Muppets Most Wanted Review

Just got home from taking the kiddo to see Muppets Most Wanted. We try as much as we can to see movies at the Alameda Theatre & Cineplex because it's a grand old theater that's really involved in local events, hosts Friday Night "Alameda's Most Talented" competitions, and also it's the only movie theater on the island! Win-win.

The movie was fun. The plot is pretty simple - a Kermit look-alike with an evil mole and an even eviler (is that a word?) Russian inspired accent takes over the Muppets, and with the help of his Number 2 (Ricky Gervais), tries to pull off the stereotypical heist - steal the Crown Jewels of England. In between, there are lots of Muppet Show Acts, a bunch of sight gags and celebrity cameos, and tons of family-friendly corny jokes.

Like any good Muppet movie, there were fun and silly original songs, and a couple of references to pop hits too. My favorite was the bit where Celine Dion sings along with Miss Piggy as her Fairy Godmother. Kelle liked the play on "Workin' in a Coal Mine," staged in a gulag and led by Ray Liotta, Danny Trejo and Jermain Clement. The kiddo liked the Muppet Show theme song best, because he almost always likes best what he already knows. 2-year-olds, man.

Overall, while it wasn't as amazing as the last Muppet movie, it was way better than a lot of the crap that movie studios put out for kids. And to be fair, they acknowledge straight away that sequels are never as good (In a song: "We’re doing a sequel/ That’s what we do in Hollywood/ And everybody knows/ That the sequel’s never quite as good").



We're Doing a Sequel - Muppets Most Wanted Music Video on Disney Video
 
I laughed plenty of times, the kiddo enjoyed asking "Whas Kewmit dooin?" a lot (and eating the popcorn), and I'd be totally down to watch it again, or listen to it in the background on a long car ride.

Let It Go

I'm seriously obsessed with this song right now. Idina Menzel is just amazing, and it's one of those awesome broadway-type songs that just makes your eyes well up. All the feelings have to go somewhere, right?




It's nice to be back home. I had an excellent time in LA, but it's definitely not my city. Alameda is better.

Pink is NOT Just for Girls, and it's NOT the Problem!

A particular Huffington Post article has been making the rounds on my Facebook this week. It's mostly a great article, and it's been bringing a ton of attention to one of my biggest pet peeves, which is awesome. The hook is an adorable Lego ad from 1981:

The article goes on to mourn that we don't have ads like this anymore. And I so agree! I wish we treated girls, and by extension girl toys, as wholly developed things that don't have to be frilly or sparkly or pink in order to be something that girls want. And I wish marketers weren't doing this to the toys of my childhood, as they "modernize" them:

Dolls don't need to be sexier. They don't need to be made skinnier, or given bigger eyes and longer hair and more porcelain skin. Dolls and female characters can be girls without bows and boobs and makeup. I don't know why toy companies are so very insistent that young children believe that all girls want to look like this, or should look like this. I don't know why they want all children to want the same thing! It's infuriating.

Toys should be toys. For kids. Whichever kids want them. We shouldn't be allowing all the toys in our country to be divided up into boy toys and girl toys. It does our children a huge disservice, and it's going to cause problems for us all in about 15 years, when the kids who grew up in this atmosphere are young adults with no concept of gender-neutral.

But the HuffPo article made me pretty angry right off the bat with this line:

The LEGOs are not pink or "made for girls." She isn't even wearing pink.

Aaaarrrggghhh!! Pink isn't the problem! Why does it matter if she's wearing pink, or not wearing pink? Pink is not our enemy. Girls should be able to wear pink if they want to! Why do people, whenever they respond to this kind of problem (and I see it all the time) think that eliminating the pink toys is the solution?

Why is there never any outrage that pink wasn't included in the original Lego set? I dare you to find a gender-neutral toy that includes pink. Or is all pink. It's nearly impossible. I can't dress my son in pink. But I can damn sure find blue clothes and toys meant for girls. Why? Why are we so afraid of pink? Is it because it's associated with feminine, and we are scared of feminine becoming the norm?

We use feminine words as insults all the time:

"You throw like a girl"
"Don't get your panties in a twist"
"Quit being such a pussy"

And we imply that a loss of manhood is the worst thing that could happen to a man:

"Turn in your man card"
"Did someone put your balls in their purse?" 

Jessica Valenti, in Full Frontal Feminism wrote:

“What’s the worst possible thing you can call a woman? Don’t hold back, now.
You’re probably thinking of words like slut, whore, bitch, cunt (I told you not to hold back!), skank. Okay, now, what are the worst things you can call a guy? Fag, girl, bitch, pussy. I’ve even heard the term “mangina.” Notice anything? The worst thing you can call a girl is a girl. The worst thing you can call a guy is a girl. Being a woman is the ultimate insult. Now tell me that’s not royally fucked up.” 

And it's true! Even the majority of our vulgar and insulting words equate to a woman's genitalia! I won't list them, but I'm sure you can think of plenty.

In Chicago several years ago, there was a contest to pick a new color to represent the newest train line. A young girl wrote an essay advocating for the color pink. “Who does not like pink?" she asked. "It’s so bright and lively … if it’s pink people will want to ride it.” The CTA agreed with her, and The Pink Line was born. And with it came outrage on the part of many Chicagoans. From Salon:

A pink train would be humiliating to the good people of Chicago. We are the hardworking, meat-eating, bar-brawling, sports-loving, dirty-politicking, multiple heart attack-surviving hog butcher for the world! We are men, except for the slightly more than half of us who are not! And you expect us to pay good money to ride on something called the “Pink Line”? Why not just put a tutu on the Sears Tower, or fill Soldier Field with tampons, or come to my house and cut my balls off?

