Gentle Humor – Page 42 – Suzanne Olsen's Humor Blog – I don't offend some of the people most of the time

How I Get My Material

On November 24, 2009

Nobody asks me how I come up with my ideas, but in case they ever do, I’m going to practice my answer.

I have no system. I get up in the morning thinking, “What will I write about today?” and my next thought is, “I’m hungry,” and I don’t think about writing for awhile, until I think, “I’m still hungry,” and that goes on until about 10:45 at night, when I panic and realize that if I’m going to meet my goal for the day, I need to make a beeline to the kitchen and grab something to tide me over while I write.

If you’ve ever read de Tocqueville’s, Democracy in America, you were probably forced to by some nincompoop like my college professor who taught American Literature. I protested on the grounds that it wasn’t even written by an American, for crying out loud. We got in a knock down drag out fight that resulted in me having a B grade from all my work but getting a C in the course because of my attitude. Oh how I despised that man. I have to go outside and spit…..Okay, I’m back. What a bad taste the memory gives me.

His name was Carafoil or something like that, but I called him Caro-vile. I was clever back then. I wanted to get my English degree, and I wanted to do it after working all day and going to three hours of classes four nights a week and paying for it out of my own pocket. The very, very last thing I wanted on earth was a man who thought he was God’s gift to English majors and, for that reason, really didn’t need to do much teaching because he felt that entertaining us with jokes and rambling reports of his ultra stupid life was a much better way to kill three hours of class time week after week.

Pardon me while I go evacuate my innards……..Okay, I’m back. That feels better. It’s hard to imagine after all this time that he still can make me nauseous.

But why was I talking about him? Oh yeah, when I wrote the word “beeline” up above, I remembered something from de Tocqueville about bees that was interesting. Bees will go out into the world and find some honey, and they’ll come back to their home in a straight line. If you want to find honey, you can actually follow a bee and it will lead you to it. That’s where the term “beeline” came from. I followed a bee a little ways once but couldn’t get over my neighbor’s fence quick enough.

Another interesting thing in that book (which was published in 1835) was the story of a farmer who had some kind of opening in his living room ceiling and bees came in his house and made a nest up there. They had their little habits, coming and going, humming and buzzing. The farmer and his wife thought they were right good company. Today, one bee gets in and people fly out the house like teenagers busted in a bar. Out come the cans of RAID, fly swatters, a big shoe, my brother’s bad breath (he can drop an insect at 7 paces), and all other lethal means to eliminate the ghastly thing before it, heaven forbid, bangs itself to death on the window trying to get out.

So there you have it, that’s how I come up with my ideas. Aren’t you glad you didn’t ask?

A Movie to Kill Time

By Suzanne Olsen

On November 23, 2009

In Movies

I just watched the most asinine movie called, “The International.” I don’t know what the critics had to say about it, but here’s my review.

We were renting this in the comfort of our own home, thank goodness, and so we saved $150 between the three of us when you add up the price of the movie tickets, popcorn, sodas, Milk Duds, and Jujube’s)

It started out and you knew SOMEBODY was going to get offed because of the music and the tension, but we didn’t really know which of the two characters it would be. And the method was fairly ingenious. It was looking like a good choice as the plot started to gear up and everyone seemed suspicious.

Then the other guy from the opening scene gets killed, and the good guys (Clive Owen and Naomi Watts) begin an “international” manhunt that leads to more plot twists and suspects, one after the other. My daughter asked, “When is this movie ever going to be over? It’s been on forever.”

This is not a good sign. An exciting movie, full of intelligent plot twists and suspense, will yank you in so that you don’t come up for air long enough to even think about the time.

Not this egregious curse of a movie. Everyone who could take us out of our misery by ending it gets killed off. In one magnificently stupid scene, the bad guys (a mean, selfish bank) decide they need to kill their hired assassin because the good guys are on to him. A bad guy meets him at the Guggenheim to set him up. He gets shot, and Clive Owen, who’s been tailing him, runs over after the shooting to try and get a couple of names out of the assassin before he croaks. The guy’s on the floor, looking like he’s dying, and says, “Help me out of this thing, I’m suffocating.” Turns out he’s got on a bulletproof vest so he doesn’t get a scratch from all the bullets fired at him.

