Advice: Moderation

This is Maggie here, Sammi is out for the day and I will tell you why. Yesterday, someone *cough* Daddy *cough* left the food bucket sitting out while they went to go shopping and Sammi bit open the bucket, allowing her to binge eat all she could and more (approximately 15 of her standard meals). Unfortunately, this is not the first time this has occurred.

So I am here to advise you, all of you, to stay away from binge eating! Sammi is currently laying on the floor underneath the swamp cooler whining pitifully (Which is driving me crazy, by the way.) and appears to be in a lot of pain. She will probably poop in the living room later, and then I will have to eat it up so our parents don't find out... Sigh, it's so hard to be an older sister to such a reckless puppy who never thinks of the consequences of her actions!

P.S. I google image searched "binge eating" and this picture is what came up. I thought it was funny.


Quick vote: Don't binge eat, for the love of everyone around you! That's right. Sammi has very aromatic farts right now!!!

TV: Oprah

Now we can't say that we regularly watch Oprah, but every now and then we're home (Well let's face it, when aren't we home!) and tired of licking our butts and chasing our tails and Oprah's on, so we watch it. Just a little bit. It's not like we're addicted or anything. Alright, that woman is addicting.

Oprah is a talk show host who, if you watch her show every day for a week, will tell you everything you will ever need to know about how to run your life. She seems so kind and supportive, but we sense a manipulative front behind that kind facade (We dogs can sense phoneys, it's just part of the job.). But although we know this, we still fall for her recommendations and try to read every book on her Book Club List. So maybe she knows the best way to deal with my personal problems and financial problems and love problems, is that so wrong?


Quick vote: Watch this show every day for a week, and you'll find yourself loving Tom Cruise too.

Music: Oh No by Ok Go

FYI: We have hit 200 posts on our blog! Thank you to all of our loyal and first-time readers. Suggestions are, as always, regularly accepted though sometimes it may take us a while to get around to reviewing them! (Email our mother at cassandra [dot] fawson at gmail [dot] com and she'll pass it on, or include suggestions in the comments!


We've been listening to Ok, Go for a while now, especially since their single, Here we go again is featured on Rock Band, which our parents seem to never be able to get their fill of (annoying game, if you ask us). Their music doesn't have incredible lyrics, but it has such get-up-and-go that you can't help but wag your tail and run in tiny circles. Check it out for dance parties or a road-trip soundtrack!

"It starts out easy;
Something simple, something sleazy,
Something itching past the edge of reserve.
Now through the lines
Of the cheap venetian blinds,
Your car is pulling off of the curb."
--Here it Goes Again

"When they finally come to destroy the earth,
They'll have to go through you first.
I bet they won't be expecting that.
When they finally come to destroy the earth,
They'll have to deal with you first,
And now my money says they won't know about
The thousand Farenheit hot metal lights behind your eyes.
Invincible."
--Invincible


Quick vote: We really like this album. It's worth checking out!

Books: Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

We've been reading Geek Love by Katherine Dunn lately at the suggestion of some friends of ours. The book follows a family of carny's before and after their crazy traveling carnival life. The main character is Olympia, a bald hunchback albino dwarf and her family, the Binewski's.

Al and Crystal Lil (a runaway Boston socialite) decide to start a family carnival with their own children and experiment with drugs and more (like radioactive isotopes) to induce freak children. They come up with Arturo the Aqua boy (born with flippers instead of limbs), The Twins: Elly and Iphy (Siamese twins with one set of legs but two torsos), Olympia, and Chick (aka Fortunato, an apparently normal child). They tour the country exhibiting their respective talents until things start to take a turn for the strangest when Arturo the Aqua Boy develops a cult following.


Quick vote: This book was strange and macabre. We didn't really like it, it was a bit too dark and grotesque for our tastes, but it was an interesting book to have read. So, don't read it, but be aware that it exists? I guess that is the moral of the story.

Blogs: Oliver

We ran into a blog this week that has changed our lives. Everyday, the blog Oliver posts a new picture of Weimaraners!!! A man and his girlfriend own two Weims, brothers actually, named Oliver and Hugo; and the pictures are only of these two dogs in their natural habitat. It's hard to describe, but these pictures are full of so much joy and personality they make us laugh, cry, and wish that we could spend our days living like these dogs seem to. So lucky and happy!

Quick vote: Pictures of Weimaraners?! Maggie is 1/2 Weim, and Sammi is a pure-bred Weimaraner and we couldn't be happier about the existence of this blog!!!

