Bird's Eye View

“Killing two birds with one stone” is probably a phrase to avoid when talking about Winged Migration, a fascinating documentary about our avian friends, but I did just that tonight: I found a film that the kids and I could watch together, and it was one that I could legitimately count in my yearly tally.

A lazy person might call this movie “soaring,” and leave it at that. Here’s my review: This film soars above all other cameras-following-birds documentaries. What must have first seemed a flight of fancy when conceived, this film of fancy flights is a real feather in the cap of its producers.

Patriots Act

I’m expecting a bump in pageviews this week after this unexpected promo in the USA Today sports section. (Hat tip: the eagle-eyed Pat H.)

Cinderella Story

In Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture, Peggy Orenstein scares the bejesus out of this father of a young daughter with her extensive research into the potentially caustic messages marketers are pushing on girls Olivia’s age and even younger. Luckily for me, there are books like this that can help us parents counterbalance these influences on our daughters. And of further fortune for me, I have a daughter who has been giving a variation of the rant below for some time now.

Potty Animal

I don’t know if it’s all the books we have lying around the house that coax Reed to the potty, or if it’s the potty itself that motivates him to read, but I’m good either way. In fact, I’m happy to hoard up our house with books and potties if that helps boost the frequency of his reading and peeing.

Seeking Office

Mindy Kaling, writer/actor of The Office fame, has written a book that Aunt Liz recently picked up and recommended.

I laughed. I cried (from laughter). In the world of female comedians who star in NBC comedies and have penned a book of late, I’d put Kaling’s effort a close second to Tina Fey’s pee-your-pants-funny Bossypants, but it crushes anything put out there by Chelsea Handler.

Park and Ride

While Reed was cutting through the unseasonably warm air on a swing in the neighborhood park, the girls were carving up the nearby parking lot with their scooters.

The Worldwide Reader

Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN is an inside-baseball look inside baseball, football, basketball, and all the other sports covered by the self-branded Worldwide Leader in Sports. The book details ESPN’s history through the words of its on-air and behind-the-scenes personalities. The network’s story unfolds chronologically through interview transcripts of its deep bench of talent, hacks, malcontents, occasional nice person, and perverts. The interview-timeline format worked well for the authors’ 2003 book about Saturday Night Live, and their return engagement is a success by and large.

ESPN’s presence/dominance in the sports world is unavoidable. Even its biggest critics—take Deadspin, for instance—depend on the network’s elevated status for their own business model of critique, scorn, and mockery. Try as I might to resist being sucked in, there are times in my chaotic life when I’m drawn back to the channel of my youth. Perhaps this urge to flip on channel 140 on my satellite package is born of sentimentality, but I’d like to think that my discerning palate is able to separate the wheat from the boo-yahs.

I can’t seem to pry myself from their coverage of the Barclays Premier League (the voices of Ian Darke and Steve McManaman dance around in my head, even while I sleep), 30 for 30 documentaries (The Two Escobars was beyond incredible), and Pardon the Interruption gabfest. The latter is as constant in my diet as bubble teas. I miss nary a show, and I’m an acolyte of Tony Kornheiser’s radio show, where devotees are affectionately dubbed “the Littles.”

And so my favorite parts of the book were when I learned more about the ways ESPN broke into broadcasting soccer, the emergence of Bill Simmons and his various enterprises, and the ways the curmudgeonly Kornheiser got himself in trouble with the brass and colleagues. But you might enjoy reading about how much people dislike Keith Olbermann, or just what a cesspool of debauchery the place was in the early and middle years. The book is 700-plus pages, and so it’s not always compelling, but I do recommend it to any diehard sports fan.

Squeezy Cheese

The puckish pair prepare their pucker-ish pose for this pic.

Cookie Connoisseurs

Fact 1: I’ve written more about cookies on this blog than any other topic that’s not a relative of mine. (I’m serious. Type “cookies” into the search box at the top.)

Fact 2: Cookies are delicious.

Fact 3: Studying and sampling the delicious Girl Scout cookies at a cookie rally is really deliciously fun.

Look on the Bright Side

I don’t recall how our next film jumped the Netflix queue, but it did. The Best and Brightest, a comedy about a family’s journey through the hypercompetitive world of admissions into New York City’s elite private kindergartens, knocks down the low-brow low bar set by our first selection. The film received a lowly 26% approval rating by critics on Rotten Tomatoes, which only goes to show that critics are mature.

For those of us whose humor spectrum is more developed and/or accepting, we may find it difficult to suppress our snickers during the film’s many ridiculous scenes—especially the ones featuring the illustrious Amy Sedaris.

While it’s the worst movie I’ve seen in 2012, it’s also the second best, and so I recommend you stay away from it unless your glow of immaturity shines as brightly as mine.

Step Show

Step Brothers, the 2008 comedy starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, was our first movie selection for 50/50. We selected this one because it was on one of the channels carried by our low-rate satellite package, and because the veteran actor who plays the successful physician—whose loutish son Dale (Reilly) battles epically with the equally idiotic Brennan (Ferrell)—called my alma mater his alma mater nearly three decades before I could.

I buy Ferrell’s comedic genius—his recent Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for Humor recognition is wholly deserved—but for me, it is Reilly who steals the scenes for me in this film, much like he does in Cedar Rapids.

My favorite quote (the scene involves the freeloading Dale unloading on Brennan and his mom while they were seated by him and his dad at the dining-room table):

You and your mom are hillbillies. This is a house of learned doctors.

Super Freaky

She's all right, she's all right, that girls all right with me, yeah, he-he-he
She's a super freak, super freak, she's super freaky, yeow
Everybody sing, super freak, super freak

excerpt from Super Freak (1981), Rick James

I’m certain the authors of the bestseller Freakonomics were engaging in a bit of wordplay with their follow-up effort. It’s funny to me that they chose to pun the title of Rick James’s ode to an unencumbered lady friend.

This book was a fast (innuendo intended) read. It was much like the first book, only freakier. (Well, not really.) Its significance for me lies outside of its content—it marks the first book of what I hope is many this year, the first I received electronically from the library, and the first I read on my iPhone. (Yes, you read that correctly. I don’t own an iPad, and I’m apparently not technologically savvy enough to download e-books onto my Kindle, and so I’m stuck reading my library’s e-books on my Kindle apps—but not on the Kindle itself.)

(Note: I’m glad to have a book done one day into the new year, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up this 366-books-in-2012 pace.)