Some of you people are relentless. I've been fielding calls the last two months or so, and I'm sick of your pleas. I'm sick of your whining. I'm sick of your idle threats (frankly, I expected more from the IRS). So I'm capitulating. I'm back. For a little while.
The questions I've been getting have been neither varied nor sundry. It's like listening to a broken record with you people. I can boil them down to the following:
1) Lucy, what have you been doing?
2) Lucy, when are you going to post a blog entry again?
Well, my answer to number 1 is classified, and I'm guessing you don't have proper security clearance for me to divulge all the details. Let's just say that I've been helping out the military with a top secret project that is going to revolutionize modern warfare. In other words, it's going to make it a whole heck of a lot cooler.
I really can't say any more.
No really. Stop asking.
A hint you say? I can't give you a hint. That would make me a traitor. I would be no better than Benedict Arnold or Madonna.
Well, that's very flattering of you. I agree that I'm a pretty cute little girl - certainly cuter that your kids. How very nice of you to publicly admit that! I suppose I can give you a small, teensy weensy hint.
*cough* Chainsaw Rocket Launcher *cough*
If Petraeus comes around asking, you didn't hear it from me, OK?
As for number 2, I guess you have your answer, don't you? I'm back and will continue feeding your addiction until I get bored or distracted by some other project. Like sitting in the sink. I figure I'm only going to fit into one of these things for so long, so I might as well get my fill while it's still comfortable
Remember last year when mommy decided to run a half marathon in San Francisco? Sure you do. Well, she's at it again, but this time she'll be competing in a triathlon for Team in Training in Washington, D.C. on September 12. That's where you run, bike, and swim. Of course, she's helping to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society too. In case you were wondering, they are against Leukemia and Lymphoma. So please help support my mommy by donating! Click HERE to give a few bucks. Every little bit helps.
Of course, the triathlon has to be scheduled on a Notre Dame football weekend. The Michigan game, no less! This will make two weekends in a row that I will be forced to not watch the game on my awesome 73 inch TV.
Sometimes I swear that mommy is off her rocker.
But then mommy said "Lucy, I know you're disappointed about not being able to watch the Fighting Irish curb-stomp the Michigan Skunk-Weasels from the comfort of your own home. But guess what!"
"What?" I said, refusing to look her in her traitorous face.
"You can come on bike rides too!"
"GET OUT OF TOWN!" I yelled. I've always wanted to go on a grown-up bike! It's on my bucket list, right after getting into a bar fight and breaking a pool cue over some random dude's back and right before visiting the Louvre.
"And you know what else?"
"Mommy, there can't possibly be more. This is the best news ever."
"Oh, there's more Lucy. I got you a pretty bike helmet."
"Hold the phone," I said. "This is America. Helmets are for Europeans. And I'm no European. I take baths, for Pete's sake. You make me!"
"Sweetie, I just want you to be safe."
So she put the helmet on me (against my will, I might add). I feel like a real schlemiel.
Of coures, the rides themselves are a good time. I get to sit in my seat and enjoy the peaceful scenery while mommy does all the work. If you want a visual, think of a rickshaw. A nice shiny red rickshaw. It really is a great time despite the helmet.
That is, until mommy decides to start singing "When You're Happy And You Know It."
I've run into a little problem. See, I'm not allowed to swear, but the movie I am about to review for you has a swear word in the title. So when I was dictating this review to daddy, I told him to go ahead and edit it as he saw fit. I'm apologizing in advance if this causes any confusion.
To intelligently discuss Kick-[REDACTED], you have to understand how it was made, and why it is a small miracle that the film is even playing in theaters right now. See, no studio would touch the script with a ten foot pole. Some outright rejected it. Others wanted to make the characters older or water down the violence. Instead of giving in to these idiots, director Matthew Vaughn independently financed the movie outside the broken studio system. And then sold the final product back to them once test audiences started going nuts for it.
So what's Kick-[REDACTED] about? It's the story of teenager Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) and his decision to become a superhero (codename: Kick-[REDACTED]) despite the fact that he has no powers. It's also the story of Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) and Big Daddy (played by a delightfully wacky Nicolas Cage), a ruthless crimefighting father-daughter duo out to take down a local crime boss.
There are so many things that could have gone wrong with this movie, and the fact that none of them did is a testament to Matthew Vaughn. He knows when to ease off the campiness and have something genuinely shocking happen. The man manages to get a good performance out of Nicolas Cage, for God's sake. That guy's been mailing it in for years. But in Kick-[REDACTED], he infuses Big Daddy with genuine emotional depth and a truly bizarre Adam West-like quirkiness. How can you cheer for a guy who has essentially raised his 11 year old daughter in a way that allows her to crush a guy in giant trash compactor? He's pretty much robbed this girl of a childhood and turned her into a relentless killing machine named Hit Girl, yet we still empathize with him.
