TV: How I Met Your Mother

We usually don't spend our time watching the classic sit-coms, as they seemed to have hit their heyday in the nineties, but we have heard several people mention that they enjoyed the show How I Met Your Mother, so we thought we'd check it out. It's as cheesy a sit-com as you can get, complete with the laugh track and predictable 20 minute episodes, but it does have something else to it, and we like it.

Ted is a single guy living in New York City, who realizes that he is ready to drop the dating scene and settle down after his good friends Lily and Marshall finally seal the deal and get engaged. Meanwhile, his friend Barney (aka Doogie Houser) is constantly teaching him how to love 'em and leave 'em. Oh, and Robin's just around to provide emotional support.


Quick vote: Funny? Yes. Cheesy? Yes. Worth your while? Meh... If there's nothing else on.

Music: Gossip in the Grain by Ray LaMontagne

Our Aunt Didi passed us this album a few months ago and we've been chewing on it ever since. Luckily we had copied the songs onto our computer before we started to eat it, so we can listen to it on our DogiPods; you know you wish you had one too! Ray is an interesting singer, his music is folksy, alternative rock, very hard to classify. Some of his songs pass easily for Nick Drake, straight off the Way to Blue album, and some get going in a fun and exciting way. His lyrics are meaningful, his voice is rich and beautiful, and his melodies get your toes tapping! We really like this album, and we look forward to investigating more of his work.


"Callous is the old crow, he mocks even the sun;
Eyes as black as blood, bone crack in the craw.
He'd say, he'd say: always never mind,
Always never mind."
-- Gossip in the Grain

"When we first met we were kids, we were wild, we were insects.
And after awhile I grew coarse, I grew cold, I grew reckless.
I hold this memory, hold you, so close to me.
Whispered, we'll always be happy."
--Sarah


Quick vote: This is a great album. Pick it up!

Books: Maus by Art Spiegelman

We have to apologize for our sudden unexpected absence last week, we took off some time to hang out with our Uncle Carter, Aunt Annie, Aunt Heady, and the rest of the crew. A tiny vacation, but we're glad that it's over now, and we hope that Uncle Busty recovers quickly!

While we were waiting for someone to pay attention to us this weekend, we had many opportunities to read, so we picked up our Uncle Buster's copy of Maus, which had been recommended to us before, but which we had never had an opportunity to read. Maus is another graphic novel, but entirely different from Rabbi's Cat, and we loved it. Our accolades are nearly as prestigious as some of the other awards Art Spiegelman has received for it, like the Pulitzer Prize...

The book is a graphic novel memoir told from the perspective of the author as he interviews his father about life as a Jew in Poland during WWII, including a year spent at Auschwitz. The Jews are portrayed as mice, the Nazi's as cats, the Poles and pigs, the Americans as dogs, and so on. We loved the way the story was told, and it's realistic aspect, despite the comic strip format. Again, though it is a comic book, we wouldn't recommend it for younger readers because of the (fairly obvious) graphic scenes and heavy subject material.


Quick vote: This book was phenomenal, and we would whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone!

Aunt Annie's 2 Cents: I like to eat mice.

Books: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

We have been working on The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski for a long while now. It's a story about dogs, so every time a dog got in trouble, we had to abandon the book for our own sanity until we were prepared to pick it up again. The book is about a family, the Sawtelle's, and the dogs they created through breeding and careful training.

Edgar is a young boy growing up with his mother and father in the midst of dozens of dogs designed by his grandfather for their intelligence, patience, and obedience. From his birth, Edgar is unable to speak, though he can hear perfectly; his disability teaches him to listen and watch, taking in his surroundings and communicating with his dogs on a different level. This book is a Hamlet-esque journey into a boy and his dogs, and the magic that exists in everyday life.


Quick vote: We loved the majority of this book, though the end was confusing and disappointing. It's a good book, but we don't really recommend it.

Blogs: Superuseless Superpowers

We ran into this blog, Superuseless Superpowers recently, and we've been loving keeping up with it. Each post lists a ridiculous superpower that always makes us laugh.

"Superuseless Superpower: Eventual Kevlar Skin. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Boink."
-- 13th Bullet Bulletproof


Quick vote: This is a great blog. We love it!

Movies: 10 Things I Hate About You

We're suckers for classic teen romance movies, and 10 Things I Hate About You is no exception! This is the oldest movie we saw with Heath Ledger in it, and he looks as great in this movie (with an Aussie accent!) as he does in Dark Knight, and more sane looking as well!

This movie takes place in a high school in Seattle, and loosely follows the plot of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Bianca Stratford is young, beautiful, and isn't allowed to go on any dates unless her older sister, Katerina-the-shrew, goes out as well. So some enterprising young men pay Patrick Verona to ask the shrew out, and you can guess where things go to from there....


Quick vote: We love this movie. It's a classic, it's awesome, it's smart, and it's funny.

Current Events: Octuplets

When we first heard about Nadya Suleman and her eight babies we were like, "So what? Dogs have litters that size all of the time, it's nothing to write home about." Then after our extensive television viewing on the subject (The Today Show, and Dateline to name a few.), we realized that evidentially humans don't usually have litters that size, and in fact this is the first successful birth of eight human babies. We're not experts or anything, but that doesn't seem very evolutionarily advantageous...

This picture (supposedly taken eight days before the eight babies were cut out of her belly) truly demonstrates how wrong this is. Basically, we think that somewhere something went serious wrong. We're not sure where the fault lies, but ultimately the fertility doctor should be blamed for this transgression against nature. And who will pay for this travesty? The fourteen children that have to eke their way into society on government welfare (Despite her claims that she won't take welfare, she took disability payments and food stamps.), and a fraction of the love they ought to have received from their parents.


Quick vote: Somewhere the system broke down, and we're not necessarily blaming her, but we do think that she is a psychopath. It saddens us that an event like this is possible, and that fourteen human children will suffer because of it.

Aunt Annie's 2 Cents: I can't have puppies because I don't have any girl parts anymore.