Tommy is one!!!

Sweet little Thomas is one year old today!!  In many ways it seems like an eternity and yet others, only minutes since the phone rang in the middle of the night alerting Lauren and I that he was on his way.
The day and a half that followed is a mix of pajama parties, train rides to see Graham, Chinese dinner, pancakes with Gigi, visits to Starbucks, and impatient excitement about when Tom would make his debut.  When he finally did he was perfect- a beautiful boy ready to take on the world as Gigi's partner in crime.

Though my time with Thomas was much shorter than with Gigi, he moved at only 8 months old, it was none the less filled with smiles, adventures around New York, and moments that I will forever treasure.  During a recent facetime with Gigi we had a chance to say hello to Tommy and he smiled laughed and showed us the one finger telling us he is one.  The short encounter filled my soul with warmth because somewhere inside that tiny boy I maybe just maybe still exist in his memory. 

I love you Tommy and happy birthday

*most recent photo stolen from Nicole's Facebook

Merry Christmas

What What

And so we enter 12-21-12

We enter the last day predicted by the Myan calander and too their predicted end of the world.   It has been 19 months since the last scheduled apocalypse came and went (the one I questioned might have been caused by Terry Gilliam) I am still here and hope that many are right when they bet the end is indeed not so near. Still one should never take things like Rapture lightly and while I said that nearly dying in a worldwide rolling earthquake put things into perspective at the time, perhaps I got a bit cocky. At the time I listed reasons why I was excited to continue living, which I have listed below along with how I am doing or rather provcrastinating at achieving the goals nearly twenty months later.

1. more time to read GOOD OMENS
I did finish reading this book, several months later and have also gone on to read two of the Hunger Game books.  I feel these books have given important lessons on surviving an apocalypse and post disaster society.

2. More time to not read HARRY POTTER- still going strong and have added not seeing the movies or participating in anything associated with Tolken

4. Time to think of a number three
I found number 3- there are two 15s!!!

5. Get to see more Terry Gilliam movies (or maybe not)
Fun fact: Terry Gilliam just finished making the film Zero Therum and now the end of days could be here.  When will this madness end? God Terry how many times does the earth have to threaten the end before you get the message.  Also, he said he had to make the movie before the end of the year; what does he know? Better still TG, what are you sorcerous director? Good or evil?

6. Watch SNL with Justin Timberlake- I did and it wasn't his best.

7. buy David Cook album- Yup and saw him two more times. Ready for more music if we survive.

8. More concerts- there are never enough

9. Continue to say all the places I want to visit before I die.
I have continued to do so but have not gone to any of them. 

10. Continue to bitch about how far away Australia is and how long it takes to get there.- check

11. Put Graham in drag.- Not full on but we are getting closer

12. Have a Pug 13. Have children- no to both

14. Question why Pug came before children- clearly because children talk back and pugs always love you

15. See the newest TRANSFORMERS and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN to understand why any movies need a year of promo.
I did see them and now I question why the continue to make them. Or why Johnny Depp is considered a great actor.

15. Continue to make Phillip S. Hoffman confused- I take pride in this but need to do more

16. Mock two more TWILIGHT films-double check

17. See Prince William get crowned King- that old bag is never dying

18. Live in Manhattan 19. Smoke pot
Still not a Manhattan dwelling pot head

20. Go on the Disney Cruise :(

Sadly the only notable things to happen are loosing G, Baby Tom, and my ability to digest wheat products.  So I plead for more life

Happy 30th David Cook

Caramel Sandwhich Cookies

For the most part, I think I am doing really well going gluten free but every now and then there is something that reminds me how much Gluten Intolerance stinks and I get sad.   I've come to grips with never having another Magnolia Cupcake, mourned the loss of IHop, and have made my peace with the rare but always unfulfilled Krispy Kreame craving, However, the hardest loss was the Caramel Sandwhich Cookie from The Treat Truck I had been dealing with the loss by simple avoidance but, alas, the other day I saw The Treat Truck and my heart sank. Unable to suffer a life without ever tasting the Delicious cookie and never experiencing the sense memory associated with it, I sprang into action, got the recipe book and converted it to gluten free.

