Funk to Funky

I’m finally home from my trip to Chicago and it feels SO good. I held up o.k. until yesterday morning when I had a complete meltdown on Skokie Blvd. with the aggressive driving piled on top of the stress of my crazy family. No, I’m not going to write much about my crazy family. I know, everybody thinks their family is crazy but you’re just going to have to trust me on this one. I will say that true to form the gathering in honor of my grandfather had a fair bit of drama with incredible apocalyptic thunderstorms bringing more rain in a few hours than I typically see in a year. My grandparents’ subdivision is built on a swamp and there was at least 3”-4” of rain forming lakes in the low lying areas of the backyard so of course the basement started flooding while we had a houseful of guests. And my uncle with bad heart problems started having bad heart problems and had forgotten his medication and had to leave in a hurry to try to get back to his home far away in the city on the flooding streets with the psycho aggressive drivers. Then there was my aunt who stresses high and had a dose of the zoomies from at least 8 am until well into the evening. I wonder if there’s a Relaxation Protocol for humans?

On a completely unrelated note, Ashes to Ashes, the sequel to the BBC’s excellent series Life on Mars, started on Saturday night. The sequel is set in the 80’s and features a female detective/psychological profiler this time around. Obviously it’s early days but so far the story line itself doesn’t seem nearly as good, probably because the premise is good enough for one series and then gets old but also because the woman’s character is annoying and screams a lot. The 80’s soundtrack is way better though-the Clash, Ultravox, the Stranglers, etc. and next week promises even more good music. Jonny and I had an 80’s stravaganza last night looking up those old bands on You Tube. The stress and boredom of the suburbs drives you to partake in strange activities that’s for sure.

I also finally had a chance to see Slumdog Millionaire. The Wilmette Theater is one of those old time vintage theaters that’s happily been preserved but sadly been chopped up into teensy weensy theaters. Oddly enough they were advertising live cabaret and comedy acts on various nights during the week. I’m not sure exactly who the target audience is meant to be but it was good to see somebody trying to bring some sort of interesting entertainment and it was nice to have an alternative to the sterile mega-plex just 10 minutes away. And it was only $4 for the matinee, woo hoo.

I’m wondering though if I’m the only person who thought the movie was kind of meh. I kept waiting for some great plot twist that never came. You could see where the entire film was going right from the start and after an hour I was bored and antsy and by the end I thought, ugh, so Hollywood and hokey. What was all the hype about? Haven’t we all seen this movie a million times over? Rags to riches, betrayal and redemption, boy gets girl, fate over free will, can they possibly fit any more cheesy Hollywood cliches into one flick? Even the little kid crawling through the latrine-that was straight out of Schindler’s List which was probably straight out of something else. And if we have to endure 2 hours of boy gets girl can’t the girl at least be interesting and have some kind of depth to her? It was interesting to a point and better than 90% of the crap in the theaters but still I couldn’t see what the fuss was about and I was expecting so much more from Danny Boyle-I LOVED Trainspotting. The only part I really enjoyed was the dancing at the end during the credits.

Sorry, not much dogs or triathlon here. Back to all that blah blah blah once things get back to normal here at home.