I Want to Break Free

Last night I had a dream that I was hanging out with Pope Benedict. We walked all the way from the new cathedral he had just built to my grandma's house. On the way he expelled a demon from a homeless person and turned a rotting trout into rice crispy treats when we were hungry. Not even kidding.

Don't Go Wasting Your Emotions

So, I was debating with myself on whether I should be blunt and just name this post "Mama Mia!" (it is a song after all) or if I should be a bit more subtle and make the song of the day "Closet" by Pete Yorn, but I decided on the middle road and gave it the title of a Queen song.

And, not that you'll listen to me, but this is another post where you should actually listen to the song of the day on the sidebar playlist.

I've decided I don't want to make it a movie review, but I do want to just come out (every pun intended) and say that I watched Mama Mia! the other night. Not only was it the best movie I've seen in a long time, but I actually might go out of my way to see it again, which is nearly unprecedented (the only movie I've seen in theaters more than once is Spiderman 2).

Mama Mia! Was weird for a number of reasons. First of all the movie (I know it was a Broadway musical first, but I haven't seen the musical so I won't mention it) was written around the soundtrack instead of the other way around. Secondly, I went in with very little information. I don't have a TV so I hadn't seen a preview of the movie, and so I only knew two facts going in: 1. On the movie poster is a girl in a wedding dress. 2. They are going to have to work about 15 ABBA songs into this movie.

So, I was surprised to find that not only was this movie not set in San Fransico or New York in the early 70's, but, for some inexplicable reason, they thought ABBA would be more appropriate to modern day Greece.

I won't give away any plot details, but I will tell you that since it's a musical there is very little plot, most of which is driven by the strangest conflict I'm ever seen in film: Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth competing over the same woman. Never since Bridget Jone's Diary (wow, I'm even making myself a little suspicious of my orientation) has Colin Firth really come up against a worthy opponent (I really don't know if I could do three posts in a row without alluding to Hugh Grant).

Really though, nothing about this movie would even be tolerable if you didn't like ABBA. And so, if I want to recommend it to people I have to begin by asking if they like ABBA, and if not I first have to talk them into listening to about 500 hours of disco.

On a manlier note: I put together a bookshelf last night. I'm pretty sure all my floors are crooked.

Also, in my never-ending quest to enrich everyone's life who reads this blog, I give you xkcd.com:


It's kind of what we're all waiting for: a person born in the 80's who grew up in the 90's writing jokes that are funniest to our generation. I'm excited for when these people kick out the baby boomers and finally take over T.V.

These comics come out 3 times a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which makes them about 3/7ths as cool as my blog, and since they're only spot-on about 70% of the time that puts them down to being about 9/25ths as cool as my blog. The other 30% of the time they are about complicated principles of physics, math, or Linux. But, check 'em out.

That was a little disjointed, but I'm fairly sleep-deprived.

Have a good one. Tomorrow is goal-day. Time to update everyone on how I did with my goals last week and share some new ones for the week to come.

P.S. And reminiscent of last week's post on Will Smith I've got a couple songs for you to compare. Try to decide if Reba McEntire subliminally ripped ABBA off (especially compare the note sequence of "Waterloo, couldn't escape if I wanted to, Waterloo, finally facing my Waterloo," with "Little Rock, think I'm gonna have to slip you off, take a chance tonight and untie the knot, there's more to life than what I've got"). Either way trying to find stuff like this is like trying to decide if thigh-high, flame pattern-boots go with David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust collar: No one should really be doing it.