Fifteen Minutes of Delusion

In an effort to provide my kids just a touch of historical pop culture, we rented Raiders of the Lost Ark for family movie night. There are so many allusions to this flick in movies and video games and TV shows that it's simply a must-see. Unfortunately, this cinematic experience didn't appeal to my pre-teen girls the way it did to me as a 13-year old boy. Too much action. Too much adventure. Too much violence. Too many dead bodies and snakes and spiders. Clearly the other three Indy movies need to come off the schedule, and my plans for a James Bond movie marathon have been abandoned completely. Sometimes I think it would be nice if I didn't have the only Y-chromosome in the family. I mean, the only other male around is Tucker the cat, and he's not even allowed in the house.

Happy President's Day! While I am a patriotic kind of guy, I have to admit that I have a rather selfish reason for liking this holiday so much. That is because while I have the day off, the girls don't. I had the day all to myself, and I could do anything I wanted. Well, actually I only had 8 hours, but that was good enough. I thought about going back to bed and sleeping, but just knowing that I had the day to myself made sleep impossible. I also thought about going to a movie, but the only show out right now that I was really interested in seeing was one I knew the girls would want to see, too. So in the end I did the dishes, did some laundry, cleaned the bathroom, and went to Wal-Mart. I did give myself a full two hours to write, getting ready for the LDSStorymaker's Conference Boot Camp. After school, I took the girls to see The Spiderwick Chronicles. We listened to the audiobooks last year, so it was interesting to see the movie. Anna enjoyed it. Alyssa thought it was ...

The brakes on our car began to sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. They needed some work. Since this kind of thing can take some time, I decided to take the car to Sears so I could hang out at the mall during the procedure. I selected Alyssa to be my mall buddy today. We had a great time, and I let her call the shots. We ate a pretzel, looked at the Disney store, and rode on the merry-go-round. The time estimate on our car was long enough that we decided to take in a movie. The only one I really thought she would like was Alvin and the Chipmunks. I have to agree with one of the reviews I read - it wasn't as bad as you would think. Because I expected to hate it, I was pleasantly surprised and actually kinda liked it.

We finally left the Dark Ages and rented High School Musical (WARNING: this link plays music) for our family movie night on Friday. It was, um, musical. This show was a Disney Channel Original movie that has managed to become popular beyond it's roots. The music was fun, the message was good, and the cast was easy on the eyes. Apparently that's what matters most to the target demographics for Disney Channel Original shows. There are a few bits of the story that resemble reality, but true to Disney Channel form, most of the situations are not remotely believable. I suppose that's appropriate, however, for a show where entire groups of people sing and dance instead of speak. This is a musical, after all. My favorite song was where the entire student body sings about keeping the status quo, which they are doing because they don't think the basketball team captain should be singing in a musical. Oh, the irony! In all, it was a pleasant show, good for the family. Just don...