This week in reviews

For some reason, perhaps pity, or perhaps just to shut my whining maw, the fates visited me with loads of free awesomeness-- a friend from work gave me tickets to an advance preview of Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, and I was able to find both Britney Spears' Blackout AND Kanye West's Graduation at the award-winning Euclid Public Library (gooooo, library!). And so, in an effort to pay it forward, I will provide you all with my reviews of each, something I know you've been waiting for, because no one buys a Britney Spears album without checking with me first.

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium: This movie got a scathingly horrible review from Entertainment Weekly, which is pretty much the bible by which I live my daily life, but we went anyway, because it was free, and because my arm was sore from Wii-overuse and I needed a break. But actually, I really, really enjoyed this movie a lot-- I thought it was funny, and smart, and it made me cry, which was super embarassing because the aforementioned friend from work is super grossed out by human emotion. I would very much recommend this movie, and not just because I have a weird Arrested Development crush on Jason Bateman (I love your cutie nose freckles, Teen Wolf Too!).

Thumbs down, however, to the crazy woman in the row in front of us who, after buying one of those industrial-sized tubs of popcorn that were designed solely in the off-chance that an actual elephant decided to spend $8.50 to watch In the Valley of Elah, dumped the entire thing into a plastic grocery bag and sent her five-year-old son out to the lobby to get it refilled (because apparently, if you have the tenacity to plow through one of those tubs, they reward you by giving you another tub). She repeated this action no less than three times, all the time smugly and loudly proclaiming how she slipped popcorn's stranglehold on the US economy. She also passed out ten cans of soda to the busload of children she had brought (which I am totally baffled by, because upon entrance to the advance screening, my purse was searched AND I had to walk through a metal detector), and produced a bag of candy as large as Brazil. Way to go, Lady Cheapington! You brought the movie theater snack industry to its knees.

Blackout: Conversely, Blackout got pretty good reviews, which is really the only reason I picked it up, and not because I still secretly enjoy listening to "Hit Me Baby One More Time" and pretending to slam my locker in a coy, come-hither fashion. However, I found this album shockingly unlistenable-- the last third of it might be totally awesome, but I will never know, as I had to turn it off somewhere in the middle of a song called "Get Naked (I Got a Plan)."

Graduation: I ain't saying it's a bad stinker/I'm just saying it's no "Golddigger." (Yes! I am an awesome rapper. Someone bring me some Louis Vuitton clothes now.) My favorite song on it so far is "Can't Tell Me Nothing," but "Stronger" is also fun. I was a bit perplexed by "Drunk and Hot Girls," but see an awesome opportunity for a collabo between he and Spears on "Drunk and Hot Girls Get Naked (I Got a Plan)."

Kim smash!

So, my happiness level has decreased dramatically since my last post, due mostly to hormones (currently, my normal, happy self has been swallowed deep into the belly of an evil, raging monster who earlier today compared one of her co-workers unfavorably to a ball of yarn). Luckily for all involved, I did not Blog While PMSing (BWP), and have allowed myself to mellow out from Super Angry to Generally Pissed Off. About what, you ask? A number of things:

1. As I type this, the Cavs are losing in a most spectacular fashion. I don't have the sound on, but I imagine that they're just playing the audio track of one of the cameramen's daughter's middle school intramural games. It would probably sync up very nicely to the action.

2. No matter how many new songs I put on it, my MP3 player insists on playing only the following songs, again and again and again:

• End of the Movie, Cake
• Bad Day, Daniel Powter (I am the only person still to have this on their MP3 player, right?)
• We Can Work It Out, Stevie Wonder
• Zoot Suit Riot, Cherry Poppin' Dadies
• Jesus Walks, Kanye West

3. The railings on the stairs leading to the front door of my office building have been removed, and these vaguely ominous silver speed bumps have been put up along the stairs, ostensibly to prevent skateboarders from using our parking lot for their illicit purposes. I'm actually torn on this, because it seems sort of fascist, but also, I believe all skateboarders secretly make fun of me whenever I walk by.

4. Jaslene won America's Next Top Model, despite the fact that she is a man.

5. The dog went and slept on my pillow after a long walk in the rain, and now my pillow reeks of wet dogness.

6. Every time I tried to get a book from the shelf at the library today, a weird old man in a Lake County Captains raincoat magically appeared and wanted the same book. Or else he wanted me to look at his ween. I was not willing to find out.

7. In general, all people, everywhere, are annoying (except for you, my faithful blog readers, who are cool and understanding of my Incredible Hulk-esque tranformation, and know in your hearts that I will become a functional member of society again within a few short days).

In conclusion, someone needs to invent something, other than wine, to which I am allergic, that can free me from this hormone driven beast! Please, do something! Before I start bitch-slapping nuns and kicking the invalid!

NOTE: LeBron James just got hurt, probably because I wrote something crappy about the Cavs. I am the worst person ever.

My library kicks your library's ass

Just got word from the Euclid library that my copy of Princess Diaries Volume VII: Party Princess is in. Shazam!

Also just in-- my copy of The Black Dahlia, which poses a problem, as I have still not completed the now painfully-close-to-overdue book I mentioned in the previous post, nor have I even really started V For Vendetta, which I took out in an effort to further alienate myself from the rest of the normal, non-graphic-novel-enjoying world. But I was number 15 on the waiting list for Dahlia! How could this have happened? Curse you, library, and your awesome goodness!

Euclid Loves Ricky

On a routine trip to the Euclid library (which, in a bit of trivia that might interest those of you who are local, is apparently considered the third best library in the nation-- I highly recommend it), I decided to peruse the CD collection, expecting to find the usual libraryesque selections-- Pavarotti, Joni Mitchell, and a random Wilco album from 1993.

So I was shocked to find an entire rack dedicated to Ricky Martin, including no less than seven copies (seven!!) of his Spanish-language album Vuelve, an album of which I believed I owned the only copy (please, do not even question why I would own a copy of this. I bought it to impress a guy, and it didn't occur to me until much later that a guy that would be impressed that I owned Vuelve might not be interested in me).

My question is, why would the Euclid library believe that seven different patrons would come in within two weeks of each other, just really wanting to hear "Por Arriba Por Abajo"? And that only counts the ones that were actually on the shelves-- what if there are, like, seven more copies of Vuelve out there, already checked out to happy Ricky Martin fans?

And there were tons of other Ricky Martin selections, as well-- Livin' La Vida Loca, that one that has "She Bangs" on it, et. al. Why? I would have investigated further, but someone was hovering around near me, clearly wanting to get a look at the Ricky Martin rack. And I didn't want to hog the Vuelve. Whatever that means.