Carnivorous Vampires and Emotional Strippers

On a recent trip to visit a friend in St. Louis, I had the pleasure of enjoying two (not surprisingly) bad movies. Renee (who has a wonderful blog about literature and writing) and I rented: Twilight’s Breaking Dawn: Part 1 and Magic Mike. Since freshman year of college, Renee and I have enjoyed a tradition of watching the Twilight movies together and laughing at how obscenely awful they are. So we were excited to catch up on our least favorite saga. And Magic Mike? We’d actually heard good things about it, and we’re not the type to turn down semi-nude male dancing.

And you know what? Twilight turned out to be both the more entertaining and more disturbing movie.

During Twilight:

Me: Oh man. Here comes the sex scene of the year.

Renee: Why is she crying in her underwear?

Me: She doesn’t want to do it!

Renee: She looks like she’s going to throw up.

Me: Did she just tell herself not to be a coward? That’s a good message.

Renee: Is this a movie for pre-teen girls!?

 . . . later

Me: Her baby’s going to die.

Renee: Edward wouldn’t let that happen.

Me: There’s nothing they can do tho—

Me & Renee: HE’S EATING THROUGH HER STOMACH!

During Magic Mike:

Me: Is it just me, or is this kinda boring?

Renee: [Snoring]

Me: And depressing?

Renee: [Crying]

Me: Where’s all the dancing? I was promised good, clean, family fun!

Renee: Want to fast-forward to the dancing parts?

Me: Yep.

In conclusion, I whole-heartedly recommend Breaking Dawn: Part 1 to no one, especially not impressionable young girls. And I give two thumbs way, way up to Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Magic Mike parody—not Magic Mike itself.  

And as I was linking the video to JGL's dance, I had to defend myself to my boyfriend:

Yes, I'm watching it again. 

Crush Their Spirits While They're Young

People treasure humbleness as a human characteristic. We praise people who don’t realize how talented they are. At the same time, we spurn people who practice false modesty. “Oh, he’s just fishing for a compliment.” I’m not one to automatically assume someone is being falsely modest, but I would like to share a parable about the dangers of practicing such false modesty. This one comes from the 7^th grade chapter of Cecily’s life.

[Sweating my 7^th grade butt on the track during gym glass]

Short boy: Hey.

[Now just vaguely pretending to run]

Me: Hello.

Shorter boy: Hey.

Me: You’re really short. I mean, hey.

Short boy: Do you have a boyfriend?

Me: [Guffaws] No.

Short boy: What if I told you that somebody likes you?

Me: I’d say you were smoking crack. I mean, I’d say you were crazy.

Short boy: Well, shorter boy here likes you.

Me: [Thinking about the fact that someone would like me, and not thinking about the boy who actually did like me] Ewww.

Shorter boy: [Deeply offended] Ewww?

Me: That’s not what I—

Shorter boy: You’re really going to hurt someone’s feelings some day.

[Shorter boy runs off crying]

Moral of the story: Strangely enough, putting yourself down in front of other people can actually make those people feel worse about themselves. 

Also, 7^th grade boys are babies.