I totally paused!

Jessica looks like she’s running away from home, not going to a forbidden rock concert. Also, the title is kind of misleading – she didn’t really have to sneak cuz no one was home when she left!

As a side note, and maybe this cover isn’t such a good example, but I always thought the twins were way cuter on the SVT covers than the SVH ones. And am I just crazy, or do other people have a hard time telling them apart on the covers? I usually look for the barrettes to see which one is Elizabeth. Otherwise, they both kind of dress like crap, despite Jess supposedly being the fashionable one.

There’s not really much to say about this book, it was relatively boring. Lila wasn’t even mean, for once! I wonder if there is any mention at all about Jessica having to walk Sally the dog for a month after this book. I’m guessing no.

Also, I will never understand how anyone can allow Jessica to continually be such a shit. She is awful, through and through!

I am deeply moved…by me.

- Stephen Colbert

Starring Colin Firth, Rupert Everett, Reese Witherspoon, and Francis O’Connor

One of the problems with my Netflix list is that while every television show on there is something specific I very much want to see, I sometimes lack as much interest with the movies.  As a result, quite a few of them get put on there and I don’t fully know why I did it, this being one of those.  I can make an educated guess that it was a combination of being Oscar Wilde and Reese Witherspoon, but that’s probably as close as I’ll ever get as to knowing why exactly I put this movie on my list.

This is a fun little movie, and I enjoyed watching it.  For me at least, this isn’t the sort of thing that has me thinking a whole lot and sometimes you just need that sort of movie, ya know?  I liked the romantic visions Cecily would get in general, and then more specific when she meets Algernon.  Of course the mix up of “Earnest” is funny and there isn’t much surprise as to how it works out.  Although I do like that at one point Cecily says she hopes a story didn’t end well, and then this one ends well.

Judy Dench was fabulous as always, I wonder if I’ll ever see her and not like her.  Colin Firth is charming in basically everything I’ve ever seen him in, and he didn’t fail to disappoint.

It does mildly make me yearn for the days when you could simply go from the country to the city and convince everyone you were someone else.  Also, was life that boring that they did it?

My Rating: 3/5

The look on Liz’s face is just killing me here! She’s like, totally worried about Amy trying out for the Boosters and getting humiliated! And what’s up with Amy’s outfit? I’d be worried about my friend if they wore jeans that high and a shirt 5 sizes too big too.

Really this book was pretty boring. More of the same Unicorns are mean to everyone in sight, Liz wants to help everyone in the world and can’t stand to see someone getting hurt in any way, people are mean to Ken Matthews. I was rather amused that Elizabeth was so shocked that Jessica was behind some of the nasty things the Unicorns pulled – she was as angry as she’d ever been in her whole life that Jessica wrote letters to Amy from Ken and to Ken from Amy! I also love that in the sixth grade, you can just write strange letters and that will get people to stop talking to each other.

Some of my favorite parts consisted of Liz thinking Jess was awful for not wanting anyone but the Unicorns to get on the Boosters squad, and then Jess can change Liz’s mind by simply clearing the table. You know you don’t do anything around the house when you can please people by once in awhile doing something like this. “How could she think Jessica was anything but sweet and lovable?” Umm, maybe because she sees what Jessica does constantly and realizes that Jess is INSANE!

It seems like they are better about consistency in the Twins series so far – they have talked about ballet in every book as of now, and Nora Mercandy was even in this book for five seconds! Oh, and have I mentioned that Ken Matthews is short? Cuz he is. People call him midget regularly.

Another thing that caught my eye was them describing school lunch…it’s pizzaburgers again! I don’t even know what a pizzaburger is, I’m relatively certain I don’t want to know either. Anyway, Jess is complaining about them and Lila says “You shouldn’t eat stuff like tht anyway. You’ll get fat.”

Perhaps I’m overly sensitive, but these girls are supposed to be twelve. At that age, you should absolutely still eat pizzaburgers! Or if you don’t, it should be because they sound disgusting, not because of the caloric content. I guess they just must be setting things up for the twins “perfect size six figures” in the SVH books, but man, talk about a bad example. It’s amazing I never became anorexic!

And of course, we get the lead up to the next book. Will Jessica be able to make it to the Johnny Buck concert? How will we ever live in this kind of anticipation?!

I love the shocked look on Elizabeth’s face. Nora looks so calm. That is obviously shocking! Also, the house is supposed to be super scary and it just isn’t :/ And I think the tag line on half the books is about something maybe coming between Jessica and Elizabeth…which, if I were either one of them, I’d probably want something to come between us.

These books are so short I swear you can explain them in two sentences. In this one, Nora Mercandy is the new girl at school and OMG her family is full of witches! So of course all the kids are mean to her and tease her, and actually do some pretty vile things. But it all works out in the end because Elizabeth has faith in her and is her friend. Cuz that’s Liz’s role in life.

