Friday, 11 May 2012
Tonight, Jennifer and I watched the first 75% of MacGruber, and I think we are dumber for it.
I thought I would like the comedy. I was a big fan of MacGyver in the 1980s. I even wrote to Richard Dean Anderson once. So, maybe I was expecting too much. There were funny bits, to be sure, but the whole thing didn’t seem to work together. I think this is a common problem with Saturday Night Live sketches turned into movies: they’re funny for five minutes, not 90.
The main issue, for me, was that the movie began with a strong indication that MacGruber is the most amazing soldier the US Military has ever had: he’s been on tours of duty in several theaters, and has won a dozen purple hearts. The first time we meet GacGruber, he is able to identify his guest without even turning to see him and he subsequently launches himself in the air, backflips, and lands face-to-face with his guest. But then…he’s jsut a buffoon. Didn’t really make sense.
Save yourself the time…rent something else.
Saturday, 12 May 2012
We got a lot done around the house today. I removed about a dozen more landscaping bricks from the front yard, installed a work bench in the garage, removed wiring from the old garage door opener, and pulled dead ivy off the side of the house. Jennifer sprayed weeds with homemade organic weed killer, and watered our flowers. Owen pulled out weeds. Isla just made it difficult for everyone.
At one point, Jennifer asked when I planned to clean up all the sticks, leaves, and debris on our garage’s roof. I said, “Let’s do it now.” So she helped me get our big ladder out of the garage and position it alongside the garage.
Then she took a picture of me:
Here you can see that the right side of the roof is already cleaned off. That’s ’cause I had just done it. The debris had been up there for so long that the leaves had rotted and returned to soil. There were weeds growing in that soil! I used a rake and a broom to get everything off. During the course of the day, the roof finally got to dry out there. Now we’re waiting for a good rain to come along and wash it off. In the meantime, unlike the previous owner, I plan to get up there more than once a decade.
Also today, we all went on a bike ride. This was Isla’s first experience bicycling. Here she is in the trailor:
How cute is that?