Happy Garfield Day!

Happy 35th birthday Garfield the cat.. pretty good life span for a feline who lives mostly on lasagna!

Garfield was my absolute favourite when I was growing up -- I had books, posters, videotapes, maybe a stuffed animal -- and still makes me chuckle. He is lazy, sarcastic, hates Mondays, loves lasagna, hates diets, eats obsessively, hates mornings and is the self-appointed centre of the universe.

 

Garfield was first published on June 19, 1978; the comic was created by Jim Davis, and the snarky feline's biography says he was born on this date in Mamma Leoni's Italian Restaurant. 

As of 2013, Garfield is syndicated in roughly 2,580 newspapers and holds the Guinness World Record for being the world's most widely syndicated comic strip. It has spawned books, TV specials and series, two mediocre movies with Bill Murray as the voice of Garfield, and generates about a billion dollars of merchandising each year.

 Happy birthday Garfield... feel the love!

Modern Family 1, Donald Trump 0...

This may be my new favourite Twitter exchange... ever.

Last week blowhard businessman Donald Trump launched a nasty generic tweet on the state of the world, as he often does, this one about how China is a threat and he is smarter than the rest of us, and was artfully called on his crap by Danny Zuker, a writer for the sitcom Modern Family, and someone I am now absolutely following.

Read and enjoy....

See this movie: 50/50

We had another great discovery on Video-on-Demand, 2011's acclaimed but little-seen comedy drama 50/50.

Based on a true story, Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Adam, a normal healthy 27-year old surprised by cancer.

This news is delivered by a mumbling robotic doctor with horrible bedside manner. The healthy young man is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and given 50/50 chances  of survival: "if you were a casino game, those would be great odds."

Adam: A tumor?

Dr. Ross: Yes.

Adam: Me?

Dr. Ross: Yes.

Adam: That doesn't make any sense though. I mean... I don't smoke, I don't drink... I recycle...

His sarcastic best friend is played by Seth Rogen, who also produced the flick based on his friend's true story. At times 50/50 is about their bro-mance, how the goofy best friend grows up to be a supportive best friend... and yet stays goofy. And crude. And hilarious.

Kyle: You could have totally fucked the shit out of that girl.

Adam: No one wants to fuck me. I look like Voldemort.

Rogen's character uses the cancer to hit on girls for both of them, and provides the comic relief for the movie. Add in a squirm-inducing overbearing mother played by Anjelica Houston, and Pitch Perfect's Anna Kendrick as a new woman on the horizon, and you have a killer cast who all deliver.

I laughed out loud during this movie, from the oral sex jokes to the jokes about the women on The View... not the same joke, for which I am grateful. And I teared up several times like when the itchy girlfriend was a bitch, and when the pussyhound best friend was a mensch, when Adam says goodbye to his mom before surgery.

Adam: Why didn't we go to a barber?

Kyle: That would have been a good idea if we paid someone to do it.

Adam: Using your fucking balls trimmer instead of going to the barber.

Kyle: I never washed them, ever. It's not my balls, it's my asshole. I'm joking.

Adam: You're not joking.

If I determined the Oscar nominations -- and I should, by the way --- then 50/50 would have gotten nominations for Gordon-Levitt as best actor and Houston as best supporting actress. And maybe for Rogen and Kendrick in supporting roles too, and for screenplay and maybe even best film -- hey War Horse was nominated that year, and it blew.

This is a charming manipulative feel-good comedy drama about cancer. And it totally works -- see it.

Awesome Tony Number...

Super-talented Neil Patrick Harris did another great job hosting this weekend's Tony Awards featuring the best of Broadway. The show was high energy, lots of fun, and featured wins by some of my faves like Cyndi Lauper and Judith Light.

As for the shows featured, more of a "meh"... I can live without seeing the Annie revival or Matilda: The Musical or Bring It On: The Musical or A Christmas Story: The Musical. I would love to see Kinky Boots, though...

While Harris has had success on Broadway and is now best known for his nine seasons on the hit sitcom How I Met Your Mother, other Broadway stars have not fared as well when they move to TV... and three of them had fun with it on the show.

