‘The Dictator’ may surprise you when you laugh out loud, in spite of your reservations

Good advice in many situations: “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

When in Japan, eat with chopsticks.

When on Illinois interstate highways, drive fast and follow slow drivers with Wisconsin plates so closely as to pressure them to move to right lane.

When spending time with 17-year-olds, learn to appreciate Sacha Baron Cohen.

This is how I came to spend good money and 90 minutes of my life with “The Dictator” this past weekend. My stepson wanted to see it, and I wanted to spend time with my stepson.

Five years ago, Caswell adopted a new accent and a verbal tic for six months after seeing “Borat.” The 13-year-old delighted in Borat’s low-brow mockumentary humor. I must have heard “I want to make sexy time” at least 10,000 times. Thank goodness, he grew out of it. And yet, he’s a Sacha Baron Cohen fan.

And so, “The Dictator” held the promise of new lows and grating lines. And you know what? It wasn’t too bad. In fact, I laughed out loud several times. And, at the end, I very much appreciated the satire of the dictator’s speech on dictatorships.

Given that it stars Cohen, “The Dictator” is filled with potty humor, embarrassing sexual references, shocking racist comments and a musical version of a four-syllable expletive that will have you singing words that would make your mother blush. But it also has a plot, a love interest and a searing perspective on our American values that will make you wonder if the democracy Egypt is establishing with its presidential vote today for the first time in thousands of years is worth it.

You’ll appreciate “The Dictator” most if you have a strong stomach for shock humor, a basic understanding of current affairs and an appreciation for Cohen’s comedic courage. And, of course, love the one you’re with. Good company makes any outing better.

This shopping trip was a first

If you can follow the logic between watching “Doomsday Preppers” on National Geographic Channel and shopping for a hand gun, then you understand the phrase “contagious paranoia.”

Did you know you need a firearm owner’s identification card to even touch a gun in an Illinois gun shop? And did you know it takes 30 days, 10 bucks and a clean mental and legal record to get one?

And did you know a 9mm handgun is probably the best option for a woman whose experience in shooting a gun begins and ends with a water pistol because it is lighter, has less recoil and doesn’t jam?

And did you know you can rent a gun at some shooting ranges so you can try one and become familiar with a particular type of shooter?

As for “contagious paranoia” and logical leaps, you might follow the link from “global pandemic” to “Be a hero.” “Global pandemic” is trending right now on National Geographic Channel’s Doomsday Dashboard. The how-to-survive rule “Don’t be a hero” was changed to “Be a hero” in the 2009 movie “Zombieland,” a tale about life after a zombie apocalypse.

Never hurts to be prepared. Extremely well prepared.

Making spirits bright … or maybe just haunting me

“Captain, he put creatures … in our ears
… to control our minds.”

~ Chekov in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”

Yeah, nothing like a Ceti eel to interfere with the mission at hand. Here on Earth, they’re known as ear worms, I learned this week on National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation.”

An ear worm is one of those nuisance fragments of a song that plays endlessly in your head.

For some inexplicable reason, that nuisance song for me recently has been “Jingle Bells.”

A listener of “Talk of the Nation” offered this advice for combatting such a creature: Sing through the whole song to close the loop (click here for that replay).

Let’s try it …

Dashing through the snow
In a one-horse open sleigh
O’er the fields we go
Laughing all the way.
Bells on bob-tail ring
Making spirits bright
What fun it is to ride and sing
A sleighing song tonight.

Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way,
Oh, what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh. Hey!
Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way,
Oh what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh.

Did it work? Yeah, me neither. At least now I won’t be alone in the rubber room.

You’re welcome.

Top 5 movie surprises of 2011

At this time of year, every movie reviewer in the country prepares a list of his or her Top 10 best movies of the year.

I’ll leave the best movies to the best reviewers, but if you’re looking for a few lesser known gems from a lesser known reviewer, check these out. These are the most surprisingly good movies I saw in 2011:

1. “White Irish Drinkers” (2010): I watched this story last weekend of two brothers trapped in their 1975 Brooklyn lives and pondering a robbery, destined for mediocrity or infamy. I was on the edge of my seat during this entire movie, waiting for the worst thing to happen. But the expected things don’t happen and, not to be a spoiler, I found the ending satisfying.

2. “Atonement” (2007): Wikipedia describes this as a “British romantic suspense war movie” set mostly in the 1930s. Starring James McAvoy and Keira Knightly, this story does indeed have romance and suspense. The main female character is a writer, to which I of course relate, and the soundtrack is magnificent.

3. “The Other Woman” (2009): I cried my eyes out when I saw “The Other Woman” staring Natalie Portman as the character for whom the movie is titled. Lisa Kudrow plays the biological mom. Besides the subtext of adultery and remarriage, the relationship between Portman’s character and her new stepson is center stage, and I found myself alternately wondering how she could be such a bad stepmother (not wicked, exactly, but definitely not good) and rooting for her success. Adding drama to this exceptional character-driven story, Portman’s character loses her biological child. The movie, which I recommend even if you’re not part of a stepfamily,  is based on a book I haven’t read, “Love and Other Impossible Pursuits.”

