Chris! Put a place on your blog entries for comments. I am totally in agreement with you about Finding Nemo. I loved it, and I thought, "Hey cool, we're the turtle parents." William and I actually had the exact same cathartic reaction to Mulan, as it arrived in theaters just after Merlin was born. We cried and cried.

My summer movie reactions are mildly different from William's, as I am much easier to please. I am not what you would call a discriminating viewer as I am able to enjoy lots of things for their pieces and not necessarily demand overall quality.

Case in point:
The Hulk - Stilted acting (I think done on purpose for the "repression" feeling of the film. Not that fun to watch, though)
- Progressively annoying editing (He uses split screens to emulate either comic book structure - in which case he failed miserably and should have watched Unbreakable to see this done flawlessly- or the old TV show - in which
case he was very effective and just annoying.
- Even I admit that the military cannot be that stupid.
- I love Sam Elliot, and I expect him to play, if not smarter, then at least wiser people.
- Nick Nolte (In itself a reason for me not to see the film. I just can't stand him.)
One might get the impression that I didn't like the film from these comments, but one would be mistaken. For me, the visceral joy of seeing a nice person explode into the jolly green giant and smash up the bad guys is just irresistable. Besides, Eric Bana and the Hulk are both kind of cute. This comment prompted Will to ask if he now had to be worried about green people too.

To be honest, there are better movies that deliver this kind of physical kick for me, Punch Drunk Love comes to mind, so I don't have to accept a mediocre film from a fabulous director about a limited possibility comic book character... but he's green.

The Matrix Reloaded - About fifteen minutes into this film, I said to myself, "Damn, they are releasing the third one in August." At that point, I just settled in to watch fight scenes (which I got tired of in another fifteen minutes.) But I liked the Architect speech and I love Morpheus's line to the general when the general says, "What if we don't believe as you do?" Morpheus replies, "My beliefs do not require it." Laurence Fishburn has come a long way from PeeWee's Playhouse, my friends. Also he, Keanu Reeves, Carrie Ann Moss, Hugo Weaving and that guy that played Mercutio in Romeo+Juliet are all just too beautiful.

X-Men2 - I really liked this movie. I can't wait to see how they handle and animate the Phoenix plot line. And then it introduces my favorite mutant - Nightcrawler. (This is what started the "blue people concern" at my house.)

I enjoyed Chris's explanation of the implications of the latest Supreme Court decision, although I felt like I was listening to the Architect in Matrix:Reloaded - I'm only human, I'm not really expected to understand all of that, am I? And it made me wonder about something else. There are several mentions of what the "majority" can legislate, but we are not really governed by the majority. (Wouldn't Nixon be happy with me?) The way I understand the workings of the machine, we are governed by a much smaller group of elected representatives. Now, they may vote in a way that reflects what they perceive the majority of their constituents supports. (This was a problem for Gore 2000. He won the majority of votes, but not in the right percentages in the right states to have the representative ballots cast for him.)

Deep breath.

Now, one reason I can see for things to be set up this way is that the majority can be wrong. The founders, working with a largely immigrant, agrarian population, knew this and they set up safeguards. This is why you hope to elect a representative who is smarter than you, so that if there are unseen negative implications of a tax cut on your child's education, say, then your power to vote in a tax cut because you really want that money for a new car can be hampered by your representative who understands more clearly the sacrifice you don't realize you are making for the short term benefit that will depreciate as soon as you leave the car lot. I think this is why people often vote for the "best man" instead of along party lines. They want someone who will make responsible choices. Now, whether the smart man or the moral man is the best man is up for debate. In any case, it is a "deeply rooted" American tradition for legislators to have the freedom to vote their conscience.

And I have to wonder (I really don't know. Perhaps one of you will.) did we end segregation with a majority, or with just enough outrage to make legislators examine their consciences? Women's voting rights? The subhuman value placed on women and African Americans was legislated by a majority who saw no compelling moral reason to treat these people (as groups) as much more than property. And they had support from the Bible and judeo-christian tradition. Children of course, were right out, and they were first protected from individuals and corporations by animal protection laws.

Anyway, as a layperson, I am glad for the decision, though I can see the problems inherent in not spelling out what it means across the board. I am glad because it seemed like a law used to punish people not just sporadically (like traffic tickets) but also vindictively. It is easy to imagine that a disgruntled neighbor would call in "those queers next door" for his own reasons. I also wondered, did this law mean that being gay was sanctioned for women, but not men?

Just asking questions.

