybe I’ll give a short sentence on it?), but I have until Thursday to read it, so I better get on it now.

After that I will be reading il Gattopardo, by Giuseppe de Lampedusa. Sadly, I am not even close to being skilled enough to read it in its native Italian, and I doubt I ever will, but someday maybe my children will. Some people swear by the book, and the NY Times even wrote a thing on it relatively recently, so we’ll see how it really is. And why is it called The Leopard when there are no leopards (nor have there ever been in history) in Italy? These questions will haunt me until I read it, or at least until I get distracted by something on YouTube.

Trip Day Eight - Home Sweet Home!

Finally the last leg of our journey. We decided not to make any stops on the way back and just booked it home, even though we had 6 hours ahead of us. The kids kept busy with their books, toys, and watching videos on my iPods...


Aside from one bathroom stop at a gross gas station, our only other stop was at a McDonald's that had a "colorful playground" (according to Adelaide) where the kids let off some steam...


Finally...

After 6 hours and 382 miles we finished our last leg to be home in time for dinner.


End: Day Eight - 1,391 miles

Trip Day Seven - Toronto and The Border

All right! Saturday! It's time for the Orsetti's to mosey on home. But not before spending the morning in Toronto with the F-X Family. We had a nice brunch then off to the city. We decided to take the ferry over to one of the islands to see what fun we could find.

Let's all check the map!

Waiting in line.

Riding the ferry.

We're here!

See ya on the return trip.

Sharing an ice cream treat.

The family.
(What are the kids looking at?)

Playground fun.

Another family pic.
(Who's that guy in our picture!)

Ahh...Much better.
(Gotta love Photoshop!)

View of Toronto from the island.

View of Toronto from the ferry.

Heading back.

Alas our time on the island was done and it was time to get going. We had lunch and on our way back we mused over the cost of real estate in Toronto...

And I just had to take a picture of the "walk" signs that are all over Canada. More like "saunter" if you ask me. I guess things are more relaxed up North.


So we said our goodbyes and hit the road. It was a great trip. We had no real plans for how long we'd drive or where we'd stop (unlike the carefully prescribed trip up), so we just hit the road. Before too long (?) we had made enough tracks that we were close enough to the Sarnia crossing so we decided to cross over so we didn't have to pay for a hotel with Canadian money.

All the time in Canada we were constantly surrounded by Ontario license plates - with an occasional Pennsylvania or New Jersey, but really no others - until about 2 miles from the border when all of a sudden we were surrounded by Michigan plates, with only a few Ontario. It was like the Ontario drivers had passed their batons to their Michigan counterparts in some sort of country relay. "We're close to the border! Everybody switch!" It was weird. Anyway, we finally got to the "Bridge to the U.S.A."


Now when we crossed into Canada, we had one car in front of us, and the border guy asking us questions seemed pretty nice. Damon was driving and he already knew what they were going to ask. I guess Damon was still nervous because when the guy asked him if we were bringing any gifts or items into the country, Damon said no even though we had some bourbon and chocolate and we just talked about making sure to tell the guy that. I guess the guy didn't buy it because he asked him again and then Damon "clarified" what we had. Otherwise, though, it didn't seem like the process was too much trouble and we were on our way after that.

So this time I was driving as we were going through the crossing. While we were eating lunch earlier that day I happened to read this article in the Toronto Start "Smile! The U.S. Sees You Coming" where it talks about how the U.S starts its "border inspection" long before you even get to the crossing - taking pictures of your license plate and connecting the info to a database long before you even pull in. Nice. Knowing that they already know our blood types and that the milk has expired in our fridge, we pulled in to wait our turn. After carefully selecting the slowest line, it was finally our turn to drive slowly past SIX cameras as they all took our pictures, waited as the dogs sniffed our car and some guy tapped it to see if it was packed with drugs or bombs. Then the border guy started his "interrogation". How many passengers? What was the purpose of your visit in Canada? How long where you there? What do you have to declare? How did you know someone in Peterborough? Where do you live? What kind of work do you do? Is this car owned by you? How do you know these people in Peterborough, again? Are you traveling with large sums of cash or jewelry? When my answers had satisfied the guy, we were finally allowed to proceed. Yes, I was intimidated. We had everything in order and had nothing to hide and I still felt so vulnerable. I felt like one wrong answer and this guy could make a lot of trouble for us. (Probably not, but it felt like that.)

When we were excused, we decided to drive a little bit further and ended up just outside of Detroit. We found some dive and ate at the Big Boy and called it a day. Next stop: HOME.

End: Day Seven - 300 miles

Trip Day Six - Canoes, Aliens, and Catan

Friday we visited the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, where we saw every kind of canoe imaginable. The kids even got to make their own little canoes.

After a nice lunch downtown, and a failed attempt at a nap, we took the kids to see a movie! Aside from taking them to see the Thomas the Train movie when they were 2 1/2, we've never really taken them to see a movie. Fortunately the theater was nearly empty and the kids were pretty good, so we didn't have to worry about the kids disturbing anyone as they oscillated between saying they wanted to leave and saying they loved the movie.

Now, mind you, all the stuff we did was not just kid stuff. We actually did some adult activities while we were visiting, if you know what I mean. Hehe...I know I shouldn't blog about it, because this is a PG family blog...but we often found ourselves up late at night indulging in activities that only adults do. WAIT! Get your mind out of the gutter! I know what you are thinking! No, it's not that! How dare you think we were playing Monopoly! Indeed we were much more discreet and tactful considering there were children in the house. No, we were playing Settlers of Catan!

Having never played before, I won the game the first night, so of course the game is AWESOME. I think this is one that we are going to have to get our own set of.