Despicable Me (movie)

I've seen Despicable Me twice now, and enjoyed it, for the most part, both times. (Yes, I'm a 50 year old woman, but I love the animated movie genre.)

And I really, really love the steampunk look of the movie. Steampunk means that there are wheels and ratchets and all sorts of "steam" driven paraphenalia to do the stuff that one simple microchip could do. For example an ordinary gun is... well, an ordinary gun. Gru pulls out his gun and immediately 6 or 7 additional barrels pop into being.

His couch was in the center of what looked like a dinosaur or other large reptilian thing - I loved that couch.

But, there were some problems with it.

The movie is made for young kids. Why, then, in the scene with Vector, is he talking about "a geometric entity endowed with both length and direction" and when he talks about "length" he does some pelvic thrusts, so the adults in the audience knew exactly what he was saying - but really, every little kid there must have gotten some idea too, and that was so unneccesary. Thank God none of the males in the movie were drawn such that the mounds that would their genitalia were shown, but still, it was so classless.

But, it continued.

One of the current methods of showing your lack of respect for someone is to angle your butt at them and pretend to fart, or to rub something several times on your butt (as the ping pong nemesis did in Balls of Fury) and as Vector does here.



Totally classless, and no need to pander to the lowest common denominator by showing it.

But it gets worse.

Throughout the movie, Gru's mother is shown as a real bitch. No other word for it - a verbally-abusive bitch. When Gru tells her his dream is to fly to the moon, she very casually says, "You're too late. NASA doesn't send monkeys to the moon anymore." How cruel, and on a par with everything else she says.

So what I want to know is, when Gru finally grows up, why is this woman still in his life? Why did't he shoot her to the moon a long time ago? [This is a mystery fiction trope that I really dislike. There are at least a couple of authors, probably more - or perhaps it's the same one using a multitude of pen names) who always has a woman detective, her husband or boyfriend, and a live-in mother who can't stand the man and is always saying rude things about him. Again, if I were in this situation in real life, I'd give the woman an ultimatum. Stop saying rude things or get out. And I hate reading in fiction books where this type of rude behavior is tolerated.

Finally, I found the ending of the movie particularly distasteful. Again, this movie is meant for little children, and the three girls in the movie are pre-pubescent and shouldn't even know what pelvic thrusts look like, let alone what they are.

So at the end, since Gru had missed the girl's recital, they're putting on a recital just for him and his minions. Three girls, dancing to Swan Lake, while mom, Gru and the minions look on. Could have been a sweet ending.

But no. Instead one of the Minions decides to turn into a DJ and puts Staying Alive onto the record player. So Gru gets up on stage, and all of a sudden he's doing the pelvic thrusts, and the clapping his butt with one hand and then the other while he looks out at the audience, and its just so inappopriate. Then we get the Vector character on the moon, who can apparently hear the music as well, and he shoves his butt out and starts slapping it like he's riding a horse (or having sex) and it was just unpleasant.)

(Previous to going into the movie, I had walked down the long line of magazines at my local Books-a-Million, and there was a whole rack dedicated to "Men's Interest" that had magazines with covers that featured nothing but women in bikinis, facing away from the camera, posing so their very large butts tilted upward and were just "in your face", while they look over their shoulders at the viewer with a seductive look. One model looked like she was in a pool, and she and her breasts were facing the camera, but you could tell she had her hips angled so that her buttocks were perked up a little, just ready for a man to start "riding" her. Disgusting. I'm all for consenting adults doing whatever they want to do in the privacy of their own home, but it is sad to see women pandering to their own degredation like this, in magazines in plain view for little kids - and big kids with their cellphones, of course - to see.)

State Farm Insurance (commercial)

State Farm has two commercial spokesmen. One is a black actor whom I believe stars on The Unit (or some similar TV show), the other is a young white guy.

The white guy, in the commercials I've seen of him, interacts with people who have to live on a budget, that they didn't use to have to do.

