Blythe Blog: February 2011

Babysitting for 8-year-olds can be absolute bliss, if only for the comedy gold. While I usually babysit an 8-year-old boy and his 12-year-old brother (stories about whom I do not feel comfortable sharing here--I have my reasons), today an 8-year-old girl was added to the mix.

Before I tell the golden tale, I do want to mention that I took them to see Gnomeo and Juliet, which was crap, although the voices were exceptionally appealing and well-cast (I see now that Gnomeo was played by my man McAvoy. I figured Juliet was Emily Blunt while watching. I also recognized Michael Caine, but believed it to be a sound-alike, which is not actually the case). It was the writing that failed to stimulate me in any way. I just feel that there was no real thought and everything was cheap and overlooked. Actually I'll explain why.

While they meant for the premise to be that the people living in the houses thought the people next door were sabotaging them, they only mentioned this once in the beginning, so after both houses were absolutely DESTROYED day after day, no remarks about the humans were made. Not to mention, the garden gnomes spent $10,000 (or pounds... whatever) of the people's money. Plus, they were allegedly maintaining the garden. Did the people not question why their backyards were apparently maintaining themselves? Or why the gnomes are reproducing?! I mean, how do these gnomes have mothers? (I actually let that slide, because I have to assume that they are FAKE mothers and are not actually giving birth, although I think if Pixar did it, it would be explained as part of the world) Also, whether or not a gnome could actually remove what was sticking to them was inconsistent. Tybalt could easily not hold his wheelbarrow and Juliet could drop her rose, but one gnome could not get a soccer ball off his butt and two gnomes were glued on a platform that they couldn't get off of. Also, regarding the gnome with the soccer ball, the other gnomes were like "pass us the ball" and said gnome got up and looked around, apparently shocked that the ball was on his butt. If they do this every day, why is he still falling for this joke? The way that Gnomeo and Juliet met was because Juliet was trying to get an orchid for a flower competition that was never mentioned EVER again. The shots were contrived. Juliet got dressed in a disguise to leave the yard, and then she got in all of these martial-arty fighting positions that were completely unexplained. Like... she's tough, but I don't understand why. When she's on a brick wall and Gnomeo sees her, she stops right in front of the moon in some sort of strong-woman pose for like... several seconds and then just keeps going, but they didn't even make her stop for any purpose (ie: catching her breath or looking for something). Some things happened that weren't carefully thought out. One gnome went into the sewer and came out in the humans' washer. Where is the gnome-sized hole in a washer?! That leads directly to the sewer?! In the beginning, they have a lawn mower race and Tybalt cheats and Gnomeo is like "we'll go into the red lawn and get them back" and the others are like "but no one has ever gone to the red lawn before." Then the proceed to flippantly leave their lawns and go into each other's lawns throughout the days and days of the film. In fact, there is a hole going from one lawn to the other that leads under the mouth of a hippopotamus sculpture thing. After Gnomeo exits from the hippo's mouth, the hippo sounds the alarm that there is an intruder. Wouldn't the hippo already be aware that there was a hole leading into the other yard under her mouth?! The last thing I'll mention that bothered me was that they met this flamingo in another yard and the flamingo talked about how he loved this other flamingo and there was a little montage of what happened. At the end, to solve this problem, they BOUGHT him another flamingo. I might be just picking now, but I would have liked it WAY more if they found the original other lady flamingo. It's really trivializing love if any flamingo will do.

All of this, plus the very contrived placements of pop culture references and jokes, made it seem like the movie was just a passionless pitch. It's Toy Story meets Romeo and Juliet with garden gnomes.

ANYWAY ANYWAY

After the movie, I forgot that my companions were not necessarily going to feel the same way about the film, which is how I got into the following exchange:

12-year-old: Oooo look! It says Elton John was [an] executive producer!

Me: ooo that sucks...

12-year-old: What?! Elton John is an amazing musician!

Me: Yes. He is.

But now for the genius. Later in the evening, the 8-year-old girl mentioned that she had seen Scott Pilgrim. I asked her what she thought and she said she liked it. Then we had the following conversation:

Girl: Do you remember the part....?

Me: What part?

Girl: You know.

Me: Well... I remember all the parts because I saw the whole movie.

Girl: You know. You know.

(Then the girl does some strange, scissor-y gesture with her fingers)

Girl: You know.

Me: What?

Girl: I'll just draw it for you.

The following drawing is the most amazing gift I have ever received.

Please note the caption underneath. After much speculation, I have decided that she chose to spell out her spelling-out of "sex," writing the "s" sound with a lisp to add character.

In other news, my mom sent me a photo of the jade plant that I left at home 2 Christmas' ago. I hate to say it, but I have little to no faith that anything I leave at home will be well cared-for so I assumed the the plant died weeks after I left it. NAY. This is what it looked like after two years of my care:

It is BARELY bigger than when I bought it, and as you can see, an entire branch didn't survive the journey from MA to PA.

After one year of my mother's care:

It's practically majestic now, in the grandiose setting it deserves. I'm so happy about this. I was really attached to this plant. At one point I even bought it an ivy plant companion (after much deliberation over the perfect jade companion, not too showy and not too similar). Sadly, the Ivy lasted barely a month in my care. Things that only require minimal care every 20 days are my forte, although in light of this new photographic evidence, that doesn't seem to be a very accurate assessment.

At this moment, I would also like to mention that I LOVED this weeks Office! It almost makes me want an 8th season.

Lastly, I thought I jinxed the idea of car trouble a couple of entries ago, but that appears to not be the case. I'm in denial so far, but I think you can assume that more on this will follow.

Pilot season is crazy!!

Again, while I rarely talk about work, I need to speak about the chaos. The entire time I've been at this job, people have dropped ominous messages about pilot season. "We need to make sure you're all trained for pilot season." "Make sure everything's organized for pilot season." "Just make sure your head shots are ready for pilot season." Pilot season starts right after winter break and while it was evident that we were in pilot season from the beginning and I've been actively more busy since then, it is only in the past two weeks that I've fully (hopefully fully) grasped the desperation, the equal parts joy and frustration, the bouts of love and hatred. It's pretty stimulating for a desk job. Organization is key. It's really just like Christmas. The goal is that the presents and Christmas spirit will outweigh the gift and family anxiety.