It's Not Perfectly Normal...

...to steal a library book and think you're Rosa Parks.

I can understand that the city doesn't want to put her in jail. Like they say, this case has already been a waste of money and time, and putting an elderly woman in jail over a library book doesn't help anyone. But I really don't like that she gets away with obstructing the library's purposes. Just because you might not like a book doesn't mean you have the right to steal it.

But I do like the ending: patrons have donated multiple copies of It's Perfectly Normal and three are already checked out.

Because no one says it better than someecards

Greatest News EVER!!!!

Buffy is back!!! Well, sorta. The CW had launched theWB.com, an internet reincarnation of the now defunct network. The main pull of the site is the video on demand they'll offer, which includes none other than Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the greatest show in the history of television.


The second I heard about this I ran lickity split over to the site to check it all out. It appears that the first five episodes are available right now. Great nostalgia. I'm hoping they'll expand their offerings slowly, without removing the initial content. We shall see. Also, the player's a little wonky on my computer, and so I haven't actually managed to pull an episode up (but I'm at work so that's okay).

This is such great news. I'm just as happy as the day I found out that you can watch the full series of Firefly on hulu.

Thank heavens for the internets, and for Joss Whedon too!

Sarah Palin, not Hillary, but you're supposed to think that if you're a woman.

So Senator John "called his wife a cunt" McCain finally picked a veep. Exciting! Was it Romney like everyone had been predicting? Nope! Even better. He picked a lady. Governor Sarah Palin.

Interesting facts
- This is the second time a lady has been picked to be the vice presidential candidate. (The number one option to be number two: Geraldine "I ruined my career by saying race too much during this election" Ferraro.)
- Palin is the first female and youngest Governor of Alaska. She was 42 when she took office in 2006. She's 44 now.
- She has a fuck ton of kids (5).
- She's pro-life, which has long been considered to be a political requirement of anyone McCain picks.
- She's a former beauty queen!

Okay, so let's get the obvious out of the way. John McCain picked this lady because she's a woman. And because despite a week of trying to make all the dems love each other again, there are still some PUMAs lurking around and he thinks the best way of catching them is to throw a woman at them. It might work for some, but it won't work for all of them. Because the people who love Hillary love HILLARY. They don't just love her because she's a woman, they love her because they've known her for 16 years. Palin seems cool enough, she's pursued ethics reform, but she's not Hillary Clinton.

Verdict: It won't get McCain the overwhelming number of women votes he's hoping it'll get him, unless this woman turns out to be stupendous on the stump. We'll see.

But if she fails to push him over the edge, we all know what he'll call her...

Don't Let This Be Our Future

I'm so scared.

Come on, Team McCain. Do you honestly not know how to use an apostrophe?

Shaft for Higher Education

Hollywood loves an inspirational teacher. You can make a flow chart of student/teacher movies, all ending with inspiring music and kids who have learned a lot about art/literature/math and a little something about life.

Some top picks:

• Blackboard Jungle: 'Rock Around the Clock' is the devil!
• To Sir, with Love: Hey, wasn't that teacher a teen delinquent in that other movie?
• Stand and Deliver: My calc teacher hoped we would be like this; too bad we weren't troublemakers and didn't really care about math, either.
• Dead Poets Society: Oh Captain, my Captain!
• Dangerous Minds: Been spending most our lives living in an Amish paradi--oh wait.

But these are just movies, maybe inspired (haha) by some true stories. For real life inspiring teachers, you have to look a little deeper. You have to be willing to take a little more than a sappy life cliche. You've gotta be called fuckers.

This wasn't my professor, but I loved him. He was really there for his students, encourages them to go out there and make some art (film, specifically), and was open to different points of view. But he was also badass. From the syllabus:

"Attendance: Ya gotta show up and don't be tardy. If not, it is your ass.
Look here I can not stand this late shit. I am not going to repeat myself
because folks keep coming late. Screw that shit. Get ya asses to
class."
Another direct quote: "If people keep being late, I'm gonna start
shootin' motherfuckers."

Sure, talking about poetry and tearing up books is great. But when it comes down to it, kids need to be smacked around a little. Maybe KevEv didn't dance with his students at the end of the year, but he's got their backs.

Because You Haven't Heard Enough About the Election

Ladies make informed decisions. Make sure to vote!

Check registration deadlines--they come up faster than you think.

