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It's the review of the Race family Christmas movie! Let's set the stage. At Thanksgiving, my sister was all, Marley and Me comes out on Christmas day, so that's going to be our Christmas movie this year. My sister is bossy like that. Kelis wrote that song "Bossy" about her. Anyhoo, so Jenn (my sister for strangers who don't know me who are reading this blog, hello, and please don't show up at my house with a white mask over your face and try to kill me ever, thanks) and her fiancee Erik did not show up until Christmas day this year. Usually, our family eats meat pie for Christmas Eve dinner and then open presents and it's wonderful, la la la, but this year my parents and I watched some golf reality show on the Golf Channel on Christmas Eve, yes, a golf reality show on the Golf channel actually exists, and yes, we actually watched it. I was trying to convince my parents to order Tropic Thunder on pay per view, but my dad is mentally deficient and refuses to commit to anything that will consume more than an hour of his life at a time, well, with the exception of sporting events. TRUE STORY. (I know I am rambling here, but deal with it, I AM SO BORED I HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO THAN WRITE THIS RAMBLING INSANE BLOG ENTRY.)

The worst thing about the golf reality show was that my mom and I TOTALLY got sucked into it, so even after my dad went to bed at like 8pm we still stayed up to watch it, AND we made everyone watch the rest of the marathon last night because we had to see who won. Getting back to the xmas movie though, even before Jenn and Erik showed up I told my mom I was not down with Marley and Me cause my wonderful morning radio show, Dave and Carole on WKLH, has been talking lately about that movie and how it is NOT the feel-good family Christmas movie they have been promoting it to be. Gino, the resident movie critic, was like, families are going to take their kids to see this movie and are going to walk out so depressed. At first they danced around why, but eventually just came right out and said [SPOILER ALERT] the dog dies at the end! And his big point was, it's not just like, they take the dog to the vet and come back alone, the last fifteen minutes of the movie is all about the dog dying! And not like I demand the movie we see on christmas is some LOL-fest or heartwarming story, but on the other hand, I don't really want to watch a dog die and bawl my eyes out either.

[Aside: I used to be able to remember every family Christmas movie we had ever seen. The first year we instituted this tradition we saw One Fine Day, that silly rom-com with Michelle Pfieffer and George Clooney. Christmas is usually the one time of year the three girls in our family can actually overrule Coach and drag him to stupid movies like that. I just checked the IMDB, and that movie came out in 1996, so when I was a freshman in college. Weird, it seems like we have been doing it a lot longer than that, but I guess not. Other Christmas movies I remember include As Good As It Gets, Patch Adams (which I chose cause it was filmed at UNC and sucked really hard and was a total downer so I don't really have a leg to stand on with this whole no sad movies on Xmas deal), Any Given Sunday (Coach won that year), and Cast Away.]

So when I told my mom I didn't want to see a movie about a dog dying her response was, it's about life! (My mom and Jenn both read the book and thought it was the bee's knees). So whatevs. I really wanted to see Slumdog Millionaire but knew there was little to not a damn chance in hell that I would ever convince my family (besides my mom, who is actually really cool about movies) to see a foreign movie that included subtitles. This did not stop me from guilting my mom by constantly referring to the Slumdog ad we had seen on TV that had said, "you will leave the theater wanting to dance and shout hurrah" (or something like that) and asking "would you rather dance out of the theater or crawl out sobbing?" She remained unconvinced and committed to Marley and Me.

Soooo, on Christmas day, my mom checked the movie listings and determined that M&M (ha) was playing at 405 and 645. J&E arrived, we had meat pies for lunch, opened presents, had a merry old time, and were not paying attention to the clock. At about 340 Coach says, when are we going to this movie? And we were all like, well, it's too late to catch the 405, so I guess 645. Coach was not having that (probably because the thought of being out later than 8pm frightened him) so he demanded that we all get ready and leave for the 405 show immediatly. The rest of us knew this was ridiculous, but we did it anyway. In the car on the way there, my mom is like panicking, saying, well let's come up with a plan B in case we do not get in to M&M, and I was like, let's just see what happens and if we need to we will see what's playing next and figure it out, anything will be better than M&M.

So, we arrive at the theater at 405, and let me shock everyone reading this entry - M&M was sold out! (I actually was kind of shocked by this, I guess all that family marketing paid off, and I hope a lot of small children have nightmares about it and Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston get egged on the street everywhere they go from now on. Also, the only other film sold out was that weird Nazi one with Tom Cruise, that was truly shocking, wtf) After my sister accused me of making the movie sell out with my "bad mojo", we were forced to pick another movie, with our choices, based on what was started in the next 20 minutes, were Benjamin Button and Yes Man. BB did not go over well, for the same reasons SM would not fly, so let's just go see YM, it will be fine. And in response to Coach asking, what is it about, I said "it's got Jim Carrey, it's a comedy" and then he went, but no, what's it about, so I said "It's got Jim Carrey, it's a comedy, THAT IS ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW, there is no plot."

So we saw YM. Let me tell you a crazy story first about this person sitting behind us, and then I swear I will actually tell you what I thought about the movie. So there was like this youngish gal behind us with her family - late teens early 20s? - and the first preview was for Dance Movie. If you have not heard about this, it's basically another in the long line of dumb dumb dumb parody movies ala Scary Movie. THIS ONE IS ABOUT DANCE. I tried to find the trailer online so you could watch it and truly experience the horror of it all, but I could not, so be thankful. Anyway, let me tell you the first "joke" in this trailer and I think we will be on the same page. There is this dancing pregnant woman, who proceeds to pop out her baby on the dance floor. This CGI baby slides across the floor and then starts breakdancing and striking hip hop poses. IT WAS AWFUL. But this girl behind us thought it was high-fucking-larious. She laughed at every damn "joke" in the trailer. I was seriously concerned for her. Also, every time she would laugh, as soon as she would stop she would like explain herself to the person sitting next to her, like this:

awful horrible insanely bad "joke"/stupid parody moment in trailer
loud, horse-like laughter
girl says "that was funny"

What. the. mutha. eff. First of all, none of this stuff was even remotely funny. Second, yea, we all guessed you thought it was funny by that sound that emitted from you that resembled laughter. UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. This girl continued to do this throughout the whole movie! I will give her that some of what she laughed at in the actual movie was funny, but she needed to get a grip.

Ok, so Yes Man. This movie was ok. I mean, just like I explained to my dad, it had Jim Carrey, it was a comedy, end of story, I think we can all get the gist from there. It had a lot of funny moments, it had the lovely Zooey Deschanel singing (!) and wearing a delightful coat which I want to fly to Hollywood and steal from the movie studio's wardrobe department, it had Murray from "Flight of the Conchords" acting totally insane and being the funniest thing in the movie, and it was not depressing in any way shape or form. All in all, a good Christmas movie for the Race clan.

Tonight we are going to the botanical gardens here in Green Bay to see some sort of light display. Apparently you can walk the mile path or take a carriage ride. Um, I vote carriage ride. I am going to freeze my buns off, but oh well, it will be better than seeing Marley and Me. Rim shot!

If You Consider it a Christmas Song...

Then add "Christmas and Me Are Through" by Your Vegas to the short list of Christmas songs I actually like. Click the link to download, I promise you will not be disappointed. I am currently in the middle of my 5th listen in a row.

Another reason to love Paul's club

Not only do they make the most awesome gimlet, they make an ab fab
bloody mary with guiness. I am being changed as we speak.