We all breathed a sigh of relief because finally, FINALLY, one informer is left standing who can squeal and the movie will be over. The second Clive Owen gets his vest off, big surprise, someone starts shooting – BEFORE he talks, of course. They shoot the crap out of the Guggenheim, with new bad guys appearing like cockroaches in the night. And you won’t believe it. Mr. “Get This Thing Off of Me” is hit by 40,000 bullets to the chest after two hours of shooting during which one of the good guys is hit in the neck and spews a geyser full of gory clots into the air like Old Faithful. “Oooo, that’s gross!” my daughter said, and it was, but in the stupidest way.

With this informant dead, my daughter and I discussed whether to commit slow suicide by continuing to watch the movie, or walk away without knowing the ending. My husband had done the smart thing by falling asleep in the Lazy Boy.

Finally, Clive convinces a brand new informant to end the movie, and it looks like it might just work until that one gets killed, too. “Will this movie never end?” wailed my daughter, which woke up my husband.

The movie did end, ridiculously, when the script brought in a hit man out of the blue hired by the sons of one of the informants killed early in the movie. No real justice is served. Clive Owens doesn’t get to see the bank’s activities brought to light – this final bad guy could have been persuaded to talk if he hadn’t just been killed. The final scene is of Clive standing on a rooftop looking bewildered, probably because he’s thinking that if he’d hired the hit man a couple of hours earlier, he could have taken out ALL the bad guys and avoided a lot of useless film time for nothing.

In a desperate attempt to bring closure to this monstrosity, newspaper clips are shown during the credits about how the bank ends up getting huge profits, how its behind the scenes dirty dealings are causing weapons to proliferate in Third World countries (which is what the plot is based on), and how Naomi Watts is appointed to lead a new investigation, which she spent the whole movie doing, to no avail, so you know the bank will continue with business as usual.

So thanks Hollywood, again, for stealing what seemed like nine hours of my life to watch a movie with no intelligent plot that didn’t even have the basic decency to satisfy the suffering audience at the end. However, my husband thought it was good, but considering that he slept through most of it, I don’t know if I’d count that as a recommendation. My Final Grade: F – See it at your own risk, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The Terrible Teens

By Suzanne Olsen

On November 22, 2009

In Kids

In 8^th grade, kids have to carry a ten-pound sack of flour around to give them an idea of what a nuisance it is to have a baby in their teens so they’ll wait until they’re older. There used to be a program where prisoners would talk to kids and show them how bad life is when you break the law. I think it was called, “Scared Straight.” These are good ideas. It’s like a flu shot – it gives you a small dose of discomfort so you can avoid the big misery of the real thing.

One thing they should also do is have a room full of teenagers and bring in couples who are desperate to have a child. They should let the teenagers just talk about their lives, and how no one understands them and how stupid their parents are, especially when they insist that their rooms get picked up every few months and the dirty, moldy plates get brought to the kitchen. “It doesn’t bother us, why should it bother them? It’s our room, not theirs. If they want it clean, they can come in and clean it.”

And then when it’s question and answer time, and the couples innocently ask some general thing to communicate, for instance, “How do you like school?” the teenagers could answer, “why are you people always up in our faces? Why don’t you get a life of your own?”

And then they could start asking for money and a ride to someone’s house in a snide and snarky tone of voice, and get mad at the would-be parents for not jumping up and doing it on a minute’s notice.

Finally, they could start blaming the prospective parents for things like making them be in that room answering stupid questions instead of out with their friends. “Your just like all grown-ups, you only think about yourself. You have no idea how hard our lives are.” And if the parents-to-be ask if there’s something they can do to help, the teenagers can say, “Yeah, right, like you could understand or even want to do anything,” and walk out the door, slamming it as hard as they can.

