I Could Be Giving Up Beef

I think it's time for me to stop eating red meat. The reason for this is because every time I consume it, let's just say that though I have employed the soldiers in the Activia yogurt brigade, they repeatedly lose the war in the battle of digestion.

This has been a very recent occurrence. For years, I could eat beef with very few consequences. Well except for a bulging waistline, but I don't attribute that to beef eating. Honestly, beef has so many nutrients that my poor malnourished body needs. I have suffered from iron deficiency anemia in the past, and I notice I tend to crave something big and beefy and no, I don't mean sex. Even though sex is something the body needs too, right?

I live with a vegetarian, so even when there is some meat in the house, it's usually chicken or fish. However, I enjoy eating beef. I don't eat it often, but when I do, it's a lovely piece of meat for me. There's just something about chowing down on the tough flesh of a bovine that really excites me. It triggers the primal instincts, hearkening back to the days of my squatting, hunting, carcass-chowing ancestors.

So for the while, I'm thinking of going off the beef, maybe only for a little while. I'm going to miss it in the meantime. Especially those Chipotle burritos.

Movie Review: Smart People (2008)

(This has been brought over from my personal blog http://www.meltacklesliterature.blogspot.com)




Here's the basic jist of this film: We have a douchebag English professor (oh gee, I don't know what that is!), played by Dennis Quaid and his dysfunctional family. There's his neglected poetry-writing son (Ashton Holmes), his no-good adopted brother (Thomas Haden Church), and his overbearingly smart Republican daughter (Ellen Page, of Juno fame). Sarah Jessica Parker also contributes as the love interest of Dennis Quaid.

I have been craving offbeat, out-of-the-ordinary films because I find the mainstream blockbusters to just be terribly blasé and the same old clichéd shit. This is not to say that I don't enjoy them. I just search for something a little more cerebral, something to tickle my fancy.

So I wanted to like this movie, truly. There's an English professor, there's a lot of talk about literature, the guy's wife died, leaving a young daughter and a son, who are both messed up. It relates to me a on a personal level. The problem with this movie is that it really lacks substance. This movie fails to connect with its audience, even myself, who can relate to the premise of the film. Dennis Quaid's character, for lack of a better term, is an asshole from start to finish. He finds a love interest and that's the part of the movie where you see the character's evolution from ass to class. He never goes through that--he stays the same very unattractive person and only gains a fraction of heart through his love with Sarah Jessica Parker's character.

Another thing I had a problem with was Ellen Page's character. I've got to admit, I enjoyed watching her in Juno. She plays this character the same way she played Juno, with that smart tongue and know-it-all bravado. She's a conservative Republican and it is apparent that she is very scarred by her mother's death but hides it. She never does what she wants, always inhibits herself. By the end of the film, we see her wanting to break out of her self-imposed shell but still...we as an audience feel absolutely no sympathy for her. There is no character evolution.

Finally, the film itself is pretentious. The title, Smart People, suggests a very holier-than-thou attitude right off the bat. Yes, I picked up the movie because I was drawn to the holier-than-thou title, but like I said, I wanted to see smart people. These were not smart people. These were bland characters that spouted off intelligent words and phrases to sound smart. The writers liberally sprinkled the script with these "smart" words to make it stand out but it fails miserably because it sounds so forced and unnatural.

Like I said, I wanted to like this movie. The soundtrack fit the scenes well and sounded solid, like Juno's soundtrack. So if you're thinking, "well it's an indie film. Of course it's not going to be all roses and candy." A successful story has to relate to the audience, it has to stir the audience to elicit sympathy or some type of emotion, be it fear, happiness, love, sadness, whatever it is. But it's such a slow-paced film, with nothing endearing that I have to give it a big thumbs down. Now I kind of feel like watching Juno.