When I was growing up, we had family dinner.  Not Walton’s family dinner, or Eight is Enough family dinner – there was no chit chat, no revelations, no drama.  We ate, and we watched the local evening news.  The lead story was always a fire.  A warehouse is burning, a tractor trailer is aflame on the highway, smoke is roaring through an apartment complex.  Fire, that was the big story.
Then, if there wasn’t a fire to report on -and, really – there was always a fire – a church, a car, a backyard leaf fire, if nothing else, the reporter could always light a cigarette and set a garbage can on fire.  In any event,  there was always weather as a fall back.  An approaching storm, inches of rain, record breaking temperatures.  Like Jane Austen advises, if you have nothing nice to say, confine your comments to the weather.

So, I don’t expect much from the local evening news – at this point, all I want to know is is it going to snow? and is Donovan McNabb finally going to get the boot?   But, really, that’s my issue – I’m sure there are many out there who think that there can be truth in reporting, that our local newscasters are striving for something a little more than mediocrity, and that  covering the health care debate, the wars in the Middle East, etc., is still an essential function of even our local news.

So, taking into consideration my obviously low expectations, and an optimists unreasonably high expectations, the newscast should land somewhere in the middle, right?  It should hit about mediocrity, shouldn’t it? 

Well, you be the judge –

Last night, I sat down to watch the 11:00 NBC10 news.  Ok, you don’t want to cover a fire – fine.  The shooting on Dorrance Street?  Ok, you don’t want to lead with local crime, so be it.  So, Renee Chenault Fattah, married to a congressman, what’s your lead?  That the President of the United States was right here in our area last night, plugging away at his health care plan?

Nope.  Facebook.  Idiots who put their ridiculous photos online, only to have someone snatch them, and  – can you hear the beat of the sympathy drums – post them elsewhere only to make fun of them.  Gasp!   The lead story, which lasted a good five minutes, was some idiot woman, by anyone’s measure, overweight, who had posted pictures of herself ONLINE, scantily clad, in ridiculous outfits, eyeing her camera with “come hither” looks.  Really?  We’re supposed to feel bad for this woman for forgetting to check the box that clearly pops up every time you post a picture on Facebook about photo privacy and who can see your pictures.   But, the bottomline is – they are ONLINE – they are accessible by anyone who wants to see them – there is no such thing as online privacy.   Everytime you post a picture, the question should be – could my boss see that?  And if the answer is yes, ok, post it, and if the answer is no you’re just an idiot.  And this blog that highjacked her pictures – Philly Burn?  Does she really think that the exposure on Philly Burn is greater than the exposure of being on NBC10?  So whoever you really didn’t want to see them before, certainly has seen them now – because you put them on the local news.  So, the only news there really is that Channel 10 got snookered, because she is clearly proud of those pictures, and wanted the widest audience she possibly could to see them. 

And what could possibly follow that story?

The President at Immaculata University, right?

Nope.  People who wanted butt lifts, but instead had some chemical injected into their butts that gave them infections – something like window filler – I can’t give you accurate reportage about the story, because by then we were already actively comparing the NBC10 telecast to the 6ABC telecast, and in the time it took NBC10 to report on Facebook idiocy, and rotted butt injections, 6ABC had covered the shooting on Dorrance Street, the death of a medic, and the burglarly of a church for its copper piping, and the President’s visit.  That’s not to say 6ABC didn’t have it’s feel good story – suburban teenagers addicted to heroin – but at least they got some actual news in there before they got to the meat of their telecast.

And what’s up with NBC10’s good news segment?  I don’t even know what the regular time is – but it’s a half hour a day, and it seems like its on whenever I turn on the t.v.  For a half hour, they only report “good” news.  Good news, bad news – really, aren’t you just supposed to report the news – the days events – and let others be the judge of whether it’s good news or bad news?  And, a half hour a day – that’s 2.5 hours of what NBC10 dubs “good” news a week – 2.5 hours of kids with cancer to promote fundraising, maimed animals rescued from animal shelters to promote fundraising, and maybe a few minutes adorable adoptable children, again to promote fundraising.  If they want to do a telethon, just call it what it is, and don’t put it on the “news.”

And what does that make the happenings of the rest of the telecast – the bad news hour?  Good news, bad news – just tell me what happened today, ok?

Saving a shoveled out parking space with a folding chair. Really!?!

Click here to view this photo book larger

Really?  This ad is going to sell you a cold medicine?  Take Halls – you’ll still look like crap, but you’ll be able to muddle through!  Take Halls – you not only will look like crap, but you will scare small children on the train! 

