Ain't it the truth

Recently spotted on a bumper sticker:

You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and won't tell you where they're going.

Monday DVD report

With a title like Life Is Hot In Cracktown, I was mostly expecting a throwaway exploitation film with, I hoped, a tolerably engaging story. But the movie actually turned out to be pretty serious: it was well acted, engaging, and stylishly directed. As widely reported elsewhere, however, the film is indeed extremely brutal.

As described by writer/director Buddy Giovinazzo in the thoughtful "making of" featurette on the DVD, the aim of the film was to present an in-your-face, unsanitized, essentially hopeless view of life in the ghetto, but then inject as much humanity as possible into the crooks, drug addicts, murderers, and fringe characters on display. To paraphrase Mr. Giovinazzo: "I wanted to show that these people, despite their problems and situations, ultimately aren't all that different from you or me, that we're all maybe one or two pieces of bad luck away from living lives just as tragic and desperate."

This approach makes the film interesting, as normal, mundane concerns and interactions are stirred into the brutality and addictions and abusive behavior. So we end up caring for these people (well, many of them, anyway), even as we're angry at them for their behaviors. Also making the film interesting is its sympathetic view of its two transsexual characters, as the story doesn't lump them into the bad stuff going on around them (well, except for the fact that they're seriously drug addicted like so many of the film's characters), but rather portrays them as people trying to be true to themselves.

Before concluding, I should again emphasize the brutality in the film. This isn't an "afterschool special" version of drug addiction and urban blight. This is very dark material, with few rays of light, that some people just won't want to sit through no matter how well done. However, if you're like me and can sometimes embrace difficult, harsh material in order to avoid seeing the same old thing all the time, this film might be worth a look.

Cheers

Just a short message to wish everyone a safe and happy Thanksgiving! And if you're reading this message on your Kindle, be sure to pull out that invaluable little device and show it off at dinner today. We have to keep spreading the word about the wide world of fun and knowledge that our e-readers present to us every day.

Wednesday grins

More silliness from around the web, to further brighten the short work week:

Don't worry: your worst humiliation is only someone else's momentary entertainment.

Just remember, the squeaky wheel doesn't always get the grease... sometimes it gets replaced.

Sex on TV won't hurt you... unless you fall off.

A husband is someone who, after taking the trash out, gives everyone the impression that he just cleaned the whole house.

How can there be self-help "groups"?

Question for the ages

Our two cats are loving and fun. But, being cats, they're also fussy and tempermental, especially in the area of food. When I give them food in the morning (refreshing their shared bowl of dry food and preparing two separate bowls of whatever canned wet food I bought that week), sometimes they'll eat right away and sometimes they won't. And when they do eat right away it's usually a semi-interested couple of bites before they walk away to stare at birds through the back window. I guess they eventually go back and eat more, because the food eventually goes somewhere (at least, a good bit of it does), and they aren't starving to death. But the point is, of all the different brands of dry and canned cat food I buy, none makes me say, "Wow, they really like that kind so I'll have to buy it again."

But here's the thing. I also buy cat treats, giving the cats two or three treats at a time, a couple of times a day. And these they really like. They scarf them down immediately. They'll even come running if they hear me opening the foil treat bag when they're in another room. The two brands they really like, by the way, are Temptations cat treats (any flavor) and Party Mix cat treats (likewise, any flavor). But I bet if I try another brand of treats, they'll love those, too. So, here's my question, if you haven't already guessed it:

In order to sell more cat food, why don't they make cat food taste more like cat treats?

My cats can't be the only pets who go crazy over cat treats. I bet cats all over America do. That's why they call them cat treats. So, shouldn't at least one cat food manufacturer- who likely already makes cat treats our felines love-- say to himself, "hmmmm, if I make our cat food taste as good as our cat treats, maybe the cats will go for it more and their owners will notice and always buy our brand of cat food, because their cats like it best." I mean, they're already halfway there with dry cat food, which already looks like most brands of cat treats.

Oh, well... I'm not sitting in the board room or test kitchens of Purina or Nine Lives, so it's mostly useless for me to make that observation. But maybe someone in the right position will have the same lightbulb moment, and then our cats and our cat food companies will together be better for it.

Happy Tuesday

Here's a little silliness, gathered from around the web, to help you coast into the Thanksgiving holiday:

Who invented the brush they put next to the toilet? That thing hurts!

When you think you have someone eating out of your hand, count your fingers.

We all can't be heroes. Somebody has to stand on the sidelines and clap as they go by.

It's always darkest before the dawn. So if you're going to steal your neighbor's newspaper, that's the time to do it.

I have to take my paycheck to the bank. It's too little to go by itself.

Hear me roar

Spotted on a bumper sticker this past weekend:

Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.