Alaskan Blog

We are eventually going to post on this blog again, but I (Michelle) have been actively blogging on my picture-a-day Alaska blog so it's kind of been taking over our blog life. Matthias has had an intermission in his blogging life but we both have great plans of putting up more things on this one. So here's the link to the other blog, and I'm going to add it to the side bar for future use.

http://michellesyearinalaska.blogspot.com/

Ahhhh...Tennis

When I was younger, I had one of those cheesy T-shirts that said "Tennis is Life". I remember from a young age watching the pros on TV and even having a higher heart rate on the bigger points. I was a bit obsessed with Pete Sampras in high school and carried the Tennis magazine around from class to class, pulling it out on any occasion. One of Matthias's earliest tactics to date me was to pretend like he wanted to learn how to play tennis...funny enough, I actually believed that he did but I know better now. One night he was walking by my apartment and the door was open. I was sitting on the carpet right in front of the TV watching a US Open match. He invited himself in (or maybe I did, but whatever) and I remember being a bit annoyed at the distraction he was to the focus I had had on the match before he came. (Before you think I'm a rude, selfish jerk, please note that Matthias was "the guy who lives behind us that I barely know" at this point.)

Anyway, the French Open is in it's second and final week and I shamefully have watched nearly every single point of every match that has been televised. But tragically, I missed recording the one match I would have paid money not to miss. I had previously scanned through the guide on our TV to make sure I had recorded any matches that would be shown. I didn't know to check a different channel on this particular day and therefore, thought nothing was being shown. What do I find out?

NADAL LOST TO A NO-NAMER IN THE THIRD ROUND!!!!

He lost to this guy:


I didn't even know this guy's name until a few days ago. You should know that Nadal has been the first person I've felt attached to since Sampras left the game, so you can imagine my disappointment. Nadal was supposed to make history in Paris this year by winning 5 consecutive French Open Titles. And now it's free for the taking, apparently. I guess you have to hand it to Soderling for pulling what's been speculated to be the biggest upset in tennis history. (The last time someone beat Nadal on clay during a major was in April 2005...this is a big deal, ok?)

Well, on to some random pictures. This one is of my hot husband at the top of a mountain right outside Anchorage. I miss him right now, because he's out of town for work. I'm trying to be brave. It's a bit like when I was little and my mom went to the store without me. An hour seemed like 5 years. These 4 days have been a century. I miss you, Thy.

I made a gigantic cupcake for my first client ever! I also made a bunch of smaller cupcakes to go with it. White chocolate cake with a strawberry cream cheese filling and vanilla buttercream on top. Yummmm. Unfortunately, I broke down and sampled a bit. I had to make sure it wasn't poisonous.

And finally, a picture I meant to put up awhile ago. I had to show what one of the trees outside our house looked like when everything was starting to sprout. You can still see some of the fall leaves that never made it to the ground. That's because fall lasts about 2 days here. A lot of the leaves freeze on the trees and stick around all winter long.

World Beard and Moustache Competition

Every two years, there is a international competition that is held at a different location each time. It's been held in places like Berlin and the like. Yesterday it happened to be Anchorage, Alaska's turn. Unfortunately, we were unable to attend the parade the night before. We read that there was a band playing music for the event with "songs about beards for people with beards". Don't worry, we heard some of that music during the approx. 90 minutes of wait time from the time we were seated to the time the first round of judging began. We only stayed for the moustache part due to time, but there were also part-beard and full-beard competitions as well. There were many moustache divisions like, "natural moustache", "dahli", "hungarian wild west", and such. The competitors were all about having their picture taken so many of these were from a quick tap on their shoulder and a snap as they smiled or posed. It's pretty safe to say we weren't expecting all of the costumes.

Pretty crazy stuff. We found out that these guys have been working on their "do" for 1-2 years. So I figure that if Matthias starts on one now, he may be ready for the next one...

Slackers...

We know, we know. We haven't blogged in awhile. We have great intentions to finally put up pics and video from the Iditarod along with other fun things from the past couple months. With all of this sunlight and warm weather, we are coming up with any excuse possible to not be inside. We haven't given up on blogging, so don't give up on checking. As my mom used to say, patience is a virtue.

