The Story of a Backpack

I gotta be honest.  I’m dying to see this.  The story of a single backpack, told by 25 different filmmakers, filmed on 5 different continents.  I think it’s going to be fabulous.  Check out the trailer:

Perfect Valentine’s Day Movie: SPOONER

Valentine’s Day is nearly here, which makes it the perfect time to tell you about one of my all-time favorite fall-in-love movies, SPOONER.  Oh my goodness, you guys.  I don’t often post about movies or books because I tend to either get tongue-tied or long-winded when trying to talk about them.  But I am just so in love with this movie, with this story, that I want for you to be, too!  :)  Here, watch the trailer:

It’s such a sweet story about a seriously socially awkward guy with a heart of gold trying to win the girl of his dreams.  I honestly cringed through much of it – not because the plot or acting was bad, but because Matthew Lillard was so believable in his awkwardness that I was having actual physical reactions to it.  But I think the thing I love most about this movie is that it’s never over-done in any way.  The storytelling is so simple, the climax so subtle, and the triumph in the end so perfect that it kept me thinking about it for days after.

I love it when books/movies/music do that – when the story being told sticks with you.

Lucky for you, Spooner is available on Netflix instantly.  If you haven’t seen it, go watch it, now.  If you have, go watch it again!

Log-Lines from the Edge of Ridiculousness

Last week I braved my fears and threw my attempt at a log-line for my book out to the masses for feedback.  And what feedback I got!  Such encouraging, kind, constructive words from so many of you…I’m still chewing through it all, but I’m feeling better about the concept.

We really Are Not Alone…and it rocks.  *big grins*

One suggestion that I found really helpful was to compare the book to popular movies or books that already exist.  While the hubster and I were discussing this idea, the conversation drifted, as it generally does, into the ridiculous.  Soon we weren’t talking about my book at all, but saying things like:

Beverly Hillbillies meets The Breakfast Club

Five nouveau riche hillbilly highschoolers move to Beverly Hills and find themselves in detention after refusing to conform to privileged private school rules.

or

Uncle Buck meets Ghost Busters

Unemployed bachelor and all-around slob, Buck babysits his brother’s rebellious – and ghostly – teenage daughter and her cute – and slimy – younger brother and sister.

We spent a decent amount of time cracking up at our new game and very, very clever book premises.  (To be fair, the hubster was home sick that day, jacked up on cold medicine…and I’m all a muss with preggo hormones…so things probably sounded far funnier to us than they will to any of you.)

As we were cackling and patting ourselves on the back for our wit and humor, it dawned on me how this could easily turn into hours and hours of fun – or, at the very least, a blog post.  :)

So here are some log-lines for unwritten books based on the idea of marrying popular movies/books/tv shows together.

300 meets 18 Again

King Leonidas – trapped in the body of his swinging grandfather – must lead a force of 300 men to fight the Persians while maintaing his bad-ass reputation, while his grandfather, trapped in King Leonidas’ much younger body, decides to re-live his youth.

How to Train Your Dragon meets Pride and Prejudice

Sparks fly when spirited but clumsy Elisabeth Bennet meets single, rich, and powerful dragon-slaying Viking Mr. Darcy.

Training Day meets Top Dog

On his first day on the job as a narcotics officer, a rookie cop works with a rogue detective who wasn’t what he expected: a dog.

Footloose meets Diehard

A city boy moves to small-town USA where he gives a local terrorist operative a dose of their own medicine through the medium of rock and roll and dancing.

Seabiscuit meets Boondock Saints

An undersized depression-era racehorse sets out to rid Boston of evil.

Elf meets Dirty Harry

After inadvertently wreaking havoc on the elf community due to his ungainly size and love of his gun, a man raised as an elf in the North Pole is sent to San Francisco to track down a serial killer.

UHF meets Jersey Shore

A local public TV station gets a new owner – a 20-something New Jersey-ite with orange skin, sky-high bouffant, and a vapid lifestyle.  Against all odds, the station becomes a big hit, with all sorts of gags and wacky humor from her friends.

Alright, that’s plenty from me – I want to hear what you’ve got!  What are some story combinations so ridiculous that they have you laughing out loud?

Quick Giggle: Insert Solo Here

A couple weeks ago, the hubster and I watched Spinal Tap.  Oh, my goodness.  Perfectly ridiculous and uncomfortably funny…it was a good watch.  Their music video The Majesty of Rock is just like a little mini-version: perfectly ridiculous, and uncomfortably funny.  I mean, just check out these lyrics: The Majesty of Rock, the Mystery of Roll, the darning of the sock, the scoring of the goal, the farmer takes a wife, the barber takes a pole…

Priceless.

But as much as I dig his character in Spinal Tap, Christopher Guest will, and always will be, to me, Corky St. Clair (Waiting for Guffman).

Lucky for you, I have a little of both lined up today!  Enjoy!!

The Grinch is Pregnant

This time of year you can find my family and I snuggled up on the couch in front of a fire, watching Christmas movies.  We have our favorites we re-visit year after year: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  Elf.  White Christmas.  Anything colorful and loud, with lots of singing.

I’m in a store and singing!  I’m in a store and I’m SING-ING!!!

