Ratatouille

I suppose this review may be a little biased. I'm a huge fan of Disney Films. Our family lived in Orlando till I was nine years old and we spent a lot of time at the theme parks. Mickey Mouse is sort of in my blood.

The great thing about Disney-Pixar is that the movies are always fantastic no matter what age you are. Don't skip out on this one just because it's rated G. Ratatouille is my favorite Disney-Pixar film yet. Monsters Inc., Nemo, and (dare I say?) even Toy Story come up short compared to this film. Ratatouille tells the story of Remy, a rat with a very developed sense of taste and smell. His father, a sort of chief of their rat colony, encourages Remy to use his gift, however the two have contrasting ideas about how to take advantage of such a unique skill. Daddy doesn't approve of mingling with humans, a necessary task if Remy ever wants to pursue his dream of being a chef. After being separated from his family, Remy is given the opportunity to fulfill his aspirations by cooking at Auguste Gusteau's, his now deceased hero's, restaurant. He's discovered by the human Linguini, an untalented chef despite being the famed Gusteau's son. Linguini and Remy team up to bring attention back to the once 5 star restaurant. Together, the pair battles hungry customers, food critics, health inspectors, and the shady head chef, Skinner. The movie, while being absolutely hilarious as well as an impressive display of animated art, manages to touch on some meaningful life lessons. Having faith in the little people can sometimes result in an incredibly tasty plate of ratatouille. The film's motto is "Anyone can cook!" and it points out this attitude doesn't only apply to the kitchen.

Also, thumbs up to the short film played before Ratatouille! Lifted is a play by play of a little green alien's experience trying to pass an extra terrestrials version of the human driver's exam. It was lots of fun, as always. You can download it on iTunes.

If you want to learn more about the film or buy tickets, Ratatouille's official website is complete with a summery, reviews, videos, character profiles, and information about the cast and crew. There's also a podcast put out by Disney-Pixar. I've subscribed, but I haven't actually watched any of the shows yet. I'm looking forward to it.

Moot

I was browsing some other bookish blogs and I came across a link reading "Book Moot." I after asking myself, "What's a moot?" I clicked on the link with hopes of being enlightened. The blog defines moot quite well in its header. "The word moot is an archaic term meaning 'argue, debate, discuss.' In early English history, a moot was a meeting to discuss local affairs. Moot comes from the Old English gemot, meaning 'meeting.' " I'm definitely using this one next time I play Scrabble!

Japanese Game Show (In a library)

Stevie () showed me this video on YouTube and I thought it was hilarious enough to post. It's definitely not one of those things everybody finds funny. It's more of a personal taste. If you don't like it, don't worry--you won't hurt my feelings. I think the best thing about this video is just the concept: Japanese men putting on a game show in a library. The part I chuckle at most is the contestants' attempt to stifle their laughter.

The Ultimate Deathly Hallows Prediction Exam

This is a really cool quiz I found on Leakynews, my favorite Harry Potter fan site. (I know, I'm a total dork). It's called The Ultimate Deathly Hallows Prediction Exam. This is a collection of hundreds of questions about every last detail of book 7. How do I answer questions about a book I've never read? Well, that's the whole point. You're responses show exactly what you think is going to go down in the final installment of the Harry Potter series. The cool part about all this is that, once the book comes out, the exam is going to be graded so you can see how close you actually were. It's proof you knew Harry was a Horcrux or Luna was Ravenclaw's decedent before you even read the book. It's a really long quiz, but you don't have to answer all the questions. I had a lot of fun filling it out. If you're not to interested in making your own predictions, but you want to check out what my take on Deathly Hallow is, click here. *Warning* I wouldn't recommend this quiz for those who haven't read all the books (I'm referring to the movie fans). This exam mentions major plot points, including deaths, that occurred throughout the first six books. Nobody wants to be spoiled.

Expect a lot of Harry Potter posts the next month or so. With the last book coming out this July, I'm doing my best to soak up all the HP I can get. I'm planning on rereading the series the week leading up to the release date (July 21) and I was thinking about posting a little something to go along with each book. Maybe some favorite moments or something. I don't know; we'll see.

Vampire Lit

To follow up my last review, here's a list of some other great vampire books I've read.