Crazy Cool Alaska Pictures

So, here is a collection of pictures from the last 3 months that highlight life in Alaska.

First, a few weeks ago, we came across a religious moose after choir practice outside our church. Don't worry mom, these were taken from the safety of our car.

Can you believe what they'll do for food? Awkward.

One afternoon we went exploring around the coast and found this park with ice blocks surrounding picnic tables. I'm not sure who actually takes advantage of them, but there is a great view of the sea ice and distant mountains on the other side of the inlet.

The following are pictures taken from the school I teach at (the trailer you see in the bottom photo is the one I teach in). The first two are icicles that blew my mind...how did they freeze sideways? The next ones are during a "cold snap" during January when it was so cold the kids couldn't even go outside to play. It was around -20 to -25 for a little over a week straight. The thing I loved about it was the way it made the trees look. The whole world was literally white from the ground to the trees to the telephone poles. It was beautiful.

We saw a moose in our front yard!! We were coming home from church, and I was talking to Matthias as I was getting out of the car and all of a sudden he said, "Watch out! There's a moose right behind you!" Sure enough, I turned around and there it was about 10 feet away. I jumped back in the car and spent about a 1/2 hour staring at it as it munched on some dead leaves in our yard. Matthias got bored (or hungry--probably both) so he went inside but I was too scared. I've been told by a reliable source that moose are more dangerous than bears. I tried about three times to get out of the car and jumped right back in because I felt so vulnerable. Finally, I was so cold I bolted up the stairs and into the house. I managed to get the camera in time to snap a few pictures from our porch.

Conclusion: Alaska provides plenty of adventure. Stay tuned for pictures of the Iditarod, world-class ice sculptures, and a real, live ice hotel.

Denny's Redeemed!

Some of you may remember the recent difficulties that Michelle and I faced at Denny's:

http://matthiasandmichellecicotte.blogspot.com/2009/02/war-on-dennys.html

We threatened to declare non-violent war on Denny's if we weren't reimbursed for the "free" Grand Slam breakfast that we were promised. Well, after standing for weeks on the precipice of war, Denny's relented. There is peace in our time:Not only did Denny's pay us back for the Grand Slam, they refunded our entire bill. Basically, Michelle got her extra hash browns for free.

So on this note, Denny's, we'll let bygones be bygones. We won't boo you, we won't brainwash our kids to hate you, and we'll stop fomenting a boycott among our friends and family. Someday we might even stop in for a Reese's peanut butter pie:

Thanks everyone for supporting the boycott. We couldn't have done this without you.

March Madness Picks: Cicotte v. Obama

OK, so I was originally planning to just post my picks, but I just had to get something off my chest. President Obama is obviously a bold guy; he had the guts to challenge Hillary Clinton with less than two years in the Senate. He also had the guts to print and borrow money like Weimar Germany in his first month on the job. That's bold. (Wait, is "bold" the right word?)*

Then I looked at his NCAA picks:
5 upsets out of 32 in the first round (two of which are 8-9 matchups)
1 (ONE !!!!) upset out of 16 in the second round (a 5 over a 4 seed)
1 upset out of 8 in the round of 16 (a 3 over a 2)
1 upset in the elite eight round

That's 8 upsets TOTAL in the entire tournament. Would you like to guess what the smallest number of upsets in the sixty-three game tournament is? The answer is 12, and it only happened once. The next lowest is 14, which also happened only once. The average is 17. And he's predicting 8.

Are you kidding me? Mr. President, I've seen gutsier brackets filled out by nine-year-old girls who pick based on the mascots. Consider your man-card revoked. I can only conclude that you were scared to pick any big upsets because you thought you might offend the residents of some state or another. I'm imagining how you picked your final four:

Obama: "Well, boys, I asked you to pick at least one upset in each round to make it look like I actually thought about this, and I see you've done that. Now, I just need one upset pick for the final four. How about Duke over Pittsburgh?"

22-year-old Harvard intern: "Sir, I think that's a bad idea. Most people hate Duke."

Obama: "How do you know that?"

