I'm more of a personality person
The quote of the day:
CNN and Time are reporting that Hitler is alive and well, and using the Net to distribute porn to minors.
Running news:
5.3 miles, and they went by pretty smoothly. I don't think I should get in the habit of drinking tequila the night before a run, however.
We had dinner at the Claim Jumper again, which I can do without for the next x number of months, no matter how good their 6-layer chocolate cake is (which is pretty darn good). Their service is slow, the food is too big, and any meal that takes 3 hours to complete had better be one of the best damn meals in recent memory. I chose my dinner via consultation with Darin: "What would you like for lunch tomorrow, sweetie?" I asked.
I got very annoyed during dinner, however, and I wasn't the only one. Harry dotes on Elinor. To the point of letting Elinor do whatever she pleases in the restaurant: bat Harry's face with her hair, climb all over our chairs, stand in our booth and stare at other customers. I was raised by parents who came from the Strict Disciplining Era--I didn't even have crayons, because I might draw on the walls. Elinor's antics drove me nuts.
They drove Brent, Therese, and Darin nuts too, surprisingly enough. Darin is much more indulgent towards children than I am, but he'd reached his limit.
Therese would try to discipline Elinor from doing something like standing in the booth, and Harry would say, "No, no, it's okay." Which does nothing to teach Elinor proper behavior, and undercuts Therese's authority. And it wasn't just last night--Harry doesn't refuse Elinor anything.
Like when Therese said Elinor couldn't have a cookie, so Elinor just went to Harry to ask for one, and he just gave it to her. (Elinor went straight to Therese, who said, "Where did you get that?" Elinor smiled, shrugged, and said, "Oh well." She was two.)
Or the time we were having dinner at the Boys' and Elinor asked for a popsicle. Harry said she could have one when she was finished with dinner. Elinor dropped her fork and said, "I'm done!" Brent was left to make Elinor eat her dinner. I could tell Brent didn't appreciate that much.
I know that if someone contradicted me in front of my child while I was trying to discipline her, I would cease allowing that person to be around my child. Darin thinks there are better ways of handling it. That's why Darin is a better people person than I am.
I had a margarita in the bar as we were waiting to get seated. The Claim Jumper makes those pretty big too--I said, "There must be an entire bottle of tequila in here." One of them wiped me out. Therese had a bloody mary and two margaritas. I think she'd had a long day.
I watched Con Air yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised--I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. It was over the top and not willing to take itself seriously.
The best scene: The plane has taken off, and there's a car attached to the plane, flying behind it. Nicolas Cage looks out the open cargo door toward the flying car and says
On any other day, this might seem strange.
Which for some reason cracked me up so hard that I decided that I could almost forgive the movie almost anything else.
One thing I couldn't forgive the movie for was the horrible--and fake--drama of having Steve Buscemi, playing Hannibal Lecter "Garland Greene", a horrible serial killer who particularly enjoys killing children. There's a long scene in which he enjoys tea with a cute little 8-year-old girl, and there are several shots later of her Barbie doll...goodness, what did Garland do?
Well, nothing, of course--you can't have bad things happen to cute children, any more than you can have them happen to animals. Name me one movie in which something horrible happens to a child...and I'll show you a movie that is solely about something horrible happening to a child. (Unless it's A Time To Kill, which is really about the joys of vigilantism--don't get me started on the Collected Works of John Grisham.)
The tag shot of the movie, which has Garland at the craps table, ostensibly reformed because of his tea-taking session, made me want to throw things at the screen. The whole Garland thing was a cheap shot, provided to give the audience a cheap sick thrill without having to do anything to earn it. Child murderers aren't cute, folks.
John Cusack? Pretty darn cute. Child murderers? Not cute. Learn the difference.
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