My Friday 5:
5 albums I have listened to the most over the course of my life so far. (topic courtesy of William)
In no particular order

1. Life's Rich Pageant by REM - First for I am Superman and then for everything else.
2. Girlfriend by Matthew Sweet - OK, I'll admit it. The anime video drew me in, but that album was probably the first tape I bought for one song and then realized with some surprise that I liked EVERY song. I was a big tape mixer before then.
3. Flood by They Might Be Giants - I was singing Women and Men to myself just last week on my way to class.
4. (Fast Car or Talkin' About a Revolution?) by Tracy Chapman
5. Greatest Hits by Stevie Ray Vaughn.

I have some runners-up, but I have to go to class and give a demo about comic books.

So. I have adopted the latin "no day without words" mantra for this blog, but the astute among you might have noticed that I haven't actually managed to create an entry every day since I replaced "Description" with latin. Never fear. I am creating words every day in my writing project/grad class which is turning out to be a ton of fun and two tons of work pressed into 4 weeks. What I will be able to wring out of the experience when I am done, I have no earthly idea as I am too busy trying to remember (if i ever really knew)how to think. All the time. It is more work than I thought.
Today my daughter announced that she wants to name her children Velma and Fred. She asked me to write it down so I can remind her when she is older in case she forgets. Promise kept.
I read Understanding Comics today and it is freakin' brilliant. I have decided to write a comic for my grad class project even though I can't draw and have never experimented with the writing format. This is not unlike my approach to every project I tackle, so I am not anxious and ready to back out yet. I do wish I had thought of it a week and a half ago, though.

Okay, my Friday 5:

The five books that I know all about, can speak on with some authority, and perhaps have directed the course of my life without my actually having read them are:

1. Le Morte d'Arthur (those of you who know me well may have to stop and catch your breath)
2. Don Quixote
3. The Chronicles of Narnia (I actually finally read The lion, the witch and the wardrobe LAST YEAR)
4. Moby Dick
5. The Catcher in the Rye

On a sad note, my beloved dog, Haggis, laid down yesterday and his body did not get back up. I do not know precisely when he died or what he died of. He was my first baby, and I will miss him.


Haggis
December 1996-June 14, 2003

"Farewell, wherever you fare, till your eyries receive you at the journey's end."

My Friday five two days late: I actually had a hard time coming up with things I hate, so these are the 5 things that annoy me:

1)Wasted food (not so much at restaraunts anymore, but when people pull things out of the fridge and leave them to spoil...aargh!)
2)Crusader Christians
3)My own habit of tracing disasters back to their innocuous beginnings (Who can live like this, really?)
4)Time travel when the person doesn't realize that s/he has time traveled (It has taken a lot of thinking and talking to pin down my exact objections here.)
5)The necessity of becoming an asshole to get reimbursed/compensated when some sales/service institution has totally fucked up whatever it is that you paid them to do.

Hello patient reader. It has been so long since I have had time to sit and type an entry that I now have several backed up in my mind. Forgive me if I ramble. First and foremost, I completed my first triathlon event on Memorial day, the Capitol of Texas FirstTri. It was a stormy morning and the race was delayed an hour, and Town Lake was 68 degrees (gasp!), but it was a lot of fun. Having completed it, I am kicking myself for not registering for Danskin. Perhaps next year.
This morning turned up further evidence that my life story really is The Cat in the Hat Comes Back when my husband washed an entire tube of dark pink/red lipstick off of my son and on to the bathtub. He had painted his whole body with lipstick, so now I have a "pink cat ring"
until I can move the mess somewhere else to be dealt with. Or not. Gavin was sick earlier this week and spent 20 hours or so throwing up. It was exciting. It was actually kind of nice to sit and hold him like a little baby (which he is not anymore), but then it took about another 20 hours of cleaning to get the sick smell under control. Then later in the week, I got sick with some mysterious flu-like ailment, which crept over me slowly until it decided to knock me out while I was at a friend's house. If there is anything worse than feeling sick, it is feeling sick in front of other people. My teeth were chattering so hard that I couldn't speak clearly (it was only 100 degrees outside) and I had to ask her if I could lie down on her bed for a few minutes to try to get my body under control enough to drive. Then I drove home and napped with Gavin until my fever was down while Merlin took care of things. She kept coming up to me on the couch and putting her hands around my face while saying, "You're going to be alright Mom. We're going to take care of you." Then she ate the last of her Rugrats vitamins and filled the container with water for me to drink. It was "children's inetol (read:tylenol) that is safe for grown ups to take."