Tracy’s blog

I took my mom on a date this morning. See, the original plan was to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I even made her watch Knocked Up last night so that she would (hopefully) fall in love with the characters; or at the very least be somewhat familiar with them.

I get up early this morning to go, because duh! AMC Theatre has $5.00 movies before noon, and I decide to look up what time the movie is playing. About that time I see 10,000 B.C. is showing as well and we had been wanting to see that.

Guess where we ended up? I guess it's okay, though. I mean, no matter how close my mom and I are, there's still a little part of me that would be weirded out staring at a giant penis in my face for half a movie.

So, we watched Steven Strait and swooned over him as the chivalrous male. <3 Can I just say now that I've loved him (aka had the hots for him) since Sky High? Moving on.

10,000 B.C. is about a prehistoric man walking to the "ends of the Earth" to save the woman he loves, and other members of his clan. Don't kid yourself, though, it's ALL about the girl.

It starts out really slow and I was kicking myself for not seeing Sarah Marshall but just then it picked up and I found that I actually cared whether or not D'Leh (Strait's character) succeeded. The acting was so-so. The accents were horrid in most cases. The action scenes were pretty good and the dynamics between the characters completely won me over.

Overall - 4 squees. I can't award anything less for a movie where all the guys spend their time shirtless. =)

As much as I worship and adore Dane Cook, I was just not impressed so much with this movie. I mean, it has its cute parts and all, but most movies do. I just feel that it could have been better. The storyline was pretty boring; Guys wife dies, he hasn't found anyone worth loving, guy meets girl, she's special, he falls in love, girl ends up being guys brother's girlfriend. It's one that anyone with half a brain cell could have seen coming.

All that being said, Dane Cook did his best. He's not an actor and so the fact that he could carry this off even remotely was pretty fantastic. I thought the middle daughter was overly dramatic and irritating and the girl (Dane's girlfriend/Dan's infatuation) could have been prettier (my shallowness shines through).

All in all, I give it 3 squees because Dan Cook was a hot bitch in it and he punched Dan in the face and blackened his eye. That, in itself is enough reason to rent a movie.

My mom bought me this CD for Christmas (I would much have preferred another book... I could have downloaded the CD over the interweb, but that's beside the point) and I do love Reba so I was at least a little bit excited about hearing what my girl had to offer.

There's a story my dad loves to tell in which my grandpa (his stepdad but the only grandfather I ever knew) kept a picture of Dolly Parton on his dresser ever since my dad could remember but when Reba came on the scene, Dolly was replaced with Reba. Now, I don't know why this story is relevant except that it shows how long Reba McEntire has been worming her way into my family. Ha-ha.

That being said, the whole record was classic country Reba. She sang ballads and made me hate life because I don't have anyone to think about when I hear these sappy songs.

I was particularly excited about the Justin Timberlake track "The Only Promise That Remains" because I read that he wrote that song specifically for her and this album and I was eager to hear how his sound would blend with hers. He's very subdued in the track and unless you are listening for him you might even miss him. It's a little more old school NSYNC Justin Timberlake (and I have zero problems with that, I loved them) and he actually sings in it... no traces of SexyBack on this track.

The most well known is obviously "Because of You" with Kelly Clarkson and since it's so well known I won't get into it. However, I did like this version even more then I liked the Kelly-only version. It was more tame and you focused on the words more. Definitely a plus because it's an extremely powerful song, it doesn't need all the fancy things to make it work.

"Sleeping With the Telephone" with Faith Hill is another favorite as is "When You Love Someone Like That" with Leann Rimes. There's a pattern here, it seems. I stick to my favorite singers even when they're doing duets with other favorite singers! Ha-ha.

All in all, I'd give it 3 squees because there are only 11 songs and they're all very safe songs. Nothing particularly challenging and nothing that sticks out in my brain as fantastic.

5 squees out of 5. Amazing book.

I've always been a huge Jenna Jameson fan. Not of her movies because I've still only ever seen snippets of a couple but of her as a woman. Ever since I was younger I've thought she was one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen and even though she doesn't quite look the way she did when I became a fan, she's still a gorgeous woman and she doesn't have to try very hard.

You're probably wondering why I started the post this way and I have your answer: I might be a little harsh on Traci Lords because pitting these two women up against each other... well, Traci doesn't really stand much of a chance and now you know why. So let's get to it, shall we?

I just finished reading Underneath It All (I bought it for myself for Christmas) and as someone who was a casual fan of Ms. Lords (Crybaby is one of my all-time favorite movies and I loved her performance as Wanda) but never worried about any of the gossip surrounding her, I was curious to hear her side of the "scandal".

The whole time I read, though, I couldn't help but compare her to my girl Jenna Jameson. Both books were written by porn stars (ex in Traci Lords' case) but that's where the similarities ended. Let's take it back to my first paragraph and I'll state that as a slightly biased Jenna fan, I wasn't hugely impressed with Underneath It All.

In How To Make Love... Jenna lay it all out on the line and stated numerous times that she chose the way her life turned out and that made me respect her. Traci, on the other hand, went the opposite direction and played the victim throughout the entire book. Now, I'm not saying she wasn't traumatized by the things that happened to her but at some point, don't you have to (wo)man up and take some responsibilities for your actions?

Traci, you chose to use your fake I.D. and make movies. You could have worked at McDonald's and made lousy money like the other people your age but you chose (yeah, there's that word again) the easy* way by relying on your beauty.

*When I say easy, I am not actually implying that this was an easy decision. From reading your book, I know it was difficult and you've regretted it every day but I am saying that it was easy to get into this world for you and required zero effort on your part to actually work for something. Easy is relative.

Back to my original point, the whole "feel sorry" for me tone of the book just aggravated me. It worked, sure. Through the whole book I was thinking, "Man, this girl had it rough!! The poor thing and at such a young age... and she's still having to fight to gain an inch." Honestly, I know all the crap that is said about her from other people's point of view but I wanted to hear her be a strong woman, which obviously she is to have made it. But all I kept getting was "my life sucked; pity me; why won't anyone give me a chance?" No offense Traci, girl, but we've all had rough lives but we all have to, at some point, own up to the choices we've made and say, "Hey, I've screwed up in the past... but it's the past. This is me now!"

Another point of contention is that it's clear she wrote this herself (without the help of a ghostwriter). The dialogue was rough, the sentence structure was choppy and there were whole paragraphs I simple skipped because I was stuck wondering what it had to do with anything. Next book, give Neil Strauss a call; he worked on Jenna's book and did a fantastic job! (Oh come on, you didn't think she did that herself, did you?)

All in all (and all my complaints aside) it wasn't a horrible book; I've read worse. It had a relatively good story line and definitely put a spin on the popular opinion of her. I am going to give it 3 squees (out of a possible 5). There's a killer picture section housing photos from the set of Crybaby and for that, I can forgive it a lot.

OH! And as for who wins the battle - No contest. Jenna holds the crown this and every year.