My sister wants me to tell a story...

I was going to title this story, My sister, evil incarnate, which would have been mean. I'm not saying that she's evil now, but years ago, I knew a sister that barely resembles the sister that I know now. That sister was one that could be very vicious when she wanted to, which was usually at unexpected times.

Let me back up. Mara wants me to tell the story of when I was made to dress up like a girl for her and her friend. I think I'd rather tell you a more painful story first. A story ripe with moments that'll make you squirm.

Because my sister grew up in the middle, she had boys coming at her from all sides. I blame my older brothers for her viciousness because they would hit her every now and then in the shoulder to show who's boss. She'd take it but would usually retaliate with some unorthodox techniques, namely scratching the living hell out of your arms with her fingers. I was a victim to this on more than one occassion.

There is one moment, however, that will forever live in my mind not only because it was unexpected, not only because it was vicious and not only because it caused me great pain, because I don't recall what I did to deserve it. It seemed to come out of left field.

One day when I was about 10-years-old, she kicked me in the nuts so hard that I immediately toppled to the ground and cried for 30 minutes. That's how hard she kicked me. She tried to comfort me probably out of fear of getting in trouble, but there was no consoling this pain. As they said in Weird Science, "That's the worst pain there is."

What was surprising at the time, but not surprising now was that one of my anatomy grew to twice the size of the other. I'm thinking it had something to do with the kick. I could literally squeeze it and fluid would flow out of it into my body somewhere. This lasted a while and understandably worried me so I showed my parents. I even showed them that I could squeeze it. Long story short, it eventually healed. I know. I know. It's pretty weird, but hey it's the truth!

I told you that story to set up for you the story of my forced dress up. Mainly, I don't really remember much about it. I think I was in the seventh grade at the time. Mara had a friend sleeping over one night when suddenly, she poked her head out of her room and called to me.

"Bob, could you come here for a minute?"

I should have known something was wrong, but it didn't occur to me that something embarrassing was going to happen to me. When you're gullible, you're bound to fall for anything.

So anyway, I come to the room and probably asked, "What?" when the door shut behind me and they both blocked the door.

I don't remember how they asked, but all I knew was that they were bound and determined to get me into some girls clothes. Being 3-years-older than me, she was about as strong as me, if not stronger. Plus, there were two of them so I was pretty intimidated. I believe I made several attempts at the door, but it was no use. I was stuck. Plus, no one on the other side was willing to give me some help. The others might have been downstairs watching TV and my sister's bedroom was upstairs, so you can see my dilemma. Try and fight and get the living hell scratched out of me or submit to their whim to dress up a boy and not get the living hell scratched out of me.

It seemed like a more appealing choice. You see, I have this phobia of getting the living hell scratched out of me by a girl so I was trapped.

They made me put on a bra and a dress. If that wasn't enough, they applied makeup to my face, styled my hair and painted my nails. To top it off, they made me strike girly poses while taking pictures!!

They finally let me go after parading me in front of my older brothers, who, of course, took great pleasure in making fun of me. It was just another in a long series of painful humiliations by my older siblings so it really didn't scar me like you'd think. No, I don't have a desire to dress up in women's clothing. I don't wear bras. I don't paint my nails. The closest I come to styling my hair is to get it wet, run gel through it and brush my curls down.

The only embarrassing thing about it was the fingernails. They painted them a pinkish color. I tried to get it all out, but I noticed the next day in class that I could still see some faint markings on the edges of my fingernails. I took great care to keep my hands in my lap or curled so as to not show the humiliating fingernails. Humiliation in front of your family is one thing. Humiliation in Junior High is another. That's not something you easily lived done.

Hell, there was a kid that had a rumor floating around about how he had sex with his cat! I'm sure it wasn't true, but even he never lived that one down!

Like I said, I didn't remember much about this event, although I specifically remember seizing the pictures when my family was done laughing at them and burning them before anyone could do anything about it. Unless we still have a negative floating around, the only way anyone will ever see those photos is if they photoshop it. Even then, it won't have the sexy pose right.

