Actually, it’s time for the Academy of Country Music awards (ACM’s), which are totally different than the Country Music Association’s awards (CMA’s), but somehow Spring Ahead to the Academy of Country Music Awards just didn’t make such a great blog title.  For you country music fans out there, you know that spring and fall are the awesome times of year for country music awards.  We get 2 great awards shows, and coming up in May are the ACM awards – the nominations were announced last week, that’s why I get to write about this now.  I was lucky enough to attend this show live one time in 2000.  It was TOTALLY AWESOME – I’d LOVE to go back…  something like that (and lots of liquor) just might get me on an airplane again…  yeah right.  Anyway, Dolly Parton hosted, and Dick Clark ran around the stage during the breaks fretting over this and that and everything in between.  Winners’ acceptance speeches got cut off, and there was the general glitz and glam of any L.A. awards show – only we were there!  And talk about a GREAT concert!  Getting to see like, 15 top country music performers LIVE, singing only their hits was unbeatable.  And I learned a lot too because I had never been to the taping of a live tv event before.  Did you know that they have “stand-ins” ready in case anyone who is seated down in front has to leave for the bathroom or anything else?  They pay models to dress up and get ready in case they need to sit in say, Wynonna Judd’s seat so it’s not empty when they show the audience on tv if Wy needs a potty break (that actually happened!).  So anyway, this year I will be watching the ACM’s from the comfort of my couch; hopefully without interuptions from kids (should change the name of this post to Yeah, Right).

I can’t remember if it’s the ACM’s or the CMA’s where they’ll have a live performer, and then that person will be nominated for the next award, so after their performance they’ll be waiting backstage, and every time they end up winning the award!  I wish they’d make it a little less obvious!  We like to fill out our own ballots and make a guessing game out of our picks for winners, and this type of format makes that too easy!  All you have to do is figure out the order of award presentations, figure out the schedule of performers, and Viola!  You’ve won the bet!  I’ll let you know come CMA awards time which awards show does this, unless they’ve (hopefully) changed things by now.

Here are the nominees this year, enjoy the show!

TOP NEW MALE VOCALIST

Luke Bryan

Jack Ingram

Jake Owen

TOP NEW FEMALE VOCALIST

Sarah Buxton

Kellie Pickler

Taylor Swift

TOP NEW DUO OR VOCAL GROUP

Carolina Rain

Lady Antebellum

The Wreckers

ALBUM OF THE YEAR [Award to Artist(s)/Producer(s)/Record Company]

5th Gear – Brad Paisley (Arista Nashville) Produced by Frank Rogers

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend – Miranda Lambert (Columbia) Produced by Frank Liddell, Mike Wrucke

Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates – Kenny Chesney (BNA) Produced by Buddy Cannon, Kenny Chesney

If You’re Going Through Hell – Rodney Atkins (Curb) Produced by Rodney Atkins, Ted Hewitt

Taylor Swift – Taylor Swift (Big Machine) Produced by Scott Borchetta, Nathan Chapman # 6 Produced by Robert Ellis Orrall

SINGLE RECORD OF THE YEAR [Award to Artist(s)/Producer(s)/Record Company]

Don’t Blink – Kenny Chesney, Produced by Buddy Cannon, Kenny Chesney BNA

Famous In A Small Town – Miranda Lambert, Produced by Frank Liddell, Mike Wrucke Columbia

Lost In This Moment – Big & Rich, Produced by Big Kenny, John Rich – Warner Bros/WRN

Stay – Sugarland, Produced by Kristian Bush, Byron Gallimore, Jennifer Nettles Mercury

Watching Airplanes – Gary Allan, Produced by Gary Allan , Mark Wright MCA Nashville

SONG OF THE YEAR [Award to Composer(s)/Publisher(s)/Artist(s)]

Don’t Blink – Kenny Chesney – Writers: Casey Beathard, Chris Wallin Publishers: Lavender Zoo Music (BMI), Mama’s Dream Music (ASCAP), Sony/ATV Acuff Rose (BMI), WB Music Corp. (ASCAP)

Lost In This Moment – Big & Rich – Writers: Keith Anderson, Rodney Clawson, John Rich Publishers: EMI April Music, Inc. (ASCAP), Romeo Cowboy Music (ASCAP), WB MusicCorp. (ASCAP), Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. (BMI), Writer’s Extreme Music (BMI)