This is possibly the most embarrassing thing I’ve admitted in public in a long time, but there was a time in my life where I actually liked Lila Fowler in these books. No idea what I saw in her, because she is so awful! To the point where I have no idea who could even write a character so vile. The pranks and schemes she comes up with to torment Nora with are really so terrible – stealing her quiz and changing the names, making her the Unicorns slave, and faking being nice to her? Wow. Not to mention the lying and saying Nora stole her pen. It kind of makes me wonder what kinds of ideas these books gave kids in school – did plots like this one make bullies well, bullier?

It’s also Halloween during this book, so this is Jessica’s costume:

She had put on lots of Pan-Cake makeup, long false eyelashes, and wore a black wig that hung to her waist. Dressed in the grass skirt, halter top, and flowered lei, she did a few hula steps in front of the mirror.

She’s a hula dancer, if you couldn’t tell. Maybe I’m a bit old fashioned or something, but this book was originally published in 1986 and that seems like a bit of a scandalous outfit for a 12 year old back then. Now days it’s probably normal, but this was a long time ago!

I also love this…

Ellen – Look at Ken [Matthews]. He’s really cute – it’s too bad he’s so short.
Jessica – I think he’s a total loser. He’s practically a midget.

Hey Jess, you are so going to be dry humping him in a few years. And Liz is going to not have sex with him behind your back – just fyi.

I think it’s funny to read these kinds of things, knowing the Twins series was written after SVH. The ghost writers must have read the High series and laaaaaaughed while thinking “What can we do to mess this up?” I cannot come up with any other explanation for why Liz and Amy Sutton are best friends in jr. high, but hate each other in high school. The last line of the book is “Could she lose Amy too?” Umm, yeah! Get used to it!

This is of course leading into the next book, which has Amy trying out for the new Booster Club and if I remember accurately, she pisses Jessica and Lila off by being good and the teacher makes them let her on the squad. Time will tell if my memory is correct.

Oh, and they did mention ballet like twice in this book. We’ll see how long that keeps up for.

I know I read this one when I was a kid, but I hardly remembered any of it! There are some that I remember quite a bit, or at least little parts of them, but this one was totally gone from my brain.

Also, Jessica never seemed this whiny and manipulative when I read these before. It’s embarrassing to say now, but I in some ways wanted to BE LIKE Jessica Wakefield. I mean, when you’re 10 things seem different, so that’s my defense. I always kind of thought if I were one of them, I’d actually be more like Elizabeth. In reality, they are both horrible role models!

Oh, and did you know that they both have long blond hair that glints in the sun, aqua-marine eyes, and dimples in their left cheeks? But even though they look EXACTLY alike, they are totes different. Cuz Jessica dresses cool and is into boys, while Elizabeth is this writer nerd for the school paper.

So in this book, they are both in ballet and Jessica is like the best in the class but everyone only ever notices Elizabeth, cuz she’s the teacher’s pet. And really, Jessica is SOOOOOO much better than her – you can tell cuz Jess says it over and over again. Did I mention that Liz is the teacher’s pet?

Personally I don’t even know how the teacher could tell them apart. I’ve always had a difficult time figuring out which one is which…guess that’s the point, cuz otherwise how could they possibly switch places as often as they do?

Them being in ballet in this book always reminded me of Jessi Ramsey in the BSC – cuz she was in ballet and love to dance and did you know, she’s black? She would so not fit in in Sweet Valley! Also, I don’t remember them ever mentioning the twins doing ballet again. Jessica totally loves it, and I’m relatively certain I never read another book that mentioned it. I swear her interests change as often as her outfits – there’s the one where she plays basketball, then another where she sings in a rock band, I think cheerleading is the only thing she consistently does, aside from manipulating.

Aaaaanyway, Jessica is all disappointed because even though she’s the best dancer in the class, Elizabeth gets the lead in the recital. She IS the teachers pet, after all. So Liz practices like crazy and just can’t get the steps right, so Jess shows her and Liz realizes that she really is the teacher’s pet and Jess really is the best in the class!

And of course, because they need to get in the training for later when Jessica is completely INsane and Elizabeth lets her do anything she wants, Liz develops a plan for Jess to get to dance the lead after all. It pisses me off to see Liz giving in to Jess like that – let her fucking deal with not being the best! Or, the acknowledged best, anyway.

Just in case anyone wondered, Amy Sutton sucks at ballet. But she is totally Liz’s best friend, next to Jessica. Until they get to high school.

This all leaves me wondering – why did I like this series so well? Perhaps the reasons will be revealed later.

I have owned this book for 12 or 13 years, I promised a friend when I was 14 that I would read it and just never did. After deciding to embark on this youth reads thing, I figured I should probably finally read the damn book and get it over with.