So I'm watching Bones on TNT, and I've just seen a commercial with the white guy, and one young man is walking along and he says proudly to one of his friends, "I found out that if I bring my lunch to work instead of going out, I can save $60 a month!"

And I'm thinking, well, golly gee whiz, who knew that if you didn't go out to restaruants, but instead brought food you'd made from home, you could actually save money??? Thanks so much All State for giving me this invaluable piece of advice, that never would have occurred to me!

It's bad enough that commercials have dumbed down the US for 30 years or more, do they really need to go this much lower?

Dos Equis (beer commercial)

Dos Equis (pronounse Dosekki) has as its spokesman a bearded, just over middle-aged guy whom they call "The most interesting man in the world."

I'm watching Twins vs Rangers on ESPN 2 (come on, Twins!), and just saw the latest commercial, which as usual annoys me. He's sitting at the head of the table, flanked by two gorgeous women who gaze at him as if enraptured.

For god's sake grow up! Do the viewers really think if they drink Dos Equis (and "stay thirsty" at the same time - how does that work?) some woman worth having is going to fall in love with them. I don't think so.

I'd like to see a commercial of a beatiful woman seated at the head of the table, with a couple of handsome guys gazing at her with doe's eyes, then she pushes them away and walks out alone.

Machete (movie)

There's an old saying, 95% of everything is crap.

That's certainly true with movies. Movie producers, from independents to bigshots, make movies every year and most of them bomb. Of the ones that bomb, most are garbage, and you wonder why in the world someone thought making it was a good idea.

Such is my thought on the movie Machete. They've been showing trailers for it for about a week now. In my Fortress of Attitude blog I'll discuss my annoyance at the sexualization of the female characters - a woman in a black bra walking around with guns hanging off her, please - but here I just want to address the plot of the movie.

Apparently the "hero" is a Mexican American DEA agent who worked under cover for the US - the FBi, the CIA, whatever. He is betrayed and his family is apparently killed, so this guy decides to get his vengeance on the US villains - Robert DeNiro as a senator, etc.

And I'm thinking, is it really necessary to make this movie now, when the country is rife with anger toward those who welcome ILLEGAL aliens and those who don't? Is it really necessary to make the US goverment the villains? Why not make the villains the Mexican and Caribbean drug cartels, that just today decapitated four people and hung their bodies off a bridge? But no... the US is going to be the villain in this piece of garbage.

I'd say it should be boycotted.

Miller Lite (commercial)

It's 6.14 pm easitern time, on ESPN, and I've got Sportscenter on.

Just saw a Miller Lite commercial that I've seen a couple of times before. (Unfortunately I had the sound down, so couldn't refresh my memory as to what was being said, but it went something like the following):

Young, handsome man comes up to a bar and asks for a lite beer, but of course doesn't specificy Miller Lite.

The beautiful female bartender looks at him with contempt and says something to the effect that he's a "girl man." He takes his beer and walks away, to reveal he's wearing a thong - although we only see the top part of it, but he plucks twice at his nether regions.

And the beautiful bartender just plumps her bo-toxed lips and smiles.

Problem? Well, on so many levels. A dig at gays, of course - as in only gay men would wear thongs. Or at the very least, effeminate men. Then there's the fact that no one in a service profession should be talking to a customer like that. Finally, of course, do we really have to see a man plucking at his underwear? Anymore than should we get to see a woman doing it? (But of course, if a woman does it, you can bet she won't be wearing any pants, so the guys in the audience can get the whole vicarious look,whereas with a guy, of course he's wearing his pants, all we see is the top of the thong above it.

Psych (TV series)

This TV series has been on for 3 or 4 seasons now.

Originally I liked it - for the character of the police officer, Lassiter.

But more and more it's just getting on my nerves.

The premise of the series is simply - de-evolved.