Intern: "Secretary Jordan from the Department of Basketball went to UNC, and he told us so."

Obama: "We have a Department of Basketball?"

Intern: "It was in the stimulus package. Besides, Jesse Jackson called to say that if you pick 'those preppy white kids from Duke', he'll denounce you as an 'Uncle Tom'."

Obama: "Fine. Syracuse over UNC?"

Intern: "A 3 seed over a 1? Are you sure you're ready to take a risk like that?"

Obama: "No, you're right, let's not chance it. How about Michigan State over Louisville?"

Intern: "That could be a good pick, considering that Michigan is sort of a swing state, but I think you should take Memphis over UConn. Connecticut is full of evil stockbrokers and insurance company execs. Not many tears will be shed for them."

Obama: "Sounds good. Now that I've got this trivial matter off my schedule, I can focus on what really matters to this country: Rehearsing for Leno."

Here are my upset picks by round (feel free to comment on them):

1st round:
Arizona over Utah
N. Iowa over Purdue
Maryland over California
Tenn over Okla. St.
Portland St. over Xavier
VCU over UCLA
W. Kentucky over Illinois
Michigan over Clemson

2nd round:
Arizona over Wake Forest
W. Kentucky over Gonzaga
ASU over Syracuse
(I also have Florida State, who will have to upset Xavier if Portland St. doesn't)

Sweet Sixteen:
Kansas over Michigan State
Washington over UConn
Missouri over Memphis
Florida State over Pitt
ASU over Oklahoma

Elite Eight:
ASU over UNC
Washington over Missouri
(I also have Duke, which will have to upset Pitt if Fla St. doesn't)

That means my final four is Louisville, Washington, Duke and ASU, with Duke beating Louisville to win it all. If you can't tell by my picks, I think the Pac-10 is better than people think, and the Big Ten is worse than people think. Also, I typically pick against small-conference teams with high seeds (i.e., Gonzaga and Xavier). I am also completely biased towards ASU and Duke. I figure it's all luck anyway, so may as well pick teams you're rooting for.

By the way, that's eighteen upsets with two pseudo-upsets, Mr. President. I may go down in flames in the first round, but at least I'm going down swinging.

*Bonus points if you recognized that as an allusion to "The Office" (from when Michael photo-shops himself into his girlfriend's family photo, with his face on the body of her ex-husband)

Europe Photo Entry #14: Paris and Versailles

(Keep an eye out for several new posts over the next few days. On Thursday I'm posting my March Madness picks, plus over the weekend we'll put up pictures and video from the Iditarod, with pictures from our trip to Fairbanks after that.)

Paris was just great; we only had a night and a day to spend, which actually was juuuuuust enough to see everything we wanted to. The first night we were there, we went to see the Arc de Triomphe:

The Champs-Elysees

The next morning we went to see the Palace of Versailles, which was a top-five experience for me:

The gardens at the Palace:

The famous Hall of Mirrors (where, I learned, the actual Treaty of Versailles was signed)

Notre Dame:
Michelle took about 9,483 pictures of the Eiffel Tower, which truly must be seen to be believed. You would think that such a famous landmark would be overrated by now (as in, "Oh, I thought it was bigger"), but that just isn't the case with the Eiffel Tower. It's definitely worth seeing in person.

Only in Alaska

I took this picture at the airport:

In case you want a little background:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulu

Europe Photo Entry #13: Rhine River Cruise and Frankfurt

Funny story before we get to the pictures. We stayed in Frankfurt for a couple of nights without really seeing the city; it was just a jumping off point for a day cruise down the Rhine river, and to see the Frankfurt temple. Our hostel was right near the train station, which meant that it was smack in the middle of the red light district. Our second night there, we finished dinner a little late, with barely enough time to do our laundry before the laundromat closed. In fact, we decided that while Michelle waited for the check (at seriously one of the best Chinese restaurants I've ever been to), I would go get our laundry.


I discovered after leaving the restaurant that the only reason I hadn't been accosted by any prostitutes up to that point was because I had Michelle with me. On my way to the hostel, they were out in force. I discovered that their preferred method of getting attention (aside from strutting) is to yell, "Sir, you dropped your credit card!" and then pretend to hold your card in the air. Clever.