Hot Tranny Mess

By this point, everyone knows big personalities stick around a little longer on reality shows. Project Runway, the gold standard of reality television, isn't much different. So now that we're solidly into Season 5, who's your favorite/least favorite designer crazyface?

Some standouts...

Suede: Named after a fabric; talks about himself in the third person; uses "wackadoodle." Kind of has evil eyes.

Blayne: Tanorexic; wants to be the new Christian?; everything is "-licious." (Didn't that ending go out in 2001? It's a 90's reivival, babe, get it right.)

Kenley: Retro-girl; a little cocky; major giggler. (Tickle-me-Kenley.)

Stella: Biker chick; a little older than several contestants; wants to leather and stud the world!

Is anyone a Santino? Is there a Daniel V just waiting to pop? (Leanne!) Discuss your favorites and hatiests in the comments.

(Who's your favorite, Tim?)

The Childhood Bedroom of My Dreams

Minus the waterfall.

When I was little, we moved and my parents decorated my room to resemble that of a Victorian princess. I wanted star wallpaper. They said I'd come to like it. By middle school, I still didn't and tacked up Buffy posters, quotes, etc. But maybe if I had had a room like this, I wouldn't have had to do that.

Pizza Girl is My Hero

Another favorite webcomic update!

Reasons I Love Questionable Content

• It's updated really regularly--Mondays through Fridays, every day, usually around midnight. It's one of my morning internet checks.
• The quips. Sometimes there was a quip too many, but it's toned down now. And really, I love reading about people who are quippier than average.
• The robots.
• The narrative. Jeph has really settled into a good flow here. Questionable Content is a mostly reality-based comic, so it's all about the characters and their lives/interactions. I'm hooked.
• Awesome t-shirts.
• Art progression. Jeph has grown so! It's exciting to watch.
• Indie music references. (Although Morgan could probably out-reference any of the cast members.)

Questionable content reminds me of Queen of Wands (now defunct). It's addictive and funny and snarky. I'd like to think I'd hang out with these people if I were a webcomic character, but they're probably too cool for me. At least I can read about them.

The Battle of UglyCute: third contender

Upfront admission: I found this by google image searching the phrase "uglycute" (in my defense, it's the first time I've done it, and it's mostly because I'm busy as all get out and dailypuppy was simply delivering me cutecute puppies as opposed to uglycute ones).

But I think it qualifies because it's both really fucking ugly and really fucking cute.

Pre School Musical

Curse them for not letting me embed this but bless them for making it.

Sesame Street, I continue to contend, is the coolest.

Genius

"If I had a quarter for every time I said I had a nickel, I would have five times as much theoretical money.” - Stephen Colbert

Disenchanted Red Riding Hood

Seriously, Jennifer.



"If you're jealous of me because I kissed a sixth grader, well you should know, that I didn't even want to. He made me!"

Time to Head to the Polka Raves

The hunt is on!

Any information about Steve should be posted in the comments.

The Battle of UglyCute: second contender

This is one mean ugly looking dog, but then he's a baby dog (aka: puppy) and therefore he becomes uglycute. He is also your second contender for the first annual LadyFaces Battle of UglyCute .

Yeah, But How Were the Reviews?

Working at the local motel? Sucks.
Getting to tell the world what a whore Denise is? Rules.

Pearls of Wisdom

Dorothy Parker, why couldn't we have lived in the same era so we could have been friends?

"Too fucking busy, and vice-versa."--Dorothy, in response to her editor demanding belated work while she was on her honeymoon.

The Battle of UglyCute: first contender

I am on a hunt for the ultimate ugly cute animal. You know, the animal that is both insanely ugly and insanely cute at the same time.

Current contender, these two platypi

Fashion Icons

Despite what America's Next Top Model may say, I don't think models are integral to making me buy a product. Companies have also caught onto this. They know we don't trust some random model; we trust those people who come into our home every week, the people we read about, the people we make a point of going to see.

Celebrities.

It was a good plan. In seventh grade, when Sarah Michelle Gellar was the star of a few Maybelline commercials, I thought, "Yes! I want to look like Buffy!" Because I saw her every week, I thought this would be a good way to emulate her.

But since then, I've wised up, along with everyone else. Companies can't just slap a celebrity in a commercial and expect to stand out. Will Arnett and Amy Poehler making funny faces in Gap sweaters? That works. I can see them doing that at home. Madonna trying to rap in Gap jeans? I'm sure that's what she and Guy do all the time.