And not only is there one snot nosed lady attempting to sell Halls, there’s another one on the opposite wall, who’s nose is even redder – Take Halls – we know Rudolph was your favorite reindeer!

Seriously – is this really selling Halls to anyone? 

Not the work of Don Draper.

Remember a few posts ago, I mentioned ridiculous wedding favors?

I figured I’d show them to you, just in case anyone’s looking for a little (and I mean little) inspiration.

Favors should be easy – its easy to say thank you when you really are thankful.    Thank you for coming to our wedding, to show our appreciation we got you -

a mini buri fan?

a tacky lantern?

Or, perhaps, a pair of cheesy crystal swans?

Thank you for attending our wedding – here’s some crap to take home with you.

A nice trendy thing to do is to make a donation to a charity in your wedding guests’ names.  That’s fine for many families, but for my politically polarized family, that just wouldn’t be a good idea. Even a donation to feeding the homeless might raise an eyebrow — why are they homeless? my Republican brother might ask.  Anyway, I didn’t feel comfortable making a donation in someone else’s name – there are many charities that I wouldn’t want my name associated with – and I wasn’t going to do it to someone else.

The only wedding favors that I haven’t “accidentally” left on the table were edibles.  My sister-in-law is a bit Hershey bar happy – every family event has a corresponding Hershey bar – so I decided to go with Hershey’s kisses.  I surfed the internet looking for wedding favor folks who applied stickers to the bottoms of Hershey’s kisses. And you know what, the price of a kiss went up astronomically once it was transformed into a wedding favor.  

Huh, I thought.  I could do that – why should I pay someone.  And, huh, I could do it better – why just have it say, Joe & Wendy – why couldn’t it be a picture.  And really, why should it be just one picture – it could be many pictures!  In fact, each box could have all unique pictures.  Why not?

I’ll tell you why not – it was was a total pain in the ass.

But, I had a vision in my head.  I saw a clear box, tied up with a fall colored ribbon.  And through the clear panels of the box, you would be able to see the pictures — pictures of us, our family, our friends.  My ideas got grandiose – I could even make personalized boxes – yes! that’s it!  Each box will contain pictures of us and the pertinent guest.  It’ll be fantastic.

So, we went to A.C. Moore, and investigated the clear boxes.  The boxes came in 2 sizes – a 2 x 2 x 2, and a 3 x 3 x 3 — Joe, the candy man, poo pooed the smalelr box – that’ll only hold five candies, he proclaimed.  So, I went home with the 3 x 3’s, and started to load up the 600 kisses that I had already stamped.   

Well, it turned out a 3 x 3 x 3 box holds 25 Hershey’s kisses.  I needed to make 60 or so boxes.  So that’s 25 different pictures, on 60 different labels – and then they had to be individually sorted, box by box.  Have you done the math yet?  Yes, that’s right – I had to hand apply 1500 stickers to 1500 Hershey’s kisses.  So much for my 600 labels I had already printed – I wasn’t even half there!

And, of course, I had bought the last 2 label packs at the Michael’s in the Northeast.  I called the Willow Grove store, and had them put aside four more packages of labels, and we trekked out to the ‘burbs so that I would be able to finish the project.  While we were there, we also picked up fall colored ribbon to finish the box with a flourish – voila, a bow!

So, I printed out a gazillion labels, through the personalized box idea out the window, and sorted – I had a bag of 60 kisses with photo A, a bag of kisses with photo b, etc.  And, after all of the boxes were filled, I began the bowing.

I had tied up 4 boxes, and ran out of ribbon. 

Huh.

Back to the drawing board.  So, we went back to Michael’s, and bought bows that were affixed to elastic – like a hair doo dah – and thank you tags.  Perfect, I thought.

Hmmm – the elastic wasn’t wide enough to get around the box.

No problem.  We cut the elastic off, and super glued each bow with tag on top of the box.

See, ridiculous wedding favors – what was I thinking!  But, here is the finished product:

The sky is falling! Oh, that was Meteor.  It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s – aliens?  Independence Day.  No, in 2012 there’s no meteor shower, space ships, or drilling on the moon.  This time, there are tsunami’s, earthquakes, and planet alignment.  In 2012, this year’s The World is Ending movie, the Earth’s core is heating up, baking the earth from the inside out like a microwave, causing the Earth’s crust to shift (I guess I shouldn’t be complaining so much about cinema verite in law films – scientists definitely have a bone to pick with this movie), the Washington Monument to crumble, and Yellowstone National Park to turn into a bubbling, exploding volcano.  Scrambling car escape? Check.   Nearly missed by a flying train while escaping in a biplane?  Check.  National monument wreckage – of course.  All of the classic disaster elements are there – sigh, the Earth is ending again.