Once I got to the hostel, I ran into the room, packed our bags with clothes, and went into the bathroom. The bathroom was behind two doors, one door on the room itself, and then another door a few feet away which enclosed a little hallway between the bathroom and the bedroom (we had a private room). Out of habit, I closed both doors on my way in. The bathroom door had a deadbolt that I didn't bother locking because I was alone in the room.

After I was finished, I walked through the bathroom door, and then tried to open the second door. It was locked. I took out my room key, and it didn't work. That's right. They rented us a room with a door that locks automatically upon closing, but didn't give us the key.


At this point I had several options: 1) Yell for help (but we had yet to see anyone else staying at the hostel, and they would have had to hear me behind two doors); 2) Wait for Michelle to wonder why I hadn't shown up and come back to the hostel to look for me (although she didn't have a key to the room); 3) Break through the door a la Jack Bauer.


I have a few iron-clad rules in life, and one of the most important is this: If you are left with only one option which requires you to act like Jack Bauer, that is the option you must take, without exception. Perhaps more importantly, I knew I couldn't just wait for Michelle to come find me because she would have panicked. In a bad, bad way. Whenever she doesn't hear from me, she assumes I've been hit by a car or abducted by Al Qaeda. Considering that we were in a seedy neighborhood in a foreign country, she would probably have assembled a search party which would include the German police, the U.S. Embassy, Interpol, NASA, and Superman.


With that in mind, I leaned back and kicked the door right next to the door knob, just like I had seen in all the cop shows. I didn't even budge. It's my own fault; I was too cautious. With wounded pride, I let loose with a more serious second kick. This one made some cracks around the knob. Encouraged, I busted through with my final kick.

The door swung open.

The weirdness wasn't over yet; on my way to the laundromat, accidentally ran over a middle-aged woman's toes with my carry-on bag (she was wearing closed-toed shoes). I apologized, and then a second or two later she suddenly started jumping up and down and yelling in German. When I looked to see what on earth the commotion was about, her friend said something along the lines of "You ran over her foot!" (or at least that's what I deciphered with my high school German skills). I didn' t run over her toes very hard, and given the delayed reaction, I think they were hoping they could get the dumb American to pay for their dinner or something along those lines. No dice.

The next morning, when we checked out, I felt a duty to inform the hostel owner that I had jacked up his door.

"Just so you know," I said, "Because we didn't have a key to the door outside the bathroom, I got stuck in there."

"Really?" he said. "It shouldn't lock."

"Well, it did," I said. "So I had to...get it open myself."

"How did you do that?"

"I had to...force it open."

The Indian man looked confused for a second, and then it clicked. "Oooooh." Fortunately, we were never charged for any damage, which makes this man one of the last honest businessmen in Europe.

Anyway, here are some pictures of our Rhine river cruise. The Rhine has a ton of castles on it because it was the main thoroughfare in Europe during the middle ages, and any fool with a castle could charge a toll for safe passage. I've forgotten most of the names of these castles.

By the way, Michelle has told me that I can't post these pictures unless I inform you that it was very windy that day. Which it was.

This cliff to the right of me is the legendary "Lorelei", the most dangerous point on the Rhine. An old German legend has it that a ghostly woman named Lorelei would sing and distract the sailors from their task, sort of like the Sirens. She was the subject of a poem by Heinrich Heine. And, other than a few terrible movies, that's about all I remember from my high school German class.

This is Marksburg Castle, the most significant castle on the Rhine, and the only one we went inside.

Looking down on the Rhine valley from Marksburg Castle.
The Frankfurt Temple. Yes, I'm wearing sneakers in that picture. We only packed a backpack and a carry-on apiece for this trip. I wasn't going to lug my dress shoes around.

The War on Denny's

I wrote this letter in a fit of righteous anger. It's a long one, but it gets better towards the end. Michelle almost died laughing when she read it. Just know that this letter really is going into the mail on Tuesday, and I mean every word of it.