It's not a surprise to see a celebrity selling something. Anne Hathaway in a perfume ad? Of course. Josh Holloway with cologne? Why not? (Although he still has some of that Sawyer attitude which makes me think he doesn't really want to smell like anything except his own sweat.) But when companies pick just the right celebrity, that campaign stands out.

Enter Wallace and Gromit.

They're lovable. They aren't in eighteen different ad campaigns. They look so daper! I don't care what they're selling; I will buy it.

It's a new generation of ad campaigns. I don't trust Madonna in Gap clothes, but I do trust Wallace and Gromit. They've survived a wererabbit. Obviously they're not going to sell out to whatever company wants them.

That's not to say I want to see Ariel and Belle in H&M. But it's a new idea for grabbing attention, and I tip my hat to the creators.

(Mostly, I just want to see Wallace and Gromit all the time. More of them, less heiresses.)

Priscilla Ahn has a beautiful voice.

La Blogotheque is possibly the most hipster/indie thing that I absolutely love. It's a french music blog that features a little series of web videos called concerts à emporter, or soirées à emporter, depending. Most of these are shot with bands that swirl through Paris, but very recently they featured a singer out in a little public square area in LA.

This woman's voice is absolutely gorgeous, and the bit is shot simply but with beautiful lighting and some sort of great color effects in edit. But what's best is the contrast between her soprano voice against the background of the families shuffling around behind her on what appears to be a lovely weekend evening. There's a sweetest to it that just knocks me off my feet.

Mommy Dearest

Sometimes, dogs are better mothers than teenagers.*

*Insert requisite Jamie Lynne Spears joke here.

The 90s are coming back

Just look at the Gap's new line. Grunge redux anyone?



Pro's? I like flannel and I like comfy. Grunge is both of these things. I might not mind being able to get away with overalls every so often all over again.

But if we're going to have a fashion comeback from the 90's there's another type of comeback I must demand. We need 90's music.

Here are some of my demands.


Who doesn't love Arrested Development? Before it was a show it was a group. An awesome hip hop group that said fuck off to the gangsta rap that was growing at this point. Oh how I loved them


Soundgarden! Their music means the 90's to me more than almost any other band. It reminds me of being a little teenager sitting in my room making collages of various media idols that I posted all over my bed posts. It reminds me of being scared of that Black Hole Sun video (which I would have included but I've always liked this song better).


Under the Bridge. Wonderful song by a band that may still be my all-time favorite.


Bonus points
My other Chili Pepper favorite, my not so guilty mid-90's pleasure, and big butt and a smile.

These are my demands. I expect culture to heed.

Radiohead covers

Dangerous territory, but excellent when done right.

This one qualifies as "right" in my book.



I love me some Cee-Lo. That man has a voice!

A Brief Pause

"With educated people, I suppose, punctuation is a matter of rule; with me it is a matter of feeling. But I must say I gave a great respect for the semicolon; it's a very useful little chap."--Abraham Lincoln

Never has a punctuation mark caused more debate than the semicolon. Put grammar snobs in a room and bring up the semicolon, and suddenly everyone's throwing bar stools at each other. There's no middle ground in the battle for/against the semicolon. It's all out war.

Lynne Truss (my person hero) "called it a 'lovely example' of proper punctuation."

 

Donald Barthelme claims, "the semicolon is ugly, ugly as a tick on a dog's belly." (Not on my Christmas list this year, Don.)

Cormac McCarthy went so far as to start on, "the 'idiocy' of semicolons."

But the semicolon isn't just going away. It has a long history of love and rejection. I'm on the love side. (You can probably tell if you've read my posts.) The semicolon isn't around just to make essayists seem smart. They extend a thought, allow a little more room than a sentence would usually be willing to give. Sometimes ideas need a little space; that way, the reader can take a brief pause, assess what he/she's thinking, and continue on without being stopped full out. A writer who doesn't consider the semicolon is like a lover who doesn't understand foreplay. You can't just start fucking and assume you've made your point. Sometimes things need to build the right way.

Maybe we should ask Mrs. McCarthy how she feels about the semicolon.

Selling Out

Why I Will Cry

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is delayed until summer 2009.

Seriously? They already have the trailer out. This is a few months away. I could understand if they had announced this back in April, but now is too late. Obviously I will go see the movie anyway, since I cried when I finished the last book, but God help Alan Horn if I ever see him in a dark alley.