Movie: The Dark Knight

After hearing all of the hype surrounding the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, how could we not sneak into a movie theater to watch it??? We did really enjoy the previous film, Batman Begins, and as our parents were going, we thought it the perfect opportunity. We spent the duration of the previews licking popcorn and soda off the ground and then, sufficiently gorged, we settled down to view one of the most discussed films of the decade.

Though we were worried about the movie's length (2.5 hours, times 7 for dog years = 17.5 hours), we hardly noticed it in our excitement! This film deserved all of the attention that it received and more, we thought it was incredible. Christian Bale returned as Bruce Wayne/Batman along with several other repeat characters. This time though, Batman comes up against an evil villian, the Joker (as you all know, played by Heath Ledger), a psycho killer/mad person. Heath did an incredible job in this role, creeping even us out (and we eat our own feces!!!). Also incredible in this film was Aaron Eckhart (see our favorable mention of him here) playing the attorney Harvey Dent. And then there was Maggie Gyllenhaal who played the love interest, and who (surprisingly) played the role worse than Katie Holmes did.


Quick vote: This was one of the best movies we've seen in a long time, though it was not without its faults (namely Maggie Gyllenhaal and a few long-winded action scenes). We definitely recommend checking it out; from the beginning bank robbery scene to the final chase scene, it's nonstop action, adventure, and awesome.

TV: Desperate Housewives

We have been watching Desperate Housewives for a couple of years now, one of our guilty secrets... It was one of the first television shows put online by ABC, the first network to have a decent online full-episode video player. One summer, we discovered said player and thus we were transfixed by what our father refers to as "tiny teev." The point is, we got sucked into the soap opera-esque plotlines of DH and found ourselves wondering what incredible thing could possibly happen next, and when would we be available to watch? We were hooked.

Everything you've heard about this show is true. There are affairs, drug-addicts, terminal illnesses, pregnancies, murders, and all the intrigue that you think could possibly be packed into a street with somewhere between 10 and 1000 houses. This show is ridiculous, and fairly hard to pick up because of all the relevant past history, but once you get into the swing of things it's hard to leave behind.


Quick vote: Is this show wholesome? Not really. Is it fun to watch? Yeah. Is it a must see? No. Will you two be watching it next fall? As long as they keep putting it up on the internet so we can catch up on it online during the days (when we have loads of time to spare)!!!

Music: Volume One by She & Him

Ever since we heard Zooey Deschanel singing in Elf, we've loved her voice and have been interested in hearing more singing from her coming our way. So when we heard about She & Him, were were hooked before we heard a note. Zooey has one of the most original voices we've heard in a long time; it's soulful and classic-sounding, like a modern Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday (though maybe not quite that classic). On top of her awesome singing is a fun lyrical band that makes the whole ensemble a pleasure to listen to!


"Why don't you sit right down and stay awhile?
We like the same things, and I like your style.
Its not a secret; why do you keep it?
I'm just sitting on the shelf."
--Why Do You Let Me Stay Here

"Speak slowly, I can't hear you.
My mind keeps spinning closer and closer to the rain on the roof,
And the rain in my head, and the things that you said,
People take it further ahead.
And it just gets so foggy,
It's nowhere in here.
And its everywhere else that I don't wanna be,
But I'm stuck here getting misty over you.
I'm alone on a bicycle for two."
--Black Hole


Quick vote: Well, this music is awesome. It gets our tail/stub a waggin' and makes us want our bellies rubbed. RUB THEM. RUB OUR BELLIES!!!

Aunt Kenya's Philosophy: She and Him? You mean, "Us, the two of us with awful grammar?" No, thank you.

Books: The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon

We finished this book a couple weeks back for the Book Club our mother is in. (She is too lazy to read the books herself, so we read them and then tell her what they are about so she can appear sophisticated and well-read to all of her friends...) This month the book was The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon. We've read others of Chabon's work; we loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and thought most of his other stuff was mediocre. So, we were understandably excited to pull out this book.

The book begins with the premise that the Jewish state of Israel was never created, and instead, following WWII, a nation of four million Jews was given a small slice of Alaska, called Sitka, to call their very own for sixty years, at which time the US government would be reclaiming the land and kicking everyone out. It is weeks away from the end of the sixty-year era, and a seemingly insignificant murder has taken place. The Sitka police do their best to solve the mystery, and in doing so, uncover something earth-shattering.


