Sunday,
January 20, 2008

Have I mentioned recently that I love my husband?

And not just because he's funny, smart, kind, cute and has a marvelous bum. He also salves my writer's ego.

I was checking my website stats today (yes, I check my stats -- hi Blue, Jana, the two other people in Atlanta, the two people in SoCal and whoever is reading me from CSC in Maryland) and I discovered that someone had been reading my sadly-uncompletely tongue-in-cheek cyberpunk serial Hoosier Red: The Life and Times of a Questionable Property, and mentioned this to Lyndon.

"You know what I always liked about that piece?" he said. "You wrote it with a different angle than Gibson and the other cyberpunk writers of the era -- they were all writing about hard types stealing company secrets and AIs and that sort of thing, whereas you had Hoosier stealing entertainment shows and movies. It wasn't a big deal then, but now that the movie industry is pretty much sending hitmen after anyone who shares pirated movie files, you really seemed ahead of your time."

Heh. I was ahead of my time!

Juno, or why I miss the upper Midwest so damn much

From the first lines of dialog, I knew, I KNEW that this movie was set somewhere in the Midwest -- you just don't get that nasal accent or lines like "Hey there, big puffy version of Junebug!" and "Next time I see that Bleeker kid I'm going to punch him in the wiener" anywhere else in the contiguous United States. And when I found out two of the characters lived in St. Cloud, MN, I practically chortled with joy -- Minnesota, that made SO much sense.

Unless you've been living in a cabin you probably know the plot by now -- quirky working class teen gets knocked up the first time she has sex (in a chair, no less), and decides to give the baby to a deserving middle class couple she finds in the Penny Saver. It's the dialog that makes this so freaking marvelous -- smart, witty, weird and hilariously OTT without seeming staged. And the fact that it's not 1) preaching at the audience or 2) in the vein of an after-school special earns ginormous brownie points with me. But mainly I adore it for dialog like:

Su-Chin: I'm having a little trouble concentrating.
Juno MacGuff: Oh, well I could lend you some of my Adderall if you want.
Su-Chin: No thanks. I'm off pills.
Juno MacGuff: Wise move. I know this girl who had a huge crazy freakout because she took too many behavioral meds at once. She took off her clothes and jumped into the fountain at Ridgedale Mall and she was like, "Blaaaaah! I'm a kraken from the sea!"
Su-Chin: (pauses) I heard that was you.
Juno MacGuff: Well, it was nice seeing you!

and

Punk Receptionist: Would you like a free condom? They're boysenberry.
Juno MacGuff: No, thanks. I'm off sex right now.
Punk Receptionist: My boyfriend wears them every time we have intercourse, it makes his junk smell like pie.

Yeah, I'm in love. And the actors are kick-ass, of course. Ellen Page is a wonder and should damn well be nominated for an Oscar for her work as Juno, J.K. Simmons is pitch-perfect as her somewhat upset but supportive dad, I want to have Allison Janney's baby for her performance as Juno's loving if harrassed stepmom, and Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner are lovely as the adoptive couple with problems of their own. I may well go see this again, as the last half-hour was spent trying to ignore my swelling bladder, and I'm definitely buying it when it comes out on DVD, foshizzle.

This YouTube thing is da BOMB

As the sister, the niece and I will be returning to the House of the Mouse in three weeks or so (stalkers, buy your plane tickets now!), I decided to upload a couple of videos from 2006's trip. In the first one, we're sitting in a pavilion in Tomorrowland eating ice cream and waiting for the fireworks to start. Watch for my sister's oh so expressive eyeroll!

These are some extremely ambitious ducks hanging out in the pool at the Wilderness Lodge. Man, talk about a pack of feathered con artists.

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