Here is my favourite number from this year's Tony's, where NPH is joined by stars of the now-cancelled Go On, The New Normal, and Smash:

Facebook: The Musical...

Facebook, Facebook, gotta check my Facebook... clever stuff from the people at AVByte!



Now go try to check a status update without hearing this song in your head over and over...

Friends With Kids...

Between airplanes and video-on-demand I love catching up on big movies I missed, bad movies I didn't want to pay to see but really want to see, and little movies that came and went quickly ... like Friends With Kids, the 2011 comedy drama about best friends who decide to have a child together, mostly because their friends are all having kids.

While yes I have friends with kids, I don't aspire to have kids, so that sets me apart from the lead characters in Friends With Kids, platonic friends played by Adam Scott and Jennifer Westfeldt.

Most of this cast is a Bridesmaids reunion, and while this flick doesn't have the shock or raunch of that one, is does have the funny, and a sweetness as well.

Thirty-something Julie and Jason have been best friends for years with no romantic interest in each other. He sleeps with someone new every few days, and she's looking for Mr. Right. As they see their friends' lives overtaken by their own young families, Julie and Jason vow they will be different --- they decide to have a child together, share in child rearing, but pursue their own romantic lives.  

Julie wants a baby and a co-parent but not a marriage, so Jason wonders if she wants to be divorced with a child before meeting the man of her dreams... then he volunteers to be the dad; as Jason says to Julie, they are "totally not attracted to each other" and "she doesn't have a lot of time to waste... so why not pop one out and then get looking for your guy?"

Things go well until he meets Megan Fox and she meets Edward Burns. Both seem like perfect mates... and yet jealousies flare up, and we all sort of know where this is going, don't we...?

Friends With Kids is an entertaining  romantic comedy, with some really funny and touching moments.

There is nothing really new or surprising here, and sure the writer (actress Westfeldt) has probably watched Annie Hall and Sex and the City a bit too often, but I enjoyed this one... check it out on a TV or airplane near you!

22 Cruising Lessons...

A few weeks ago we had had the amazing opportunity to take a 'bucket list' type of vacation... a luxury cruise including stops in Italy, the Greek islands, and Turkey. Yes it was a WOW of a trip for sure... from a guided walking tour of Pompeii to a Segway tour of Malta to a gondola ride in Venice, we played tourist to the hilt... and loved every minute of it!

Here's what I saw and learned about cruising and travel...

1- It's not the wisest idea to read The Wheat Belly diet book on a plane going to Italy, home of pizza, pasta, and focaccia...

2- It is possible to eat healthy and exercise regularly on a cruise ship, though it is not the norm; as an Australian passenger said to me at the buffet on day one, "You come on as a passenger, you go home as cargo."

3- Being under 50 makes us "young"...

4- While the Amalfi coast is breathtakingly gorgeous, the town itself is not a hub of excitement; it has one big church and a dozen tiny pizza shops. And a place that sells dirty aprons.

5- Italian drivers are proudly crazy, from the taxi driver who speeds and weaves to the limo driver whose brakes didn't exist, to the bus driver who could lead a film called 'mountain terror'...

6- Our first tour bus driver looked amazingly like the Lorax.

7- Italian men smoke lots of cigarettes and wear lots of scarves. At least one of these is bad.

8- A Segway tour is an amazing way to experience a new place... will do again for sure. And I only fell once. And crashed into other people twice. Oops.

9- Yes, reading the fact-free suspense novel Pompeii at 4 AM the morning before touring Pompeii counts as doing your research.

10- The only fully restored building in Pompeii is a brothel.

11- In case visitors to Pompeii do not already know where the brothel is, there are penis signs on the roads to point (yep) you in the right direction...

12- With three long airplane flights in each direction, I got caught up on lots of movies; Streisand's The Guilt Trip is bad, The Hobbit is long, The Bourne Legacy is too obsessed with missing Matt Damon, and Oz The Great and Powerful is more fun than I expected. As for Hope Springs, no one needs to see Meryl Streep go down on Tommy Lee Jones in a movie theatre. Blech.