Yes, I know, I’m painting a pretty rosy picture of living with teenagers, because it gets a lot uglier than this. If anyone would have warned me, I might have reconsidered. The only consolation is that, rumor has it, the nasty alien thing living in your child’s body will eventually leave, and your sweet daughter will reappear sometime in her 20’s or 30’s. I only hope I can survive that long because, if looks could kill, I’d be fertilizing daisies.

Sorry I’m Late

By Suzanne Olsen

On November 21, 2009

In People, Uncategorized

I just had a wonderful Indian dinner with friends, and when it was all done and I was happy as a clam, they started talking about taxes and the new health plan. I immediately got indigestion, and since I procrastinated all day writing my blog, and now I’m too cranky to be funny, I’m taking the lazy way out and using a poem I wrote a while back. This still counts as my blog post for today, if I can hurry and get it done before midnight.

I do not premeditate being late.
I really try not to procrastinate.
I want to be on time, honest I do.
But then my keys hide, and so does one shoe.
I set my clocks ahead, but it’s all for naught.
Sometimes being late isn’t always my fault.

If I leave my house almost right on time.
A bus on a narrow road puts me behind.
Red lights conspire to slow my pace.
They’re never green when I’m having to race.
Road construction blocks my path.
Flagmen don’t care about my wrath.

And if I’m late, I’m just like my brother,
We both got tardiness from our mother.
She made us be careful and take our time.
She said, “If you’re late, it’s not such a crime.”
“Better late than never,” is what she’d say,
But most other people don’t feel that way.

My bosses scold, and I dread all the fuss,
My husband fumes and starts to cuss.
My daughter pouts when she’s late for school,
My son says, “Mom, this is really NOT cool.”
Puntuality is always my goal.
But it’s something I can’t seem to control.

Oddly, I have friends who are never late.
You’d think they’d complain when we make a date.
They know what time I’ll dash through the door.
Five minutes behind, just like before.
You’d think my lateness would make them distant.
“You’re late,” they say, “but at least you’re consistent.”

Birds of a Feather

By Suzanne Olsen

On November 20, 2009

In People

I was thinking about friendships, and I realize that I tend to like people who are like me. That’s because we have things in common. If I’m in a group of people, and they’re all talking about American Idol – they know all the contestants’ names and call in and vote a dozen times – but I don’t give a flying rip about the show (and I’m just using American Idol as an example, you can substitute any show, like Dancing with the Stars, Survivor, Jerry Springer – it’s all the same difference). If you don’t watch the show, it’s probably because you’ve tried to sit through one episode and you concluded that it was pretty dumb. And if they watch it, then it stands to reason that they’re dumb, too.

Humans have an immense capacity for thinking everyone else is stupid. Women demonstrate this repeatedly. A woman will say, “I can’t believe she did that!” Frequently the woman will lean over and put her hand to the side of her face so the public won’t be able to hear her catty comments. What she’s really saying is, “She’s so bizarre, I just want to take her and shake some sense into her.”

Women always want to shake some sense into somebody. We think we can fix people. We start with our husbands, which doesn’t get very far, so we have children and enjoy a small measure of success while they’re helpless, but around age two the battles start and escalate until they reach their teens and we concede the war.

So women go to work on their friends, but they have to be careful if they want to actually keep the friend. “I really liked your hair short,” is the kind of subtle comment they’ll make to try and get you to change. Or, “why don’t you try yoga, I hear that’s a really good way to get in shape – I’ll sign up with you.”

If you migrate toward people more like you, there’s less to fix and, consequently, less irritation. For instance, people choose the Republican Party because they want to hold onto their money and buy gas-guzzlers and McMansions to show they have succeeded in life. People choose the Democratic Party because they feel guilty about succeeding in life and want to share some of their wealth with those less fortunate. You’ll choose the group that makes you feel most comfortable, and set about criticizing the other group and try to convert them as much as possible.

Sometimes I wonder where I’m going with these tangents. But one thing I’m certain about, even within my own circle of friends who are a lot like me, I can still find things about them that I wish they’d do differently. And everyone I know is like that. I have one friend who thinks women should never be caught shoeless without a fresh pedicure. After she has people over in the summer, all she can talk about is how so and so’s feet looked so bad and how she can’t believe they go around in flip flops with those yellowish looking toenails. I have a relative who talks incessantly about how other people act so inappropriately, yet she has the social graces of a baboon.