Saw the movie Saw...

I had it all worked up to attempt a stupid rhyme review like She sells seashells on the seashore along the lines of "She saw saw simply to stupify her stepmother" or something like that, but I don't have that much free time on my hands.

So anyway, I saw the movie Saw and it was really good. It's a suspense thriller that for once had a lot of suspense and thrills. I read a lot of mediocre reviews this movie, but I found it quite good. Granted, if you are easily disturbed, then you'll either hate this movie or you'll be watching quite a bit of it with your hand over your eyes.

The movie centers around a villain named Jigsaw who doesn't actually kill his victims. He gets them to kill themselves or to kill others for the sake of saving their lives. One victim has a poison in his body and the antidote is in a safe. The numbers are on the wall among other numbers, but he only has a candle to light his way. Did I mention that the guy is smeared from head to toe in a highly flamable gel?

Such is the nature of Jigsaw. He invents deadly puzzles for this victims who are usually drugged and wake up in the puzzle.

The movie centers around two men who are chained to opposite ends of a dirty washroom. They are chained by one foot. There is no key and they are given saws that aren't strong enough to cut through chains, but they will cut through bone. You probably get where that leads.

I won't spoil the plot, but I would like to point out that one review I read said that the twists in this movie are sillier than the next. I heartily disagree. Considering the bizarre premise, I think all of the twists made sense. Also, I defy you to see the ending coming!

I wish I could forgotten this movie...

What a crapfest. I'm of course referring to the "movie" The Forgotten.

As usual spoilers lie ahead.

I'm sure there are some that are going to say that they can appreciate the story and what was being accomplished in this movie, but it all fell flat to me.

When I mentioned to a co-worker that I was going to watch the Forgotten, he said, "It's interesting and really long."

I could tell that he didn't like it, but was holding back until I had seen it.

Really long? It's only 86 minutes long! I can concur, it seems like it takes forever and a day for this movie to get anywhere. It's not that it moves slow. It doesn't. I gets going quickly, but where it's going is so absurd that it defies logic. I had it mostly figured out in the first 15 minutes. Each of the "twists" were not unexpected because if you saw the trailer or any of the commercial spots, they showed you almost every twist that you'd need to see.

The movie starts out with Juliane Moore's character Kally grieving over her son, Sam, who died in a plane crash almost 15 months ago. She can't let go of it. Every day, she goes into her son's room and pulls out her son's scrapbooks and looks through the pictures. One day, at her psychiatrist's office, she notices that her cup of coffee it gone! (dun dun dun!). He insists that she didn't have it today and that she must be smelling his cup because (in psychiatrist speak), the body smells it and relays a memory to the brain and blah blah blah. I don't know about you, but I have never smelled something and then thought I was eating or drinking it. It might have been neater if she actually had a cup of coffee in front of her and then it disappears. At least then the audience might see that she had the cup and then realize that something freaky was going on.

She goes home and enters her son's room and all of the pictures are blank! (dun dun dun!) She pops in her son's home movies and they're all static! (dun dun dun!). Telly's husband comes home (played by Anthony Edwards who probably got the nicest pay check for the least amount of acting in his life) and she's furious at him for destroying the pictures and videos. He insists that they never had a son. Gary Sinese, the psychiatrist comes over and they both insist that she never had a son and that he was still born. She created the whole childhood in her head and what not.

Telly checks the newspaper records at the library for the crash, but there’s nothing in any of the papers about it (dun dun dun!). She runs into an old friend who used to baby sit Sam and she has no idea who Sam is (dun dun dun!).

Then another guy who lost his daughter in the plane crash gets involved. He doesn't remember either. He suddenly remembers his daughter and they have to run from NSA agents at every turn. Suddenly they're on the lamb and wanted by the NSA for some reason. With his help, they try to contact Telly’s husband to tell him that another person forgot their child and he doesn’t even know his own wife (dun dun dun!).

