Movies and More Movies

Its probably been 6 months since I've been to a movie in an actual movie theater, but this weekend I went to two! Friday my book club went to dinner to talk about Secret Life of Bees and then to the movie. I'm normally disappointed by adaptations of books and didn't have high hopes for this one given the casting (Jennifer Hudson as a peach picker turned nanny? Please.) and my disdain for fake southern accents. But I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised with good acting and a remarkable likeness to the book -- some of the dialogue was verbatim. There were some details changed unnecessarily but overall I gave it high marks. I guess Sue Monk Kidd didn't sell out the way most authors do (ahem, John Grisham). The other movie we went to see was Madagascar 2, a big experiment since we took Gabe. The movie was ok, not that I saw much of it given the large task of keeping a 2-year old from shouting "zebra!", "lion!", "penguin!" every time an animal appeared on screen. Also it turns out that movie theaters have these booster seats from little kids, not that we were smart enough to figure that out until 30 minutes into the movie and 7 seats deep in the row. So our booster-less booger got to sit - you guessed it - on mommy's lap the whole time. Except for the time he spent picking up various treasures from the theater floor. And the time standing up in his own seat playing peek a boo with the folks in front and behind us. Yes, that little experiment was $27 well spent. Maybe we'll try again when he's 7. In other news this week, like the rest of America we stayed up late to watch election results and all I can say is this: the American people proved me wrong. Given that 5 years ago public enemies #1 and #2 were Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, I had serious doubts that our relatively shallow electorate could vote for someone named Barack Hussein Obama - black or white. Lets face it - this is the same public that can't find Washington, DC on a map. But they proved me wrong and we're all the better for it. A shout out to my friend Caroline who was the Obama coordinator for North Carolina. I had doubts she could turn such an entrenched red state even the slightest shade of blue, but she did!