 And there, I think, is the real problem. It's not so much that we now offer almost exclusively pink (and purple!) toys to girls. It's that we don't offer them to boys. And by doing so, by leaving pink out of all gender-neutral items, out of all "boy" toys, we are teaching both boys and girls that pink is an other.

That only someone who is less-than will want pink. Pink has been made to represent the underlying hatred our society has for all things feminine, and that sucks. Because I like pink. And I like girly things. And that makes me no less capable than anyone else.

I just wish society would agree with me on that.

***Whoops! Turns out the original title of this blog post was used already by the excellent Bob "MovieBob" Chipman. Here's a link to his great discussion of the same concept: Pink is Not the Problem.

Why so few kids movies?

It might be silly, but I love taking my kid to the movies. I love going to the movies, so that might be part of it, ha! When he was just born, we went to see The Muppet Movie together, and it was great. He slept, and nursed, and since he loved songs from very early on, it was an easy way to get out of the house.

He hadn't been to any other movies since then, until just before his 2nd birthday, when we took him to see Disney's Planes. We'd heard it was perfect for little ones, and it'd been so long since I saw a movie, I would have been willing to sit through almost anything! And it was adorable! Not so much the movie itself, which was pretty mediocre, but watching the kiddo watch the movie. He was enthralled. He danced to the songs, pointed out the planes, and loved the popcorn.

Since then, I've taken him to two more flicks - Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, and Frozen. They were both great. Fun, funny at times (Meatballs more so), and a nice way for the kiddo and I to have a special adventure together.

But now that I have a kiddo of movie-going age, I've noticed the serious lack of kids movies in theaters. And I'm not just talking about good kids movies. Seriously, right now, Frozen is the only thing in the theaters. It's been the only thing in theaters for at least a month! I'm not saying I want to take him to movies all the time, but especially over winter break time, I would've thought there would have been at least two options! I hope this is just a weird lull, because I'd be sad for my kid if he hardly ever got to experience good films in the theaters - it's just too fun!

That said, I can't wait for the Lego movie to come out. Ross has loved Legos his whole life, and I just know the kiddo is going to too. And also, the movie looks awesome. Seriously, check it out!

List #3: Things I want to do right now but can't

1. I'm dying to write about people in my life today. Just dying. I'm keeping a few awesome little secrets, some of which many people already know and a few that no one else knows, and none of which I'm allowed to put on the internet. And I'm going to confess something here: I love gossip. I love knowing things about people, about how people feel about each other, about little dramas, getting to tell people news they've never heard before...but it would be so unfair to write about those things, so I'll just keep them to myself and flaunt the fact that I know things, because I love my friends and family more than I love gossip. I think this whole thing started when I watched soap operas as a kid. Those were the best sick days - marathons of Days of Our Lives and All My Children, with so much intrigue and scheming and overdone romance.

2. I so want to go to Disneyland. It's holiday time there, which is always the best. The lights and the bells and the funny outfits everyone wears - they're so cheery, everything smells delicious, and the whole place has always felt magical to me. We took Emmett this summer and he loved it, which made me so happy, because I've loved Disneyland for ages. Kelle and I had annual passes when we were teenagers and used to spend most Tuesday afternoons there, searching for Hidden Mickeys and groups of tourists dressed identically. I'd like to go today, but of course it's really far away and this is a holiday weekend, so that's not gonna happen. And it's pricey! Just about $100 a ticket now - we did it once this year, but I don't know if we could justify spending that kind of money again - throw in parking and lunch, and it's nearly a $300 day, that for us ended at 1:00 because of naptime. Boo.

3. I want to wear my wedding rings. I love them and I hate not wearing them. This one isn't a "just today" kind of thing, but a most days thing. My fingers swell up because of my arthritis, so my rings only fit sometimes, and if I leave them on too long, my skin gets really irritated and I break out in a horrible rash because of the too-tight rings. I also want to get them sized, but I'm not sure that will help, because my Drs. don't know if the arthritis will stick around or not, so I may end up with too-big rings.

4. Swimming sounds like the best thing right now, but we don't have a pool, and we're not members anywhere. I suppose Emmett and I could try to sneak into a hotel pool somewhere in Emeryville, but that sounds risky. 

5. If I could upload pictures of the "Animal Alphabet" Ross designed, I would put it up on our Etsy shop right now and promote the shit out of it. These little paintings are so fricken cute. We're going to offer individual letters as paintings, and also custom made name deals - they'll be adorable, and hopefully a big hit. BUT! We still can't find the cord to the camera, and I think that although the iPhone pictures are ok, I should be learning how to use the Lumix. Especially if we're gonna be doing this for reals, which I so hope we are. I'm enjoying it, and I know Ross is too - he's told me several times he likes having painting "assignments" because it helps him focus his art. I feel the same way about writing - it's kind of torturous getting going sometimes, but once I do it, I'm so glad.

6. For probably 4 days now, I've wanted dim sum. Delicious little bites of pastry or rice paper filled with vegetables and spices and seasonings and man, they're so good. I especially want a chive pancake with peanut sauce. I've also been craving these vegetable kabobs from a Thai Lao restaurant in Berkeley called Dara. I lived around the corner from it for a year or so, and used to eat there all the time. These things are heavenly - Marinated broccoli, tofu, potatoes, mushrooms, carrots and onions all charred on a woodfire grill and served with cucumber and carrot salad and peanut sauce. My mouth is watering thinking about them.

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I'm sure there's more, but I can go binge on Parks and Rec right now because the kiddo is napping, and so I'm going to. Today, I'm thankful for: brand new sweatshirts that are still fuzzy and soft inside, bandannas, plants that are hard to kill, bubbly water and big heavy blankets