4. “Lars and the Real Girl” (2007): This love story, of sorts, stars Ryan Gosling, who paired with George Clooney in the “Ides of March” this year, in an unconventional relationship with a blow-up doll. It’s much better than it sounds. Set in Wisconsin, it features all kinds of Midwest references to Scandinavians, church goers, winter and buttoned-up repression. I laughed, I cried, it became a part of me (really).

5. “Cedar Rapids” (2011): For the wife of an insurance man, I enjoyed every minute of this romp with insurance salespeople at their annual convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. A naive insurance agent (Ed Helms from “The Office”)  gets out of his comfort zone and ends up opening the eyes of others. John C. Reilly is outrageous, as usual, and I enjoy Sigourney Weaver in just about anything.

Enjoy the movie season and the movie review season!

Though it tried, D-BOX seat didn’t rock my world

Why settle for 2D or even 3D movie experience when one can enjoy an interactive one?

Why, indeed.

I’m sure interactive movies will progress mightily, but I wouldn’t recommend springing for the D-BOX seats at your local theater just yet.

D-BOX technology moves your movie seat in ways integrated with the movie itself. While watching “Real Steel” this afternoon with my Beloved and my stepson, our chairs jiggled while the characters were driving down the road in a truck, thundered when the half-ton robots stomped through the screen and jolted with each right hook and left upper cut.

I enjoyed the movie more than the moving chair. “Real Steel” is a futuristic story about a boxing promoter with an underdog robot on the robot boxing circuit and an estranged 11-year-old son. It’s a decent example of the marriage of good characters and good special effects. The story does a masterful job of appeasing the interests of a 17-year-old and a couple of 40something-year-olds.

At one point, rain is pouring from the sky and I half expected rain to fall from the theater ceiling. That kind of sensory detail — smell, taste and feel — is what it will take to make interactive movies impressive. Like the old 3D glasses, a moving chair was just a gimmick.

4 worthwhile resources for wicked stepmothers (and the rest of us who are just trying our best)

“Love is learning how to be patient.”

Chicago Tribune reporter Kevin Pang used this line in a story today about Enrique Calderon, a line cook at Ina’s restaurant who flawlessly flips Ina’s famous pancakes.

It’s good advice for stepmoms, too.

Having been a stepmom for three years now, I have an inkling of how much I didn’t know when I first met the boy who became my stepson and the young woman who became my stepdaughter. I can’t say I wouldn’t have taken this road if I had known all the ups and downs I was in for, but I might have traveled better if I had a few of these stepmom resources:

1. A book: Being a stepmother is “the most difficult role in the family today,” according to Ron L. Deal and Laura Petherbridge, authors of “The Smart Stepmom,” a fabulous guide for a woman thinking about getting involved with a man with children and for women who have been stepmoms for years. The book is written from a Christian perspective, but the principles therein can be adopted by any woman looking for advice on understanding the motivations of their stepchildren, engaging her husband and coping successfully with the biological mom. I wish I would have read this book before I got married the second time; maybe I wouldn’t have made so many mistakes and taken so many slights personally.
2. A magazine: StepMom Magazine is an online magazine that specifically addresses the unique challenges of stepmoms. It’s not cheap ($5 a month), but it is full of relevant well-written stories and useful perspectives. The September issue has stories on loyalty binds, jealousy between stepmothers and stepdaughters, resolving conflict and forgiveness plus regular features. It’s designed so well, I print it out.
3. A website: I found www.NoOnesTheBitch.com on Facebook. If nothing else, it is an amazing case study on using social media to promote one’s book (which is also interesting to me). “No One’s The Bitch” is written by a biological mom and a stepmom who actually get along and do so well enough that they wrote a book about it. I haven’t read the book yet, but the website is well-stocked and features a blog. They also have a fan page on Facebook that puts out inspirational and interactive information.
4. A movie: I cried my eyes out the other night when I saw “The Other Woman” staring Natalie Portman as the character for whom the movie is titled. Lisa Kudrow plays the biological mom. Besides the subtext of adultery and remarriage, the relationship between Portman’s character and her new stepson is center stage, and I found myself alternately wondering how she could be such a bad stepmother (not wicked, exactly, but definitely not good) and rooting for her success. Adding drama to this exceptional character-driven story, Portman’s character loses her biological child. The movie, which I recommend even if you’re not part of a stepfamily,  is based on a book I haven’t read, “Love and Other Impossible Pursuits.”

For other posts about my stepmother journey, click on “Parenting” in the tag cloud in the right column.

‘Cedar Rapids’ makes insurance downright fun

If you’re looking for a light-hearted comedy with plenty of Midwest humor and just enough farce to keep you smirking until the next laugh, check out “Cedar Rapids.”

“Cedar Rapids” is a comedy starring Ed Helms (“The Office”) as a naive insurance agent at his first insurance industry convention in the cosmopolitan Iowa city. Helms’ bawdy comic foil is John C. Reilly (“Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby”), who throws out rapid-fire lines with panache.