Moments – Emerson Drive – Writers: Dave Berg, Annie Tate, Sam Tate  Publishers: Gravitron (SESAC), WB Music Corp. (ASCAP)

Watching You – Rodney Atkins – Writers: Rodney Atkins, Steve Dean, Brian White Publishers: Bethar Music (BMI), Mike Curb Music (BMI), Multisongs (SESAC), Songs From The White House (SESAC)

Stay – Sugarland – Writer: Jennifer Nettles – Publishers: Jennifer Nettles Publishing (ASCAP)

VIDEO OF THE YEAR [Award to Producer(s)/Director(s)/Artist(s)]

Don’t Blink – Kenny Chesney – Producer: Tacklebox Films  Director: Shaun Silva

Lost In This Moment – Big & Rich  Producer: Big Kenny, Steve Lamar, Marc Oswald Director: Robert Deaton and George Flanigen

Online – Brad Paisley – Producer: Frames Per Second – Director: Jason Alexander

Stay – Sugarland – Producer: Kristian Bush, Byron Gallimore, Jennifer Nettles – Director: Shaun Silva

Watching You – Rodney Atkins – Producer: Broken Poet Production – Director: Eric Welch

VOCAL EVENT OF THE YEAR [Award to Artist(s)/Producer(s)/Record Company]

Because Of You – Reba McEntire Duet With Kelly Clarkson – Produced by Tony Brown, Reba McEntire MCA Nashville

Find Out Who Your Friends Are – Tracy Lawrence With Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney – Produced by Julian King, Tracy Lawrence – Rocky Comfort/CO5

Shiftwork – Kenny Chesney Duet With George Strait – Produced by Buddy Cannon, Kenny Chesney BNA

Till We Ain’t Strangers Anymore – Bon Jovi Featuring LeAnn Rimes – Produced by Dann Huff – Mecury

What You Give Away –Vince Gill With Sheryl Crow – Produced by Vince Gill, John Hobbs, Justin Niebank – MCA Nashville

I am having some motivation problems with this blog- lately I just don’t feel like writing about work.  It seems like the things I go through are either just too uninteresting to write about when I think about it, or it is similar to something I already wrote.  Sometimes I just don’t get around to it and am too tired by the time I think about it.  These past few days have really all been similar.  I really only got to teach math for the last three days, and today we didn’t even do that so I didn’t do much of anything except help out like a teaching assistant.  Not that there’s really anything wrong with that but it is rather unexciting to write about.  The most tedious part I think was during the morning today, and again at the start of the afternoon when the third graders just played educational games on their laptops (only 4th-6th did testing today, and the other half of the multiage rooms were fourth grade).  I of course had to walk around and make sure they were playing only educational games.  They are not as devious as middle-schoolers, but fun will still win out over education if left unwatched, even with third graders.

Today was actually a very easy teaching day overall, even for the other teacher.  In fact, the only subject actually taught/worked on was reading.  The rest of the day was spend on laptops, read-alouds, silent reading, down-time packets, and classroom games.  Sub + already messed up schedules due to testing = even even worse schedules.  From the last four days, I would say the teacher I was subbing for really owes the other teacher big time for getting sick and leaving her pretty much all of the planning work and team teaching.

Hmm… This was actually going to be very short due to my lack of motivation, but turned out to be quite reasonable in length.  Goes to show that once one gets started, the writing can just keep going.

My blog title is just about as creative as last night’s episode – not one of our favorites.  Let’s start by referring you to the tvguide.com blog.  Thank goodness our regular writer is back.  Not only does she give a complete synopsis of the episodes, she likes to make it interactive by posing interesting questions to the viewers:  https://community.tvguide.com/blog/Lost/800062566

And, as a bonus this week, tvguide.com had a really interesting Q & A with some of the Lost cast members.  It wasn’t just interview-type questions either; it was cast members asking the producers questions about what’s going to happen in the show.  I think I learned more from this Q & A than from last night’s episode!  Check it out here:  https://www.tvguide.com/news/lost-questions-answered/080304-01

Keep in mind that since this is a synopsis of last night’s episode, there will be SPOILERS ahead, so don’t read if you don’t want to know what happened!