1. Dracula: This one's sort of a given. I'm pretty sure this was the first vampire story ever published. Classics have a bad reputation for being difficult, but not this book. It seemed like something I would have picked up off of the newly released shelf, but the story is over 100 years old. I read this in my book club and really enjoyed it. (I actually read all but the last fifteen pages or so because I didn't quite finish before our meeting. I've always meant to finish it, but I haven't thought about it until just now. I should work on that.)
2. The Historian: This is one of the longest books I've ever read, but, trust me, it's totally worth it. I read The Historian for my book club too. This book is part Da Vinci Code, part Dracula, part The Secret Life of Bees. It's a great collaboration of a bunch of genres: science fiction, mystery, historical fiction, and even a pinch (no more, no less) of chick lit.
3. Interview with the Vampire: Great read. Full of details and history, as well as intriguing characters. You should go read my review for more insight.
4. Twilight: I don't know how to express the love I have for this book. It's seriously a health hazard because everyone I know can't manage to put it down for anything, not even food. If I remember correctly, I blew off all my classes for a day or two to spend more time reading this book. Twilight is pure pleasure. It's romantic and funny and thrilling and a blast to read. Go buy it now!
5. New Moon: This is the sequel to Twilight. It's just as amazing. I love it.

Interview with the Vampire

The Rumors are true. Interview with a Vampire was a really good read. I have to admit, I've always been interested in these blood sucking monsters, so it was about time I read Interview with a Vampire. It's part of that standard vampire literature. (Is that a genre?). The book stars Louis, a vampire telling a curious boy with a tape recorder what he's been up to the last couple hundred years. He grows up in eighteenth New Orleans Louisiana where he witnesses his brother's suicide. He's 'bitten', inconveniently, in the midst of his confusion and mourning over his brother death by a vampire named Lestat, a selfish character very different from Louis. The two don't get off to a good start and spend the rest of the novel at odds. Louis, unlike the majority of his fellow species, does not see immortality as a gift. He feels cursed and therefore bitter, helpless, and full of self hate. The majority of the novel is focused on Louis's inability to accept the fact he's a vampire. The book, though full of despair, if beautiful. I thought Rice pulled off the self pity story very well. Interview with a Vampire is full of details as well as history. It's not what I would call a fast read; this one took me a while, but that doesn't mean it's bad, just well deserving of your time. I definitely plan on reading the rest of the series.

See more reviews or buy Interview with the Vampire at Amazon.com.

Merriem-Webster's Word of the Day: whammy

I learned a new word yesterday: whammy. A whammy is a supernatural power bringing bad luck, a magic curse spell, jinx, or hex, or a potent force or attack; specifically : a paralyzing or lethal blow. Although it is unclear where the word came from, it is assumed the word is a combination of wham and whimsical - "y". The word was popularized in the 1950s by the strip "Li'l Abner."

I learned all this from the Merriam Webster's Word of the Day podcast. Thumbs up to expanding your vocabulary. The podcasts are only about two minutes long. I've had a few eposodes on my computer for a while now, but this was the first time I tried listening to one. I really liked it. The podcast is lots of fun for word lovers.

Goodbye Beloved Green Layout

Wrinkled Thought has a got a new web design today and I thought I'd post this in memory of the Wrinkled Thought's first skin. Goodbye beloved green layout. I'll never forget you. Although that lime green was never my favorite color, you shall be missed.

Eggs Erroneous

This is a photo of the band I played in for Saint Andrew Lutheran's VBS last week. We call ourselves Eggs Erroneous. (The name was inspired by a recipe mentioned in the film Ernest Goes to Camp)
Left to Right
Dusty: Electric Guitar
Joseph: Rhythm Guitar
Tink: Vocals/Hand Motions
Emilie [me]: Clarinet
MaryBeth: Drums
David: Vocals/Hand Motions
Chris: Guitar

Feel free to contact me if you'd like to book us for your church's VBS.
=)

I just got back from a camp called Affirm held at UNA. It's put on for the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) youth every summer. I've been spending a lot of time away from home lately, but I should be around for a couple weeks now.

HP Deluxe Edition Cover Art

Scholastic has released the cover art for the deluxe edition of the U.S. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. This is my favorite cover art yet for the Harry Potter books. I wasn't planning on buying the deluxe edition, but these images look great. Too bad it's $65. Oh, and in case you haven't heard by now, there's going to be a Harry Potter theme park built. It's about time. Harry Potter is, like, the biggest money making thing of all time. As excited as I am about being able to visit Hogwarts, I feel like a theme park is potential overkill.

Seymour

I've been struggling coming up with a way of summarizing such a unique book. It's really not a book at all, more just a collection of J.D. Salinger's musings on his older brother, Seymour. It's sort of one of those books you love or you hate. I loved it. J.D.S. is hilarious and smart and, amazingly, manages to depict his emotions without turning the book into a cry-fest. It was great. Since I can't seem to come up with a good way of summing it up, here's some quotes that might do the trick. I had quite a few favorites.

Most of these quotes are being directed straight to the reader from the writer.