The story is underscored with sweetness despite its vulgarities, free-flowing alcohol, illegal drugs and a character who is a prostitute. The movie is fun no matter what your job, but the punch lines are especially tart if you know anything about the insurance industry, as I do, being married to an insurance salesman. I snagged the best line for a job summary I jazzed up today for my Beloved:

“Insurance agents get people’s lives back on track.”

~ Tim Lippe in “Cedar Rapids”

Better to watch ‘Horrible Bosses’ than have one

“Horrible Bosses” got me thinking about my employment revenge fantasies.

The movie was OK. Certainly not bad. But not as good as the reviews led me to believe. I laughed, yes, out loud sometimes, but “Horrible Bosses” is no “Hangover.”

I am way too buttoned up to ever imagine actually killing my boss, as the downtrodden employees in the movie did, but I have fantasized about leaving a boss completely incapacitated in a work sense as I walked out the pool house/newsroom/meeting room/cubicle with a flurry of expletives and a “take this job and shove it” refrain. I never actually got to enjoy such a dramatic exit, and unfortunately, the saying is true: No one is irreplaceable. There was always another cog willing to take my place on the wheel, and my former places of employment tended to go on without me (though one of them declared bankruptcy after I left, and I watched with a mix of glee and dread as another one of them melted down in every sense short of bankruptcy).

I distinctly remember chanting “ding, dong, the witch is dead” after one of my former bosses left. Or was she dismissed? I no longer remember. The smug sense of victory has faded over time.

The supervisor characters in the movie were over the top in terms of being bad. Are there real bosses who are that overt in their abuses of power? In my experience, the truly horrible bosses in the world are much better at hiding their horrible-ness behind fake smiles, limp handshakes, lame rules and long absences.

Got a horrible boss story? Do tell.

Potpourri post

Weekend thoughts on corn, movies and writing …

• Illinois sweet corn is better than Minnesota sweet corn. Sorry, Minnesota friends, but it is. I wish it was some other way for you, but it’s not. Hampshire friends, get thee to Prairie View for some fresh sweet corn. Having enjoyed locally grown sweet corn in northern Illinois for five years now, I know it’s not a fluke. Could be the soil. Could be the rain patterns. I’m sure the farmers here and there are equally attentive, but the sweet corn here is just better. I ate my first ears of the season for lunch today, and they were sublime.
• After watching the 2007 movie “Atonement” yesterday, I understood completely why the musical score won the Oscar for Best Original Score. The movie is about a writer, and the score brilliantly incorporates a typewriter into the rhythm. It’s lovely. Makes me want to watch all the movies in the past 10 years that have earned Best Original Score Academy Awards.
• I was encouraged to reminisce about my high school boyfriend by a friend who read a draft of my book, so I spent a little time on that today:

He wrote me long, emotion-filled letters almost every day when I first went away to college. Popular inventions like cell phones and easy internet access didn’t exist back in the late 1980s, at least at the college I went to in the middle of nowhere, Minnesota. I could only afford to call him (and by “call,” I mean “dial” and by “dial” I mean “radial dial,” remember those?) on the hallway dorm phone once a week, so letters filled the gap. He would write romantic nothings about how much he missed me or funny things about his day or sometimes he included lyrics from a piece of pop music.

I destroyed his letters at some point after getting together with my ex-husband, and I’ve missed them. I threw them away with good intentions of proving my loyalty, but those little letters were a solid, substantial record of love, however fleeting. Sometimes, I wish I had that proof in the form of handwritten words to remind me.

• Didn’t make it to “Horrible Bosses” this weekend like I’d hoped (reviews, anyone?), but I did catch Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman in the 2010 movie, “Switch” about a woman who has a baby through artificial insemination over the objections of her best friend who ends up switching his sperm for the sperm donor’s. It was an amusing movie, and Juliette Lewis earns huge kudos in the supporting actress role.

A little bit of Havana, inside and out

“Care for some gopher, Everett?”

“No, thank you, Delmar. One third of a gopher would only arouse my appetite without bedding it down.”

“Oh, you can have the whole thing. Me and Pete already had one apiece. We ran across a whole … gopher village.”

– “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?”

Today’s unusual menu option: Cuban-Style Beans with Rice & Plantains.

Those yellow things are diced and sautéed plantains, kind of like hard green bananas. They taste like potatoes.

But that’s not the weirdest thing about this dish. The weirdest thing is that is calls for three kinds of onions: sautéed yellow onion with the beans and garnishes of red onion and scallions. I can still taste them.

I enjoyed this dish with a Corona. Yes, it’s a Mexican beer. Does Cuba have a beer? Like its cigars, Cuban beer is probably not legal here either.

Besides the homage in food, it’s feeling like Cuba around here. It was 91 degrees in northern Illinois on Tuesday and got up to 88 degrees yesterday and today. Mop my brow!

Heat must be getting to me.