(Harry looks upset, too.)

New Yorkers Say the Darndest Things

You Earn Extra Street Cred for Creeping Out a Hobo

Suit lugging huge rolling suitcase to hobo taking up two seats on train: Pardon me.
Hobo (sliding over, looking at huge suitcase): What do you have there, a dog or something?
Suit (with deadpan look on his face, stroking suitcase fondly): I used to. (sighs)
(hobo slowly inches away)

--L Train

Overheard by: Cai

Best Prank Ever

Rob and Elliot: another webcomic near and dear to my heart.

I love Rob and Elliot for its randomness. I don't really know much about Rob and Elliot as characters, and there isn't an overall plot arch, but that's what I love them for. They can do whatever, whenever, and it usually leads to dark hilarity.

What Also Sucks

• JFK (The airport, not the person.)
• Weather
• Airplanes
• Lines
• Loud people in hats
  

Love Sucks

There are a few things I love: YA lit, Joss Whedon, and the ugly-hot guy in literature.

1. YA and children's books are where it's at. These are the books you grow up loving and end up holding nearer and dearer to your heart than anything written by Joyce or Melville.
2. Buffy helped me survive middle school. I'm usually not a vampire nut, but this show really struck a chord. It used a supernatural universe in order to underscore how weird and deadly high school can be.
3. My middle school crushes were Cyrano de Bergerac and the Phantom of the Opera. Hell, I even liked the eyepatch kid from Newsies the best. Any messed up guy that loved the main girl just for loving him back was right up my 7th grade alley.

So it would seem that Stephanie Meyer's book, Twilight, would be made for me. It's the latest YA book craze--people are dubbing it the next Harry Potter--and, at its core, has a forbidden teen vampire love saga. Flash back to Buffy and Angel much?

I ended up finishing Twilight in less than 24 hours. Sure, it's 500 pages of largish type, so it's not really a very long book. And I tend to be a fast reader. But it's definitely got a hook and Meyer knows how to pull the reader along. What will happen next? Will Bella fall down a well and Edward have to save her? Will Edward decide she's just a tasty snack? Who loves who the most? Okay, that was a little snarky, but really, it is a page-turner. And Meyer actually knows how to write, too. The prose gets pretty purple, but I like that Bella has a more mature voice than most YA protagonists. It especially helps in this kind of novel, too, in which Bella falls so desperately in love with Edward that it seems a little unrealistic.

(Unrealistic in a teen vampire love novel? No!)

What I didn't like about the novel was how needy and weak Bella becomes. Again, she's very mature for her age--she's grown up almost taking care of her parents, and isn't particularly interested in being the queen bee at her new high school. But Bella really loses herself once she starts a relationship with Edward. The two declare their undying love for each other and Bella isolates herself from everyone else she's known in town. Also, there's the threat that Edward could drink her blood at any second. He could just lose control--she's so tasty!--and she seems kind of okay with that. (This is more pronounced than in the Buffy/Angel relationship since here Edward is especially attracted to Bella because she smells so great--like a big plate of cupcakes, basically.) Did I think Edward was hot, even with his creepy vampireness? You betcha. But I was also turned off by how their relationship resembled an abusive one. Sure, Edward saves Bella all the time (girl is worse than Timmy from Lassie, I swear), but there is that constant threat that he could snap. Also, he has a bad temper and is condescending, while Bella laps this up and thinks everything he does is "perfect." He basically stalks her under the pretense of "keeping her safe," which ooged me out a little. Their relationship is extremely intense for seventeen year-olds. (Okay, one seventeen year-old and one guy who's celebrated his 100th birthday already.) By the end, Bella is basically begging to give up her entire life and join him as a member of the undead. It's a little creepy for a YA relationship.

The biggest warning sign for an abusive relationship came at the end, when Bella is talking to her friend, Jacob, whose Native American family is not okay with vampires:

"He was...kind of over the top when you got hurt down in Phoenix. He didn't believe..." Jacob trailed off self-consciously.

My eyes narrowed. "I fell."

"I know that," Jacob said quickly.

"He thinks Edward had something to do with me getting hurt."

Really, Edward did save Bella, but this reminded me of women who claim they "fell" when they actually got hit by their boyfriend/husband. Those echoes give the book a much darker shade than I think Meyer intended.