When the episode opened last night, we see Juliet in makeup, which tells us this is either a flash-forward or a flash-back.  My first thought (and likewise with the tv guide blogger it turns out) is that it’s a flash-forward and Juliet is one of the ‘Oceanic 6’.  We soon find out that this is not the case; it’s actually a flash-back, and BOOM – here are 2 new characters for us all of a sudden, Harper and her husband, Griffin.  Later in the episode, we find out that Griffin has met his demise already, so at least we only have Harper as a new character to contend with.  I don’t know about everybody else, but I don’t remember Griffin from previous episodes.  They showed him when the Others saw Oceanic 815 fall from the sky, and the tv guide blog mentioned him interacting with Ana Lucia, but I personally don’t remember him.  If I wasn’t worried about being reminded of a thousand loose ends that haven’t been tied up, I would go back and watch the episodes with Griffin in them.  And speaking of Ana Lucia, her name has come up a lot lately for someone who has been dead for awhile.  During the preview for next week’s episode, they mentioned that we will “see a face you never thought you’d see again.”  Please, please do not let it be Ana Lucia!  Luckily, I think Michelle Rodriguez was too much of a liability for the show to ever resurrect her character – I hope.  Didn’t like Michelle Rodriguez (couldn’t she afford a taxi or better yet, to not get drunk at the Lost party rather than drive home?  She ruined her up-and-coming career – what a moron), and I didn’t like Ana Lucia one bit.  And speaking of coming back, tonight’s episode marked the reappearance of the eerie whispering in the forest, along with the numbers (there was a safe on the wall behind a painting, how corny, but the combination to the safe was some of the numbers that played such a major part in seasons 1 and 2 – haven’t seen them much since).  The eerie whispering and the numbers are two things I really hope they will explain someday…  And speaking of questions, here are my questions after watching tonight’s episode:

1.  Locke says to Ben, “There is just one more thing I want to know.”  WHAT?  There is really only ONE more thing Locke wants to know from Ben?  I would have a million questions for that guy!

2.  Why does Ben say something about kids asking for their mother?  Are the Zach and Emma he is referring to HIS kids?

3.  Do Farraday and Juliet know each other?  In tonight’s episode they seemed to, but before this, they didn’t.

Also tonight, there were 2 interesting quotes which I will leave you with:

1.  Ben pulls a video tape labeled Red Sox out of the safe, and says, “I taped over the game.”  I found it kind of cheesy, but my husband thought it was funny.  Cheesy or not, it was pretty funny to hear Ben say that in that calculatingly evil tone of his.

2.  Juliet says, “It was very stressful being an Other, Jack.”  I guess you had to see it, but it was a very entertaining and intriguing line, hearing it after all we’ve been through, especially when the Others were so mysterious for so long.  The tvguide blog mentioned this line too; it was very noteworthy.

I was disappointed after this week’s episode because again, there are more new characters and less answers than ever.  The cast Q & A they had on tvguide.com helped to cheer me up a little though; it gave me hope that the producers and writers do have some idea of where they’re taking this show because I do have my doubts that they know what they’re doing or where they’re going.  I just hope next week’s episode is better.

For several decades, movie directors have attempted to seamlessly blend live action and animation. In the 1945 film Anchor’s Aweigh, Gene Kelly danced with Jerry Mouse. Dancing penguins served as waiters in Mary Poppins. Michael Jordan played basketball with Bugs Bunny and a multitude of other Looney Tunes. There must be several other examples; however, one of the finest films to combine animated characters and live actors is 1988s Who Framed Roger Rabbit.Bob Hoskins plays Eddie Valient, a middle-aged detective investigating the murder of Marvin Acme (owner of Acme Products and Toontown). The prime suspect: Roger Rabbit, star of Maroon Cartoons. Roger is “framed” for the murder after he discovers that his beloved wife Jessica played pattycake with Acme. Valient (who’s brother was killed by a toon) reluctantly agrees to help Roger clear his good name.But, the plot takes a back seat to the cameo appearances by hundreds of cartoon characters. Black-and-white as well as color toons interact with each other as well as with their human counterparts. Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Daffy Duck, Donald Duck, Betty Boop, and Droopy are just a few of the animated characters seen throughout the movie. Donald and Daffy’s dueling piano scene is priceless. With the cast of characters seen throughout the movie, everyone is sure to find their favorite. Although a majority of the toons were created in the 1940s, most are easily recognizable.

