A lot of things.....

Next week I will be posting a pretty special end of the year post. So keep your eyes out for that.

Just a few things on my mind today...this past sunday I saw or walked out the film "Juno". I had really high hopes for this film I like Ellen Page, I thought she was brilliant in "Hard Candy", I have a crush on Michael Cerna if only he was around when I was in high school, I really like Jennifer Garner, Allison Janey is really good and I thought Jason Reitman's first film "Thank You For Smoking" was excellent. And when I read and saw previews for this film I though okay this could be an interesting premise, it looks a bit different then your average teen age pregnancy films.

Sunday I go to see it and I really couldn't sit through this film! What made it so bad was the writing. The screenplay is written by a thirty year old woman by the name of Diablo Cody who is a former assistant turned blogger turned stripper turned novelist. The dialogue is like one bad conversation you'd hear in a bar in Williamsburg and it didn't strike me as being ironic but more cool for the sake of being cool, which made it that more annoying. The dialogue is filled with constant 90's pop culture references, hip hop slang and it just gets seriously tiresome after a while! And as much as I like Ellen Page, I really wanted to punch her character the way that she delivers these lines is very obnoxious and grating! Another thing that bugged me about this film was the way Jennifer Garner's character is written. She plays one part of a yuppie couple who are looking to adopt a child. Jason Bateman plays her husband and he is a former musician turned corporate guy, the way that Jennifer Garner's character is written is that of a woman who is so desperate for a child that she looks at this child as a trophy and her status filled life. Diablo Cody makes her not seem human. Anyway usually I try and get my $11 from films and I hardly walk out but I had to walk out of "Juno" it was that bad.

Speaking of Juno like stories I can't get over the story about Britney Spears' sister Jamie-Lynn being pregnant at 16, Jamie-Lynn seemed like she had her head straighter then her sister's ! The details that I love about this story is that Jamie-Lynn and her boyfriend aka the babydaddy met at church and Mama Spears was in the process of writing a parenting guide that was due to be published by a Christian publishing company and of course after this news her contract was yanked! And then Jamie-Lynn and her mother got a million dollars for telling their story to OK! Magazine and I just read that once the baby is born Jamie-Lynn agreed to a photo shoot with OK once the baby is born for another million dollars! I'm just curious what Mama Spears would have written about in her parenting guide, "Pimp your kids out till one of them becomes a big mentally ill addicted mess who resents you and the other gets pregnant at 16". The holier then thou born again types are always the ones with the most skeletons in their closets. Wouldn't the smart PR move be issue a statement confirming the rumor and then say our family would like privacy at this time. But I guess in hindsight doing this OK! spread and coming clean about everything will hopefully make some other poor teenage girl who finds herself pregnant be able to talk to her parents about her situation. Anyway I hope Jamie-Lynn isn't anything like her sister or her mother when it comes to parenting and she realizes what a big responsibility parent is.

Onto the next thing!

Over the weekend 70's soft rock pioneer Dan Fogelburg died at 56 from prostate cancer. I always get him confused with Dan Hill, I know now that Dan Hill sang "Sometimes When We Touch" and Dan Fogelburg sang "Leader of the Band". What I didn't know is that Joe Walsh of the Eagles produced Dan Fogelburg's debut album, so he had some cred. I remember the joke that Denis Leary used to tell, he went into this whole thing about the parents of kids who killed themeselves suing heavy metal bands back in the 80's because they claimed there were secret messages to kill yourself if you played the records backward and the parents claimed their kids listen to these messages and killed themselves as a result, and the premise of the joke was that he wanted to sue Dan Fogelburg and James Taylor for turning him into a pussy in the 70's. RIP Dan Fogelburg and Jim Croce got a signing partner in heaven for the soft rock band!!

Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Chanaka, Happy Three Kings Day, Happy Ramadan what ever it is you celebrate have a good one! And stay tuned for that end of the year post!