When I was 13, the Buffy and Angel drama didn't bother me at all. But even now, I think what helped in that situation was that Buffy had some plans/attitudes of her own. She didn't swoon every time she saw him. Sure, she had plans, but they involved somehow rising above both of their issues; she never wanted to become a vampire.

(Of course, in the Twilight-verse, vampires can avoid sucking humans, can go out in sunlight--shiny!--and look hot all the time.)

Did I get pulled in? You bet. I'll probably get the next one from the library as well. But I'm also a little worried for those legions of fangirls out there would think that love is all-consuming and means you need to be with someone whom you are totally awed by and can't survive without. That love means literally giving up life as you know it.

I don't want to sound preachy, because there are all kinds of relationships in literatures, and YA lit shouldn't necessarily teach kids a good, old-fashioned lesson. But it is something that struck me the wrong way, even as I liked the book overall. Maybe it's just a sign of maturity--I'm sure I would have swooned over Edward as a 13 year-old myself.

(Recently, I rewatched My So-Called Life and realized what a jackass Jordan actually is. Same idea, I guess.)

If you haven't read the book, you've probably seen the trailer for the movie or, better yet, the Entertainment Weekly cover. As hysterical as that picture is, it does reflect the tone of the books a little. It's melodramatic heart-throb stuff, but it's fun. I'm not going to be in the theaters on opening night, but I might Netflix it when it comes out in DVD.

Where Can She Be?

The only old-school computer game that can rival Oregon Trail is Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. While my family only had the demo version of Oregon Trail--I had to try to kill my wagon-mates really quickly--we had the full Carmen Sandiego, so it holds a special place in my heart. All I know about geography I owe to that sticky-fingered filcher.

Check out this list of fun facts about Carmen. Some favorites:

3. Carmen used to be an ACME agent before defecting to V.I.L.E. (the Villains' International League of Evil).

7. One episode of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego was never aired because the contestant fell down in the bonus round and broke her arm.

My Little Horrible Pony

How does this pony look so much like Nathan Fillion?

Nathan "Filly"on?

Wait, you haven't seen Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog yet?

(Watch it on hulu!)

So many links! Also, if Joss Whedon is out there, reading this, I think we should be best friends.

Lost in Translation

Thirteen Words Not Found in the English Language

Some favorites:

5. Esprit de l’escalier (French): a witty remark that occurs to you too late, literally on the way down the stairs…

6. Meraki (Greek): doing something with soul, creativity, or love

10. Pochemuchka (Russian): a person who asks a lot of questions

My Other New Enemy

I must sound like some kind of Grendel's mother, making enemies left and right. But the internet is the place for differing views to butt heads, right?

Spoilers ahead!

First of all, I loved Wall*E. I have a heart of ice when it comes to movies/books/general entertainment and I almost cried twice during this movie. I thought it was moving, heartfelt, and hopeful. Apparently someone else thinks it's a date rape movie.

I know.

He claims that he just doesn't get the relationship. He makes Wall*E out to be this socially retarded freak show hiding in his parents' basement with his collectables, and EVE to be the movie-cliche "other" who somehow sees beyond Wall*E's crippling lack of social skills. Also, holding her hand is date raping her.

Did we see the same movie?

I think Devin's problem is that he overlooked the movie's central conceit: they're robots. They don't function in relationships like humans. Wall*E is different because--since he's been left alone for so long--he's had to develop a personality. He's not all about the job. Neither is EVE. When she first gets to Earth, she waits until the spaceship is gone and then starts zooming around, enjoying how she can fly and move. These are two robots who have the same outlook on life--there's more than just the job.

However, EVE's job is still important to her, so when she sees how Wall*E has taken care of her when she was shut down, plus how he helped her not look like a fuck-up at work, she realizes, "Hey, this little robot is something special."

As for the shut down thing, Devin claims: 

Wall*E's big love montage--where Wall*E takes the shut down EVE all over the place and wines and dines her unconscious form--is the hyper-realization of that. But the movie takes it even farther and has Wall*E essentially date rape the sleeping bot--he forces open the plate on her body where her hand resides and pulls out the appendage so he can hold it. In the world of Wall*E hand holding seems to be like Doing It, or some variation thereof, and the little garbage bot forcing himself on a knocked out female is incredibly creepy.