13- At one point my husband looks over at me and says "Your iPad is your top priority" --- uh, wrong, that top priority would be Alfred.

14- In our eagerness to see and experience everything, we booked too many excursion to churches and excavation sites. At some point eyes glaze over, which seems disrespectful to all the people and history that have been there before us.

15- In Turkey we saw impressive looking fake Rolex watches and fake Louis Vuitton handbags. In  stores named Genuine Fake Watches and Genuine Fake Handbags.

16- This is the cruise ship pool at night. The ship was awesome, and with 2800 passengers and 1200 staff it was like a small city at sea. The idea of bigger ships -- and there are way bigger ships out there -- seems like way too much.

17- Much as I am happy to cross seeing the Acropolis off my bucket list, it is such a crowded tourist cash grab at this point that it was not a highlight. In hindsight, disappointing.

18- Surprisingly, there is no Acropolis WiFi.

19- Crocs with socks are ALWAYS a bad look, even on a cheesy looking tourist in a faraway land.

20- "Old town" Chania in Crete has a Sephora and a Curves... so I am thinking not really as traditional old-town as they market to tourists.

21- We have had good tour guides and we have had bad tour guides, and then for 5 very long hours in Crete we had a really bad tour guide... hello and goodbye Irena. Sure you can tell us over and over again we need two weeks to see Crete, but you couldn't make it interesting for five hours. Yawn. And I say this with love...  go right now and choose a new career.

22- In Venice our tour guide told us that the gondoliers in Las Vegas sing, but the real ones in Venice don't. Not so... ours sang, and whistled and acted as tour guide. And was easy on the eyes too. Amazing ride through the back 'streets' and the Grand Canal of Venice. Awesome.

Next year, on to Antarctica....!

Best of TV, 2013...

The 2012-2013 TV season is winding down, and while I have not watched some acclaimed hits like Breaking Bad, I have watched my share of good and bad TV, so here are my picks for what entertained me this season:

Best Comedy: Big Bang Theory -- Howard coming back from space, Amy Farrah-Fowler's bigger role, and the usual geeky humour had me laughing out loud.

Best Drama: Sure it's not Shakespeare, but I wouldn't watch Shakespeare every week... and season two of the revamped super-soap Dallas was suspenseful, sexy and sometimes just funny. Beautiful rich people sleeping around and stabbing each other in the back is fun to watch. And the passing of Larry Hagman brought on unexpected stories and an incredible touching farewell to icon JR Ewing.

Call It A Classic Already: The Good Wife is old news by now, but it remains amazingly smart and entertaining. Sure the season started off wonky with the Kalinda's secret husband storyline going nowhere, but once that was over they brought back the core marital political drama and big name guest stars doing unexpected things, from Michael J Fox to Nathan Lane to Mathew Perry. Every episode is worth watching.

Best Reality Show: New judges Usher and Shakira juiced the already addictive The Voice.... amazing singers, big celeb coaches like Sheryl Crow, and touching personal stories. Plus the whole idea of having coaches who help rather than idiot judges who are mean is just appealing to begin with.

Best Daytime Show: While Katie had its moments, it was Anderson Cooper's second season of daytime that was fast and smart and funny. Between Cooper coming out of the closet last summer, and then the show being cancelled early in its second season and still having the season to make new shows, Cooper seemed loose and relaxed and was just entertaining. Pair him with a sassy cohost with Lisa Rinna or Kathy Griffin and the show soars.

Best Late Night: Hands down, Jimmy Fallon.... and that is why he is getting The Tonight Show next year.

Best New Show: The reimagined Sherlock Holmes in Elementary, with Holmes as an antisocial British addict fresh out of rehab in modern New York, and Lucy Liu as Watson, was way better than I expected from CBS... great actors and interesting story lines.

And they can't all be good, so here are some quick ideas on worst of the season: The New Normal which got better as the season went on but too often chose preachy over funny, soapy Nashville which started off strong but lost steam, Revenge which followed up a great first season with a lousy second one, The View which became so dull even Joy Behar is leaving, and the bizarro coming-out speech from Jodie Foster at The Golden Globes.

