It's a Beast

I gots to talk about this.

So, last week I was enjoying my typical Thursday evening which comes standard with a locked bedroom door, a dirty martini, and Vampire Diary on the TV, when I saw something disturbing. No, not the fact that Vamp Di will be playing re-runs until April 7th--though that caused me to be distraught enough to pull some hair from my head and let out a howling, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

Remember, Hollie loves her some Ian Somerhalder even though lately I've been all like, what, seriously, for real, why are you so good now Damon? Be bad. Be real bad. Go kill some people, will ya? Do vampy things and do them with your shirt off. And is anyone else getting sick of Stephan crying so much? Not into the super-sensitive vampire guy. Nope. Not really digging him. But, OMG I love Caroline now that she's a vampire and kicking some serious tail and I just knew that Elena's mom was coming back, I just knew it and gee whiz, wouldn't it be cool if Matt turned into a vampire? I could totally see that happening.

Anywho, the disturbing thing that I saw was a preview for Beastly, a new movie that supposedly follows the whole A Beauty and the Beast storyline. I am absolutely one-hundred percent NOT a feminist (I'm making banana bread right now for Pete's sake!), but I cannot stand this idea!

I mean, okay, this guy is like really, really shallow and stuff and he thinks that it's all like really, really super awesome to be hot and then he like totally gets punished for his shallow thoughts and stuff by a witch or something and then he's like really, really grotesquely ugly and he has to make someone love him so that he can see that beauty is like really only skin-deep, you know, and then he gets to be like really hot again.

So, the way this story works, this shallow guy falls in love with a beautiful woman and that is enough to redeem him????? Like that makes him remarkable. If anyone is remarkable in the story, it's Belle. She falls in love with a beast even though he's not her species! Why does this guy get rewarded for falling in love with a smart, beautiful, kind, interesting girl? Is it really so hard to fall in love with someone like her? What did he learn? I fell in love with a beautiful woman, beauty means nothing?

Yeah, right.

It's the same reason I can't stand all these shows and movies where the nerdy guy gets the super awesome swimsuit model and he stays nerdy. This never happens in reverse. Sometimes the plain girl gets a makeover and then she gets the hot guy, but you never see the hot guy-plain girl combo. I wonder if it's because of the geek factor that naturally comes with being a writer (I've been to writer's conferences, trust me, I know what I'm talking about) and these script-writer-guys are trying to live out their nerdy boy gets beautiful woman fantasies on the big screen.

Give me Shallow Hal any day. Plus, it's got Gwynth Paltrow in a fat suit sans flaxseed oil. You gotta love that.

Mommy May I

Has anyone else seen this newsletter that Gwyneth Paltrow puts out that is supposed to make her look like the all normal-motherly-type? It's really useful if you need to puke. It can help you do that.

I'll admit, I'm not the best one to comment on this. I mean, there's a reason why this is NOT a Mommy Blog. And that reason is . . . I'm not that great at it. The Mommy part, that is. My house is always a wreck, my kids tuck themselves in bed a couple nights a week, I consider a dip in the public pool as an acceptable substitute for a bath, I let them fudge on homework when I don't feel like doing it, when Husband is out of town they eat nothing but fast food and stuff from the freezer, and the big secret . . . they get on my nerves sometimes.

But . . . we have a lot of fun, probably because I'm on the same level as they are maturity wise (they've already surpassed Husband) and there's lots of that gooey love stuff in my house.

Apparently Gwyneth and her friends are perfect at it just like they are in every area of their life. She has this lady friend who is a CEO at some company or another write in some tips for moms. This lady, this lady right here says that she feels so good after she exercises but she can't make herself do it, so what she does is have a personal trainer come to her house at 6:00 in the morning. Out of touch with reality much? I mean, you know, I'm like all yeah, right, exactly the answer I've been looking for! I mean, you know, I hate to exercise and this pile of money that I've been sleeping on is just not that comfortable, so now I have the perfect answer to both of my problems—a personal trainer at my doorstep every morning!

And these ladies and their flaxseed oil! Seriously! Oh, but they're just like us because one of them forgot to give it to her daughter last week. Oops, I'm such a normal mom who forgets to do important things like give my kid flaxseed oil.

Let me read some posts about Gwyneth Paltrow cleaning up those fun yellow puddles that mysteriously appear around the toilet after her kids have gone tinkle and then maybe I'll feel a little like she's a normal mom.

Read This, Not That

From time to time I like to feel smart, so I'll read some serious, intellectually-stimulating work of fiction. This, I believe, is good for me. I have discovered a complicated mathematic equation that proves that one's IQ decreases with direct proportion to the number of children one has multiplied by the number of years that one stays home to raise these children. The only way to counter this is to set aside time each day to think about something other than Strawberry Shortcake, how to get grass stains out of denim, and how much TV is too much TV.

So, I ordered Jonathan Franzen's Freedom a few months ago and the lovely people at Amazon told me that other people who read Freedom also read Franzen's Corrections and Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question and wouldn't I like to order those too and be like all those smart people, hmmm? Wouldn't I? Why yes! Thanks for asking!

So the book I am going to discuss today is Jeff Kinney's Diary
of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth 'cause those other books weren't nearly as good.

First Son happens to be the sweetest child ever to live and gave me Diary of a Wimpy Kid as a birthday present after I so thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Most adults (including me!) can't even do this—think about what someone else may enjoy, but my seven-year-old can. Can anyone say proud Mama?

I planned on reading some of it to him every night and had visions of us curled up reading it together and how he would always remember that and maybe even read it to his kids one day. However, as soon as I cracked the cover, I couldn't put it down. It was sooooo funny and compelling.

It's everything that made The Wonder Years one of the greatest TV shows ever created. The only thing you can do when you look back on the most awkward, worst years of your life is laugh about it. And what, I ask you, what is more awkward and worser than middle school? That's right, nothing.

Kinney is a whiz at taking small details of a sixth grader's life and turning them into things of comedic genius. His wit combined with his simplistic cartoons are a deadly combo. I laughed so hard I snorted. It's a double whammy of laughter for adults because we can experience the humor from the standpoint of looking back at our youth and from the standpoint of looking at our children. However, I still don't know what the ugly truth is. Maybe that book was a little too high-brow for me after all.

So if you need a break from serious (a.k.a. boring) fiction, then look no further than your kid's backpack. They've got the goods.