James Rodriguez plays a character named Shaun Spencer, who's extremely intelligent with a photographic memory. His father, a police officer, raised him to be a police officer, but he rebelled when he was 20 or so and drifted off into a series of low level jobs, before returning back to California, getting involved in a kidnapping case and having to prove who did it to remove himself from suspicion, because he had "known to much" about the case.

Each episode after that, the police are trying to do their job, when Shaun and his partner Gus show up. The police tell Shaun to go away, he never does. In the real world, he'd be thrown in jail. In the TV series, he always turns out to be right, which makes one wonder, why do the cops always try to keep him from investigating, when he's always right? (Perhaps they should do a sequel...do all his cases get thrown out at trial because of the way he found evidence and so on?)

In any event, the Shaun Spencer character just annoys the hell out of me. He's very much an exhibitionist, everything is about him. He barges into meeting rooms and starts talking, he ignores orders from the cops, etc. etc.

What does this teach kids in real life? That if your'e a guy you can act outrageously and get away with it? That authority is meant to be defied every single time? That nothign bad will happen to you if you talk back to cops (wrong), teachers (well, there, of course, kids can do anything they want to teachers without fear of punishment) and parents, likewise.

NFL Sunday Ticket (commercials)

I've been watching golf on TNT for the last couple of days, and I'm sure I've seen these commercials on other channels as well.

There are two commercials that I've seen so far.

In one a bunch of people in Boston or somewhere, shoveling snow, have a new neighbot who's a Dolphins fan. So they're standing out in their yards, shoveling snow, and one of them sends a shovelful at the guy's front door.

In another, more egregious version, a group of young businessmen are in a country inn, and they ask for more tea from an old waitress, who proceeds to wring out her dishrag into their tea, before giving it to them. All because they follow the wrong sports team.

Now of course these are meant to be funny, but I don't think they are. They are catering to the lowest common denominator of people who actually are this obsessed by sports.

There was a case a couple years ago where some guy wearing a ballcap from the wrong football walked into a sports bar, and got beaten up because of it.

And how many teenagers who are going to work at restaurants for money when their parents demand they get a job, are going to remember that dishcloth-wringing-into the tea schtick and decide they're going to do that too, after all, it's funny and they did it on TV!

Just terrible.

"I was born to have children. It's what I'm here for."

Even if she must live on welfare to take care of them. And in England, welfare is pretty lucrative, as witness the stories below.

Benefit Scroungers

Carl and Samantha Gillespie, together with their 12 children, have moved into a detached period house, with eight bedrooms, a garden, its own driveway and all set in a leafy residential area of Newbury, Berkshire. It's the type of highly-desirable family home that is well beyond the reach of many middle-class professionals but they've been given the keys without paying a penny. The couple, who receive an astonishing £44,000 in benefits a year, have been housed in the £500,000 property by their local council.

West Berkshire County Council gave them the keys after their previous council home burnt down in a blaze sparked by one of the couple's children. The Gillespies have been dubbed 'Britain's biggest scroungers' and are the most notorious example of people taking advantage of our generous benefits system. The £44,000 benefits includesf £1,500 a month housing benefit, £1,200 a month child tax credit, £560 a month child benefits, £280 job seeker's allowance and £1,600 a year in council tax.

The couple say they don't work because looking after their children is a full time job and they would earn less working than they do claiming the dole. Mr Gillespie quit a job at stacking shelves at Asda before he had even started, when he realised the £300 a week he would earn would result in a £400 benefits cut. He said, "Some people may think we're a bunch of spongers, but it's not true." His wife added, "I was born to have children, it's what I am here for."