For the sort of book this is, I suppose it wasn’t bad. The biggest flaw I found was that I just didn’t feel pulled into the book, not really engaged. Perhaps it’s unfair, but I keep wanting to compare books to my experience with The Golden Compass, which I absolutely loved and felt enchanted by. This book fell flat as far as that was concerned.

I also felt like it was a little predictable, at least from an adult reading perspective. Of course the evil rat Cluny can’t be victorious until the end…otherwise, why would the book be so long? Each time the mice thwarted the rats plans, I felt like I could see it coming from a mile away.

The characters also felt a little shallow to me. Matthias’ transformation from this meek stumbling fool to the Warrior of Redwall was sudden and abrupt for me. It was one of the things I thought was going to happen from the moment the evil was introduced, but it still didn’t seem believable. One moment he’s falling over his shoes, the next he’s wielding a dagger. I also felt like his repeated journeys away from Redwall Abbey were kind of selfish – he knows the Abbey is under seige, yet he continues to leave it unattended and come back to his friends in danger. And leaving everyone to worry about him? That’s just rude!

Also, I’m confused as to how exactly this whole world is supposed to work…is this supposed to be in a somewhat real life situation where there are perhaps humans around? Wouldn’t humans find it bizarre to have a little castle in the middle of some field? I would expect that some child would stumble upon it and I dunno, torture the mice and demolish the structure. Plus, people would so notice a huge band of rats milling about the countryside in armor! I guess it just didn’t make much sense to me that they weren’t larger and just totally in a fantasy world. Or maybe everything was just larger. Still, there had to be people in some fashion, cuz who built the roads and the barn? Then at the same time, we got the impression that the Abbey walls were wicked tall, like the rats and stuff had to climb trees to get over them, so that would indicate more life sized buildings and animals.

I know this all sounds pretty negative, but for what it’s worth, I didn’t hate the book. I think if I had actually read it back when I first received it, I would have liked it and probably would have continued on with the series. I had hoped even now it would motivate me to read the following books, but unfortunately that isn’t happening. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t good enough for me to feel like it’s worth the time to get the rest and read them.

It’ll be an entertaining read for a young teenager or a tween, and even for an adult it’s good “distracted” reading – the kind you can do in a waiting room or on the bus.

You know the phrase “Take names and kick ass?”  Well, our country is good at half of those

- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

Starring Paul Rudd, Famke Janssen, Gretchen Mol, Jessica Alba, and Winona Ryder

I think this movie should have been subtitled “A huge waste of time.”  At rare times, it was mildly funny.  Mostly it was just dumb. The idea of the movie is there’s a short film for each of the ten commandments.  And since I am more for George Carlin’s revised list of the two commandments, I didn’t even remember all ten of the real ones!

Normally I adore Paul Rudd so I kept thinking “Oh my, how could he be attached to this?” I mean, he’s the thing that keeps me able to watch Judd Apatow movies!  But in this movie, he was just totally buggin’.

On the Tivo, this movie had Jessica Alba listed in the billing, and she was only in it for like five minutes.  I think it should tell you something when you don’t have a good enough movie to list the stars of more of the film, so you list a big name to get people to watch.  Sometimes this is a good thing, like with Drew Barrymore being listed in the billing for Scream when she was only in it for the opening scene (yes, I love that movie, hence the multiple references).  In cases like The Ten, it didn’t do any good.

I can’t even remember some of the stories, they were so dumb.  And perhaps I’m just dense, but I didn’t really understand what the bulk of the stories had to do with the ten commandments…it seemed totally unrelated.

So, if this movie is on your list, I say don’t waste your time with it.  It’s one of those things that after watching, I wish I had knitted through the whole movie.

My Rating: 1.5/5

Starring Susan Sarandon and Nick Nolte

This movie was rather sad, and was something that taught me about a subject I knew nothing about before.  I always find it interesting when a disease strikes just one sex, yet the other is the carrier.  I don’t know enough about biology to really understand this stuff, but I just don’t get what about being male or female makes you immune from a specific disease.

I genuinely felt horrible for the people in the movie.  It was difficult to understand the attitudes of some of the parents, that some of them seemed unwilling to admit that maybe there was more they could do to help their children.  If I had children, I’m certain I’d be more like Susan Sarandon was in this movie, fighting hard to get a cure or help for my child.

One complaint, or distraction you could say, was Nick Nolte.  His character is supposed to be Italian and maybe he’s just not a good enough actor, but he wasn’t very convincing to me.  His accent was kind of bad and I kept thinking that it would have been better if someone else had played his role.

Otherwise, a good movie and while sad, worth the time.  I also like that it’s based on true events, that always makes things more interesting to me.

My Rating: 3/5