Eclipse x 2, The Passage, Remember Me - I love good stories!

(The sun is out. It's actually shining. On the ground and through the trees. There is a soft breeze, and I'm NOT wearing wool socks or a turtleneck sweater. It is June 29. I don't want to speak too loudly or else the weather might unexpectedly change, but thanks, Weather Gods. We do appreciate the reprieve from the oppressive cloud cover. Just in time. I think that last call may have overfilled my shrink's voicemail.)

SO--today is it. The countdown. The one my daughter, Princess, has been ticking off on her calendar for months. No, it's not due to final report card day, or yearbook day. She is going to the movie theatre at 12:30 pm to wait in line for six-point-five hours to get into an auditorium with 400 other screaming teenagers (and a few moms) to watch seven-point-five hours of vampire/werewolf carnage and mayhem (well, sort of mayhem--dude, the vampires sparkle???). Yeah, I'm going. But I'm in a diversionary state right now, so I'd pretty much clean moss off the side of the house with tweezers and my toothbrush to get out of doing what I know I should be doing. And I don't want my sweet little thing to be in a movie theatre for that long without her mommy. She may be 16 but she's a good 16, not the snotty, booze-guzzling, authority-questioning little shit some of her Facebook "friends" are. Holy. Cow. You wanna feel old? Look at your teenager's Facebook account. Half the time I don't even know what the hell they're saying. (I think it's English. Scary, frightening English, but English nonetheless. I think.) Some real geniuses on there, I tell ya.

Anyway, watch for the Twilight Saga: Eclipse review this week on ChicMomMagazine.com. I'll probably do a DVD review on another delicious-looking film, ironically called The Eclipse, about a widower whose dead wife may be stalking him from beyond. It looks incredibly sinister, brilliantly acted by a cast of Irish actors (and Irish-American Aidan Quinn). Check out the trailer at http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/magnolia/theeclipse/. It comes out today on DVD, so watch for the review, either here or on ChicMom, over the next week or so. OH, and Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief is out on DVD today. I think Bueno's head is going to explode. My little Greek mythology nerd...! Princess gets seven hours of Twilight, Bueno gets Percy Jackson. Yeah, movie freaks. The cool thing is, these movies started out as books. And my kids have read them. Which means they're using their brains. I like.

The good word this week:

MOVIE: Remember Me, Robert Pattinson, Pierce Brosnan, Emilie de Ravin = pretty good. Kick-in-the-ass, grab-you-by-the-throat ending. Wow. I sort of saw it coming but thought...nahhhhh. Yeah, I was right. But it was good. RPattz is so good at the brooding thing, and FINALLY, we get to see him gettin' it on with a hottie with some spunk. Sorry, Bella and Edward, but come on, already! Some of us want to see the Deed! Tyler and Allie...yes, they deed it. It's pretty good. Oh, and the acting--yes, the acting. Good. Thumbs up. Again, more brooding, but the real story is between Tyler and his little sister (Caroline, played by Ruby Jerins--she looks like an Osment kid--I had to check IMDB to make sure she wasn't Haley Joel and Emily's little sister). Heartbreaking. Like Lauren said, it'll make you wanna hug your kids a little extra today.

BOOK: The Passage, Justin Cronin. Suspense, suspense, suspense! This guy obviously scores in the higher echelons of IQ-dom. Dude's a genius. I tried to put aside my green-with-envy attitude (I wish I could write like he does) as I chewed through this weighty novel in just under five days. Cronin integrated post-apocalypse and vampires, and though it had an I Am Legend feel to it, he does a noteworthy job bringing the characters to life throughout the story. No details are spared, and the histories he has woven for his people are vast and rich. This is not light reading, however; though Cronin's prose is tight and descriptive, it's heady. Like I said, he's a smart guy. If you like supermarket bodice-rippers, I'm thinking The Passage ain't for you. And if you tend to obsess about the end of the world (like I do), maybe you should hold off, especially if you've watched The Road and Book of Eli back to back like I have. I seem to be on an apocalyptic bender right now... I can tell you, I don't have nearly enough canned beans in the cupboard, no propane, and I have no idea where my pocketknife is. All good things to have when the end befalls us. Oh, and Band-Aids. And some Neosporin. LOTS of Neosporin. Maybe a flame thrower, too.

Overall, good read. Worth the cover price of the book (even if I did buy it at Costco).

I have to go put makeup on and be wonderful. If this post is disjointed, it's because school is out, and I've been interrupted about 14 times. Please forgive me for sounding lost. Then again, I always sound lost, don't I?

Yak soon...