And then there’s me, who wishes I could do a makeover on everyone. I’d have the negative people shut up, the mousey people stand up, the unhealthy people slim down, the mean people beat down, the prices at my favorite stores marked down, and my income jacked up. That’s how I’d make the world a better place. But in the meantime, I’m going to try and accept people just the way they are because, God love ‘em, they weren’t lucky enough to be born like me. And I’m pretty positive that everyone else thinks they’re just right, because it doesn’t seem like anyone I know has ever changed for the better, no matter how much good advice I give them.

Somebody’s Got to Be the Straight Guy

By Suzanne Olsen

On November 19, 2009

In People

I’ve always been the straight man, or straight person. I’ll see a joke coming and set it up. Like last night at that concert I was telling you about. My friend took a picture of me, and then a couple of minutes later we were looking at the pictures, and since it was dark in there, and the screen’s really tiny on those phone things, at first all I could see were just shades of color. I said, “Is that me?”

They laughed, so I realized it must not have been. The other thing is, I’ve got braces on my teeth due to some faulty dental work (I had very straight teeth and the last thing I wanted or needed before the faulty dental work was braces). I look hideous in pictures and I’m not exaggerating. They did a little blurb about me in The Oregonian and sent a photographer to my house, and he must have taken 500 pictures, but since every camera makes me look like some toothless doofus no matter how I pose or the skill of the photographer, I looked like an idiot. “It wasn’t the best picture of you,” my friend Joyce said, which I thought was very kind.

Anyway, I hate getting my picture taken, but not as much as I hate seeing the picture. Laurie was sitting in the middle, holding up the pictures for both of us to see, and as my eyes finally got focused on the camera, I saw that she was showing a picture of her pet frog, an ugly close-up shot from an angle that distorted him and made him out of focus so that he looked like a brown cow pie with a giant froggy eyeball. I piped up and said, “Is that me? I just don’t look like myself with these braces.”

Laurie and Olivia about wet their pants because they could obviously see the frog in the picture. Tears started rolling down their eyes, I’m not kidding. They were bent over like they were checking their shoes and laughing, only coming up to wipe away the tears, then bending back down again. Now, mind you, we all had a couple of pints of IPA, except Laurie had that black poison of a beer – a porter – because she must have thought she needed more hair on her chest, so maybe that made them a little more susceptible to my humor, but that’s what I’m talking about being the straight person.

I had a friend once named Steve Bingham who I snubbed all through high school but “met” in Fort Myers Beach, Florida when I was there with two girlfriends spending the summer after my sophomore year in college. Bingham (that’s what we all called him), by sheer coincidence, had come down there with a pack of his friends, and we ran into them and invited them to our apartment. A hurricane was raging outside – wind bending the palm trees almost 90º and sheets or horizontal rain pounding the windows. I discovered that Bingham was naturally very funny. We were listening to The Who, and I had on a pair of headphones so I could hear over the wind, even though the speakers were up plenty high. Did I mention I’m going deaf? Anyway, Bingham would ask me questions like, “You’re ugly, aren’t you?” and then start shaking his head up and down in an exaggerated way to get me to agree with him. Everyone in the room thought I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I could, though I pretended I couldn’t and I’d start nodding yes along with him. Everyone cracked up. I could see them all giggling, but I kept a straight face. They acted like it was the funniest thing on earth. There was beer involved there, too. Then Bingham would say, “You like girls, don’t you?” and I’d nod and smile. “You eat Palmetto bugs, don’t you?” and so on. Seems like we did that for hours until we were overcome with hunger and walked downstairs to Vi’s Restaurant to get Key Lime Pie.