February 15, 2009

Denny's Call Center, 203 East Main Street P-8-6, Spartanburg, SC 29319

Dear Denny’s:

Anyone who knows me well knows that getting ripped off is my number one pet peeve. And you have ripped me off, Denny’s.

Over the years I have not been a frequent guest of your restaurants. Until this month I had been perhaps four times in my life. My wife, on the other hand, is an enthusiastic connoisseur of your Reese’s peanut butter cup pie. Notwithstanding the infrequency of my visits, I was excited to hear that you had promised a free Grand Slam breakfast to anyone who came the Tuesday after this year’s Super Bowl. My wife and I are frugal people who seldom eat out. We can’t afford to try new places very often because on the rare occasions that we do eat out, we hate to take chances. So this promotion was a rare opportunity to get us into your restaurant. I’m sure that’s exactly what you had in mind.

We expected the Denny’s in midtown Anchorage to be slammed, no pun intended. We were right; so many Alaskans had succumbed to the siren song of free pancakes, eggs, sausage and bacon that there was a two hour wait. “No problem”, we were told, “You can have a rain check.”

Ah, a rain check! Perfect! “I’ll take two,” I said. “One for me, and one for my wife.” If we couldn’t eat for free today, we could wait until next week.

And so, patient people that we are, we returned to Denny’s the following Wednesday, determined to finally get that free meal we were promised. After sitting down in a booth, strange things began to happen. We saw an elderly gentleman sitting about 20 feet from us, who appeared not to be in his right mind. He was using foul language with the staff, and eventually had to be kicked out because of his offensive behavior. I am quite certain that he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol (not unusual for Alaska, although I’m more accustomed to seeing it on the city bus).

After our waitress took our order, we pointed to the rain check coupons. “We can use these, right?” we asked. “Oh yeah,” she said. So far, so good.

We enjoyed our food immensely, although I admit that food always tastes better when it’s free. While we were eating, though, another man began to make a scene with the wait staff. Again, the man appeared to be drunk or high.

Our waitress brought us a bill for $14.90 (that’s two $6.95 meals, and an extra $1 order of hash browns for my wife- there is no sales tax in Alaska). She specifically told us, “they’ll take those off the bill for you,” presumably referring to the charge for our two meals.

We left a generous tip (hey, we got a free meal, right?) and went to pay at the counter. Here is where the whole experience soured. I handed our rain check coupons to the restaurant manager, who immediately pointed to the fine print on one of the coupons: “One coupon per order per visit.”

“Oh, OK,” I said, “But we got these the day of the Super Bowl giveaway.”

“Yes, I know, that’s when EVERYONE got them,” the manager sneered at me, as if only a child would have thought that it mattered when I got the coupons.

“But, you see, my wife and I expected to eat together that Tuesday. If we had been able to eat that Tuesday, we would have both eaten free.”

“Yes?” the manager said, as if to say, “So what?”

“And they told us this was a rain check. And when someone tells me that it’s a rain check, I assume that means I get the same thing that I would have gotten, only later. So that means if we could have eaten together for free that day we should be able to eat together for free now.”

“I’m sorry, that’s not what the coupon says.” Oh, good, I’m glad we’ve established that for certain.

“And there’s nothing you can do about it?” I said, incredulously.

“Nope.”

“So even though we were told it was a rain check, we have to pay for one of the meals?” I said this with the maximum amount of irritation one can muster without yelling.

“Yes.”

“Listen, just look at us. We’re not a couple of high school kids trying to pull a fast one.” (I was on my lunch hour, wearing a shirt and tie.) “Are you’re telling me there’s NOTHING you can do?”

“I’m sorry, that’s what the coupon says.”

“And there are NO exceptions?”

“No.”

At this point, I considered just walking out of the store without paying. I still wish I had. Instead, in the name of civility I paid the $7.94 bill, while practically shouting through the restaurant, “I’M NEVER COMING TO DENNY’S AGAIN!”