It's all very ridiculous and harmed by the movie's commercials. In the commercials for the film, you see them questioning a guy and he whispers, "They're listening". Suddenly, the house explodes and he's pulled into the air! (dun dun dun!). The problem is, they show you every scene like that in the commercial so I'm sitting there waiting for it.

"It's going to come soon!" I kept thinking, but it took forever for the first person to get pulled into the air.

At exactly 60 minutes into the movie the first abduction occurs. A few more occur after this and each time is no surprise because if you've paying attention to the commercials you saw when each one was coming.

The whole premise of the movie is that aliens run experiments on our lives. This experiment was to see if the parents could forget their children. Everyone did except for Telly. It's not exactly a jaw dropper. From the very beginning, I could tell that this movie involved aliens abducting people although I wasn't exactly sure why.

I thought the movie was going to be about a lady whose memory was being messed with. At the start, it would be subtle, but then I thought it was going to be really cool to see pieces of her memory and reality literally ripped into the sky. Sadly, that's not the case. What's left is a movie premise so dull that it wouldn't even make the X-Files.

A creepy alien guy that walks around like he studied Terminator 2’s T1000 terminator while on slow motion appears from time to time. He’s the one conducting the “experiment” to see if the parents would forget. When the experiment fails because Telly still won’t forget, the screams, “I need more time!” as he’s sucked up in the air. Was this his final thesis? Pretty harsh penalty for failing, if that’s the case.

The ending is a typical Hollywood ending with all of the feel good elements with the sense that despite the fear of Aliens running tests on us on a whim and our children taken from us, that everything is going to be all right. There’s even an “alternate” ending on the DVD that is so similar to the theatrical cut that I’m surprised they included it at all.

Forget about this movie at all costs.

I feel love in the air...

Today is Valentine's Day. Now it would be really cliche of me to just say what a bogus holiday because it's a corporate-made holiday to sell flowers and what not, but I'm going to anyway.

I think what soured me and a lot of people on Valentine's Day is that growing up, when it was time for people to date, I was always left out. I don't think I had a valid excuse to celebrate Valentine's Day until I was in college and even then, I would forget half of the time. One time, my Mom called me up and asked me if I had gotten my girlfriend, who was still in high school (one year younger than me) a Valentine's Day present. I had not because I lacked the one thing you need in this situation, money. Also, I just hadn't thought about it because I hadn't celebrated it in so long.

In grade school, it was super easy. Everybody got Valentines for everyone else. Boys gave to boys and girls. Girls gave to girls and boys. No one got left out. It was easy. It was fun. Kind of creepy now that I think about it, but hey it was an excuse to get candy.

So "I" got a gift for my then girlfriend when I was a freshman in college. Months later, I'm in my girlfriend's room and she says, "Hey, look at the plant you got me. It's really growing."

"What plant?" I asked stupidly. I had long forgotten about it.

"The plant you sent to me for Valentine's Day."

"Oh! THAT plant!" I said excitedly. "I ordered it over the phone, so I didn't really get to see it." So I recovered by digging myself a little hole. She didn't notice.

This is kind of like when I celebrated Mother's Day for my wife after my daughter was born. She kind of asked me what I was going to buy for mother's day. I was planning on buying a card, but it didn't dawn on me that I was supposed to buy a card for her until a day later when a Eureka moment hit me.

Back to Valentine's Day. Because neither my wife and I had celebrated it much in college, we just haven't made a big deal about it. I don't think a lot people do, either.

Not according to the TV commercials. They make it look like you'll be in the dog house if you don't give your honey something on Valentine's Day. Personally, I think giving something on a day other than Valentine's Day would hold more weight. It's unexpected.

I think another reason Valentine's Day doesn't hold much weight with people like me is because it's a holiday that excludes people. Christmas is really for most everyone because even non-Christians celebrate it. Thanksgiving is a time when you give thanks with everyone. Independence Day is a country-wide celebrate. Mostly non-Irish people drink green beer and make asses of themselves on St. Patrick's Day. Hell, even Earth Day involves you if you give a crap about the Earth.