And then there's Kick-[REDACTED] himself--an awkward, sort of annoying teenager with some sort of deranged desire to fight crime. It seems like he's not really that into the whole truth and justice thing--he just wants to be a superhero for the sake of being a superhero. What kind of person does that? A slighly unbalanced one, that's who. Yet we care about this weirdo, and we can't help but get a little bit nervous every time he puts on his gear. In the world of Kick-[REDACTED], it's a genuine possibility that this loser is going to get the crap beat out of him and a knife in the gut. In fact, that actually happens early on in the movie.
What's even more amazing is that this uneasiness about the well-being of Kick-[REDACTED] and Hit Girl continues throughout the WHOLE movie. Just as you get used to the idea that Hit Girl is pretty much unstoppable, she gets into a brutal fistfight and you all of a sudden remember that she's an 11 year old girl who, without her kitana blades and guns, is not a physical match for a grown man.
So should you see it? Well, let me ask you this. Are you American? Are you a bed-wetting, politically correct namby-pamby? If your answers to those questions are yes and no, respectively, then you should see Kick-[REDACTED]. It's unapologetically fun, and it is hard evidence that movie-making can still be fun.
Want to get a taste of what Kick-[REDACTED] is all about? Just check out this clip featuring a nice father-daughter moment between Big Daddy and Hit Girl:
Matthew Vaughn has found himself a genuine star in Chloe Moretz. Watching this 11 year old girl cut her way through a room full of thugs with nothing but a kitana blade is more fun than anything I've seen on screen in years.
In fact, Hit Girl is my new hero. I asked my daddy if I could be Hit Girl for Halloween, and he said yes. We haven't broken the news to mommy yet. As far as she's concerned, I'm still going as Elizabeth Lambert, a truly great soccer player for New Mexico State:
"You lost me 40 million Deutche Marks, Hank! 40 million! You know what, Hank? You're fired.
Pack up your things and don't let the door hit you on the way out, deadbeat.".
After a long day at work, there's nothing I like more than kicking back, enjoying a juice box, and reading a good book. And boy do I have a treat for you. Next: A Novel by James Hynes.
Next: A Novel follows middle aged protagonist Kevin Quinn as he spends a day in Austin, Texas on a job interview. Boring, right? And even worse, Kevin is a self-absorbed jerk (strike one), a pinko commie liberal (strike two), and an editor at the University of Michigan (strike three). So James Hynes has really dug himself into a hole almost immediately. A hole so deep, I thought, that even James Joyce would have a hard time writing himself out of it.
Well, James Hynes is no James Joyce, but he does pull off something amazing in Next: A Novel. He makes the mundane interesting, and then pulls off an ending that a lesser writer would have fumbled (I'm looking at you, Dan Brown).
What's even more amazing is that he makes a Michigan employee sympathetic. I didn't even think they had humans up there! But by the end of Next: A Novel, I was actively rooting for him to straighten his personal life out and find some sort of solace, whether it's in Michigan or Texas.
I am awarding Next: A Novel 8 out 10 Stuffed Pink Bunnies (I'm a bit too old for rattles now). Next: A Novel is available now, so run out and pick up a copy today.
I have a great excuse, I swear. See, I've been doing a real bang-up job of tearing the house up. The messes I make surprise even me sometimes. It drives mommy crazy! So back at the end of January, my mommy and daddy put their noggins together and decided that they would finish the basement so I could have MORE room to make messes in.
Real smart, I know.
So how does this relate to blogging? Well, I count on my daddy to do all the typing. I just dictate. But he's been busy for the last two months trying to get the basement done. In other words, he's basically ignored me and my blogging demands. It was horrible.
But we're past all that now. I'm back, and badder than ever. There will be more mailbags. There will be more reviews. There will be 100% more punching eagles in the face.
For the last few weeks, me and mommy and daddy have been kicking around some ideas for Family Night. Now that football season is over (almost), we need something to look forward to on weekends. Daddy wanted us to all to join a gun club, which I was all for. Mommy, however, only selectively approves of the Bill of Rights.
Mommy's idea was for us all to help feed the poor on Family Night. Both me and daddy had a good laugh at that one. Finally, I spoke up. "Look, folks," I said. "Family Night should mean fun. It should mean games. It should mean great food. It should mean a trip to The Incredible Pizza Company."
So The Incredible Pizza Company it was. I had heard about this place on the radio, and it definitely lived up to its name. There was pizza everywhere and games and rides galore. Oh yes, there were rides. Rides designed especially for little kids like me.