Now, I'm a lawyer, so I understand the importance of reading the fine print. But I’ve also worked in several customer service jobs in my life. I used to be an assistant manager at a video store, so I know what it’s like to deal with angry customers (YOU try telling a mom with three small kids that she can’t rent Cinderella until they pay $35.48 in late fees). And yeah, some people were constantly trying to get out of late fees. But something that we were told constantly by upper management is that each customer is worth about $200 a year, so when push comes to shove, some leniency is required to avoid driving them away.

I find it absolutely implausible that this manager really couldn’t do anything for us. If nothing else, she could have rung it up as two different orders. And I’ve eaten out enough to know that a REAL restaurant writes things off all the time in order to keep customers happy. I assume that the manager is not a franchisee who actually cares whether her franchise makes a profit, because her attitude positively screams, “GIVE ME YOUR MONEY AND GO AWAY!!” Basically, she took what was looking like a good experience at Denny’s and turned it into a terrible one.

So here’s what I’m going to do, Denny’s: Unless I am compensated for the $6.95 value of the Grand Slam, I am declaring non-violent war on your restaurant. That’s right, Denny’s: you will become my enemy.

Of what would such a war by non-violent means consist? First of all, I can guarantee I won’t set foot in a Denny’s again. Neither will my wife.

Furthermore, anytime Denny’s comes up in conversation, I will mention what a terrible place it is, how much I hate it, what a bunch of rip-off artists you are, etc. No one who mentions Denny’s in my presence will fail to know of my deep hatred for you. I will also post this letter on my family’s blog, so that all of our friends and relatives will know what happened, and to guard their wallets whenever they enter your walls.

I will also instruct my children in the ways of Denny’s hatred. They will be taught that Denny’s is the worst restaurant in the world, that the food is bad and overpriced. When we are on family trips, we will boo Denny’s from the safety of our car. If it’s 3:00 a.m. and we’re driving in the middle of nowhere, we’ll bypass every Denny’s until we find a Steak ‘N Shake or Waffle House. Hopefully our children will carry these lessons into adulthood. You can call this brainwashing if you like, but just know that you are never getting my kids’ money either.

Perhaps you think that none of this will matter to you, Denny’s. Maybe you think that you won’t lose much if you only lose my family and me as customers. But guess what, Denny’s: whatever amount of profit you miss out on by losing our business, it has GOT to be more than $6.95. The potential future profit on Reese’s Peanut Butter Pies alone must be several times that amount.

So do the right thing, Denny’s. Reimburse us for the rip-off, and we’ll assume this was an isolated incident and all will be forgiven. Otherwise, you can be sure of three things: If we want to get ripped off by a rude restaurant staff, we’ll go to Italy; if we want to hang out with potentially violent drug addicts, we’ll go to a methadone clinic; and if we want good home cooking at an affordable price in the wee hours of the morning, you can find us at IHOP.

s/Matthias Cicotte

UPDATE: http://matthiasandmichellecicotte.blogspot.com/2009/03/dennys-redeemed.html

Rothenburg

Rothenburg is one of the most well-preserved medieval towns in the world, with the original wall that surrounds it and everything. In my opinion, it's a must-see if you're ever in or around West Germany. There were the coolest looking buildings, lots of fun little shops (one of my favorites was a Christmas shop that had all sorts of Christmas decor and a huge tree in the middle), and delicious little pie crust pastries called "schneeballen" that were to die for. We got here on a Romantic Road bus tour that went from Munich to Frankfurt and stopped along the way at different points of interest. We got on the next bus the following day and finished the tour after spending a day/night/part of a day in Rothenburg. We stayed in this quaint, medieval hotel that was really more like someone's home. Here are some pictures of part of the town as the sun was about to set.

You could actually walk around nearly the whole town on the inside of the wall that's shown below. It was pretty high up, so you could get a good view of the town as you walked around.

We went to a museum that showed the different ways they would punish lawbreakers back then, one of which is shown below. I think this particular one was warn as punishment by women who were caught gossiping:

We also went on a city tour with a man dressed in costume who spoke as if it were back in the times when this town was thriving and practicing cruel and unusual punishment. It was one of my favorite parts of the time there.

Here are just some cool shots of the buildings.