You know, I think some of this stuff gets lost in the telling, but I’m sitting here laughing like I’m at a comedy club thinking about it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve laughed about that frog picture – it probably wouldn’t have been so funny if the frog hadn’t looked so bad. I woke myself up snickering about it in my sleep. See? When you laugh, you forget about the bad things, like how hideous you look in braces. For a couple of minutes, anyway.

Concerts Make Me Sleepy

By Suzanne Olsen

On November 18, 2009

In People, Uncategorized

I just went to a concert by a group called Playing for Change with a couple of my girlfriends. We had dinner first at The Aladdin Theater, and it was packed. There was a table for two, so a couple sitting at a table for four agreed to change with us, so I felt I needed to entertain them with whining that our food was taking forever to get there and asking for some of theirs when they were served. Boy were they laughing, especially after I’d had a couple of IPA’s on an empty stomach. Everything I said was funny. Ha Ha

After we ate we went in and got our seats. The band came out and were quite good, except when they played reggae music which, excuse me if I’m not diverse in my musical taste, but it all sounds pretty much the same to me (which is the exact thing my dad used to say about my rock music). Besides, I like songs I know better than new stuff, especially at a concert. But it turned out to be good that they played those songs because then I was able to grab a little shuteye.

I enjoyed the concert – it was mostly an older crowd and we were swaying back and forth, a couple of people lit their Bic’s, and it was like old times. And actually, it was a whole lot like the concerts I went to back in the day. The Allman Brothers or Leon Russell came through Knoxville, Tennessee practically every other week, it seemed like, and there were about twenty of us who never missed a concert. Back then there was a cloud of smoke at every concert, and the majority of it was not tobacco. Complete strangers passed those funny cigarettes back and forth – it didn’t matter if you partook or not, it was good concert etiquette to pass whatever was handed to you along. Someone would put a doobie in your right hand and you’d already have one in your left to pass off. I’m sure the second-hand smoke was enough to have an affect on those of us who were there just to hear the music. Oh yeah, that reminds me, we saw the Doobie Brothers, too.

I remember getting so sleepy because I had to be at work early every morning, and I’d pray that the concert would get over. Then finally the lead guitar guy would do his excruciatingly long solo of eardrum busting high notes, and when he quit everyone cheered – but I’m sure it was because it was finally over, not because anyone liked it. Then they’d leave the stage to pounding feet on bleachers and hollers and claps, and I would start praying again that the lights would come on.

But they never did. After the racket continued for a while, the band would sheepishly come back out, put their guitars on, and start playing the one song you’d been waiting to hear all night, which brought the house down. And they dragged the song out for an eternity, and then they’d go back off stage, and the freaking lights would still stay off. Doggone it! They’d come back and do a slow song nobody on earth wanted to hear, and when they were done we gave them polite applause and the lights went on, and I could go home.

Same thing happened tonight. Playing for Change comes back out and does their “Stand By Me” signature song, getting the audience to sing with them amid the cheering, swaying, and Bic lighters, and then they leave again, but the lights stay off, and there’s one guy still up on stage. He slowly raises a microphone to his mouth and everything gets really quiet and he starts singing, “Amazing Grace.” Well now there’s a slow one that he made even slower – and I thought, “this is the same formula they were using back in the day.” But I had to give him credit, he sang it very well, and it was all the more special because he was actually blind – wearing an eye patch even.

All in all it was a great concert, but now you must excuse me. I’m very, very sleepy – just like in the good old days.

Don’t Answer It!

By Suzanne Olsen

On November 17, 2009

In Fears, People

I’ve gotten to where I’m afraid to answer the phone. In my office I don’t have caller ID, so I don’t know I’m about to get a sucker punch until I hear the pause on the line, then a nasally voice says, “Is Mr. or Mrs. So and So at home?” You know good and well that it’s not a friend or family member because they’d know you were home when you answered the phone. To toy with them I say, “This is Mr. So and So.” They stutter and then, like the polished actors they are, get right back to the script and start telling you, in earnest, that this is NOT a sales call. They simply have a small survey that will only take a few seconds, and could you please tell them if you have a heater in your house (no), does it have an air filter (yes), does anyone in your house have asthma or allergies (no), what is your age group (infant), are you working (get serious), how many children are living in the house (two dozen, I think. I’ve lost count).