What were your favourites this year?

See This Movie: Safety Not Guaranteed...

"So you think this is normal" says the reporter to the intern... "Just because a guy wants to do something new doesn't mean he's a freak show"... or does it?

One of the great things about video-on-demand is access to movies that we could not otherwise see, that likely never came to our city, such as Safety Not Guaranteed, a 2012 well-reviewed little independent flick that won a screenwriting award at the Sundance Film Festival and that never came here.

This is a smart, funny, sweet and ultimately touching film about love and outcasts.

Safety Not Guaranteed is about a man named Kenneth seeking someone to travel back in time with him. He places an ad in Seattle magazine seeking someone to go along...

As this makes news, self-obsessed reporter Jeff (Jake Johnson from New Girl) gets the assignment and takes two interns along: Arnao, a shy twenty-one year Indian student, and Darius, a bored cynical university student.  

Darius is challenged with getting weird guy Kenneth to trust her. Arnao and Jeff follow along to get the story of the crazy time travel guy. We go along for the quirky characters and the laughs.

The characters in Safety Not Guaranteed are stuck in time, just like Kenneth. Jeff tries to be cool but is having difficulty coming to grips with his job and being a grown-up. Arnao hides behind his plain glasses and is frozen, unable to communicate with the world. Darius confesses she’d rather live in another time because “everything cool has been done.”

Safety Not Guaranteed is a surprise, as is its finale. It’s shot digitally and done on a low budget, which form part of its charm. That, along with the film’s smart writing and sharp editing add to the film’s allure. Quirky charm and some laughs along the way don’t hurt either. See it.

Bruce Springsteen & Marriage Equality...

See This Movie: Seeking A Friend...

One of my favourite things about all our movie channels and video-on-demand TV options is discovering little seen movies, or catching the big flicks I missed the first time around.

I just discovered last year's little-seen Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World, with Steve Carell and Keira Knightley. While promoted as a comedy, this is more of a wistful drama... and I found it enchanting.

In Seeking..., An asteroid named "Matilda" is on a collision course towards Earth and in three weeks the world will come to an end...  so what would you do?

The film's primary characters, Carell's Dodge and Knightley's Penny, are neighbours who didn't know of each other until all hell breaks loose, and through chance, discover that they click. 

Dodge's wife runs away and leaves him sad and confused, not knowing why his marriage vows didn't last, and reminiscing about his high school sweetheart. Penny just broke up with her loser boyfriend, and while escaping from the mob they make a pact that she will help him muster up some courage while seeking out his lost love and he will help her find an airplane good enough to send her back to her family.

It's a road trip of sorts, set to an apocalyptic background. There's good music, wacky situations the duo find themselves in, and some time to perform that world-ending soul search, while inevitably falling in love. 

There's lots of truths put on the table for discussion, and with no fancy special effects this is a character-driven apocalypse tale... so it's no Armageddon, which is a good thing. 

The first half of Seeking... is a comedy and satire, and then it shifts into an emotional drama and really works. It is touching, tender and thought provoking... see it.

Harrison Ford On Gay Marriage...

Harrison Ford, the actor also known as Han Solo, Indiana Jones, and Mr Calista Flockhart, is out making the rounds promoting his new baseball movie 42, and was asked about marriage quality. Here's what he said:

We’re getting there, we’re getting there, he says in an interview with Metro. You know, you would hope that it would have happened with less resistance. You would have hoped that everyone would get the point at the same time, but life’s not like that.

Things do change quickly at a tipping point, as it builds and it builds and it builds until there’s a moment where the balance of opinion, the weight of experience and the understanding comes to a point where the scales tip in the other direction, he adds.

42 is the story of Jackie Robinson and the struggle for racial acceptance, and Ford was asked if he saw a parallel between that struggle and the current battle for marriage equality:

I think there’s a metaphor you can reach for, according to your own interests and your own understanding and your own issues. But trying to create the best expression of the ideals — the most equal society, the best-regulated society, the best-behaving society — depend on attending to equality and inequity whenever it rears its ugly head. Certainly the marriage issue conveniently falls into that category.