• "You'll deny it up and down, I fear, but I'm really in no position to take your word for it. you're a great bird-lover."
• I feel, at least, that I know him-you-quite well enough to guess what kind of well-meant gesture might be welcomed from me right now. In this entre-nous spirit, then, old confidant, before we join the others, the grounded everywhere, including, I'm sure, the middle-aged hot-rodders who insist on zooming us to the moon, the Dharma Bums, the makers of cigarette filters for thinking men, the Beat and the Sloppy and the Petulant, the chosen cultists, all the lofty experts who know so well what we should or shouldn't do with our poor little sex organs, all the bearded, proud, unlettered young men and unskilled guitarists and Zen-killers and incorporated aesthetic Teddy boys who look down their thoroughly unenlightened noses at this splendid planet where (please don't shut me up) Kilroy, Christ, and Shakespeare all stopped- before we join these others, I privately say to you, old friend (unto you, really, I'm afraid), please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of very early-blooming parentheses: (((())))."
• "Professionally speaking, which is the only way I've ever really enjoyed speaking up (and, just to ingratiate myself still less, I speak nine languages, incessantly, four of them stone-dead)-professionally speaking, I repeat, I'm an ecstatically happy man."
• "To the point: I happen to know, possibly none better, that an ecstatically happy writing person is often a totally draining type to have around"
• "In the wake of anything as large and consuming as happiness, he necessarily forfeits the much smaller but, for a writer, always rather exquisite pleasure of appearing on the page serenely sitting on a fence. Worst of all, I think, he's no longer in a position to look after the reader's most immediate want; namely, to see the author get the hell on with his story."
• "I'm aware that a good many perfectly intelligent people can't purportedly being told. (We're advised of these things by mail-mostly, granted, by thesis preparers with very natural, oaty urges to write us under the table in their off-campus time. But we read, and usually we believe; good, bad, or indifferent, any string of English words holds our attention as if it came from Prospero himself.)"
• "(My brother, for the record, had a distracting habit, most of his adult life, of investigating loaded ashtrays with his index finger, clearing all the cigarette ends to the sides-smiling from ear to ear as he did it-as if he expected to see Christ himself curled up cherubically in the middle, and he never looked disappointed.)"
• "On the other hand, in the earlier, much shorter story I did, back in the late forties, he not only appeared in the flesh but walked, talked, went for a dip in the ocean, and fired a bullet through his brain in the last paragraph."
• "For this Semitic-Celtic Oriental I need a spanking-new paragraph."
• "I argued her down, and I'm prepared, frankly, to argue you down, too, if necessary."
• "I pause, of coarse, to give the reader a chance to throw up his hands, or, more likely, to wash them of the whole lot of us."
• "Yet a real artist, I've noticed, will survive anything. (Even praise, I happily suspect.)"
• "I would to God the reader had something terrible to tell me first. (Oh, you out there- with your enviable golden silence.)"
• "You can't imagine what big, hand-rubbing plans I had for this immediate space."
• "I'm not exactly wallowing in guilt at the moment, but guilt is guilt. It doesn't go away. It can't be nullified. It can't even be fully understood, I'm certain-its roots run too deep into private and long-standing karma. About the only thing that saves my neck when I get to feeling this way is that guilt is an imperfect form of knowledge."
• "I worry about big jumps that I can measure off with my eyes. I think I dream of your daring to jump right out of my sight. Excuse this. I'm writing very fast now."
• "Along about the third wakeful night in a row, he'd look up at least once from whatever he was doing to ask me if I felt a terrible draft. (No one in our family, not even Seymour, felt drafts. Only terrible drafts.)"
• "(Pool I'll have to discuss another time. It wasn't just a game with us, it was almost a protestant reformation. We shot pool before or after almost every important crisis of our young manhood.)"
• "'How can it be luck if I aim?' I said back to him, not loud (despite the italics) but with rather more irritation in my voice than I was actually feeling. He didn't say anything for a moment but simply stood balanced on the curb, looking at me, I knew imperfectly, with love. 'Because it will be,' he said. 'You'll be glad if you hit his marble--Ira's marble--won't you? Won't you be glad? And if you're glad when you hit somebody's marble, then you sort of secretly didn't expect too much to do it. So there'd have to be some luck in it, there'd have to be slightly quite a lot of accident in it.'"

See more reviews or buy Seymour at Amazon.com.

The Retired Camp Counselor Returns

After 10 days of being away from home and 7 of those days being spent chasing around kids, I'm finally home from staffing camp Rau-Wood. I'm going to take this space and use it to share some of the many excellent photos I took. (I took over 1000 pictures during the week. I think that's my personal record.)

Half-Birthday

According to Wikipedia, a half-birthday is "a day six months before or after the real anniversary of a person's birth" as well as "one of many unbirthdays, to use Lewis Carroll's term for any day that is not a person's real birthday."

Happy half-birthday Wrinkled Thought! =)