I have yet to figure out what makes women so much better at making sandwiches than men.  It might sound funny, but it’s very true.  I’ve been to a number of Subway Sandwich Shops across a number of states, and every time without fail, if a male makes the sandwich, eating it is dreadful.  They don’t spread the condiments evenly, so the sandwich is either soggy or falls apart or both, and it definitely doesn’t taste very good when ingredients are all clumped together and not spread out correctly.  I can think of 4 possible reasons why females make better “sandwich artists” than males: 1.  organizational skills – Women tend to have better ways of organizing things and in a more efficient order.  Apparently, this holds true even when organizing sandwich ingredients.  2.  detail-orientated thinking – Women tend to think about and obsess over every little detail, just ask their husbands.  3.  patience – Women practice having lots of patience to put up with the men in their daily lives.  It takes lots of patience to make a perfect sub.  4.  compassion – Let’s face it, women have more of this than men.  And it takes an understanding woman to want to take the time to care about your sandwich.

Does this mean that having a woman in the white house is a better choice after all?  Probably not, I wouldn’t read that far into it.  But if I were you, next time you go to a Subway and a male worker says, “Can I help you?”,  you should say, “Thanks, but I prefer a ma’am-wich”.

HAHAHA!  Just kidding!  You’ll look like a big idiot if you say that!  If a man makes your sandwich, just wear a bib and don’t expect it to taste very good!

and straight on til morning. This quote is from Sir James M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. Since the characters introduction in 1902, the boy who never grew up has been the subject of stage plays, movies, cartoon series, books, AND PEANUT BUTTER. In 1991, Steven Spielberg brought to the big screen an adventure that few thought imaginable: a grown up Peter Pan in the film Hook.

Robin Williams is cast as lawyer Peter Banning who has no time for his young son Jack’s baseball games and carries his cell phone wherever he goes. In an ironic scene at the beginning of the movie, the cell phone goes off during his daughter Maggie’s performance of (what else) “Peter Pan.”

The Banning family travel to London to honor Granny Wendy and her orphanage. While there, Jack and Maggie are kidnapped by Captain Hook. Wendy informs Peter that he is indeed Peter Pan and the children have been kidnapped in an attempt to lure him to Neverland for one final battle. Unwilling to believe Wendy, Peter is eventually knocked out and dragged by Tinkerbell to Neverland.

The title character is played magnificently by Dustin Hoffman. The makeup makes him almost unrecognizable. Part of the fun in watching the DVD is seeing how many actors you can discover in the background: Phil Collins and Glenn Close both have small cameos.

Hook makes even the most stubborn of adults believe that buried deep inside of themselves there is a bit of the kid which all of us have inside. A great family film.

Bet you think this is going to be about one of my kids, don’t ya?  Well, the truth is, they’re all good.  Unless you count yesterday, when #2 and #3 were acting up…  but it was another snow day, so I think they had cabin fever.  And luckily for me, my friend and neighbor called out of nowhere and asked if she could take the older 2 sledding with the kids she watches.  I was having a bad day, especially since the dogs were being needy about going outside constantly (with a new one, it’s not really a fun gamble to see if she’s “lying” about having to go potty!), and as I said, the kids were acting up, so I was very agreeable to the sledding plan!  It was like a miracle – I SOOO needed that break, and the kids needed to get out of the house, so in the words of my friend Morat – EVERYONE WINS!!!  THANK YOU SHELLEY!

