For exactly one year, I’ve decided to keep a record of every time I either chose to or was forced to sit down and watch a movie that my daughter insisted on watching. I felt that last year, the reason I wasn’t watching as many movies as I normally would, was because I had to watch the same movie with her dozens of times over, thus eating into my own movie-watching experience.
Here are the results:
In short, her old favorites Coraline and Paranorman (both Laika films) beat out the expected Frozen. Worth noting is that I didn’t include single-watch features (there were several).
Oh and the total? 264, and with there being 42 unique films on the list, 222 of those times were a time I’d already seen the movie at least once. If the average movie length is 1:30:00, that’s 396 hours of time spent watching movies with my daughter.
Many of you are more than likely unaware that there is rather little to do in the great large state of Minnesota. Aside from being famous for consisting primarily of marshland, Minnesota is full of other fun facts about itself:
The name Minnesota comes from the Dakotan words for water and “like a partly cloudy sky”. Put together it means something like “clouded water”.
Minnesota is also the northernmost US state outside of Alaska, which further proves its point that its indistinguishable from Canada to everyone but genuine Canadians.
Minnesota is historically home to the largest mass execution in US history, which resulted from the “Dakota War” of 1862, which saw the execution of over three dozen Dakotans, finally forcing them to be driven off their land for good.
Minnesota, while being predominantly German and Lutheran, is proud to steal the Scandinavian term “uff da”, which is relatively meaningless and can be used to express everything from surprise to dismay to contentment.
While being home to the midwest’s second most popular Renaissance Fair, Minnesota’s real pride and joy is its state fair; its main attraction being the “fattest pig contest.”
All of that is true. BUT, really, there was some good to come out of Minnesota. Let’s not forget that Minnesota was the birthplace of: Bob Dylan, The Jayhawks, The Replacements, A Prairie Home Companion, Mystery Science Theater 3000, the Coen Brothers, and quite possibly more. I’d research it further, but I promised myself I’d only spend five minutes on wikipedia for this once. Challenge met.
I'm not sure how the internet works. I think this man wrote my blog for me.
I think my initial point was that there’s absolutely nothing to do here, and while this comes as no surprise to anyone here, it may be a shock to most because most people have never dreamt of visiting this state. That being said, I spent a portion of my day babysitting a 4yr old, his 3yr old sister, and a 2yr old wandering vagrant child. I apparently succeeded greatly in being tasked with entertaining the kids while all the adults talked for the majority of my time there. It actually all went swimmingly until the 3yr old girl got her head knocked by a chair due to the collapse of a hastily assembled fort. To be perfectly honest, I’m not really great with coming up with activities on the spot for little kids, but I thought a fort is always a safe bet. The chair thought otherwise and it turned into a national disaster that was only remedied by the mom coming in and fixing the situation in two minutes flat. It could’ve been a real national disaster though, and I’ll advise never forgetting anyway. 9/9/11, never forget the hazards of plastic chair forts.
Lest we forget, box office predictions. Hey, I may be out of state, but I’m not out of mind! HAHA! Ahem.
The Contagion
The Help
The Debt
Warrior
Frickin’… I dunno, let’s say Apollo 18
That’s right: I’m predicting that this is FINALLY the week that The Help is dethroned. I’m not saying that Contagion will be a lot better or anything; it’s just damn time. Contagion, by the way, is something I WANT to be good, being directed by Soderbergh (who I occasionally mix up with other directors) and having a good cast and all. I’m pretty sure it’s just Outbreak, though, and that was already released. At least I’m pretty sure it was.
James Newton Howard did the soundtrack to SOMETHING that year, and it wasn't "Just Cause", "Waterworld", or "French Kiss", all of which ALSO came out in 1995. Or wait, yeah it was those too.
Today’s song of the day is a very apres paux live rendition of Blue by the aforementioned Minneapolis-grown Jayhawks. WHAT MAKES THIS VIDEO SPECIAL? They’re the musical guests on whatever show Jon Stewart was hosting back in 1995. It’s a lot of fun:
The Glass City 