I am seeing this movie for the first time. I knew it took place in a hasidic jewish community. I also remembered that there was an incident that was being discussed in yeshiva back in 1997 about a film crew who was chased out of the neighborhood by angry community members. I never connected the two until now.

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,287659,00.html

The movie isn't all that bad, but I can understand why people were up in arms about it. First, aside from a few themes and rituals, it isn't very accurate. There's a scene where the main character's husband kisses her in public. That does not happen. The clothes, hairstyles and general appearance of the community members are also all wrong for this area. It's funny, my first thought after watching the start of the movie was 'this was written by a hipster who went to Yeshiva and thinks he understands the lifestyle because he sometimes hung out with orthodox jews', and, upon googling, learned that this was exactly the case.

And honestly, it also made me think a little about how there are lots of pretty corruptible young wives in this neighborhood, and I kind of wished for a second that I was the kind of person who enjoyed 'corrupting' others. Oh, the deviants I could create...

But enough about that.

How YOU doin?

I have been exhausting myself with thoughts of trying to change the world over the last day or so. Then I remember that I am not violent enough, smart enough or tolerant enough of idiots to do so, and I just go back to making jokes and listening to myself rant on the internet.

I'm home here. It's all good.

I watched almost an entire season of How I met Your Mother yesterday. I had seen the first season ages ago and didn't love it or hate it. I still feel the same. I like the performers but the plots are as predictable as any other sitcom and it really isn't good for anything other than brain-dead entertainment.

Today I will watch a few movies that I have been putting off seeing because I'm pretty sure I won't like them. I am also in the strangest mood to watch a Sarah Jessica Parker movie. That's a sign of instability, right?

Sigh. People. Can't live with them, can't subject them to your autocratic rule and shoot them in the face when they are being dumb.

I am starting to decompress. I've spent a majority of my last three days sleeping. Saturday I woke up to eat lunch and watch a football game. Sunday I woke up to go to lunch with an old family friend. Today I woke up in the morning to take care of a bit of online stuff I needed to do, then I went back to sleep. Now I just woke up to get ready to go to my cousins for a Hanukkah party. This is probably too much sleep, but it feels good so I'm cool with it.

I've got stuff to do tomorrow so I won't get a chance to sleep the day away again. I also probably won't feel like doing that. I feel rested right now.

My suitcase is half packed. I'm looking forward to Florida. It's going to be a very short visit, but I'm looking forward to seeing lots of awesome people, checking out my old favorite FL book store and browsing the thrift shops on South Beach. Yeah, I'm an old coot. That's what I do when on vacation. The closest I get to the beach itself is the thrift shop.

In the "grim is AN GENIUS" Column, we have a knee brace misadventure. I bought a supposedly really good brace for my left knee (that I am still neglecting getting checked out, but only because it's starting to feel slightly better) and upon receiving it, tried it and did not like it at all. It severely limited the mobility of my entire leg and just felt wrong. I wore it to one softball game and it was pretty useless. I got it at a pretty solid deal and did not feel like returning it was worth the bother, and was just going to resell it on eBay. I took it out of its box to photograph it when I noticed the little logo and realized that I had been wearing it backwards. So yeah. Tried it again, the correct way. Feels pretty good, and only limits the part of the leg it is supposed to. I AN GENIUS.

IMPORTANT QUESTION

If a Tify has a birthday but I am offline for the entirety of it, did she still get older?

This weekend, the NFL has moved its slate of games up to Saturday instead of Sunday, because obviously they care more about Christians than Jews. This creates a conflict for me. I can either stay home and watch a great local rivalry play out as the Jets play the Giants, or I can go play my usual football game. They both take place at exactly the same time.

In other news... LATKES