Well said, Mr Ford! Now how about signing up for that new Star Wars sequel already?

White Trash Pizza Party...

A few weeks ago we had dinner and a lovely evening at the home of our friends, let's call them Jane and Glenn (because those are their names).

As we ate a wonderful indulgent yet mostly healthy meal, veggies and all, we laughed and mocked the crazy trashy foods we had seen advertised... silly over-the-top things like pizza with hot dogs shoved in the crust, and pizza with cream cheese and meatball toppers. Why would people ruin foods with bizarre fatty stupid combinations like that?

These disgusting over the top carb-loaded fat-overkill foods were utterly gross. And we simply had to try them... so the plan for our next evening together was hatched.

So last weekend we had our White Trash Pizza Party (thanks Jane for the moniker). While we didn't go as far as to wear Crocs or play bingo, I think we pulled it off.

After the first crisis was averted (these gourmet delights are no longer offered on the Pizza Hut website), we were able to call customer service and special order them in. For the "crown" pizza we chose both cream cheese and meatball crowns (crust extensions), and decided on spicy chicken toppings. For the hot dog stuffed crust we chose vegetarian toppings (extra irony points).

Four people, no veggies, two large fat-filled pizzas... they were cheesy and bready and tasty and way too much. And we devoured them. Like so many things in life, they were so bad and so good.

While all were tasty --- cream cheese on pizza, who knew? --- we all agreed the hot dog crust (think pig in a blanket) was our favourite, and we were a tad embarrassed by our affection for it. Awesome.

To mitigate the risk of this meal not being bad enough for us, Jane and Glenn brought six Dairy Queen Dilly Bars for dessert... so that's about the Weight Watchers points equivalent of kale, right?

Awesome fun evening... and oh yeah I gotta get on that damn treadmill.

Alfie's Birthday Fundraiser...

It's no secret that Alfred is the non-human love of my life... and today the little dude is six years old! So while we may have a toy or two for the little furball, it is a tradition on alfred lives here to mark this occasion in a bigger way.

So in honour of the birthday of the world's cutest canine, also known as Alfie, Alfredo, Furball, ADD Alfred, Ewok, Moocho Poocho, Beagle Wannabe, Alfie Poop, Little Dude, The Instigator and Have-Many-Needs Havanese, ... here's the deal... As I know that Alfie is more pampered than your average pooch, we are gonna celebrate his birthday by raising money for the Humane Society. For every comment left on this post today and tomorrow, April 26 and 27, we will donate $1 from Alfie's allowance to the Humane Society..... how much money will Alfie raise this year?

Happy Jelly Bean Day!

Forget all those other so-called important occasions, forget Christmas or your spouse's birthday... tomorrow April 22 is a holiday of major importance... National Jelly Bean Day!

How do you celebrate? National Jelly Bean Day is a time to enjoy gobs and gobs of jelly beans. While they are especially popular at Easter, jelly beans are popular year round. Cuz they're awesome.

While my extensive research, also known as a five-second Google search, did not discover the origin of National Jelly Bean Day, I would guess Ronald Reagan had something to do with it. That dude loved his jelly beans!

Fun fact: Jelly beans date back to at least the 1860's. Advertisements promoted sending jelly beans to Union troops fighting in the Civil War. The original candy maker is unknown. Once again, I would guess Ronald Reagan. That guy was really old when he was President.

Jelly bean flavours are limited only by the imagination of candy makers. If you've never enjoyed the multitude of flavors in a box of gourmet jelly beans, I suggest you head right out to the store and buy yourself some. And buy a box for me too. My jellybean gumball machine is empty (and yes I really have one of those).

My husband has been known to surprise me with boxes of Jelly Belly's. Tonight would be good timing, honey...

Favourite flavours? I like licorice, green apple, sour cherry and root beer. Oh, okay, all of 'em... what's your favourite flavour?

(a version of this was posted April 22/2011)