The only reason this movie worked at all for me is John Cusack, playing a science fiction writer who “gets it.”  I liked him, I liked his family, and I wanted them to live.  Of course, since he’s a writer who “gets it,” he wasn’t “there” for his family, who leave him, and move in with mom’s new boyfriend, the likable, but not cool Gordon, a doctor who happens to be taking flying lessons.  At the end of the movie, you know that both John and Gordon can’t both survive, because the family could not be reunited with likable guy Gordon in the way.  I also liked the dog, a pretty ugly dog, but a dog nonetheless, and I was happy that the dog managed to live as well. 

The movie has a lot impassioned speeches from the President, and his scientific advisor – the moral centers of the film.  They talk like we would want politicians to talk – admitting wrong, taking the blame, “owning it,” and in the end, doing the right thing – more of  a fantasy than the earth ending I suppose.  Civilization be damned – we are going to do the right thing!  And of course, it all comes down to John Cusack saving the day – but first, he has to reunite with his estranged wife – and there’s a long kissy cooey scene where the seconds are ticking away, and he’s supposed to be saving the world. 

The movie is long – really really long – and editing out the romance would have been a nice way to speed things up a bit.  I guess the producers thought that the marriage between Indpendence Day and Titanic would sell more tickets to women – I don’t know why movie folks think that to get women to go to the movies there had better be a romance with a satisfying ending.  I don’t know – maybe they’re right – but this woman just wants to go to a good movie.

Yes, the blog has been having a bit of split personality disorder lately.  Or maybe it’s not the blog, maybe it’s me.  Hmm, I’ll have to think on that one. 

After Joe picked Law Abiding Citizen, it was my turn to roll the cinematic dice – we’re diplomatic that way – if you blow it, you lose picking privileges until forgiven.  So, I picked Amelia, which I thought would be a fascinating story of how a woman of her era became such a feminist, a pioneer for women in the field of aviation at a time when women driving cars was frowned upon.  No such luck.  The film opens with Ms. Earhart’s first trip to New York to essentially auditition for  George Putnam,  he would later become her husband, for the prize spot of becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic – as part of the crew, but really as a celebrated passenger.  Where’d she come from?  Unclear.  Why does she fly?  Who knows.  Family?  General information about her father having problems with alcohol.  Instead of getting to the heart of Earhart, the movie chooses to center around the relationship between her and George, with a side trip to Vidal land – which because we know nothing about her other than she is a freewheeling free thinker not to be tied down, or earthbound, but artificial constructs such as marriage, makes very little sense.

So, what should be an enlightening biopic turns into essentially Titanic in the air – a rather boring, trite romance, with Richard Gere looking all misty eyed – and you know behind his glazed over eyes, he’s just counting the money that he’ll make from this movie, and how much he’ll be able to give to the Dalai Lama, laughing at everyone who bought a ticket to this Oscar contender in sheeps clothing – ha ha, fooled ya!  And, I guess in order to perpetuate the fraud that this is actually a good biography and a serious film, it is critical of Earhart – how many times can it tell us that in actuality, she wasn’t a very good pilot, had little training, and probably shouldn’t have been soloing across the globe in the first place?  And, because we have no back story, no insight into Amelia aside from her relationship with George, it’s hard to come away from the movie without thinking – silly woman, what was she thinking? 

And, Hilary Swank really doesn’t help matters.  Sure, she could be Amelia’s twin, yeah, she’s got that strange androgyny thing going – but all of this really serves as a distraction.  Like her teeth – I find it hard to watch Swank because of her teeth – just a little aside.  Here, Swank affects what I suppose is a Kansas accent – puts on masculine, boyish clothes, and has her eyes permanently affixed straight ahead, in a wide eyed stare, I guess signifying honesty, and a rose colored glasses way of looking at the world.  Just doesn’t work for me.  And, I don’t believe it – I look at pictures of Amelia Earhart, and the one thing you know from those pictures is that she was a player – and everything she did, she did full throttle – those pictures show hard living – and you get none of that from Swank.  The accent, the strange speech patterns, the clothes - she wears them like a Halloween costume – it all seemed very unnatural – she didn’t become the character, she just wore her.

So, will the Academy be fooled – accents are biggies at award time, along with gaining weight, and playing Nazis.  Heck, Richard Gere could be nominated for best support actor his ”subtle” (he mailed it in) performance, could be a nice enough performance for the Academy to throw him a body of work bone.  And her – if she gets nominated, it’s definitely what I’ve called in the past, the Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome - this wasn’t a great performance, but she has all the trappings to fool a fool – accent, teeth, clothes.  We’ll have to see.

