Monthly Archives: July 2010

Five things

Dare ya to do it. Five things we don’t know about you. Five opinions that might shock, entertain, delight, enlighten, or evoke feelings of utter ambivalence. Five items that are either personal or professional, good or not so good, silly or sublime, prideful or shameful.

Short lists reveal a lot, I think. Behold:

Although I think I might have mentioned this someplace before, I believe I am the only high school choir director in the United States who has never seen a single episode of “Glee.”
There are very few things I truly hate, but #1 on that short list is mean, inconsiderate people. (Passive-aggressives rank a close second, and Pharisees are up near the top as well.)
I believe that spankings do have an occasional place in the discipline framework of parenting. (If you want to open a protracted discussion on this, I’m game.)
I think people who say, “I don’t care what anyone thinks,” are likely hiding some issues that would indicate otherwise. If you don’t care what anyone thinks, you really shouldn’t have to say so. You just do what you do. It’s like telling the kids on the playground, “I’m really going home now! I mean it!” after not getting your way.
I really, really, really, really hate choir warmups. You know, the scales, the solfege, the chorales. I am going to do some experiments this fall with minimizing them.

OK, go. Regular Finkville citizens know I run this blog just as much for interaction and discourse as for blathering on about me, me, me (although I do enjoy that tasty morsel), so you know what to do. Your username and email are probably auto-saved in your browser. I also know there are readers who hide in the shadows, or who only comment once in a great while. Let’s hear from you, too.

Is it Sunday already? Could it possibly mean that in six days, we will be on the road towards the Odyssey? And me without a single plan for what to pack…

Review: Knight and Day

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Yesterday, the Thriller and I took off to Mansfield to catch a matinee and do some pre-Odyssey shopping. Eclipse was our film of choice; it started at 11:00. Well, thanks to endless traffic jams due to heavy construction, we were late enough to have missed the first part of the movie. So, he says to me, “You go ahead and pick another one. I’ll watch whatever you want.”

On a whim, I chose Knight and Day, the new film with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. What a hoot! A perfect movie for a carefree day. We both loved it.

I’m sad that half the critics at Rotten Tomatoes.com disliked it. No, it didn’t have any heavy or lofty themes, and no, it wasn’t about dastardly Americans destroying the earth and creating a dystopia that only helpless but politically and environmentally correct malcontents can fix. Rather, it’s a spy story with lots of great car chases and shoot-outs, accompanied by a good dose of mystery and silliness.

I think Tom Cruise is a wackjob in real life. But people, he is positively adorable in this movie, playing a rogue spy who goes against the “Agency.” His perfect foil is Cameron Diaz, a likable character with a small ditzy streak whom Cruise endeavors to protect. That’s where the comedy comes in. Diaz is an absolute spaz, flipping out regularly at the dizzyingly dangerous situations in which she finds herself, while Cruise shows total calm — indeed, he is the ultimate gentleman and perfect nice guy, calmly and kindly giving instructions to Diaz while the pair is bombarded by machine gun fire, or gently reassuring her as he sedates her for her safety.

It was funny and entertaining, and that’s all. If you won’t feel the need to assign national importance to its message, and you can find it within yourself to just enjoy a crazy romp, then you need to see this film. If you can’t, then maybe you could be a movie critic. Honestly, sometimes they’re just uptight goons.

On the Rat-O-Meter scale of five cheeses, I give the following to Knight and Day, simply on its entertainment merit:

And the sun comes up…

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…on another day for Cleveland sports fans, just like it did back in May. That’s all I’ll say on the subject. We keep hope alive, even though it stings bad. My mother used to tell me when I’d whine after she sprayed Bactine on my scraped-up knee, “If it stings, it means the medicine is working.”

Well, the medicine must really be working.

And now for something you’ll really like: EIGHT DAYS till the Route 66 Odyssey. And it’s Finkday. Candy will be eaten.

BTTH XII

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Well isn’t this just spectacular. Just when you think the LeBron madness couldn’t get anymore ridiculous, there’s this. Can it just please go away?

Here’s the biggest mistake many Cavs fans made: believing that James cares about them, and “HOME” (I saw the billboards in Cleveland the other day) and loyalty and bringing a pro sports championship of any kind to the state of Ohio. If he chooses to stay in Cleveland, it won’t be because of any of that. His behavior since February is proof positive of it, and this new insanity on ESPN drives the nail in for good. I mean really, since they’ve promised not to drag out the wait time for the announcement past ten minutes, how long will it take him to actually phonate where he’s going? Five seconds? How long does saying a city name like Cleveland, Chicago, Miami, East Rutherford or New York take?

The only ratings jump will be in the first ten minutes. After that, I’d bet that most of the fans in the aforementioned cities — with the exception of the one named by LeBron — will tune out. Idiotic.

LeBron James, his handlers and ESPN: BTTH. But this article — awesome. Haha. Yay for 20/20 perspective when needed.

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While flipping channels before bedtime last night, I came across this gem: Toddlers and Tiaras on TLC. In addition to illustrating the immeasurable lengths asinine maternal units will span in order to live vicariously through their poor daughters, this show reminded me of the old car accident saying: it’s horrifying, but you can’t look away.

Some of the cuter quotes I remember:

Mom #1, hissing in a whisper to her 4-year-old who didn’t want to wear a gargantuan wig onstage: “If you don’t wear the wig, you won’t win the Crown of Royalty!”

Mom #2, in an interview: “If Eden wins this, my $70,000 investment will have been worth it.”

Mom #3, in a startling moment of honesty: “I’m certain it’s more about what I want than what she wants.”

Fantastic. And there was so much more — not to mention the fact that people actually have pictures made of their 6-year-old daughters to look like this. No joke. That’s Regan — a real little girl. It’d be interesting to see how many pedophiles have these pageant sites bookmarked.

Child pageants, everyone who runs them, and especially the parents who exploit their kids in them: BTTH.

Children that age should be at the park, playing hide-and-seek in the big plastic tunnel.

Zoo — Whew!

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It was a hot one, lemmetellya fiends. But we had a blast. In spite of the 100-degree heat, we enjoyed the bears (black, brown and polar), lions, lemurs, tiny monkeys, baboons, flamingos, snakes, seals, birds, exotic cats and giraffes. Jake was in charge of the spritz bottle, and we all got multiple mist treatments. I applied and reapplied sunscreen like it was my job (except I forgot my own face. Oi.).

Our geriatric spines may never be the same, but we sure loved our day together. Both boys were great sports about everything, and the Thriller was the ultimate host, making sure we were all as cool and hydrated as we could be.

We. Walked. Everywhere. And everywhere we walked was uphill and six miles to get there. But what a workout, eh?

Behold, the Zootorial…