Again, what movie was he watching? When EVE shuts down, Wall*E has no idea what's happened to her. His behavior is like someone taking care of a coma patient. He's trying to revive her with fun activities; he takes care of her; and the hand holding doesn't mean sex, it's Wall*E's way of saying "I love you" since he can't actually speak. He's not date raping her. He's expressing that he cares. When EVE sees all of this, she realizes how this little robot has done more than any other robot ever. (Same for the humans and other robots who meet Wall*E--they're so focused on the job that he, who forced contact, breaks them out of their self-contained shells.)

Mostly I feel like this review was just trying to be controversial for the sake of it. Why poke holes in something that's genuinely charming and nice?

He's Never Gonna Let Us Down

Well edited, youtube guy.

Oh Yeah!

My New Enemy

An attack on trashy YA lit. Nothing new, right? Anyone can say bad things about the Clique books. But somehow the Guardian's Anthony McGowan can't even manage that.

My first reaction--"Yeesh, what a creep." Those snide remarks about Jane Austen and Philip Pullman made me want to go through my computer screen and punch him in the neck. He reminded me of that obnoxious kid in high school. The smartass who would undermine the teacher and destroy half of English literature with the assurance that he "knew what he was talking about." Pretentious ass.

Anyway, so I read through the article and I came to this conclusion: it's not a very good column.

Initially, he claims that he's setting out to talk about "which books, if any, [he'd] ban from school libraries - in the unlikely circumstance of me being in a position to ban anything." So he mentions Austen, Pullman, Nietzsche, De Sade (the two former he wouldn't ban, the two latter he wouldn't be so happy about teens ready.) So not a huge list of banned books here. But then we get to it:

OK, so not many teenagers are going to be reading Nietzsche and the Marquis de Sade, but there's a whole world of books that I'd ban straight away if I got the chance: pink books. Yes, down there with Nietzsche and De Sade I'd place those terrible teeny-chick lit "novels", the ones about snogging and boyfriends and make-up and nothing else. The novel is supposed (says who? says me) to exalt the soul, to show humanity what, in its greatest moments, it might achieve; and yet also to reveal our vulnerability and our helplessness.

The leathery-skinned hacks who churn out the Pink books present a vision of young people as self-obsessed, shallow, blind automata, swilling about in a moronic inferno. Reading these books will leave your soul as shrivelled as one of those pistachios you sometimes find, blackened, in the bottom of the bag. Teenage girls, read the Brontës, read Elizabeth Gaskell, read George Eliot, read anything else - even Jane Austen - but keep the pink off your shelves.

So...what are these "pink books?" I can certainly think of some--the Gossip Girl books, the Clique books, the It Girl books, hell, even Sweet Valley High. I hate these series. (Okay, I did have the first few Sweet Valley Twins books, but they were never a favorite.) They are shallow, moronic, etc. But why doesn't McGowan mention any of the books I've just named. My guess is that he's never actually run into one of these books. He's just heard they're out there in the same way a parent might know crack or oral sex parties are out there. So why even write a column about something about which you don't have any first hand experience? Did he even do any research? Maybe he just read the back of a Gossip Girl novel? Put a little more effort into this next time, please, Guardian.

Sorry, Anthony. You knew you were going to be my enemy when you insulted Jane.

Julia Nunes

The internet is awesome.

Why? WHY? You actually want me to explain? Fine. it's awesome because if it weren't for the internet none of us would know who Julia Nunes is. That would be sad because she's wonderfully talented. She plays the ukulele, covers great songs amazingly well, and then even writes her own tunes (which also happen to be good).

Then she puts them on youtube so the rest of the world can see them. So we should all thank our lucky youtubes for giving us Julia Nunes.



Oh yeah, she's 19. A teenager!

Second Life for Van Gogh

When Studios Put the Blinders on

"The Dark Knight" almost certainly took away some business from the "The Mummy," since both movies competed for the same action crowds.

"It looked like we could do somewhere between $45 and $50 million, but no one could have foreseen the juggernaut 'The Dark Knight' has become," said Nikki Rocco, head of distribution for Universal.

Um...did you not pay attention to the hype for the last year or so?

Cornbread

I've been at Pawleys Island all week attending my family reunion. It was a big success on the whole, although we did suffer multiple injuries and had at least two trips to the ER. Meanwhile, I got to hang out with all my cousins that I don't see, and a couple of their friends.

Here's a clip of Anna Chill (my cousin) and Brooke (her friend) at the Cornbread festival last year.



Pretty cool cats if you ask me.