Ingredients

serves about 30-35 sandwich cookies

• For the cookies:
• 1 ½ cups firmly packed brown sugar  
• 2 cups (4 sticks) butter 
• 2 egg yolks 
• 4 cups Almond flour 
•  
•  
• For the frosting:
• ½ cup (1 stick) butter 
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 
• 5 cups confectioners’ sugar 
• 6 tablespoons milk

Procedures

1. To make the cookies, in a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg yolks and flour and mix well.
2. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 30 minutes, up to overnight.
3. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Grease a baking sheet or line it with parchment paper.
4. Use a rolling pin to roll the dough to ¼-inch thick. Cut out the cookies using a round cookie cutter. If the dough seems too soft, refrigerate the rolled out dough for a bit to firm it up before cutting the cookies.
5. Place the cookies 1 inch apart on the baking sheet and bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until slightly golden. Cool completely (at least an hour)
6. To make the frosting, in a medium pan over medium heat, brown the butter. Take off the heat.
7. Add the vanilla and confectioners’ sugar and whisk to combine. Whisk in the milk, until the mixture is creamy and smooth. If the frosting seems too thick, add a little more milk.
8. Using an offset spatula or a butter knife, frost the underside of 1 cookie and top with a second cookie to make a sandwich. If you prefer, use a piping bag or a plastic storage bag with the tip cut off to place a dollop of frosting on the upturned cookie and then top with the second cookie. 
   
   
   

**The cookies will keep in an airtight container for 3 to 5 days frosted, longer if unfrosted
**You can keep the frosting in a covered container in the fridge if you make it ahead of time or aren’t quite ready to use it. When you’re ready to fill the cookies, give the frosting time to soften a bit, or stick in the microwave for 10 seconds or a bit more.

Breaking Dawn Part Two

By the time I walked into the theater to see the fourth and hopefully final Twilight film I was beginning to feel like Enis Del Mar and Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain and felt the urge to scream at the screen "I wish I knew how to quit you!!" or the less famous, "Why can't you just let me be...I can't stand being like this more!!!"  You see the truth is, I don't hate Twilight, I am actually sadistically drawn to it.  If I simply hated it, I could just ignore it the way I plan to ignore The Hobit but this is so much worse- I am drawn to it, I can't help but watch the trainwreckness of it, feel dirty for having been excited to see it and then blog about it ( see here and here ) It is a sick, strange addiction but this was the light at the end of the tunnel, a few more hours and I would be free of shallow plots, weird pseudo-vampires, and Kristen Stewart's dead eyes.


--------------------------------------SPOILERS TO FOLLOW------------------------------------

There I put a spoiler label so nobody can cmplain that I ruined something from a a movie based on a book that has been out for years.


Part Two focuses on the repercussions of human-turned-vampire Bella and her undead husband creating a half human half vampire child, just your ordinary first world problems. Poor little Renesmee has to deal with a lot of things normal children don't.  She ages Rapidly so that in a few months she appears to be a school aged child. Her maternal grandfather is told that she is adopted because Bella's pregnancy was never explained to him (actually nothing is explained to him he is just told to not ask any questions EVER.)  Her mother's best friend, the shirtless shape shifter is in love with her.  Oh yes, you read that correctly.  An eighteen or nineteen year old is in love with the newborn but you see it isn't his fault because according to werewolf* legend (the one created by Twilight author Stephanie Myer not actual legend) a werewolf* can't help who they imprint on and they are forced to love them forever.  So since it is his natural instinct, biological and nothing Jacob can help, Edward and Bella allow him to be alone with their daughter and even make him the guardian to Renesmee if they should meet their final death.