Not Valentine's Day. It's the one holiday where you feel like a loser if you don't have someone to love. And it's a target kind of love. You can't just love your Mom or you cat, you must love someone romantically or forever be shunned. You can't show up at a school yard and hand out Valentines to kids because you love children. No one can get away with that, unless you're Michael Jackson (cheap joke).

I say, we need to change the holiday to include all love. You love your family? Take them out to dinner. Give your Mom some flowers. It shouldn't have to be a holiday that sucks for the single people...

My thoughts on the big game...

The big game was kind of lame. Well, the game action was all right, but the show around the game was kind of lame.

Last year, there was so much feigned shock and awe from the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction incident that broadcasters over the past year have been forced to comply to new decency standards. Because of this, the commercials and show around the game were mostly lame.

The beginning pregame show had a few artists like Charlie Daniels, the Black-Eyed Peas and someone else I don't remember. Then, they carted out Alicia Keys and a bunch of blind and deaf kids. Now if it wasn't so ridiculous and forced, it might have come off as touching. To me, it was pretty laughable. Maybe I'm a heartless bastard, but all I could think of when Alicia Keys was singing America the Beautiful with the kids signing along was the scene in Napoleon Dynamite where Napoleon was signing along to The Rose in class with a few other girls.

They also had these poor blind kids singing along because some of them were looking in the wrong direction, which is understandable given the amount of blind kids they had out there.

I kept thinking to myself that the execs must have been sweating to get the pretty people back on screen again because you knew that at tons of game parties, that was probably the time when viewers chose to surf or refresh their drinks.

Don't get me wrong, it's all nice and touching, but this is football, the toughest game on Earth. Guys want to see someone hit someone else, fart jokes or pretty people to look at. That was lacking a lot this year.

Then there was an extended tribute to the greatest generation with the national anthem. You know that generation that selflessly volunteered without a draft by the millions to do the right thing? That generation. Kind of ironic that most of the nation was watching with a military overseas that is dangerously stretched thin. Could have been a nice plea for people to sign up, but that's another story.

The game started and then the commercials started. Last year, there were many erectial disfunction commercials. This year, there was a rather tame one from Cialis. No biggie. I can live without seeing mental images of unattractive older people getting it on.

Last year we had farting horses. This year, we had a farting Monkey with a barely audible fart. I'm not saying it all has to be fart jokes, but controversial humor has been a staple in the past and why I even watched the commercials.

In years past, you had hot women. This year, there were nary a hot woman in sight save for the GoDaddy.com commercial, which I watched with the sound down (I had the game running through headphones so my daughter could watch her Disney movie). With the sound down, it looked rather stupid. I can only imagine what it was like with the sound up.

The halftime show was easy to skip since it was all Paul McCartney, who I could care less about seeing.

Save for a couple of funny Bud Light ads, this year's bowl tried to go back to days of more innocent times, but I think it only frustrates viewers who are used to seeing a regular football game. Next year, are they going to require the cheerleaders to wear the think sweaters and poodle skirts of the past? Will we be overwhelmed by commercials that show the nuclear family where Dad works and Mom stays at home? Maybe we should ban the female reporters on the sidelines?

Next year, I think they should run two feeds of the Super Bowl. One on cable and one on the network. Run different commercials on the other network and give the guys the game they were used to. Let's be real here. Ann Coulter can complain all she wants about not enjoying the commercials "because she has a brain", but the game wasn't made for the critics, it was made for the fans of the game.

Maybe the family friendly feed could have the sportscasters stroking kittens in their laps while they’re talking onscreen. The pregame and halftime shows could have various shots of clowns and mimes walking around the field. All female performers could be required to have shirts that buttoned all the way up to their neck and shirts that went all the way down to their ankles. The Best Damned Sports Show Period, which changed it’s name to the Best Darned Sports Show Period could be changed again to the Best Dadgum Sports Show Period. Camera shots of the field could be sponsored by Ovaltine. The chain gang crew could be run by a group of handicapped people in wheel chairs. Gatorade could be banned with just old fashioned lemonade served by Aunt Bea, who would also serve apple pie to the players that were hungry during the game. All players could be required to hug each other after a tackle to show kids at home that these guys can be friends between plays. Not to shock the elderly with loud crowd noise, the tension of the game could be toned down by the noise hushed with calming music like Theme From a Summer Place playing in the background. Finally, Zuzu Petals will gleefully say, “Look Daddy! Every time a referee a blows a whistle, a kicker gets his wings.”