Now, for what the post is really about:  The Jennifer Aniston movie, The Good Girl.  We watched it last night.  You’re probably thinking, wow, they watch lots of movies, and you’re right!  We have a lovely library system where you can search almost every Ohio library online for almost any movie you can think of, and they will ship it to our home library for free – you just have to wait a few days, sometimes longer if it’s a popular movie with a waiting list.  So, almost every night, hubby and I like to sit down with a movie during our “parent time”, providing the kids willingly go to bed, which of course is not always foolproof…  But most of the time, it works, so last night the movie was The Good Girl.  The movie started out kinda slow, but it did get better.  I would classify it as a dark comedy.  Jennifer Aniston plays a bored, depressed housewife who decides to have an affair with a co-worker, played by Jake Gyllenhaal.   Her morals (if she had any to begin with that is) and behavior spiral out of control from then on, and the movie is an entertaining look at modern day suburban life gone awry.  It is a good dark comedy, like I said, it takes some getting used to, but we liked it overall.  Jake Gyllenhaal probably stands out as the best actor in the movie (along with Mike White – more on him later); his character was just this crazy 22-year-old man-child.   Jennifer Aniston was ok, but it took me about 20 minutes to get past her just acting like Rachel from Friends with a southern accent.  Maybe an actress playing the same character for 10 yrs. in a hit sitcom clouds a viewer’s perception, I don’t know…  I did really like that show and have seen every episode at least once, some MANY times.  Once I got used to her in this movie, she did a good job of bringing her character to life, although none of the main characters in this movie were really all that likable.  That probably has to do with it being a dark comedy – more on those later.  You have to really feel sorry for her husband in the movie who is a real dip (not to mention a pothead), but comes nowhere close to deserving all the crap she makes him put up with, not that I know who would…  Zooey Deschanel is great in this movie; she doesn’t play a likable character as far as being a nice person, but she is hilarious and provides much of the movie’s comic relief.

I really only like to compare movies in the same genre, so it’d be difficult for me to rate this one compared to other movies I’ve watched lately, like Vantage Point, The Hitcher, or As Good as It Gets.  I can’t really remember the other dark comedies I’ve seen, but I know I liked them; Heathers and Drowning Mona come to mind, but I’ll have to watch them again cuz it’s been awhile.  Overall, I would say that if you like dark comedies, I recommend this one, but I don’t think dark comedies are for everyone.  The script is interesting, and some of the acting is pretty good.  Mike White wrote the movie, and I have to say, I like his work.  He is best known (to me anyway) as Ned Schneebly from The School of Rock, which he also wrote.  Maybe it’s because he writes the characters he plays that he is fun to watch, and this film is no exception – his character (a religiously religious security guard who moonlights as a minister) is actually quite likable, especially compared to all the other characters!  Also to Mike White’s writing credit is Nacho Libre, but I don’t think I was a big fan of that one.  Since we try to cram in so many movies, some are watched while we’re ultra-sleepy or being interrupted by kids, and Nacho Libre just might be one of those because I don’t really remember it.  Either that, or it was just bad.  Again, if you like dark comedies, go rent The Good Girl, it’s certainly “different” as far as comedies go…

One of the strangest trends in movies for the past several years has been to turn television shows of days gone by into big screen extravaganzas. For the most part, I do not see them as being over successful. Probably, the most profitable venture into this phenomenon has been the Star Trek series. This is primarily because there was a built-in audience of fans who wanted to see the further voyages of Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and company. However, several other television shows have attempted to cross over and most have failed.

The Flintstones tried twice with live-action versions of the classic cartoon. While the first movie was relatively entertaining, The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas was a disaster. It featured a ridiculous looking computer generated version of the Great Gazoo (voiced by Alan Cummings). Even Ann-Margaret (reprising her role as Ann-Margrock from the original series) could not save the movie. Perhaps the Jetsons live-action movie (which has been in pre-production for about 5 years) will do better. Or maybe it is better to leave animated series as they are…. animated.

Several classic television comedies have also tried to become big screen movies. The Beverly Hillbillies, Leave It to Beaver, and Bewitched to name a few. Does anyone even remember them? Nicole Kidman attempted to portray Samantha in a movie whose plot was a convoluted mess. Beaver tried to be a movie centered around plot devices audiences could watch on TVLand reruns that were considerably better (for example, Beaver stuck in the giant coffee cup on top of a giant billboard). I think I have seen The Beverly Hillbillies once and remember NOT laughing at the hicks trying to integrate themselves into Beverly Hills life.

This summer audiences will be delight in two television comedies coming to the big screen.  Sex and the City will star Sarah Jessica Parker and the rest of the cast of the original series.  Get Smart brings the tremendous Steve Carell to the iconic role of Maxwell Smart, agent 86 of CONTROL.

