An Embarrassing Richness of Many Small Good Things...

Ah - the weather here is lovely, albeit starting to really warm up, and life is generally all-around good. Nothing big, nothing majorly exciting... but the past few days have been exceedingly pleasant.
I'll take it....

• Bubba had a birthday this weekend! 39! He's been having a hellaciously busy work schedule lately, so he really just wanted to kick back and relax this weekend. So we did.
  Bubba is a man of simple needs - he is passionately interested in a few specific things, and therefore is quite easy to shop for. For his birthday, Schecky and I got him the first season of Lost on DVD, this book about Lost, this other book about Lost, and this book which was featured on Lost. Sense a theme there? Guess what we'll be watching Wednesday night....
  He also is going to buy some piece of music software for his MIDI setup that I don't understand, but he seems excited by it all...
  
  
• We went to see Over the Hedge with Schecky. I somehow did not know anything about this movie going into it - must have missed every preview, trailer and commercial... Anyhow - we all loved it!
  When we got in, and I realized it was a DreamWorks animation film, I did not have high hopes. I know that I am in the minority on this, but I didn't love Shrek. And I really didn't like Shrek 2. And whereas I actually enjoyed the penguin parts of Madagascar, I acknowledge that that was a pretty lame movie at best. And Sharktale...well, that movie just sucked. So I thought "Oh well, at least I have Twizzlers," and settled in for what I thought would be a pretty mediocre movie.
  
  I was wrong - it was funny, it was clever, the animation was amazing. The story was really quite good*, and everything fit together neatly. In addition to Garry Shandling, whom I love, there were at least a dozen big "names" doing the voice work, but this enhanced rather than overshadowed the movie. That's a pet peeve of mine, when you get a celeb to voice a character, and all you can think the entire time is "Well, that's Eddie Murphy".
  
  I would recommend this for elementary age kids - there are a few tense parts with an exterminator who is trying to eradicate the critters - voiced by the very funny Thomas Hayden Church - which might be a bit much for little guys. However, Schecky, who often does not do well with scary parts in movies, did just fine with this.
  
  A final note as to why I give this movie high marks - it is a very funny kids' movie that does not resort to pee and poop and fart jokes for cheap laughs. Yes, there is a skunk, and there are some jokes about skunk smell. But when bodily function jokes seem to be the norm in kid movies these days, it was a delight to go to a movie that got laughs the hard way - with clever writing and good setups. We gave this movie six thumbs-up. And I would go see it again...
  
  
• I got to read the new Augusten Burroughs book, Possible Side Effects, and I enjoyed it immensely, despite some unusually savage reviews of it at Amazon.
  Unlike the nay-sayers at Amazon, I did not find this to be B-sides or rejected material. I thought it to be exactly what I expect from Augusten - biting and funny and observant.
  
  If you like Augusten, you'll thoroughly enjoy this book. If you don't like him, this isn't going to change your mind. If you've never read him - start with Running With Scissors - it's a good litmus test as to whether or not your going to like his style.
  
  
• Last, but certainly not least, I got a cool new Adult Swim jacket from an acquaintance at Schecky's school. She had been wearing a jacket like this earlier in the week, and I complemented her on it. Her son and Schecky got together for a playdate this weekend, and when I went to pick Schecky up, she gave me a jacket of my very own! I love, love, love it, and have been trying to wear it whenever possible - which is proving difficult, since summer is wanting to appear. How long is it until October????

Like I said - nothing huge or earth-shattering, but just a nice, nice weekend. And we needed one of those!
Hope everyone out there had exactly the kind of weekend that you wanted!

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*And for those of you who like a social commentary with your cartoons, Over the Hedge has a really rather pointed message about our American tendency to consume too much of everything. And how unnecessary it all is....