Now according to the Encyclopedia for Mental Disorders a Pedophile is defined as:

  - a paraphilia that involves an abnormal interest in children.

 

-Most mental health professionals, confine the definition of pedophilia to sexual activity with     prepubescent children, who are generally age 13 or younger.

  -The most common overt aspect of pedophilia is an intense interest in children

-Unfortunately, some pedophiles are professionals who are entrusted with educating or maintaining the   health and well-being of young persons, while others are entrusted with children to whom they are related by blood or marriage. 

The reason I point this out is I want everyone to know two important things about the character  of Jacob Black, nobody blames him for his disease because, indeed he cannot help it but that also, he was written as a textbook pedophile.  Sadly, Edward and Bella refused to see his illness and continue to taught him with their beautiful half breed daughter.



But I digress; the makers of Twilight want you to believe the greatest danger is not oblivious parents or sexual deviants but rather The Volturi- a group of lawmaker vampires who try and keep order in the vampire community (clearly a conservative standpoint against a powerful National Government.)   One of the rules the Volturi has is that there are to be no immortal children because long ago there existed vampire children who possessed more power than could be controlled so anyone who made a vampire child (which they believe Renesmee is) is to be destroyed.  This is the basic conflict of the movie as the Cullens gather all their vampire friends together to "reason with them" to allow everyone to live happily ever after.  This leads to a huge fake out dream battle that doesn't really exist, but where amazingly horrible CGI does and many of the well beloved characters are mamed or killed in the worst looking special effects this side of the 21st century!   My fellow theater goers wailed in horror and screams of, "Oh no not Carlyle!!" and "the book was NOT like this, this is sooooo totes sad," while I was stifling my laughter at the whole cartoonish look and that one scene where Rob Pattenson forgot that Edward isn't British and spoke with his native tongue and nobody caught it in post production.    Luckily the tears of horror turned to tears of relief and delight when it is discovered that the whole battle was a vision that one of the vampires projected so the Vulturi would back off.  The Yolo Crowd and sad moms wept with delight and I laughed freely at them.









Soon after that scene the film, and series, was over with a nice tribute where all of the actors of the franchise were shown in a fitting tribute (even though they hilariously showed both actresses to play the character of Victoria who had been replaced half way through back to back) and I can honestly say it was the only thing done right out of all four movies.  People cried as they walked out to the parking lot, there had even been people giving it a standing ovation which was a fitting end to the laugh-fest I have known as the Twilight Saga.

*I may have touched on this before but if I have it needs to be restated.  The "werewolves" in Twilight, so called, are not werewolves because their turning into giant Scottish terrier looking  creatures as nothing to do with the phases of the moon.

Inside The Lion King

To celebrate the 15th Anniversary of one of Broadway's boldest musicals, Disney is sharing Inside The Lion King, a free exhibit showcasing the costumes, masks, sets, and props from the show.  Though I have never really been interested in thew show itself, I decided to go and it is well worth a walk through:

The exhibit is located on 6th Avenue and 42nd street across from Bryant Park and will be open through December 16th.

THE HISTORY BOYS

WARNING: IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE HISTORY BOYS AND WANT TO, DON’T READ THIS. IT’S NOT EVEN A SPOILER- I’M GOING TO ACTUALLY EXPLAIN THE ENDING!

So I recently saw the movie The History Boys. It was very good and definitely worth of all the praise it got on Broadway and in the West End. It is the story of boys- and there teachers- training for the placement exams for Oxford and Cambridge. There are, as there always are in film and especially in theatre, twists and turns along the way.

However, in typical cinema style, everything seems to be resolved in the end. The students all make their desired schools (imagine the odds), all the teachers are happy- or at least content, with both their jobs and their lives, and the two gay (perhaps bisexual or bi-curious?) teachers are literally riding off into the sunset on a motorcycle.