Prior to their latest home, the Gillespies were housed in a five-bedroom property in Purley-on-Thames, Berkshire. However, in June last year the property burnt down when one of the family's youngest twins played with a cigarette lighter. Following that they lived in temporary council accommodation and the children were ferried to and from school in a minibus, paid for by the council. Their latest home, formerly a hotel, is estimated to have cost £350,000 to buy and a further £150,000 to renovate with double-glazing, carpets, central heating and furniture. (Source: Daily Mail, Jul/07)


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Martin McLoughlin defended his foul-mouthed family after six of them were handed ASBOs. The freeloading family are set to be banished from the whole of Lancashire after an eight-year reign of terror and his wife and all four of their sons, one just 14, have been barred from going out at night by the unprecedented anti-social behaviour order. Defiant McLoughlin, is vowing to fight the interim ASBOs and said the accusations against himself, wife Christine and sons were "bullshit", and complained how his family struggle to survive on £1,000 a month benefits.

McLoughlin accused police of "victimising" his family and has made a complaint to the Police Professional Standards Board. He is also threatening to sue Lancashire Police, and since the family have no money it will be the taxpayer who funds their expensive legal aid bill. The interim ASBOs came after family members were accused of being involved in 500 incidents in Morecambe since 1999, including vandalism, handling stolen goods and terrorising a wheelchair victim. The interim ASBOs force them to stay indoors between 11pm and 7am and ban them from swearing or harassing people anywhere in England and Wales.

Anyone breaking the order could be landed with a five-year stretch in jail but one of the brood, a convicted arsonist, stormed, "We are not the family from hell, we are more like the Royle family off the telly. I can't even say 'bloody'. It's an infringement of free speech. Whatever happened to being allowed to speak your mind in this country? We will be fighting this ASBO all the way." The family were kicked out of their council house in Morecambe but they trashed it before they quit and left the garden strewn with rubbish.

They have moved into a £70,000 home which belongs to a woman friend who is charging them just £500 rent a month. It has a widescreen TV, leather sofas and DVD players in every bedroom. McLoughlin said, "We're over the moon and very lucky. The rent is a bargain and we'll get some, if not all, of the amount covered by housing benefit. We've landed on our feet. We'll never step foot in Morecambe again." (Source: Sunday People, Feb/07)


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Aubrey and partner Kelly have claimed thousands in handounts. Kelly pockets nearly £20,000 a year in welfare payments, but still moans, "It's a hard life on benefits." And now, their break-up is now costing thousands more, as they fight a legal aid-funded battle for custody of their 10 dependant kids. Aubrey, who left their home in Orpington, Kent, with four of the kids, said, "These people who criticise, it's because they don't know us." They lived in two houses which council bosses knocked into one to house them all.

Kelly said, "Having seven bedrooms is great, I love it. I have a spare room for guests. My brother is living in there." As well as child benefit, chain-smoker Kelly picks up around £1,000 a month in tax credits, disability payments and income support. She pays £43 rent a week and no council tax, and she can afford to go clubbing every Saturday night, and even splashed out more than £600 on an African grey parrot.

Most of her money goes on the kids. She explained, "We used to make them share the Xbox but it meant that they didn't get much time on it. So now we have two Xboxes and three PlayStations." Kelly drives a BMW. Aubrey drives a Jaguar and spends his days tending his 38 canaries, one parrot, one dog and 18 tropical fish. (Source: News of the World, Mar/07)


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Mark Corby, who gets £20,000-a-year in benefits, has a massive Christmas lights decorating the outside of his four-bedroom semi. And he is running up a small fortune in electricity burned to keep his display lit 7 hours a day for 7 weeks. Corby, who has not worked for three years, admits he had lost track of how much he and his jobless wife get in income support, housing benefit, incapacity benefit, family allowance and child tax credits.

He said, “A few years ago it was very tough to get by on state benefits. But it’s much easier these days because of all the tax credits. If I was self-employed I could earn £30,000 a year but I don’t want to be my own boss. And to be honest, it’s not worth me working for less than £20,000. All the money I get just goes in the bank and I use my switch card to pay for everything. Why shouldn’t I spend some of it on Christmas decorations? Poverty is all relative.”