The first ride I went on was pretty uneventful. It was a sad looking alligator. "Hey, fella," I said. "Cheer up, why don't you?" He didn't respond. Poor guy. I felt sort of bad, but then my mommy paid for the ride and I forgot all about whatever this guy's problems were. Better him than me, I figured.
Next was a ride on the Merry-Go-Round. There is only one word to describe this ride: BORING. I just sat there and spun in a circle. I can do that on my own at home! And it doesn't cost a dollar!
Finally, I was allowed to go in the ride I'd been itching to get on all night: the race car.
Oh man, was this a great ride. It went around in a nice little circle and was reasonably fast. That is, until my mommy frantically dragged me out of it. See, I tried to climb out of the car because I thought it would be a good idea to try to stand on the hood like a stuntman. Mommy, who can be a little bit of a spaz sometimes, jumped onto the track and dragged me out of the racecar. Immediately after she dragged me out, she stopped paying attention to the racecar, which was making its rounds. And then BAM! The racecar hit her, and she stumbled forward, crying for my daddy to rescue her.
So we got mommy off the track and gave her some ice cream to calm her down. I patted her head because I knew that the racecar really scared her. "Do you want to go home?" I asked.
"Mmm-hmm," she nodded.
I turned to daddy. "She's had a long day. Maybe we should get going."
"Good idea, Lucy."
So Family Night was over. Even though my mommy got hit by a car, I'd classify tonight as a raging success.
I know that I've already reviewed Avatar. And I thought I'd said what I had to say about it. But then the piece of crap goes and starts winning awards, and everybody in Hollywood starts falling all over themselves to make every movie in 3D. Still, I was going to let it go. After all, I'm just 14 months old. What do I know about the movie industry? More than you might think, actually. I know a good movie when I see it. And Avatar wasn't it.
So why am I so fired up, you ask? Shouldn't I be playing with Emilio and Esteban? Shouldn't I be walking on the treadmill? Shouldn't I be learning how to say things other than "hi", "dada", and "ba"? All of that can wait! This needs to be said now.
James Cameron is a hack.
People who like Avatar are idiots.
2009 saw not just one great science fiction movie released. It saw two. And both were from first time directors. The higher profile of the two was Neil Blomkamp's District 9.
District 9 was made for just over $30 million dollars and asks what would happen if one million extraterrestrial refugees were stranded in Johannesburg, South Africa. The answer probably doesn't surprise you, but the movie takes a tired allegorical premise and makes it completely enjoyable. Sure, the movie has stuff to say about apartheid (it's no accident that it takes place in Johannesburg), but it also has a lot to say about aliens blowing people up with totally awesome weapons. It's funny, sad, and action-packed. And it was made for about 1/10th of the budget of Avatar.
The second great science fiction movie of 2009 was Duncan Jones' Moon.
Moon was made for $5 million dollars, and it may very well be the best picture of the year. Sam Bell (played by the criminally underrated Sam Rockwell) is a solitary lunar employee nearing the end of his three stint harvesting a new form of energy from the lunar soil. His only companion is GERTY, a robotic assistant reminiscent of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey (but don't worry, this ain't 2001: A Space Odyssey, and no one will flash random patterns of light at you for ten minutes). During his last several days on the dark side of the moon, Sam begins to experience a series of personal crises that I don't want to spoil here. My only advice to you is this: watch it. It was made for 1/60th of the budget of Avatar.
I've spelled it out for you. I've done the math for you. For what it cost to make Avatar, we could have had 10 movies like District 9. We could have had 60 movies like Moon. But instead we got $300 million dollars' worth of 12 foot tall noble, blue cat-monkeys worshipping a tree and some mixed message about how technology is bad despite the fact that the whole point of the movie is to showcase the advanced technology used to make it. Huh?
I'll get off my soapbox now. It's late, and I have a long day ahead of me. Tomorrow's Saturday, and that means daddy's home. And that means I'm going to have to spend the whole day entertaining him. I would never tell him this, but at about 3 o'clock on days like tomorrow, I just start counting the minutes until it's his bedtime. I mean, I can only take everything out of the cupboard and spill uncooked rice everywhere so many times. It just gets exhausting after awhile.
I was watching this great channel the other day. It's called Animal Planet, and they had these great shows about these people who have problems with their pets. And them some weirdo comes in and teaches them how to beat their pets into submission or something.
You see that? That's a dog with a broken spirit! It wants the cupcakes so bad! You can see it in the doggy's eyes! But its more afraid of what its owners will do to it if it takes the cupcakes. Torture? Likely. But the real question is what form that torture will take. Waterboarding? Thumbscrews? A simple beating? Forcing it to watch Oprah? That's the best part! The doggy has no idea what will happen if it disobeys, but it knows that it will be bad.