Think about it. We could make it the ultimate family friendly event. That diet Pepsi commercial with one of the Queer Eye guys was too controversial. No suggestions of any kind to sex. More commercials for wholesome family entertainment are in order.

It takes a Village to spoil a movie...

Ever read I am the Cheese? I read it in my ninth grade English class and I thought it was great. It was a nice adventure in the whole What-the-hell-is-going-on? genre that can be pretty effective. That's how I'd equate the Village.

Not that anyone's reading this, but if you are, then spoilers are ahead.

I watched The Village Sunday night courtesy of my brother, Bill, who cooled off long enough to let me borrow the movie on DVD. I'm really glad I didn't spend money to watch it. Not that The Village was a bad movie, but in terms of let downs, it was a HUGE disappointment.

Don't get me wrong. It has a rather interesting story, with interesting characters and interesting twists, which is played out like a quirky drama with some suspense thrown in. That would have been fine if that' s how it was potrayed in the TV commercials and movie trailers. Not even close.

The movie trailers made the movie seem like the scariest movie of the year. It had all of the elements of creepiness. A town isolated from the world in a large valley. They can't leave because of the truce that exists between them and creatures in the woods. The trailers make it seem that the truce is broken and a blood bath ensues. The scenes you see are of spooky creatures moving about with the townspeople huddled in a floor trapdoor begging the person at the door not to let the creatures in. That would have been a nice thriller if that's how it played out, but it doesn't play out that way.

Every scary part of the movie has already been shown to you in the trailers and commercials for the movie.

There are two twists to the movie. One is that the creatures that you see early on in the movie are a farce potrayed by the elders of the village to keep their inhabitants from leaving. As to why they do this is the other twist.

Joaquin Phoenix's character gets stabbed by the village idiot played by Adrian Brody because he's going to marry his sister, whom he loves and is afraid to lose. Because they don't have any medicines, his fiance begs to go into town to find medicines to heal her future husband. The fiance is a blind woman, by the way, who is one of the more interesting characters of the movie.

Her father, the town preacher, shows her the secret of the forest and tells her how to get to town. Of course, there's a lot of "How could you?" lines by the other town elders in on the sham. She gets to the end of the path in the forest and this 1800's village is actually in the middle of a wildlife refuge in modern times!!! Nice twist, but not scary.

That's what I had a problem. I was expecting a scary movie and instead I get a cozy drama pretending to be a scary movie.

This would be like seeing a trailer for a movie promising the hottest love scenes and steaming adult action and instead you get mostly pillow talk and clothes humping. Or if you saw a trailer for a non-stop action movie, but then most of the action you see in the trailer occurs in the first 10 minutes and the characters sit around and bitch at each other for the other two hours. Or if you rented an adult movie, but all you saw were shadows behind a screen with people moaning for the whole movie.

I can understand why this movie fell off the radar fast. People felt ripped off and I don't blame them.

Besides the fact, what people start a village up in modern times and then not come up with a stash of essential items like medicine? You could have stored a huge parsel of them in the shed you don't allow the townspeople to enter. Since the town doctor is also in on the sham, you could trick your naive townspeople that the medicines they have were procured from the town years ago before they were born. That'd be the first thing I'd stock up on if I was going to isolate myself like this. What's more, it's mentioned by those on the outside that the estate makes sure that no aircraft fly over the refuge. If you have someone looking out for you on the outside, why wouldn't this person make sure that every few months a parsel of goods and medicines is thrown over the wall of the refuge. The town elders could have come up with an excuse that only a certain blessed person could go into town to get the goods, or better yet, act like they've always had them. How would the naive townspeople know?