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Drooling on the Pillow

Friday, November 25, 2005

Grab Bag 

It was a nice Thanksgiving. I had my brother and his family, plus the mother-in-law, an old friend of hers and her friend's niece from Kansas City. As a theological aside, while Lane is unquestionably a Goddess, she descends from an Old, rather than New Testament figure. Think of Minerva springing from the forehead of Amanda Wingfield. In a really bad mood.

I do 98% of the cooking in the house. I'm pretty good, I think, but I'm not a very organized person, so that last half hour before serving pretty much wrecks me for the day. But it all worked out well and everybody seemed happy.

Today we went to see the new Harry Potter. I liked it (Grace wasn't scared), but I think it is far from the best. It's common to hear the first two movies denigrated at the expense of the second two, but the difference between the Chris Columbus movies and this one is just skill at story telling. Columbus does make things go down rather too easy, but he takes you through everything that is important in the book.

This one had much more interesting material to work with and all the set pieces were done spectacularly, but they didn't really connect. Everybody hates Harry, flip the page and everybody loves him. The complicated and agonizing development of the relationship between Hermione and Ron, which was done so simply and charmingly in the books becomes bumptious and offhand in this movie. If you hadn't read the book it might get past you that there was anything going on at all. The movie is long and the major scenes (the challenges, the ball and the confrontation with Voldemort) are done beautifully and at length and I just think there wasn't space or time for him to get seamlessly from one to the next.

And I think Michael Gambon is one of the greatest actors alive, but I miss Richard Harris.

Much more importantly, I want to talk about an a horror show I've seen two or three chapters of named Trading Spaces: Boys vs. Girls. If you have a kid under twelve or so a chill just rose up your spine.

Trading Spaces, the "adult" version, is a vile thing, but essentially harmless. Women and those men who are really into design and decorative elements should enjoy and indulge. The rest of us know which channels to avoid.

The whole idea of the kid's version seems to be that there are not enough gay men in the world and we need to start training the next generation. Two boys and two girls design a fantasy room for each other and a crew of designers and some of the merriest construction workers you ever saw help them execute the plan. In other words, two perfectly good young men who might otherwise be outside playing street hockey or torturing cats spend several days designing and renovating a girl's room. Right down to the last Hello Kitty! decal. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

As it happens, I agree that there could usefully be a lot more gay men in the world, but I have to admit I get a little queasy watching a show dedicated to their manufacture. It's a generational thing, I guess.

More likely I'm over-compensating for admitting I do all the cooking and for the Tennessee Williams reference in the first paragraph.
Posted by: Sluggo / 6:28 PM
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