While I still have several posts written in my head about San Diego, they’ve failed to go live due to technical difficulties – I lost my USB cord for my camera, and need to buy a card reader, I accidently deleted the pictures I meant to upload from work from my flash drive, just bonehead stuff.  So, still more San Diego to come!

In the meantime, I figured I do a movie review round – up.  Because, yes, even on our honeymoon, we went to the movies.

First up, Law Abiding Citizen with Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler.  Perhaps, this movie was a little too close to home for me – literally and figuratively.  Filmed in Philadelphia, and at times, almost in my own backyard, Law Abiding Citizen is dark, oh so dark – with ominous clouds, gloomy weather, and with so little color, that the movie could have been shot in black and white.  While appropriate for the story, I suppose, it does nothing for the Philadelpha aesthetic — or city could not have looked uglier.  I guess you couldn’t possible film a taut thriller on a sunny day in Fairmount Park, that would have been too much to ask.

But city love aside, Law Abiding Citizen was just too preposterous for me to bare.  I must have knocked Joe a half a dozen times as I squirmed in my chair, restless with annoyance.   When a District Attorney actually stepped foot in a prison, he got an elbow to the side.  When a capital murder defendant had a bail hearing, he got my foot to his knee.  I just couldn’t take it.

Why does cinema verite not apply to the law?  Why does no one care if they get it right if they’re making a “legal” thriller?  From the moment this film begins, it gets it all wrong.  The movie’s premise is the following – Gerard Butler’s character’s family is slaughtered in a home invasion/sexual assault by two sceevy looking thugs.  The perpetrators are caught, and arrested.  Somehow, the more culpable of the two manages to cut a deal with the prosecutor to testify against the less guilty guy for a hugely reduced sentence.  When the prosecutor explains this to the grieving father Butler, he says things like “there’s a technicality.  We can’t use the DNA found at the scene – the defense was able to suppress it because it was tainted.”  Blah blah blah.  First of all, suppression hearings happen in open court, generally right before the trial starts.  They are not back room maneuvers.  Secondly, this DNA was supposedly DNA found on the little girl, in the house – not DNA recovered from the perpetrators.  An attorney could not suppress it because his client has no privacy interest in the evidence recovered from the crime scene.  I suppose it could have been “tainted” upon collection, but that doesn’t get you suppression, that gets you an argument at trial.  Whatever – why get it right eh?   And there’s Gerard Butler, crying, begging him not to cut a deal, because he was there, and he can identify the perpetrators.  Eh, the Assistant District Attorney Jamie Foxx says, you blacked out, no one will believe you.  I blacked out after, says Butler, I saw everything.  Not good enough.  Not good enough?  Eyewitness testimony to the slaughter of his family is not good enough?  Hmmm — I wish the jury knew that during the last case I lost, where there was no DNA and only eyewitness testimony.

Obviously, I could go on and on about the inaccuracies in the movie.  And, I won’t – go on and on and on – but I will go on a bit more – here’s a for instance:

Jamie Foxx, a star Assistant District Attorney,  interrogates Butler’s character in a state prison facility, in a kind of star chamber, equipped with one way glass and a sound system, in what looks like Eastern State Penitentiary.  A.  Assistant DA’s do not go to prison, unless it’s for line-ups or detainer hearings.  In fact, I’ve met many a DA in the parking lot, completely lost, and befuddled about how to actually get into the prison.  Instead, if a DA needs to talk to an incarcerated individual (a witnesss, not the actual defendant – that’s next), they have their DA Detectives go up to the prison, put them in a van, and either bring them down to the Criminal Justice Center (not City Hall, because DA’s do not work in City Hall) or their office (again, the DA’s off ice is not in City Hall).  And that’s not because they’re not doing their jobs – on the contrary – C. an Assistant District Attorney is not allowed to speak to a charged murderer, or any charged defendant for that matter.  I guess in this movie, since he was acting as his own attorney, I suppose communication would have been possible, but Police question suspects, not DA’s. There are so many reasons why this is this case, so just trust me on this one.  And, this star chamber, apparently housed at Eastern State Penitentiary, exists no where in Philadelphia.  Murder suspects are brought to the Roundhouse, an incredibly ugly building, rotting from the inside out, in the heart of the historic district, where they are placed in a small interview room, equipped with cameras that are only turned on if the suspect decides he wants to recreate the crime for the camera.  Suspects, during interrogation, are often given hoagies or chinese food, but not Craft-o-Matic beds, or steak dinners from Del Frisco’s. 