Saturday night was the yearly kick-off of our tradition, and first on our list this year was ‘The Grinch’.  Not the cartoon version, but the waaaaaay-over-the-top-with-Jim-Carrey version.  We love this movie: fabulous costumes, a heroine so doggone sweet you just want to pinch her cheeks until they burst, and of course, the reason for the whole thing, the hairy, mean-spirited, cranky, smelly, but deep-down good-guy, Mr. Grinch.

As we were watching the flick for the umpteenth time, something dawned on me.  I don’t know why I didn’t pick up on it before.  It’s so frigging obvious.

The Grinch is Pregnant.

No, you say.  The Grinch is a dude, you say.  Even if it were physically possible in Who-biology for dudes to carry offspring seahorse-style – the Grinch hasn’t had a relationship, or a fling, in…forever!

Don’t care.  Doesn’t matter.  All of your arguments are moot, because the evidence is overwhelming.  Maybe it’s the immaculate conception of Who-mythology, I don’t know.  But the evidence is glaringly obvious.

Item #1:  Wouldja just look at that belly?  Unless Mr. Grinch is a heavy drinker (and there is no evidence pointing to that), or his diet contains an overabundance of high fructose corn syrup – which I suppose is a possibility, given the combination of the Who’s collective sweet-tooths (word?) and wastefulness (have you seen what they’ve done to Mt. Crumpit, where Grinchy gets all his food?), there’s no other explanation for it.  Even accounting for the high fructose corn syrup theory, there’s one more part of the Grinch’s anatomy that points to his ‘condition’.  Any woman who’s ever been pregnant knows one of the first signs of expectancy is a little visit from The Titty Fairy.  And the Grinch is no exception.  Sure, they’re hairy and green, but Mother Nature’s pre-natal blessings are unmistakably there.

Item #2:  The Grinch’s taste in food is…strange…to say the least.  At one point we see him wolfing down an uncooked onion, skin and all.  At the end of the film, when all is right in Whoville and Mr. Grinch is carving the roast-beast, he asks “Who wants the gizzard?”  A cry of  ”I do!” is swiftly denied, as the Grinch declares himself eater of said gizzard.  This is indicative of pregnancy for two reasons: (1) Only somebody with seriously screwed up taste-buds (aka, a pregnant person) would enjoy eating gizzards (I call liar on anybody else who says they like ‘em), and (2) Only a pregnant person would be mean enough to offer food, renege on the offer, and then eat it in front of the person he/she just jipped.

Finally, while being honored as the Holiday Cheermeister, we see him gorging himself on pudding, fruitcake, and fudge – which he does almost violently, shouting such phrases as Bring it on! and That all you got? between mouthfuls.  Only one brand of person eats with such voracity: a pregnant one.

Item #3:  Mood swings.  And lots of ‘em.  From euphorically happy to crushingly depressed; hateful and revenge-filled to helpful and downright sweet, Mr. Grinch runs the gambit of emotions.  Something, I daresay, every pregnant woman is familiar with.

Item #4:  The Grinch decides to attend the Who’s Christmas festivities, because he feels he deserves an award.  Pregnant women often feel this way (in fact, I do, at this very moment).  I mean, come on, we’re making life here.  Give me a crown, sparkly clothes, and a check, and make it snappy before one of those apocalyptic mood-swings (that could literally put an end to your life as you know it) descends in its furious glory of hell-fire and brimstone.

But *ahem* we’re talking about the Grinch, not me.  (That, by the way, is another nod in the the Grinch-is-preggo argument.  Many pregnant women – except for me – are unintentionally self-absorbed.  Except for me.  The Grinch suffers from this affliction.  But I don’t.  Not me.  Never me.  Me, me, me.)

Item #5:  Any mother-to-be will tell you, finding cute clothes that fit well during pregnancy is a pain in her ever-widening derriere.  The Grinch is no exception.  When trying to find something decent to wear to accept the Holiday Cheermeister award, we see him tearing through his closet, unhappy with how everything looks on his rounded, pear-shaped body.  Ultimately, he settles on a pair of lederhosen (which of us preggos haven’t, in our hormone-fueled need to look cute, tried out the well-intentioned, but desperately horrible coveralls look?) stolen from the Who version of the Ricola guy.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.  And any woman with the bun in the oven will tell you, a looming holiday party where you’re to be the guest of honor is a desperate time.

Item #6:  Pregnancy sends all kinds of freaky-crazy-ridiculous amounts of hormones rushing through the body, causing all kinds of interesting things to happen.  The list of things that change in unpleasant ways is long, but for the sake of time-conservation, I’ll only deal with two: Bad breath and body hair.  While it is true that the Grinch was hairy as a child, I’d say he’s had a fair bit of unusual growth at the time the movie was filmed.  I can vouch for the validity of this: If it weren’t for my daily plucking/waxing/shaving regimen, I would be utterly unrecognizable during pregnancy.  Secondly, his breath is bad.  Really bad.  At one point, he makes a poor, defenseless Who pass out just by breathing on him.  I could easily do the same to you, dear reader, if it weren’t for the obsessive amount of tooth-brushing, flossing, and rinsing I do these days.

There it is.  My argument for the fact that Mr. Grinch is indeed with child.  Do you agree with my observations, or would you rather believe this post is simply the mad ramblings of a pregnant woman who currently sees the world through childbearing-glasses?