Siskel & Ebert I'm Not

S o the gal pals and I headed out Friday night to see New Moon. We read the entire Twilight book series avidly -- the average being to finish all four books in the space of 10-14 days. Of course, to achieve this you need to completely neglect to feed, interact with, or provide for your family in any discernible way, but sacrifices must be made for literature.

I know they are not Great Literature. They are not Steinbeck. I consider them more like "Gone with the Wind." Engaging, entertaining, and fun. What's wrong with fun? Not every book or movie must be Great Art to be good. In fact, I'll go as far as to say that most movies (and some books) pushed as "great art" are in fact pretentious yawns. Give me a nice fluffy fun flick any day.

So there we were watching New Moon. Just us and dozens of young girls. I saw a few kids from Wonderboy's 6th grade class there (all girls by the way).

If you liked Twilight you'll love New Moon. It's more Jacob, less Edward (which made me sad, I like a nice emaciated vampire kind of thing any day) but since the majority of theatergoers heaved an audible 'sigh' when Jacob took off his shirt mid-show, I figure they more than made up for it.

Other than that where Twilight was blue, New Moon is brown. The lighting is so different and there is one scene that is so laugh-out-loud bad that I can only think it was included as a joke. Or the Director lost a bet.

Still, it was an enjoyable $7 (Matinee price) plus popcorn and I highly recommend it for those who love fantasy, adventure, and pretty boys (and can get past the whole "the actor who plays Jacob is not yet eighteen years old" thing). Hello Mrs. Robinson indeed!

3 Days of Camp

A lternately titled: My semi-empty nest.

So Matthew is off to camp. Camp is something ELSE the school cooked up just to torture me. Much like the whole "5th graders TOTALLY belong in Middle School with big giant huge children who look like they eat 5th graders for mid-morning snack!" they have helpfully decided that in 6th grade children should go away to camp - for three days.

They have done this for something like 25 years now and since all the natives are brainwashed into thinking about how much fun this is - we all have to agree.

Granted, I'm sure he is in good hands and all the older kids, former camp survivors, wax rhapsodic about the wonders of camp. The lakeside learning. The hands-on demonstrations. The time they took all the bunks and stacked them up out on the lawn ...

Even though Matthew has gone camping with the Scouts before, this is different. This is no-contact-camp. "Don't call us, we'll call you!" they said. And then you have to hope and pray they don't because they only call you for Bad News.

So I haven't heard from my firstborn since Wednesday a.m. when he tossed his bags into the back of the oldest equipment bus in creation (I think it was horse-drawn) and sauntered into the school. I know all the good moms wring their hands and say they are "worried sick" about their kids but the truth is, I'm not worried at all. He'll be fine. It's good for him. I bet he hardly even misses us because he's having too much fun.

Which is, after all, what being twelve is all about.

Tomorrow at 2 p.m. they deliver our children back to us. They say it's an educational experience. I think it's practice designed to wear us down for future spring breaks.