Out With The Old...And A Half Assed Review Of The Hobbit!

Last night's post was less than inspired...in fact, it was 100% shite.  I can't let 2012 go out like that, so I'm going to end this year with a final post to free my head of clutter...

Before we start with the random unpacking of my mental attic, let's start with a few tangible items I could stand to do with less of:

Water bottles - We have a metric crap ton of water bottles floating around the cupboards of the house.  It seems every time the girls have a soccer or gymnastics camp they receive water bottles.  We also receive water bottles as gifts from time to time...but I also do dumb things like register to receive email updates from various car manufacturers, and my reward for doing so (aside from the emails that flood my inbox) is usually a water bottle.  I'm completely over water bottles and it is time to cull the ones we have.  If interested, let me know...I have a lovely blue Mazda water bottle looking for a home.

Paperwork - I've bitched and moaned about piles of paper at our house...the kids bring home papers, The Better Half has yet to discover paperless statements so every month we are inundated with envelopes containing bank info she never looks over.  We have a filing cabinet in the garage filled with decades of paperwork.  It has to go.  'Important' papers can be saved, archived, etc...but I'd say 90% of what is being saved is outdated and useless at this point. 

Tupperware - A majority of our Tupperware no longer matches, a fact that makes me want to fall down upon my knees and claw at my face in frustration.  At one point, all of our Tupperware (or Rubbermade) containers matched and it was glorious...but some of the lids have gone missing, or we have lids with no containers...or we have containers that I don't remember buying...or we have containers that have just disappeared into thin air.  A Tupperware reckoning is upon us, the misfits must go and a new homogenous regime must move in. 

Tools - I'll admit that I am no handyman.  In fact, I'm downright dangerously incompetent when it comes to most home repairs.  Still, I have a lot of tools, most of which I'll never use.  A majority of the work around the house I've been successful at saw me using nothing more than the occasional screwdriver, vice grips, channel locks, and various types of tape.  Everything else I own is extraneous and rarely, if ever, comes into play...and when it does the results are disastrous at worst, pure amateur hour at best.  Looks like I'll be putting some tools out for the Spring garage sale...and a bunch of Russians will come by and offer no more than $1.00 on everything from Dremel tools to circular saws.

Alright, enough of that...

For 8 1/2 years my family and the fridge have coexisted peacefully.  Oh, there has been the sporadic frozen water dispenser line, but nothing serious.  That has changed in recent days, now the fridge has engaged in outright hostile behavior.  For one reason or another, the temperature inside the fridge swings wildly....once dropping from the recommended 37 degrees to 26 degrees over night.  This caused an 3/4 full bottle of sparking raspberry cider to freeze and explode, showering the fridge with a sticky slush that coated everything...plus, there was glass everywhere.  All of our produce froze as well as the milk.  The freezer has also been acting sporadically, but not to the extremes the fridge side has displayed.

It's a GE Arctic fridge, and less than in-depth online research tells me that the motherboard has gone off the rails.  An inquiry to GE has been submitted to get a quote on the repair, but I don't think it's going to be cheap.  While it may not be as expensive as a new fridge, The Better Half wants to explore the option of buying a new unit as she never really liked the one we have.  She wants to look at ding and dent stores for new models that are counter profile depth and don't flash freeze the produce in fits of fridge rage. 

This would be the second GE appliance to declare war on us, although I was able to wage a fitful peace with the oven using nothing by Hello Kitty post-it notes to keep its motherboard from shorting.  Any recommendations on a fridge would be appreciated, this would be nice, but the MSRP is a wee bit out of our budget.

I took in a viewing of The Hobbit just before Christmas, and aye caramba it is a bloated telling of a story that should not take three films to tell...even two films would be pushing it.  Peter Jackson's decision to turn a 300 page book into 3 films running close to 9 hours is baffling.  This will be the first film trilogy in history that will take longer to watch than to read the book it is based upon. 

The issues with The Hobbit can all be laid at the feet of Jackson.  His reverence for the source material and, well, love of the sound cash registers make, kneecaps this effort.  Jackson is attempting to lay the framework for the Fellowship Of The Ring trilogy, which is pure folly.  George Lucas had a whack at this with his ill-fated and poorly conceived Star Wars prequel trilogy.  The big difference is that Lucas literally had no effing idea how to wedge his 'Vader Redemption' narrative of the prequels into the Original Trilogy, giving the solid impression that he made it all up as he went along.  Jackson has the opposite issue, he wishes to cram every bit of exposition and detail into his Hobbit prequel trilogy, even if the film suffers for it.

Peter Jackson's decision to pad the telling of The Hobbit with events that Tolkien glossed over in the book is absurd.  Certain scenes drag out so long that it feels they were filmed in real time, and the big set pieces reminded me of One Eyed Willie's lair in The Goonies crossbred with Donkey Kong Country and the Temple Of Doom mine car scene. 

The film really only crackles to life during the scene with Bilbo and Gollum, as Gollum is the only character with personality outside of an overarching motive that drives the rest of the characters. 

I just finished a rereading of The Hobbit, and to be honest, I'm kind of dreading the next two film installments.  My fear is that Jackson is going to over tell even more of the story, especially the time the dwarfs are incarcerated by the wood elves....