Corby claims to be too ill to work but refuses to say what was wrong with him. His wife Susan is also long-term sick and Corby claimed he needs to be off to care for her. They have eight children aged eight months to 14 years at home. Two older children have left home and have jobs. Local people are incensed by the display. One stormed, “Mr. Corby is a fit and able man who shows no sign of physical or mental impairment preventing him from doing an honest day’s work."

They added, "All his children are regularly dressed in designer clothes and expensive sportswear. The thing that upsets the hard-working people in the area most is the amount of Christmas lights he has, which put Blackpool illuminations to shame. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. It looks like Las Vegas on steroids. They must have cost many hundreds of pounds, if not thousands, yet it’s all done on benefits.” (Source: The Sun)

A family of 16 has revealed they are better off staying at home and claiming benefits than getting a job. Mother-of-fourteen Dawn Cain, who is expecting her 15th baby in April, and husband Sean are given £36,847 in tax-free benefits a year. Mr Cain, a former landscape gardener, has been out of work since 2003 when he took time off to help his wife care for their children but he soon realised his family was better off claiming benefits than if he worked. He said, "With the social giving us £700 a week, why should I work for anything less? There's no point me even trying to look for a job. I've got a family of 15 to support. I'm better off staying at home and helping Dawn with the kids. People could call us scroungers but what would they do in the same situation?"

Rent on the Cains's home in Wythenshawe, Manchester, is paid for them and they do not have to pay their £1,023-a-year council tax. They get £7,176 in child benefit, £22,828 in child tax credits and free school dinners for eight of their children worth £1,920. Mr Cain also receives £3,900 in Jobseeker's Allowance. (Why? You have to prove you are actively seeking employment in order to qualify for this benefit!) The total amount is £36,847 a year, equivalent to someone earning a gross salary of £51,500. Mrs Cain, who has not worked since she was 18, added, "I'm a good mum. I breastfed them all and with each one I learn a bit more, so I think, "well why not have another one?" I look after my kids well and make sure we get by. And every Christmas I make sure they get everything they want." (Source: Daily Mail, Dec/09)

Advocates of Anti-Shariah Measures Alarmed by Judge's Ruling

This is one of the most frightening things I've read in a long time. A woman IN THE USA wants a restraining order against her husband because he beats her and rapes her repeatedly. The judge says, "Sorry. No. He's Muslim. He can do that to you because that's part of his religon."

Advocates of Anti-Shariah Measures Alarmed by Judge's Ruling

A New Jersey family court judge's decision not to grant a restraining order to a woman who was sexually abused by her Moroccan husband and forced repeatedly to have sex with him is sounding the alarm for advocates of laws designed to ban Shariah in America.

Judge Joseph Charles, in denying the restraining order to the woman after her divorce, ruled that her ex-husband felt he had behaved according to his Muslim beliefs -- and that he did not have "criminal desire to or intent to sexually assault" his wife.

According to the court record, the man's wife -- a Moroccan woman who had recently immigrated to the U.S. at the time of the attacks -- alleged:

"Defendant forced plaintiff to have sex with him while she cried. Plaintiff testified that defendant always told her "this is according to our religion. You are my wife, I c[an] do anything to you. The woman, she should submit and do anything I ask her to do."

In considering the woman's plea for a restraining order after the couple divorced, Charles ruled in June 2009 that a preponderance of the evidence showed the defendant had harassed and assaulted her, but "The court believes that [defendant] was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and it was something that was not prohibited."

Charles' ruling was overturned last month by New Jersey's Appellate Court, which ruled that the husband's religious beliefs were irrelevant and that the judge, in taking them into consideration, "was mistaken."

The woman's lawyer, Jennifer Donnelly of New Jersey Legal Services, told FoxNews.com that Charles' ruling should add to the case for a proposed Oklahoma law, which will be on the ballot in November, which would ban judges from considering "international law or Shariah Law" in their rulings.

