you're ordering tests to cover your lechery; or help, my rotisseur's arm is full of spiders

I'm back from my week at the cottage. We left a little later than originally planned, after a couple of my hebrew peeps came through with cancelled plans of their own and we all got together for a rockin' jewish christmas eve. In what was a harbinger of things to come, The Aviator turned out to be kind of meh. This has been one awful year at the movies, and so why should this be any different? There's nothing really wrong with the picture, just nothing extraordinary, and for my money that makes it a disappointment. Remember when Scorsese had so many ideas it didn't seem like they all fit on the screen at the same time? Well now he's a competent journeyman who seems less passionate about the stories he's telling than Ron Howard does. I'd love to talk to someone in 1978 and let them know that someday Richie Cunningham was gonna be a better director than the guy that just did Taxi Driver.

Then it was some excellent Omonia greek, and in the morning we headed north. I packed about 10 dvd's and no books (a mistake, as it turned out that Cig actually did need to use his own computer some of the time, leaving me with nothing to do but spend time with my son. That bastard.) I did manage to get this astounding picture:



I think he might have a slight astigmatism, we'll know better after some tests. This was part of our time spent playing 3d Tic-Tac-Toe (those are the "O's"), a shockingly challenging game that was quickly replaced by a variation in which both players work cooperatively to try not to win. This is, of course impossible and that added to the joy. The main point of playing games with Max isn't so much to play the games anyways, it's to teach him how to win, and how to lose. At almost 5, it's a work in progress.

We played in the snow, I watched about 14 hours of commentary and special features (that giant burning building in Gone With The Wind?, it's the gates to Skull Island from RKO's back lot), Leah read an entire book, and general nondescript fun was had by all. Max can now play Mary Had a Little Lamb on the piano, and nothing else of consequence was accomplished. We came back yesterday, leaving Max for one extra day of fun.

There were still a couple of movies left on my list, so I headed out for a double feature, Life Aquatic (more meh) and Million Dollar Baby (still more meh, although in this case a two thirds excellent movie ruined by a poor final third) and then it was home again to my warm bed.

Now my only problem is what to do with New Year's eve.