Ok, I’m exaggerating just a tad on the number of snow days we’ve had, but that’s what it feels like by now!  I suppose with the new dog in the house, today was as good a day as any to have yet another snow day, but my poor husband is going to go crazy from shoveling all this snow!  It’s become almost a daily chore – just what he needed!  And, the weather guys are saying that they’re tracking ANOTHER system due here on Friday!  They won’t use the dreaded 4-letter “s” word though, it’s kinda funny.  They’ll just call it a “weather system” and “let’s see what it drops on us” – as if there’s any chance it will bring something other than snow (that dreaded 4-letter word!), yeah right.

Hubby and I braved the weather last night to venture out to a movie for date night.  Our date night is once a week on Tuesdays, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s snowed for the last like, 5 Tuesdays in a row, no exaggerating this time!  Last week,  our movie theater was CLOSED because of the snow – that stank.  Instead of having a nice dinner, we got snacks at KFC cuz we were running late for the movie, and then we got there, and they were closed!  So sick of this weather already!  What did that groundhog say again?!?  So anyway, we ventured to a neighboring town with a movie theater that’s a little bigger; that way we could be assured it would be open.  We saw Vantage Point, an action movie with Dennis Quaid, Forrest Whittaker, and Matthew Fox.  And speaking of Groundhog Day, if you’ve seen that movie, even though it’s a comedy, Vantage Point actually had something in common with it in that they kept showing the same scene over and over.  The point of the movie was to take the audience through an incident of terrorism, one persepective at a time.  Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox played secret service agents, and Forrest Whittaker was a tourist bystander who happened to catch everything on video.  It was a satisfying action movie – MUCH better than Gone Baby Gone…  I might actually say it was kinda like Groundhog Day meets In the Line of Fire, if you’ve seen that movie, since Dennis Quaid’s character had been through an assassination attempt on the President before and was jumpy – just like Clint Eastwood’s character in In the Line of Fire.  If you like action movies, this one won’t disappoint.  I was actually surprised there wasn’t a little more to the plot, and I can’t believe the constant violence earned it only a PG13 rating.  But when I think about it, I suppose you could see the same type of violence on tv any given night or even on cable during the day – it’s just what has happened to entertainment these days, I guess.  Vantage Point has constant action, the movie is never slow, and seeing the action from the different people’s perspectives (vantage points 🙂  get it?) was interesting and not at all confusing like I was concerned about.  I found something at the end of the movie incredibly hokey, but then again, that’s common in action movies, you gotta appreciate them for what they are.

Announcing a new addition to the family: Beesley!  No, we didn’t have the baby early – Beesley is of the canine variety.  She is named for a character on what is quite possibly the best tv show ever, The Office (Pam Beesley).  Now that the writer’s strike is over, we can once again look forward to new episodes of this great show.  This way, if Pam and Jim get married, there is still a Beesley namesake 🙂

She is a cocker spaniel mix about 5 1/2 yrs. old.  She is black and white and really cute!  She’s great with kids, and we’ve had a bit of a rocky start with our other 2 dogs, but we think 3 dogs will be good company and not a crowd soon.  We got her from the humane society, which is always a crap-shoot, but well worth it if you do your research.  Get to know the breed of dog you’re considering (if possible, sometimes they don’t always know what a mutt is made of!), and spend a lot of time getting to know the potential pet and vice versa – bring your whole family to test the dog around kids and look at a bunch of dogs to get an idea of what kind of personality and habits you may or may not want in a new family member.  Remember, this pet will be living with you and your loved ones for hopefully a number of years, so it’s really important to find a good fit!  Giving a pet a home who needs one is so rewarding!  It’s really easy and fun to go puppy shopping at a pet store because let’s face it, puppies are some of the cutest things ever!  But remember, they grow out of the cute and teeny phase within MONTHS, sometimes even mere WEEKS!  Puppies are not potty-trained, and you will have no idea how easy (or difficult!) your new puppy will be to potty train.  Our first dog took years to potty-train, whereas our 2nd dog basically potty-trained herself even though she was a young puppy when she came into our home.  Beesley is already potty-trained, and she seems to have had a good home in the past.  She is used to being let out on a cable in the backyard, knows her way around the house, and basically seems to fit right in so far at least…  So, our crap-shoot seems to have paid off thus far!  I will keep you posted!