Whee! Or is it Wii? :)

Okay, 'nuff with the Nintendo reference.
Haven't posted here in a while but I figured I at least should post something before midnight... you'll see why.  :)

Today is the 36th anniversary of the day I entered the world.  :)  AKA birthday, whelpday, [insert your own description here]

Also, happy belated whelpday to araquan... no, I didn't forget you, just hadn't posted anything until now.

Movie reviews... saw a flurry of movies over the past couple weeks, and in no particular order, here's my capsule review of 'em:

"Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" -- This movie is one to watch if you want to see just how f****ed up the U.S. is.  But if you were to try something like what Sacha Baron Cohen did in a more restrictive nation, lots of luck in getting it done without getting yourself executed!  Technically, Borat never did anything illegal, just some rather over-the-top and very suggestive stuff.  And the church revival scene was a hoot.  'Nuff said.

"Flushed Away" -- A Dreamworks movie in the style of Wallace & Gromit, it traces the epic journey of a spoiled rat (Roddy St James) who suddenly faces life in the sewers.  I'm not going to spoil it any more than that (Wikipedia pretty much spoils the movie by telling you just about everything that happens).  But the singing slugs are just, well, uh... disturbing.  Yet can you say "running gag"?  I thought you could.

"Let's Go To Prison" -- By far the most messed up of the recent movies that I saw.  Dax Shepard plays a career criminal who schemes to make life a living hell for the son of the judge who kept repeatedly sending him to prison (because the judge himself had just passed away).  This is one seriously f****ed-up movie because it takes gags to new heights and perversion all over the place.  Rated R, approx an hour and 45 minutes long...

"Happy Feet" -- Not nearly as messed up as "Let's Go To Prison," and more of a musical than anything else.  It's still got some pretty good over-the-top gags, and especially when you got Robin Williams voicing at least two of the characters, it's not very hard to go wrong.  I will admit that when I chose this movie (because I was picking up the tickets for everyone), I wasn't sure if I had made a good choice.  But given that at least one other person besides myself enjoyed the movie and at least laughed throughout it, I think it was pretty good.

So the verdicts:  definitely go see "Let's Go To Prison" and "Flushed Away"... "Borat" was okay but seemed a bit overhyped, and those who are offended by it deserve to be... "Happy Feet" is a feel-good movie that's significantly toned down (compared to "Let's Go...") and is somewhere in the middle between fair and excellent.

But I think I'm definitely getting "Flushed Away" on video and possibly also "Let's Go To Prison".  After all, if we can't laugh at ourselves, then who CAN we laugh at?

In still other news... booked flight reservations for FC07 last week.  Unless a major catastrophe happens, I will be there, and so will technocollie.

And in more other news, I added a couple of DVD box sets to my (growing?) collection:

- MASH: The Martinis & Medicine Collection -- all of the episodes plus the movie plus a DVD with bonus material.  The episodes are uncut, which kinda makes watching them on the Hallmark Channel pointless...

- Gummi Bears:  Seasons 1-3 -- mail-ordered this from Amazon and it came in last Tuesday.  Only got to see a pawful of episodes so far, but it was worth getting if only for the fact that my favorite Gummi -- Gusto -- is in several of the episodes.  My second favorite Gummi?  Believe it or not, it's Gruffi.  But I prefer Corey Burton's rendition of the "old foof" to Bill Scott's.  I guess that's because Bill Scott's rendition is, well, uh... gruffy.