Then they tell you that, based on your preposterous answers, you’ve qualified for a free in-home consultation at absolutely no obligation to you, it’s a free service they’re offering to people in your neighborhood because you’re special and they happened to be right down the street doing something important and can just drop in, say on Tuesday, or Wednesday if that would work better.

Do people really fall for this? Because I can tell you this, if you let them come to your house, they’ll convince you to buy some air filtration system that costs more than the crown jewels and, when it’s all said and done, you won’t notice you’ve got it, though you’ll try to convince yourself it’s working and saving doctor bills and removing dust in your home, though dust is like air – it goes where it wants to go and doesn’t need to consult you if it wants to lay in a grey film over everything you own, air filter or no air filter.

Sometimes I get calls from people wanting to give me an amazing vacation package to some new resort, but I have to bring my husband, and we have to sit through a ninety-minute sales pitch to buy a time-share, though they don’t put it that way. They say they just want to make sure we’re aware of all the amenities, which they list in exceptionally cheery tones.

I’ve been on a couple of these and they aren’t so bad, really, until the sales person takes you in the little room and tells you he’s not going to try and sell you on the place because it’s really the best deal on the planet so you’d be very wise to get in on it now because prices will go up and they’re running a special offer TODAY ONLY. After you say about forty no thank-you’s, the manager comes in just to make absolutely sure you know how stupid you are for passing up this once in a lifetime deal. You have to agree out loud that you are stupid before they’ll turn you lose, but it’s worth it.

So I’ve pretty much given up answering the phone. I let the machine take the call and then call people back who aren’t hustling me for something. I figure I save about two hours a day doing this, and my wallet can breathe easier, even if I won’t be able to until I buy the gold-plated filter. Personally, I get along just fine with dust.

Why We Love This Dog

By Suzanne Olsen

On November 16, 2009

In Pets

My dog is curled up in my lap (yes, she is a lap dog), and she’s hot. Not “attractive” hot, though I think most dogs would say she is quite cute with her black curly hair and black eyes. The eyes are her best feature when you can see them, which is only when she looks at you askance so that the little sliver moons of white show.

No, this dog is really hot. She’s like a heating pad, which works okay in the winter because it gets cold sitting in front of the computer, but in the summer we’re both shifting positions, trying to get some cool air in, but she won’t get out of my lap even if we’re both miserable, and if I put her down because I can’t take it anymore, she looks at me with those sliver moon eyes and whines all pitiful-like until I pick her back up.

Speaking of whining, this dog is always seeing something out the back door and wanting to check it out. I open the sliding door to let her out, and she just stands there with her nose stretched out, smelling the cold air rushing in. I’ll start to close the door, and she leans way forward and takes a step. I stop the door and she sniffs some more, and I lose all patience and try to shut the door quickly, but then she tries to bolt through it before it closes. So I open the door enough for her to get through, and she finally goes out on the patio and barks a few times. If I stand there, she ignores me and just looks around for an eternity. If I walk off, she turns toward the door and wants to be let back in right away. I read somewhere that a doorway is something that a dog is always on the wrong side of.

Dogs are pretty entertaining, though, aren’t they? I mean, this one will play with you by pretending to bite your hand or pull on your sleeve and growl. You push her away and she comes back, pretending to bite again. It’s all in good fun until suddenly, for absolutely no reason, she gets mad. She lunges at you and bites pretty hard, which usually doesn’t hurt because she’s only a 9 pound Yorkie Poo, but sometimes her little pointy tooth will make contact with a bone and it hurts like the dickens. She growls like you’ve become a burglar and she’s morphed into a Doberman, and she’s got a particular growl that if you hear that, and you get your hand or face or any other part close to her, she’d bite hard enough to make a lasting tooth impression in your flesh.