It seems like the perfect Hollywood ending, except then it isn’t the ending. Perhaps because it is British and not Hollywood, it can’t end happily ever after. We find out after a premature fade to black that the motorcycle crashed and the older, and more loveable, Mr. Hector died. If this isn’t enough of a downer, at the funeral, we learn the future fates of the boys. One of whom decides to join the army so he can pay for college and he died at the age of 27 or 28.

Inspire of the fact that the film made me tear up, or maybe because of it, I did enjoy this film. It isn’t happy but it is real. The characters are human. It is a beautiful portrayal of real life and I’d recommend it to anyone in search of a good movie.

The (Long Procrastinated) Dark Knight Review

Obviously my appriciation of Heath Ledger as an actor makes it seem like my TDK preference above the other movies in Christopher Nolan's trilogy has to do with him and I guess, in many ways it does. However, the fact that possible my favorite actor being in a movie, doesn't necessitate my liking the actual movie and certainly doesn't guarantee the movie itself would be one of my favorite movies. That is exactly what TDK is; not one of my favorite Ledger movies, not my favorite comic book movie, and not just my favorite Batman movie. It stands as one of my favorite movies period.

It is hard to say how much of this comes Ledger's transformation into the award winning Psycho-Genius Joker. For arguments sake, and for length reasons, I am stating here and now that Ledger's performance was superb but the rest of this will dedicated to every other piece of the puzzle. The performance ranks for many as one of the greatest of all cinema but that isn't to say that he's the only one to act well. The casts of all three Dark Knight movies were filled with Oscar winners. Much of the credit should also be given to Christopher Nolan and his co-writers because, for all the attention that Ledger received, he could only be as good as the material would allow.

There are people who complain that Nolan didn't do justice to Batman or whatever but I am not well read in the comic's history to talk about that. All I am interested in when I go to a movie is if I like it. The Dark Knight Rises seemed like Nolan and co were ready to move on to something new and the plot was sloppy. It moved around at a hectic pace, there were gaping holes, and felt like the makers of the film wanted to fit in more than a reasonably sized movie would properly allow so they skipped around and added a lot of unnecessary noise to distract the audiences. On the flipside, Batman Begins was well put together but didn't really move well enough. The point was to introduce the origin of Batman in detail but it felt stretched. Had the setup taken up half of the first film perhaps the third would've had an easier pace.

The Dark Knight was just right. It introduced Batman's arch rival, The Joker, in the first scene simply by putting him there and he takes control of the franchise the same way he takes over Gothem City. It sets up quickly but sufficiently the facts: Harvey Dent is the new DA of Gothem City, Everyone believes he will be the saving grace of the forsaken town, and until then the police have looked the other way and allowed the masked Vigilante protect the streets, something he does apparently very well because the mob has been practically put out of business. During his Bruce Wayne life our hero takes turns lusting after his childhood sweetheart, now conveniently in love with Dent, and using his Wayne corporation to get closer to the one last mobsters still in business. Perfectly on cue, the Joker (who wasn't getting enough attention from the Bat) complicates both of these missions. Batman is then forced to play the Joker's game- he likes that.

Forced into a game of Cat And Mouse, and after inadvertently leading to more deaths than a Shakespeare tragedy, Batman comes close to revealing his identity but is protected in the last seconds by Dent claiming himself as Batman. Then the fun really begins for the Joker who kills more people, blows up a hospital, and attempts to cause two boats full of people to kill each other. His crowning achievement, however, is to turn Dent into the same kind of cold blooded killer that he is.

Sure Batman saves the day in the end the way he has to but in under three hours the movie gives you action, suspense, love, loss, sacrifice, and makes you question (if you don't already) Government, society, the media, your perceptions of good verses evil, and even the validity of death (not quite Commissioner Gordon fakes his own death in a very true to life way.)

So that's it: 4.5 year and countless viewings after it's July 2008 release- My Dark Knight review. Hope you enjoyed it.