Quick vote: We really wanted to love this book, but it lacked the panache of Kavalier and Clay and we never quite got into the book as we had wanted. Sigh, we suppose that disappointment is just a part of life.

Blogs: Stuff White People Like

We've been reading this blog for a while, and just realized that we had never recommended it to our regular readers and fellow butt-sniffers. The blog's pretty self-explanatory, basically they talk exclusively about things that white people supposedly like. The entries are shockingly accurate (We are not white people but brown/grey dogs, but we live with white people so we know what they are like.), and quite funny.


"White people who read TIME will quote these statistics, but even non-TIME reading white people will throw in stats they read in a less-than-credible study. It’s not unusual to hear such thingsas “I don’t mind this neighborhood since I’m not Republican. 80% of them are anti-minority, you know” or “I don’t think you should let Sally play softball because 70% of softball players are lesbians”."
--Statistics (see above picture)

"Comparing people to Hitler is an easy way for white people to get a strong point across to the less enlightened, or the insufficiently white. Everyone knows who Adolf Hitler was. And everyone knows that Hitler was very, very bad. Therefore, if a white person really, REALLY, doesn’t like something or
someone, he or she may angrily say something to the effect of, “This is exactly the same kind of thing that Hitler used to do!” accompanied by varying levels of profanity based on blood-alcohol content. No matter what your gut reaction may be at that point, do not disagree with that white person. Otherwise, well, you love Hitler."
--Comparing People to Hitler


Quick vote: Basically, this blog is awesome.

Movie: Thank You For Smoking

We first saw this movie a couple of years ago and immediately loved it. The plot is smart and original, and we laughed a lot, to the point that it partially negated Maggie's incontinence medicine and she peed a little bit on Daddy's side of the bed! (Shhh, don't tell.)

Nick Naylor (played by the very talented Aaron Eckhart) works for the Academy for Tobacco Studies where they do 'research' that proves that smoking isn't bad for you. He goes around selling his soul, talking to people everyone on tv and in conferences, about how there is no proof that smoking is bad for you. Also, he hangs out with 'The M.O.D. squad' (Merchants Of Death) with a lobbyist for firearms and a lobbyist for alcohol.


Quick vote: Though this movie swears a lot and definitely has adult themes (which we can handle since we are two and three respectively now), we loved it, and we think that you'll love it too.

TV: America's Got Talent

While our dad was running on the treadmill last night, we turned on the television for some classic channel surfing. We flipped to NBC and low-and-behold, America's Got Talent was on. This show was a surprise, we left it on and started watching, to our ultimate horror. (Was that dramatic enough for you???)

The show is sort of an American Idol format show, but with people performing a variety of 'talents' rather than just singing. Like for jugglers, cloggers, ventriloquists, hoochie-dancers, and people with large belly-buttons! This show is ridiculous, and on furthering our research, we were amused and disgusted to find that the show is in its third season.


Quick vote: Stay away. Stay far away.

Aunt Izzie's Wiz-ord: I was on this show once for my amazing ability to impersonate Dolly Pardon. I got kicked out early in the running though because I rolled over and exposed my boobies to the crowd...

Music: Coffee Shop by Landon Pigg

We first heard Landon Pigg's Single, Falling in Love At a Coffee Shop on a commercial and we instantly loved it. We've given the rest of the songs on this short record a listen and they're alright, but nothing compared to the aforementioned. He's got a really sweet voice and combined with cute/cheesy lyrics and a fun lyrical band, makes for a fun song you'll hum along to all day long! And he's cute too, for a human.


"No one understands me quite like you do,
Through all of the shadowy corners of me.

I never knew just what it was about this old coffee shop
I love so much.
All of the while I never knew.

I think that possibly, maybe I'm falling for you.
Yes, there's a chance that I've fallen quite hard over you.
I've seen the waters that make your eyes shine,
Now I'm shining too.

Because, oh, because,
I've fallen quite hard over over you."
--Falling in Love in a Coffee Shop


Quick vote: This is a cute song by a cute guy. Good for wedding video background music and something to chew on a bone to.

Books: The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston & Mario Spezi

We read The Monster of Florence a couple of weeks ago, and loved it. We're usually not super into non-fiction, preferring fiction, but this read like a thriller novel, and best of all it was true! We loved the Italian spin on everything, and the way the beginning part felt like an incompetent Law and Order.