This is the bell tower that back-in-the-day would warn the Rothenburg residents outside the city walls to hurry in before the gate was locked up for the night. They would do this nightly so they wouldn't be invaded. Once they closed the gate, they would refuse to open it. There was a little miniature compartment that was big enough for only one person that could be used by anyone who didn't make it back in time but if you were the second guy, you were out of luck and would have to sleep under the stars until the morning when they'd let you in.

Come Again?!

I get almost all my news from the internet, which means that I usually know more about the national news than the local news. So imagine my alarm when I read this message on my work e-mail:

"To be pro-active about the volcano eruption, IT would ask that you power down your PC and printers at night before going home."

The volcano eruption?

The Oscar Grouch

If you can bring yourself to read this whole thing, I’ve got an awesome idea.On Saturday Michelle and I watched The Dark Knight with the kids in my Sunday School class (they swear it’s ok with their parents). It was the third time I’ve watched it, and I distinctly thought “If this doesn’t get at least nominated for best picture, then the Oscars have no meaning.” It’s a superbly-executed allegory for the moral conflicts of the War on Terror. Heath Ledger as the Joker is the perfect portrayal of a Nietzchean Superman. Surely if any action movie can be nominated, it’s this one. There are only two minor flaws in the movie: 1) a couple of plot holes that you don’t even think about until later, and 2) Maggie Gyllenhall looks like the kind of crazy girl that I will warn my sons about, the kind that writes depressing poetry and doesn’t wash her hair for weeks at a time. It actually made me miss Katie Holmes.

Well, the nominees came out today:
1. Slumdog Millionaire
2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
3. Frost/Nixon
4. Milk
5. The Reader

I looked it up, and the highest grossing movie from among these five was “Benjamin Button”. It was the #22 among all the movies released last year. Slumdog Millionaire was #62. “Milk” was #111, Frost/Nixon was #145, and The Reader was #148. This means there are two movies nominated for “Best Picture” that were apparently less desirable to audiences than “The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything” (#127). Three of those movies put together made less than “Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay” (#75). And The Dark Knight was seen by three times as many people as all five nominees combined.

This is why I don't watch the Oscars. Basically, Hollywood types are like mopey teenagers who only like bands that no one has ever heard of, but claim that they liked all the popular bands "before they got big". They should have just dubbed the movie in Cantonese and called it "Crouching Joker, Hidden Batman." Then the critics would have loved it. Do you think anyone is going to watch “The Reader” ten or twenty years from now? No one is watching it now, for crying out loud. Apparently movies are like food; if it tastes good, it must be bad for you.

I realize that the boring “critically acclaimed” movies aren’t going anywhere. So here’s my suggestion: Just like how the NCAA Basketball Tournament has East, West, South and Midwest brackets, the Best Picture Oscar should have brackets for different kinds of movies. Here are my suggested brackets:

1. The “Blockbuster” Bracket: Because at least one of the nominees ought to be a movie people care about.

2. The “Discrimination Film” Bracket: Because people still just don’t understand how hard it can be to grow up in this country as a minority/woman/disabled/left-handed/gay/Canadian/ex-con/pedophile/communist/terrorist.

3. The “Holocaust/Nazi” Bracket: Because Fascism is all you have left when you refuse to acknowledge the millions of people who were killed by the Communists.

4. The “Depressing Movies About People Who Hate Life Where the Protagonist is Just as Spiteful, Dishonest, Adulterous and Selfish as the Antagonist” Bracket: Because Hollywood loves characters with “nuance”. Note to movie directors: there’s a problem with your movie if I want both the "good guy" and the "bad guy" to die.

5. I can’t decide whether to make this the “Biopic” Bracket or the “Anything with Meryl Streep in it” Bracket, because there’s going to be one of these nominated every year.

What do you think of my plan?

Sledding at Soldier Hollow

Sariah just emailed me the pictures we took on her camera of our sledding trip at Soldier Hollow over the break. It's becoming sort of a tradition and I love it! There had been a snowstorm recently so we found the first few times down it was easy to find yourself stopping on the middle of the hill. But we're pretty much professional sledders so we developed a system that I believe people were jealous of. I won't reveal our secrets, but I will say we had a blast flying down in record speed.