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This page is full of different things from time to time. Right
now it has some favorite websites, book & film reviews. (Keep scrolling.  ) Enjoy!
Quizes and Games and Pages ... Oh My!
These are some fun quizes and games and websites that I have found in my travels. You
might enjoy them too.
To get to know me better, I'm going to share a deep, dark secret with you. I took the "Better Personality" quiz, and unbelievably, I was classified as a dictator. 
(See my results HERE.) I wish that I could direct you to that really great, insightful quiz, but the site is completely
gone. At least, you might understand me a little better. Oh well, onward and upward!! CHARGE!  (Forgive
me. It's been so long since I've been able to use my Frodo motie, created by the beautiful and talented Christine.)
And speaking of excellence, there is this most brilliant article written by Craig Ferguson
about coming of age. Not the coming of age when a teenager gets laid for the first time, but when a man accepts
the mantle of adulthood. Yes, I admit that I'm smitten with him, but that doesn't make him any less profound.
"Man to Man"
I keep finding myself getting sucked in to more message boards and blogs that I feel
an uncontrolable obsession to monitor everyday. One of them is a brilliant blog, Grant's Blog . I won't begin to imply that I understand half of what he's talking about, but I usually feel that I have
been given an unexpected glimpse into the larger world when I read it.
After that I don't even know if I should tell you about my blog. If
you have a passing interest, my main one is at LiveJournal.
While we're having all this fun, it might be nice to help the hungry. You can
do that by clicking the following links: HUMANS & ANIMALS
*** Current Movie Reviews ***
(Current in the sense that they were done most recently. Some may be for older films.
It's anybody's guess. For some of my favorite reviews click HERE. )
The Darjeeling Limited
You know when you see a movie trailer, and you think it looks good. Then you see the actors and maybe the
director doing interviews, and you think, "Yeah, this should be really cool!" And your expectations get so high that when
you actually go to see it, you think, "What a piece of crap!"
Well, after a summer of seeing the trailers and being
delighted with the commercials for The Darjeeling Limited, watching interviews with Jason Schwartzman and Wes Anderson, seeing
the tragedy of Owen Wilson's suicide attempt, and being bummed because it was not shown within 100 miles of where I live,
it finally came out on DVD this week. (Note: While that sentence was long and convoluted, it was not a run-on sentence. ) I bought the DVD a couple of days
ago, but I was afraid to watch it.
I bit the bullet today, and .... it .... was .... everything ... I'd hoped it would
be!  And more. It is such
a delightful film. Strange and convoluted, yes (much like my sentence above), but it was also sweet, charming, interesting,
and funny. It was a wild ride, and you never knew what was coming around the next corner. That in itself is amazing considering
how much I heard about it. It made me laugh hysterically. It made me cry. It made me go, hmmmmm.
 *******************************
Atonement
First off, I will admit that this is not the official poster for the film, but I like it much
better, so there!  With that out of the way, we can get on with things.
After much deliberation, I've decided that I liked it. I was riveted throughout. So much to
think about, and I was totally emotionally invested in the film. It's not a happy movie, so anyone looking for light romantic
fare will be disappointed though it was marketed that way somewhat. It is visually stunning too. Cinematography was beautiful.
The music was perfect. Too bad James McAvoy wasn't nominated. He was brilliant. I suppose that when there are only 5 slots,
and with George Clooney, Daniel Day-Lewis, Johhny Depp, Tommy Lee Jones, and Viggo Mortensen are in the running it's kind
of tough. One good thing about the Golden Globes, they split the category between comedy/musical & drama, so more folks
can get nominated.
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*** Books Reviews ***
Between the Bridge and the River - Craig Ferguson
I don't know what I expected when I read this book, but it wasn't this. There had been
warnings of political incorrectness, sex, violence, foul language. There were praises of humor, satire, and comedic
greatness. I have been watching the author do monologues on TV for months where he talks about his life constantly with
hilarious results. Indeed it was all of these things and more.
To be honest, it started off kind of slow for me. I can honestly say that if I had just
randomly picked it up in the bookstore and started reading the beginning, I don't think that I would have bought it.
Luckily for me, I had already bought the book, and I wanted to read it in its entirety regardless, so that I would know whether
or not Mr. Ferguson was as brilliant as I had previously judged him to be.
It did take several chapters to introduce the characters and start on this wild ride.
Luckily, they're not too long. I'm not sure how to describe it. Really, there are three seperate stories, and
every once in a while they cross paths, and never for very long. I'm not sure that each of them could not have stood
very well on their own. There were times while reading the book that I thought that they would have been better
on their own. But authors must have their themes, and while the individual stories might have been better on their
own, some of the themes would not have been as powerful. One of these themes being the interconnectedness of life.
This book was everything that I was warned about along with a heavy level of cynicism.
That was fine. I expected that. My opinion of the observational powers of Ferguson was reenforced. He, like
the best comics, sees things and makes connections that are beyond the power of mere mortals. Great, but ...
It could be that everyone looks at everything through the lenses of their life, and so they
see what they want to see, but ... I saw a sensitivity, a perception, an understanding of the universe, a peaceful spirituality
that I did not expect. It cut me to the core. I'm sure that others will overlook it or pass it off as more of
the religious patter and mumbo-jumbo that Ferguson rips to shreds through most of the book. Maybe, he even meant it
that way, and it's just my interpretation at this point in my life. But it doesn't matter. It spoke to me,
and regardless of the rest, that makes it great.
The funny thing is that until a few moments ago, I didn't get the title. From the moment
I heard of the book, I thought, "Between the Bridge and the River, what kind of title is that? What can it mean?
What is that? Where is that? On the bank by the bridge? What could be there? Is it a part
of a great line in the story?" Well, I can tell you that there is nothing like that in the book. I could be totally
off base, but the only thing that I could think of had a much more spiritual thread. Then it made perfect sense.
Craig Ferguson, theologian.
P.S. Apparently, Ferguson actually
references what the title means in the book, and he talked about it on his book tour after I read it, so there's no big secret
about it. I guess that I was so engrossed in the story that I wasn't worrying about the title at the time,
or (more likely) I was so stuck on my preconceived notions that I blocked out any other data. But, I'm happy with my
experience of dawing realization. It was much more thrilling and awe-inspiring.
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