There I’m done – I could go on – like I said – and on . . . but let me just finish with a word for the nonlegal minded, those of you who just want to go to a good movie.  This isn’t it.  Even if you know nothing of the law, this movie just doesn’t do it.  The plot, involving high levels of gratuitous gore, is uninspiring, and frankly unoriginal.  Vigilante justice is nothing new, and Butler’s character doesn’t bring anything to the table.  In the beginning you are lead to believe that he’s an ordinary law abiding citizen, but you come to learn he’s actually a government terminator, with a brain so sophisticated only Jamie Foxx and his army of one detective can diffuse it.  Whatever.  If I had any sympathy for the guy – an ordinary shlub taken advantage of and betrayed by the criminal justice system – it was gone once I found out what hypocrite he was.  Here he is, raging against the criminal justice machine, yet he himself was employed as a lethal execution – judge, jury, the works – did his victims get to negotiate – was justice ever served? 

There’s no suspense in this movie.  Of course, Jamie Foxx will find redemption, rise in the ranks, and learn to appreciate his family, his long ignored wife and children.  Whatever. 

Next:  Amelia

Many people wondered why Joe and I got married so quickly; we were engaged in August and married in November. Luckily, this isn’t the 50’s — people weren’t huddling in corners, and whispering in hushed voices, “Is she pregnant?” – no I just got straight forward questions – are you knocked up? The answer to that would be – no.

The real answer is that we already had a vacation planned in November – a trip to San Diego to see the Eagles v. the Chargers at Qualcom Stadium, and we planned around what turned out to be a lovely preplanned honeymoon. The answer to why Eagles v. Chargers is a more complicated question, actually. My dear husband, even though a lifelong PA resident, somehow emerged a Chargers fan. Something to do with Dan Fouts, something to do with the West Coast offense – I don’t know.

So, over the next week, while I will not attempt to explain my husband’s Charger nature, I will try to blog about our trip. Today’s post is my favorite part of our trip – besides being with my new hubby, of course.

Joe’s not really a zoo enthusiast, but after seeing his team win on their home field, it wasn’t too hard to get him to go to the San Diego Zoo, and spend some quality time with their Pandas.

The San Diego Zoo has been home to at least 2 Pandas since 1987. Now, they have a whole family of Pandas. The women in the family are not camera shy, and can be viewed sleeping and eating – it’s nice to be a Panda. The new baby Panda can be observed on a monitor, and you can watch him coo and wriggle all day long – and if Joe hadn’t pushed me along, we probably would have been there all day long. 

When we were there, this new little guy didn’t have a name, but on Tuesday, he had his naming ceremony, and he is now Yun Zi, “son of cloud,” which is appropriate since his mommy’s name is Bai Yun, “white cloud.”

 Yun Zi’s daddy, unlike his mommy, is camera shy, and I got the impression he is never available for viewing.  Apparently, Pandas are not the little sweethearts that they appear to be, but rather are creatures who have little patience, and do not, under any circumstance, want to be interrupted when eating.  Lemon will not be playing with any Pandas any time soon.

The other somewhat disappointing Panda fact I learned is that their fur is not soft at all – in fact, it’s coarse, and much like steel wool.  Now, I’ll never wonder why we don’t knit from Pandas, like we do from Alpacas, or LLamas, or sheep.  No Panda sweater for me.

So, here are the pictures I took of the two lady Pandas – Su Lin and Zhen Zhen.

I probably took a gazillion pictures of the pandas, and I don’t even know if these are the best ones. But, here’s a video Joe shot – I think this is Zhen Zhen-

Of course, Pandas are not the only highlight at the zoo. While I think Philadelphia can go toe to toe with San Diego as far as variety of animals, and attempting to create the most natural environment for the creatures, San Diego definitely has the upper hand when it comes to surroundings and layout – the zoo is, after all, in the middle of Balboa Park, surrounded by a harbor town and neighboring foothills.  There’s a 30 minute guided tour bus, and the footpaths glide easily up and down sloping hills, adjacent to animal habitats.  The newest exhibit is called the Elephant Odyssey, and while the main attraction is the elephants, its supposed to be an archeological stroll through California’s indigenous animal population.  Within this exhibit, there are not only elephants, but a few lions, and a jaguar – so close behind the glass you can almost smell the carcasses they’re chowing down on. 

Anyway, I won’t post all 30 billion pictures I took at the zoo – but you can see some of them here . 

And, of course, I did come home with my Panda t-shirt.  But, riddle me this – why, in this new world of souvenir t-shirts, am I a size large child or an size x-large woman?

Tags: jaguar, pandas, San Diego, Zoo