Mario Spezi was a crime journalist for his local Florentine newspaper. When a serial killer story popped up, he was assigned to follow the case for its duration, which turned out to be many years as the killer murdered parked couples and mutilated the women's corpses. Douglas Preston moves to Florence decades later to write a novel about Florence when he meets Spezi and together they decide to solve the Monster of Florence case. As they delve deeper into the crime, they end up becoming caught in it themselves as the police arrest them for a litany of crimes.


Quick vote: This book was awesome. We highly recommend it to all of those that like detective stories and crime shows. The one caveat is that some of the descriptions of the crime scenes are a little gory, so if you're a tad squeamish just skip the section or pass on the book all together. Send us an email, and we'll give you the ending! Now we're off to chase our tail/stub!

Blogs: Wrong Kmiller

We stumbled upon this blog by accident, but now peruse it by choice. The concept is simple, a person, Kerry Miller (Man, woman? We're not sure.) has an email address of kmiller [at] google.com, which many people mistakenly email things to. Kerry then posts these emails at his blog, and they are quite an interesting collection of peoples' lives. Some of our favorites include:

"...Fun stuff... you are welcome to help me house-sit some of the nights the rest of that week--we can cook exotic and walk Blackie and ?sew? and you can sleep in Jean's room and we can drive back together in the morning (assuming it won't hurt your school schedule)."
--you can't blame the jungle for this one

"hey wassup kyle?!..its gus from northstar the other day. hope all is great w/u on yet ANOTHER deep pow day.

this is some sick shit huh? it just keeps dumpin...."
--that is some sick shit


Quick vote: This blog is short, sweet, and hilarious. We <3 it.

Note: Since there wasn't really a picture included on this blog, we enclosed this picture of Sammi sitting in a camp chair. We apologize for the fuzzy quality, cameras are hard for dogs to operate.

Movie: Word Wars

We bitches enjoy a good documentary every now and then (like Air Guitar Nation which we reviewed a few months ago, or Spellbound) which is why we were excited when we heard about Word Wars: Tiles and Tribulations on the Scrabble Game Circuit, a documentary about competitive Scrabble playing. Yes, this movie was just as exciting as it sounds, and even more hilarious.

This movie follows four of the top competitor's in the NSA (not, National Security Agency, but the National Scrabble Association) Scrabble Tournament playing for $25,000 and the title of top Scrabbler. There is the previous winner, a stand-up comedian, a poor black guy from Harlem, and a man incredibly encumbered by various gastrointestinal problems.


Quick vote: This movie is incredible, with Scrabble scores of 400-500 per person, and it makes us feel like crappy players (though we have chewed up one of those tile racks, which made us very happy). We definitely recommend that y'all check this one out!

TV: Law and Order: SVU

We've reviewed just about every Law & Order spinoff ever, so we thought it fitting that we circle around and hit L&O: SVU or Special Victims Unit. This is probably our least favorite of the spinoffs, but it still has the quality of detective work we adore and the excellent theme song (or at least a version of it) to dance to or sing a long with.

The Special Victim's Unit is a crack team of people that deal solely with sexual crimes (or anything loosely related or thought to be a sex crime). For this reason, it is one of our least favorites of the L&O's, as it is quite graphic and disturbing.


Quick vote: We'll always love us some Law & Order, but we prefer the gratuitous sex crimes to be kept at a minimum.

Aunt Annie's 50 Cents: Law and Order? My law is to lick myself. The order of licking is: Paw, Boobies, Bumby.

Music: Elevator by Hot Hot Heat

We've been listening to Hot Hot Heat for a while (mostly just Make Up the Breakdown though), and we got our hands on Elevator. If you've never heard of Hot Hot Heat, we would compare it to a ruder, hasher form of the Killers. Their lyrics as well as their music lack manners, and we love them both!



"I've given up on social niceties,
I threw 'em out when I threw out your keys.
Along with all your records I can't stand; you never even listened to any one of them.
You're never gonna drag me out again,
With all the people that were never ever even your friends.
So here it is, your final lullaby:

So goodnight, goodnight.
You're embarassing me,
You're embarassing you.
So goodnight, goodnight.
Walk away from the door,
Walk away from my life."

--Goodnight, Goodnight

"Blame me for the elevator - I know you will.
It's not me who's the operator but you're going down.
You'll be sorry when you're singing all alone."
--Elevator


Quick vote: This album is a lot of fun, we really enjoy it. Great soundtrack for chasing down a cat or biting your sister on the neck.

Books: Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl

We picked up Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl at the insistence of our Grandma Lisa. This book follows Ruth as she grows up living with a bipolar mother and dysfunctional family, and how she became a lover of food leading to her current career as the New York Times' food critic.