I've tried to put what I've learned from Animal Planet into practice with Bailey, and it isn't taking. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but Bailey just won't act like Cupcake Dog. She's stubborn and doesn't listen at all. It really makes me angry. Sometimes I just want to eat my pear and be left alone. But in trots Bailey, tongue hanging out of her mouth and tail wagging. She looks all cute and cuddly, but she has one mission: take Lucy's pear. To wit:
I'm just going to go ahead and address the elephant in the room. The IOC denied my many requests that they allow me to participate in this year's Winter Olympics. Look, IOC, I said, I'm almost half as old as those Chinese girls who won all those medals in gymnastics a few years ago. Of course, they denied me. They hid behind their "rules" and told me to take a hike.
But don't think for one second that I don't know what's going on here. The IOC is terrified of the beatdown I would put on all the crap countries out there (I'm looking at you, Portugal), and they've decided to stonewall me.
This won't stop me from competing in 2014, though. I'll be five whole years old. Until then, I'm going into training. In fact, I had my first session today with my daddy. He told me that if I stick with him, he'll turn me into an absolute war machine. Portugal won't know what hit 'em.
You know, mommy gets a bad rap around these parts sometimes. I've accused her of being a terrorist, I've thrown things at her, I've bitten her. But guess what? When she leaves for the weekend, things around the house really change. And I'm not sure I like it very much.
See, daddy's in charge. Don't get me wrong. I like daddy just fine. He makes me laugh. We play hide and seek. He lets me stand on things that mommy won't. But there are, uh, differences.
Take today for example. Things started off fine. I got my milk and a nice breakfast of eggs and sausage. Things were going swimmingly. Then we ran out of milk. Normally when this happens, me and mommy take a trip to the store.
But not with daddy. He took my bottle and filled it up with something called "Red Bull" (which is like milk, I guess?).
It didn't taste terrible, and I finished the whole bottle. I don't really remember much about the next two hours except that I spent most of it chasing Bailey with a stick. My doggy can't even look at me without flinching now.
And after that, I didn't really feel too good. So what did daddy do? Did he give me medicine for my tummy? Did he hold me and tell me that everything was OK? No. He handed me a hunk of cheese and told me to walk it off.
Mommy wouldn't have let any of this happen, and I really miss her schoolmarmishness. She may not be as fun, but she's just a little more thoughtful. She wouldn't have given me Red Bull and cheese for dinner. She wouldn't have made me watch horror movies and football all day. And she certainly would've changed my clothes when I spilled apple juice all over myself instead of making me wear a barrel the rest of the day.
Being a kid is rough. People just assume that you know basic things. Take snow, for example. No one ever bothered to tell me what that stuff was. So it's only natural that I got curious over the last week or so. I would look out the window and watch this strange white powder fall from the sky.
There had to be an explanation! And, after lots of thought and analysis, I reached the only reasonable conclusion I could reach given my limited understanding of how the world works.
It was anthrax, and the terrorists were dumping it all over my yard. But why?
Then the pieces started to fall into place. It was an inside job orchestrated by none other than mommy.
Oh, I was surprised too. She seems so sweet and loving when you meet her. But that's exactly what a double-agent terrorist would have you believe. They gain your trust, and then WHAM, terror is knocking at your front door.
The missing piece of the puzzle was mommy's endgame. Was it simply to elicit terror? What could she possibly have to gain by aligning herself with the enemy? Money? Unlikely. She seems to have a limitless supply of that on a little plastic card she keeps in her wallet. Power? Perhaps. But to what end?
Questions abounded, and answers were few and far between.
Just as my suspicions were reaching their zenith, my mommy and my daddy bundled me all up and took me outside. At first I thought it was just another routine trip, but as soon as they put on my mittens and boots, I realized that this was no ordinary trip to the gas station to buy scratch-offs and butane.
They intended to put me IN the anthrax!
Unconscionable! I started to scream in--you guessed it--terror. I was scared and I felt betrayed, especially by daddy. How could he be in on this? Was he a terrorist too? Mommy, I could buy. But not daddy.
Anyway, as I'm sure you figured out by now, it wasn't anthrax on the ground. It was snow. And you know what? Snow ain't that much fun. It's cold. It stings. It's slippery. If I wanted to get frostbite, I'd hang out in the freezer.
So, yes, mommy isn't a terrorist. But believe you me, this whole incident is going in the dossier I keep on her.
by James Hynes.
and 
(James Hynes apparently likes to make sure you know what you're getting, whether its a novel or a tale). I'll let you know how those are once I finish them. 
