short 'n' sweet... well, short... well, not as long as usual... aw shut up and read it!

Kids, Mom's hungover. Do you know what a hangover is?

"Does that mean you're drunk?"

"Not today -- I was drunk yesterday."

Lifted from School of Rock which I hope to go see, but am not holding my breath. (The last movie I saw in a theater was... was... hmmm... AH HA! That X2 movie, the X-Men sequel. I think. What was that, May? Good Lord. Honey: for our anniversay we're going to the darned movies!)

Anyways, we went to a post-hurricane party last night. That's what old people do -- we make sure everything came out okay and THEN we party, instead of during the hurricane like we did when we were kids. (Although, I never had a hurricane party; I was too young during the hurricanes when I lived here.) I partooketh too much and have been paying for it all day. As well as Daddy, whom I've just left, who got to benefit from me sniping at him. To be fair, I DID warn him it would happen and tried to leave sooner but then that damned Nick and Jessica show came on MTV and damn if that is not compelling.

Which has left me in a dither -- do I blog about this awful show (or just let you read this article from the prolific Heather Havrilesky -- who is NOT me) OR do I blog about the awful AWFUL movie I watched this morning while moaning on the couch and trying not to hurl again.

The movie it is then. Some of you may have seen it and if so, you have my apologies. It's called The Time Machine. Guy Pearce, whom I LOVED in Memento (that was that backwards movie), starred and he was just awful. But it wasn't his fault because the movie was just so bad. Painfully bad. As they say, it was trainwreck bad. It wasn't quite "Newlyweds" bad, but what can be? It starts out well enough, boy loves girl, girl loves boy, girl dies in tragic mugging, boy builds a time machine so he can go back and stop this from happening. An average story, really. But, then it got really bizarre. He decides to go to the future to get the answer to his question. And again, looks kinda promising because he sees a girl on a bike who comments on his quaint clothing and she kinda looks like the chick who died and you think that's going to turn into something. Predictably bad, maybe -- but not painful. But no. It gets worse. He decides he needs to travel further into the future and just 7 short years later he arrives to find the city in ruins because the drilling on the moon for the lunar colony they were building threw the moon out of orbit and it's about to crash into Earth.

No. I am not making that up. You see a blip about the lunar colony in his first visit to the future and then in the next instant -- it's destroying the world. Then he goes FAR into the future where he meets Mara and her brother Cayden. Their people live in these houses that look like baskets that are built into the sides of cliff walls. They're very primitive, like cavemen. People disappear, there are BAD things happening but no one ever speaks of it. Just when dude's getting ready to go travelling again, creatures rise out of the dirt and trees and start attacking. Of course, they steal Mara and no one does anything. Because they go after the ones who fight back FIRST.

Turns out these creatures evolved because of the moon crash thing -- some people went under ground and some stayed above. The underground people weren't able to survive once it was safe to go above ground and yet somehow they're able to survive long enough to hunt the above ground people. They eat them. But some of them are used for breeding, hence their interest in Mara.

No. Still not making this up. Jeremy Irons was all done up to look like a mad yet dashing albino whose brain has grown so big that it extends down his spinal cord.

Blah blah blah -- Guy Pearce fights with the bad guy, uses the time machine to change the future (he goes even further into the future and sees that the underground people are running things and so he goes back to the time when he left Mara) and decides that this land is HIS home now. Flash back to the time period he left and his nuturing housekeeper and blustery best friend are baffled at his disappearance but decide that it's for the best. Perhaps he's found a new home.

Yup. That was it.

This wasn't short. Oops. Could have actually been longer but I couldn't bear to go into the detail that was really necessary to fully describe how bad this movie was and why. This is why I couldn't be a movie critic -- I can't put the weight behind the argument. Just know that it sucks. Please don't watch it. You won't be able to stop and then you'll hate yourself after. It's kinda like when you eat the whole carton of Ben & Jerry's even though you promised yourself you were going to make it last at least 2 times this time. You hate yourself after but you know if you had to do it all over again you would.

Anyways -- last note... Turns out that the hurricane didn't cause me and S to devolve into snarking at each other. We did pretty darned well and even could have taken a break last night and neither one of us wanted to.

It's like we're in love or something, it's disgusting!! ;-)

Take care y'all -- email your hurricane stories!

-HP

ps: If you do decide to read the review of The Newlyweds, it's at Salon.com. You do NOT have to subscribe, you just have to agree to watch an ad before they'll let you finish reading. It's no big deal.