Ruth's mother was bipolar and had a stomach of iron. She grew up being constantly fed gross and moldy food; and protecting her parents guests from the worst offenders. She spends time at a French boarding school, learning about great cooking there; she has a black roommate who teaches her about soul food; and so forth.


Quick vote: This book was a lot of fun, and we especially enjoyed all of the recipes inside! (Our mother cooks them, we tend to struggle waiting to eat anything until it's cooked.)

Blogs: 3191

We heard about this blog recently, and it has fast become one of our favorites. We looked for something a tad more patriotic to use for the 4th, but what you see is what you get with us! Two women, living 3191 miles apart from each other (one in Portland, Maine and one in Portland, Oregon), took pictures of their kitchen tables every morning for a year unbeknown to one another. They eventually found each other, and they're now working on 'a year of evenings' taking pictures of each evening instead of morning. These pictures are awesome, and a very intimate glimpse into the lives of two women.


Quick vote: This blog is pretty cool. We like the intimate view it gives us of these random women living 3191 miles away from each other.

Movie: The Darjeeling Limited

We are big fans of Wes Anderson's work; We loved The Royal Tennenbaums and we liked Bottle Rocket and The Aquatic Life of Steve Zissou. So we were excited when we heard about The Darjeeling Limited starring Owen Wilson and the guy from The Pianist (Adrien Brody) with cameos from Bill Murray, Anjelica Huston, and Natalie Portman.

The Darjeeling Limited is about three brothers who end up going on a spiritual journey to India after they have grown apart three years after their father's death. The older brother (Owen Wilson) has organized the whole trip with elaborate stops and rituals on a train ride that secretly is taking them to see their mother, who didn't attend their father's funeral, and whom they haven't seen since. The middle brother (Adrien Brody) has become a hoarder of his fathers things, including a pair of prescription sunglasses he wears throughout the movie. The youngest brother (Jason Schwartzman) has just broken up with his girlfriend (Natalie Portman) in the short film Hotel Chevalier and keeps writing stories about true events, but claiming they are fictional.


Quick vote: We were so excited for this film, we wanted to love it so much. But it failed. Crashed and burned. This movie tries so hard to be indie and different and cool and eclectic, that it ends up being two hours of disjointed nothingness with a cool soundtrack. Don't see it. And bite anyone that recommends it to you.

TV: Freaks and Geeks

We had heard several people recommend Freaks and Geeks to us, a canceled show about high school in the 80's, but unfortunately we never got around to watching it until recently. This show is awesome. It makes us cringe and celebrate the fact that due to straight F's in obedience school #1, we never made it to high school.

Sam Weir is a freshman in high school, and a total geek. He has two other friends who are also really geeky, loves Star Wars, has a huge crush on a cheerleader (who talks to him for unexplained reasons) ,and is repeatedly beaten up by a high school bully. Sam's older sister Lindsey is a high school brain who has decided to go the loser-loner-smoker route and become a total freak, oh and she also has a gigantic crush on Daniel, the head freak. Our favorite episode we've seen is where the geeks find out about drunk driving and alcohol poisoning and so decide to replace the beer at Lindsey's kegger with a keg of non-alcoholic beer they wheel home in a red wagon. The freaks get drunk anyways, the geeks blame the placebo effect.


Quick vote: This tv show is honest, frank, painful to watch, and hilarious. We highly recommend it!

Music: Hello...x by Tristan Prettyman

We got this cd from our Aunt Didi, with several others she had been trying to get our mother to listen to. From the first listen, we loved it! Her music is like Sheryl Crow meets Ani Difranco; a little bit of country, a little bit of indie, a little bit of rock and roll, and a little bit of chick/chic.

"I can't believe I even came,
Don't even know your name.
Boy you know that ain't my scene,
But you gotta play by the rules
If you ever gonna win the game.

Never gonna fall, I'm never gonna fall
For that old trick again."
--California Girl

"You swim in and out of my heart
Like a fish in a bowl.
Getting warm with summer approaching,
But still my feet are cold.

No matter how hard I try,
Don’t think you’ll ever see,
That your love is a perfect blindfold for me?"
--Blindfold


Quick vote: We really like this album, it's eclectic and inventive.

Aunt Kenya's Philosophy: This album is a breath of fresh air in my life full of aggravation. The perfect soundtrack to chewing on bees, barking at birds, barking at my nemesis Einstein, or napping in the shade.