Movie Review: Knocked Up

Knocked Up: Torgo approves

I don't know if I would have found this movie as funny if I wasn't married with two kids. But I am, so I did.

While parts of the final act were made-for-movies labor & delivery (even I knew the decels response was incorrect), the bit about the doctor being away and the attending doctor being awful are pretty accurate. That's why there are doulas. That's what doulas are for.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about this. It's funny. You should see it.

Where The Hell Is Bill?

That's a Camper van Beethoven song that isn't very good, but it's catchy. It mostly consists of the line: "Where, where the hell is Bill?"

My point is this:

"You Remind Me of Me" -- ended badly. Very badly.

Here's something odd: all throughout the book, someone had drawn underlines and made various demarcations, as though to indicate key plot/character elements, themes, etc. I kept wondering, is someone reading this for a class? If so, why? Does Dan Chaon make his students read his books? Does he have a friend at some SF college?

Usually, in books I read with somebody's notes in them, the notes peter out quickly. Not here. In fact, the first time I get a better sense of the mysterious, tortured student is at the very end, where she (I'm presuming she based on handwriting style -- I could be wrong) adds a coda:

"Characters with a trailer trash mentality, absolutely clueless, screwed up and insuring continuity by screwing up the lives of their hapless offspring. Life is a meaningless dead end, a hell on earth. Author Chaon should add an R to his surname and call himself Charon."

There are so many interesting things about that note.

The author seems literate -- how many people use the adjective 'hapless'? She also uses the phrase 'trailer trash,' which is degrading. Then there's the Charon thing.

I'll admit it, I had to look up Charon. Turns out the note-writer was more clever with her literary allusions than Chaon. That makes me smile.

But it also brings me to that Michelangelo picture of Charon. I know Big Mike is supposed to be a great artist, but aren't the proportions all off? Look at his head in relation to his arm. And what the hell is going on with his abdomen?!

The picture weirds me out.

Little Dude (not) in the water

Yesterday was Little Dude's first swim lesson. He'd been swimming in the g'rents pool in Arizona, but that was a much smaller pool.

I think he got freaked out by the big pool. We got there early, which meant we watched the class before us for about 10 minutes. Even though one of his friends from the neighborhood is in that class, I think it gave him time to solidify his opinion that he wasn't going anywhere near the water.

A few weeks ago, as you might remember, he went running into the ocean. The Pacific Ocean. The biggest body of water on the planet. On the Northern California coast where attacks by great white sharks happen (and one just happened recently -- a kayaker got attacked about 10 miles away).

But an indoor pool freaked him.

I was sympathetic. I remember taking swim lessons at the Y in Green Bay. There were two pools, the swimming pool and the diving pool. The water in the diving pool was about 10 feet deep. That meant that I knew there were sharks in it and whenever I dove I had to get out of the water as quickly as humanly possible.

The shallower pool also had sharks, I was sure, but if you stayed near the walls you'd maybe be ok.

(I blame Steven Spielberg for all of this.)

We'll take Little Dude back next weekend and try again. Things were complicated by the lesson time. It was 1:30. He usually naps from about 11-1. If he's doing something fun, that can get pushed back. But he slept late so we didn't force a nap at 11, then it was too late to start a nap before we went, so we figured we'd try holding off. That was a mistake. He was scared and tired, which is a rough combo for a 2-year-old.

The only good news that, while trying to encourage him to get in the water, I fearlessly went in the pool. I guess I've gotten over the whole shark thing.

I'm not going to show him "Jaws" when he's six. I'm also not going to just throw him in the water -- ok, I would, but M-N says no. Hopefully, next week will go a little better.