Here are some things I finally read or watched this week, which have been on their respective queues for a long time:
1) The Magnificent Seven. Good - easy to see why it's a classic. Yul Brenner and Steve McQueen are especially magnificent - they just don't make 'em like that anymore.
2) Be Cool. Not Cool. That's all it deserves. Any more would further desecrate the original, which I still like.
3) Freakonomics. Liked it. It's a quick read and, even if it's not as enlightening as some would make it out to be, it did spur me to reconsider a few things and see certain trends in a new light, and that has value to me.
4) Curb Your Enthusiasm. Long-recommended by friends, the show is undeniably funny. Whether I can bear the awkwardness it invokes remains an open question.
A few related media thoughts:
5) Re-watching The Hobbit and Return of the King with the kiddos has us all (well, not M, but me and the kids) singing "The Greatest Adventure", "Where There's a Whip, There's a Way!", and "Frodo of the Nine Fingers" with great aplomb. I think I like The Hobbit better (probably b/c that was the one I watched a lot as a kid), but H seems to like RotK more, at least at the moment.
5a) The Last Unicorn is en route from Netflix - it will be interesting to see if H loves it or if it scares her too much.
6) We've been playing (a simplified, extremely brief) version of Gloom, a card game based on Edward Gorey's work where you try to make the members of a quirky family suffer horribly with cards like "Mocked by Midgets" or "Marooned on the Moors" and inflict happiness ("Slept without Sorrows") on opposing players' families, until everyone dies horrible deaths! The kids saw it on the shelf and begged to play it, and we always make clear that it's comedy, and THEY LOVE IT. They want to play it every night. I'd be lying if I denied it makes me proud. Tonight we read "The Doubtful Guest" as our bedtime story.
7) As a balance for all the bits of my childhood and sense of humor/humour that I'm inflicting on my children, it's only fair that we give the classics of their own generation a fair chance. Thus, M and I will probably be watching High School Musical this week to see if we think it's OK for Hilde to watch yet.
2 comments:
what? The animated RotK, but not the animated LotR? Scandalous!
I sing the Animated hobbit, RoK songs alll the time. They're true classics. My siblings and I had a habit of singing when there's a whip there's a way Sat mornings when we were forced to do chores. My dad consequently spent most mornings outside or in the case of rain, in the garage.
And hurrah for the Last Unicorn. I can sing all those songs too. Even the stupid butterfly one.
By the way, Aaron was claiming earilier today he had never watched Dune. A child of the eighties not watching Dune?!? - I told him I didn't believe it and I was going to ask you.
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