My son loves to get her to the biting stage because he thinks her growling is funny. I say to him, “You’re gonna get bit,” and he grins and looks at me and, every single time, puts his hand a little closer to the dog’s mouth and she shoots out like a lighting bolt and clamps onto his hand, and he yanks it away howling, “SHE BIT ME!” like it just came out of nowhere. He gets all upset because those bites really do hurt, and acts like the dog is disloyal and unfaithful, and shows me the tooth mark before he goes away pouting, clutching his bitten hand and mumbling, “Bad dog.”

I can’t tell you how many times this has been repeated at my house. Over and over and over again. My son will go off to his room or somewhere and then come back out a little later, still pouting, and won’t make eye contact with the dog, who’s just sitting there on my lap minding her own business, the altercation already forgotten and her little stub tail thumping soundlessly against my leg.

The dog is the central figure in this house. Everyone wants to know what the dog is doing at all times. When the kids come home, I ask them how school was, and then I tell them about the adventures of the dog that day. “She treed a squirrel,” or “she rolled in something so foul it made my eyes water,” or “she saw some crows and barked her fool head off for half an hour.” I honestly don’t know what we all talked about before the dog. She’s everyone’s best friend, but she likes my lap the best.

The Men Who Stare at Stinkers

By Suzanne Olsen

On November 15, 2009

In Movies

I wanted to go to a movie, and let me first say that just about every one out lately sucks. There have been a couple of good ones, but I’m going to ignore them because they’re not as fun to write about.

I went to Fandango to check out what was on and the reviews. What’s amazing to me is that the reviews are all over the place. One movie fan says, “This is the funniest movie ever,” and the next one says, “don’t waste your money, wait for the DVD.”

I could understand if these reviews were in the middle, like “it’s not a great movie but it’s a lot better than cleaning the toilet.” Then you know that it’s nothing to get excited about but something good enough to pass for entertainment. But when the reviews are so far to the left and right, who can you believe?

I also get confused about the professional critics at the LA Times, Variety, and USA Today. For instance, I read the LA Times’ review of “The Men Who Stare at Goats.” I read the whole review and can’t tell if it’s a movie worth seeing or not. The only thing clear is that they like George Clooney. Well, so do I, and he’s almost enough of a draw that I’d go see anything he’s in, except that I don’t quite trust him anymore. He was in “Burn After Reading,” a movie I thought was beyond stupid.

Which leads me to my main complaint about some movies. They try so hard to do something new and different, and if it’s really really different, the critics will praise it just because it’s not the same drivel they see all the time. They’ll give the movie a good review even if the director thinks a plot is something in a cemetery, even if the story is remarkably unbelievable, and even if the characters act bizarre just for the sake of acting bizarre. In other words, in my and the rest of the sane world’s opinion, the movie stinks, but the critics love it.

Sometimes the reviews are obviously slanted to favor a movie. Maybe the critic is getting a kickback. You see this a lot on DVD’s. There will be some glowing remark like, “the best movie of the year” and then the reviewer will be in microscopic letters under it, and it will be someone like, “The North Dakota Plains Mostly Monthly Observer.” My favorite, though, are those movies released at the first of the year and someone reviews them, saying, “One of the top 10 movies of 2009.” There have only been 4 movies released so far, and this one is so bad it can’t even make the top 5 list.

Well, enough griping about movies. We’re going to see “Couples Retreat” which promises, according to the fan reviews, to be both a “laugh out loud comedy” and a “complete waste of time.” But it sounds better than “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” because of these telling reviews by fans: “this movie suct really bad,” “This movie was beyond horrible!” “This movie would be declared cruel and unusual punishment if shown to Guantanamo inmates,” “a stinker of gigantic prortions,” “Pointless yawner and time waster,” “I want my money back.” See? These kind of reviews I can trust. Sorry George. You may be pretty, but I’ll stick with watching you again in “Brother, Where Art Thou?” Now that was a fine movie, and you were brilliant every time you said, “My hair!” Can’t you please get Hollywood to wise up and give us a good, quirky, entertaining story to spend our hard earned money on? We’re counting on you. And quit taking parts in these lousy movies, it’s not fair to us women who have to give up the eye candy because we don’t want to be pistol whipped by a lousy plot.