"Those who don't want the bill to pass say, 'there's really no need for it because why would a judge walk down that road of religion?'" Donnelly said.

"Clearly here, this judge did walk down that road. He may not have said 'Shariah law.' But I think it's indicative that, in trying to be respectful of religion, judges venture into a very slippery slope."

Donnelly said she was surprised when Charles refused to issue a restraining order, adding that the only tipoffs that it might happen were questions he put to the husband's imam when he testified in the case.

The Appeals Court ruling notes, "The imam testified regarding Islamic law as it relates to sexual behavior. The imam confirmed that a wife must comply with her husband's sexual demands, because the husband is prohibited from obtaining sexual satisfaction elsewhere.

"However, a husband was forbidden to approach his wife 'like any animal.' ... he acknowledged that New Jersey law considered coerced sex between married people to be rape."

Charles, a former New Jersey state senator, declined to comment on his ruling. The husband, who represented himself in court, remains unnamed, as does his ex-wife.

While the judge in the case did not specifically mention Islamic or Shariah law, Robert Spencer, director of JihadWatch.com, said he might as well have.

"This is a ruling that is strictly in line with Islamic law, which does indeed declare that a wife may not refuse her husband sex under virtually any circumstances," Spencer said. "The only legal framework that would not consider marital rape to be sexual assault is Shariah."

But Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the Council for American Islamic Relations, said claims about Shariah law in the U.S. play into irrational fears about Muslims.

"It fits into the whole extremist Muslim-basher theme that Muslims are somehow trying to replace the Constitution with Islamic law," he said.

"That is absolute fantasy, and hateful. Islamic beliefs don't permit rape of any kind," he said, speaking of the New Jersey case.

Asked whether the imam's testimony contradicted that, Hooper replied, "It's just clear that a Muslim husband shouldn't do anything of this sort to his wife. It's just common sense. You don't need a religious figure to tell you that's wrong."

First Amendment expert Eugene Volokh, a professor at UCLA, said, "The Shariah law debate is a total distraction," and he noted that in the U.S., two people may sign a contract and give an Islamic court the power to determine if the contract is breached. In a 2003 case, for instance, a Texas district court ruled that the private "Texas Islamic Court" should decide the amount a husband owed his wife in a divorce proceeding -- because when they got married, they had signed a contract specifying that was what they wanted.

But assault is illegal, regardless of any contract, Volokh said, and the Appellate Court in New Jersey ruled correctly.

"The claimed religious practice of non-consensual sex involved in this case is so heinous that almost everybody thinks that you shouldn't have the right to do that, no matter what your religious beliefs are."

The husband in the case has been indicted on criminal charges and is expected to face trial in the fall.

Donnelly said that, as far as she knew, her client had not had trouble with her ex-husband since they divorced. She added that she hoped the Appeals Court ruling for her client would set a precedent.

"This ruling will really help people coming behind her," she said.

Geico Car Insurance (commercials)

The Geico commercials have irritated me for some time. (Well, as you can probaby tell from this blog, most commercials have irritated me for some time.)

The Geico salesperson in most of these is a Gecko. The Gecko's boss is an old white guy executive who isn't very smart. (Indeed, isn't that interesting? Geico is trying to sell itself as a great insurance company, and their two main spokespeople are an incompetent/clueless white executive and a little green gecko?

One of the commercials is the white exec wanting to do a trust building exercise, where he's going to fall backward and let the Gecko catch him. Sure to get a laugh, because it's so stupid...but doesn't it really decrease your trust in Geico a bit?

Another one is where the exec takes out the first dollar he's ever made - that he's apparently saved for 40 years or so, because he wants to show it to the Gecko. Thing is the Gecko saw a dollar on the man's desk, decided to steal it, and treat himself to some potato chips (or crisps as they call them in England.) What's up with that? Teaching kids and even adults that if you see a dollar floating around in someone's home or office, it's just fine to pick it up and spend it? Well, apparently the Geico gecko seems to think so.