Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

Recent trailers

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So, we’ve been seeing more movies of late — Friday afternoon “date night” and all. And, of course, we’ve been seeing more trailers. Forthwith:

View From The Top: Gwyneth Paltrow stars as a “Coffee, Tea, or Me?” era stewardess — that’s stewardess, not flight attendant, and if I have to explain the difference to you, I’ll…cry, or something — in what appears to be an exceedingly unfunny comedy that has Mike Myers as the “wacky” stewardess trainer. With a crossed eye. What’s worse is that the trailer has the whole movie in it.

How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days: When I saw the trailer for this insanely terrible looking romantic comedy, I was reminded of Darin’s comment about a billboard for Eight Heads In A Duffel Bag: “That’s not a movie, that’s a pitch.” Better was the one-liner I read (in Variety, I think): “‘How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days’ will soon be known in the trade as ‘How Not to Write a Romantic Comedy.'” Sounds about right. And that’s just from the trailer.

Bringing Down The House: Steve Martin is the uptight white guy! Queen Latifah is the earthy black woman! Steve has lost his way in life, but Latifah helps him find his soul brother side! Wackiness ensues, including the never-seen-before uptight-white-guy-acts-jive scene. Rated: Oh. My. God. This is one of those films that pays for Martin to write theatre pieces, am I right?

It Runs In The Family: Kirk Douglas and Michael Douglas play (what else?) father and son in a family comedy. Or family drama, I’m not sure which. Also not sure of the target market.

Anger Management: Adam Sandler plays the incredibly calm guy mistakenly sentenced to anger management therapy. Jack Nicholson is his scenery-chewing therapist who wants to teach him how to get angry, not stop getting angry. Jack moves into Adam’s apartment. Wackiness ensues.

Here’s one for you, Daryl

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Jon Carroll’s column today talks about why we might do better just staying home with our kids and teaching them what we know, instead of shipping them off to other places to learn:

And I’m thinking: Maybe it would be better if we just stayed home and taught them what we know. Not all of us are famous mandolin players, of course, but all of us are something. We garden, we cook, we sing, we collect clocks. Nothing the matter with teaching a kid to collect clocks.

The bonus is obvious. We get to spend time with our kids; they get to spend time with us. They’ll want to spend time with their friends too, and they should, but there are lots of hours in the day if you look for them. And you’ll begin to build a relationship based on something other than the natural power differential in families.

Not that I did this when my kids were young. I was having an important career. It worked out OK in the end, but I ain’t gettin’ those hours back, and I think about that sometimes, even now.

A guide to my blogs II

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In which I continue my tour of my links. I’m doing all of the links except the lefty blogs in this one. (Those are going to take a while, so like all good procrastinators I have put them off for a while.)

Humor

Crazy Apple Rumors: What needs to be said? This site frequently has me in tears, from the Steve Jobs breakfast watch to the description of the 120″ Powerbook that requires four men to carry it to the Definitive Guide to Avie Tevanian. I don’t think you have to be Mac fanatic to enjoy this site, but why else would you go?

Dave Barry: You read his columns. Now read the blog!

Fanatical Apathy: A lefty blog, but one that makes its points with screamingly funny sketches and essays, not to mention the Sims version of the State of the Union. Adam Felber is also a regular on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” my favorite NPR show.

Neal Pollack: Hilarious. He’s funny. His guest hosts are funny. Neal has something to do with Dave Eggers, but damned if I know what. Or care.

Poor Man: Andrew Northrup came up with the Pacino Theorem. Need we say more? I think not.

Suckful: Eclectic. Offensive. The whole Vin Diesel thing—what up with that? But intermittently hi-fucking-larious.

Education

Alice Bachini: A libertarian/right-wing homeschooling mom in the countryside of England. I look in every so often, but a multi-author blog she helped start, Rational Parenting, gets more of my attention.

Brian’s Education Blog: Brian is one of the co-authors of Samizdata, so as you can expect he’s a bit libertarian. Plus, he’s another Brit. Intelligent—always provides me with food for thought, even if I don’t agree with him.

Daryl Cobranchi: Daryl’s a homeschooling dad, and homeschooling is the focus of this journal. He finds the best collection of links on homeschooling.

Education Weak: One of these links I consider dumping every so often. Good collection of links, but she’s definitely on the right side of the spectrum and has scary headlines like, “Why I Like Jeb.”

Michael Peach: A British homeschooling dad who’s very funny. Reportedly he’s considered right-wing in his country, but around these here parts he’d be considered a lefty pinko.

Our Horrible Children: A blog devoted to the disgusting results of having “zero tolerance” policies at schools around the nation and how a desire to be “tough on crime” has led us to some incredibly stupid behavior.

Rational Parenting: Multi-author blog devoted to “Constructive consentual coercion-free problem-solving in all areas of family life.” Pro-child, pro-attachment parenting. Also, looking for more authors.

Food

A Coffee Odyssey: A blog devoted to (wait for it) coffee. Hasn’t been updated since Dec. 20, sadly.

bread, coffee, chocolate, yoga: A blog devoted to the important things in life, plus bread and yoga. Fortune concentrates pretty much just on these four topics, but the stuff she has is great!

Food Blog: A food blog devoted to recipes and food news. Very tasty. The font is too small, though.

In My kitchen: Deb makes a recipe, describes the process, and gives you pictures. What’s not to love?

The Right

Joanne Jacobs: Every week I consider deleting this blog. Pro: Joanne’s concentrates on the Bay Area, most of her links are about education, and she’s a frequent poster. Con: so annoyingly right-wing she ended up with the right-wing blogs instead of the education blogs. Says stupid things like “Islam turned (Richard Reid) from a small-time loser into a (would-be) mass murderer. This counts as a save?” Does she say similar things about Christian crazies? (I’ll let you figure out the answer to that one.)

Samizdata: Multi-author Libertarian blog mostly out of Great Britain. Eclectic topics, from video games to the Iraq situation to general Libertarian causes like “privacy.” (Remember when conservatives were big on that? Sigh.) Often annoying, always thought-provoking.

The Volokh Conspiracy: Another multi-author blog, written by people on the whole much smarter than the average bear. Interesting perspective on things, particularly as the lead blogger, Eugene Volokh, is a law professor at UCLA.