Tag Archives: diversions

Movie Review: The Artist

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I was afraid The Artist would be a pretentious piece of crud, partly because it had won so many awards, and partly because it was both in black-and-white and almost without sound.

After all, using black and white now can seem gimmicky or simply too precious and cutesy. It’s not used a lot for full movies anymore, but it is used quite frequently for portions of movies — Schindler’s List, Dead Again and Oz the Great and Powerful all used black and white for various purposes and scenes, each in a slightly different way.

I’m happy to say that I didn’t think The Artist was pretentious. It was actually a pretty simple movie about a man’s downward career trajectory while he watches a woman’s upward career trajectory, and how the two interrelate. I’d hesitate to call it a romance, though it is billed that way, and there are a few moments where it almost becomes romantic, but misses the mark.

I learned something important from The Artist: most of the time, you don’t really need to hear the words to understand what’s going on in a scene. The acting is enough, and knowing the specific words doesn’t make a huge amount of difference.

I also learned that by minimizing the sound in a movie, you can make the sounds you do use especially meaningful. During the few scenes in The Artist that feature sound, that sound is always meaningful. In one it is momentous and terrifying, disturbing and upsetting. In the other scene, the sound is a triumph. This movie used sound in a different way than any other movie I’ve ever seen.

I’m not saying the movie was perfect. It dragged a bit in some places, and could have benefited by another run-through with the editorial scissors.

I didn’t much care for the lead actress, Berenice Bejo, but mostly on the grounds that she looked nothing like the movie stars of that era. Perhaps more could have been done with her makeup to give her that look–the lead actor, Jean Dujardin looked perfect for his era, so why worry about giving the woman the chalk-white-face and makeup of her time period as well? Why does the woman have to be contemporary-pretty when the man can have that old-fashioned mustache and slicked-back hair?

Finally, the music could have used a bit more variety. When the music is all your audience will hear for most of the film, you need to change the music more often. The music was very good, but some of it was quite repetitive.

All in all, I enjoyed The Artist, but if you see it, be sure to watch it when you’re in a patient mood and want to see a character-driven dramedy. It’s really a simple little movie, but you’ll need to keep your eyes on the screen and avoid multitasking while you watch it.

The New Oz Movie

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Well, after 28 years they’ve finally come out with a new Oz movie, and the critics already seem to be jumping all over it with hobnailed boots.

Fair enough. I haven’t seen it yet, so I have no idea whether it’s any good.

What I do question is the critics’ seeming universal claim that the original movie was an unparalleled classic of American movie-making, and the unspoken premise that it should be enshrined forever because it’s awesome, period.

I like “Wizard of Oz,” don’t get me wrong. It is a classic. It has some neat images (the colorchanging horse! The Art Deco Emerald City!) and a couple of good songs. It’s a fairytale quest flick, which I always appreciate, too.

… but.

But Judy Garland was in her late teens when she filmed this movie, and her dialogue would be better suited to an eight-year-old. But the Dorothy character doesn’t actually do a whole lot during the movie–she reacts to situations, sure, but mostly things seem to happen to her. And the characterizations are mostly paper-thin.

It’s a good movie, sure, but I’d argue that its strongest point is its setting, or perhaps the music– certainly not the characters, the plot or the script. Think about it: The yellow brick road. The Emerald City. The color-shifting horse, the angry trees, the flying monkeys, the dark forest and the field of poppies. All that is part of the setting.

And if the setting is great, why not revisit it and expand it?

I’m not saying the new movie is any good–I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know. I am saying that if you do see it, it’s probably best to view it as a standalone movie, or at least try not to remember the first flick through the rose-colored glasses of childhood.

Unless you’re seeing the new movie while you’re still a child as well, you’re not going to be making a fair comparison that way.

Candidates for Worst Movie

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Some of the folks on Facebook have some suggestions for the worst movies they’ve seen.

  • TB: The Sweetest Thing. “I normally like that genre, but it was drivel. Went nowhere.”
  • ML: Anything with George Clooney in it.
  • CT: Lady in the Water. “Painfully strange and annoying.” Sucker Punch, a close second. “A noisy mess.”
  • AW: War of the Worlds, in Swedish, with English subtitles.
  • AM: Black Hawk Down “There is just only so many consecutive minutes of guys peeking around corners with an M16 that I can take.”
  • JH: Apocalypse Now. “Could not watch.”

I think the only movie I’ve ever stopped watching out of self-defense is probably the first “The Fast and the Furious.” Boring, inane dialogue and some of the least sympathetic characters ever (and that’s a high bar to vault).

I even sat through the entirety of “Transformers”, hoping against hope that everyone in the movie would be killed somehow. Disappointingly, all the “stars” made it out alive.

Edit: And here’s a few more!

  • BB: Silent Hill, half the Resident Evils, anything involving Steven Segal, and of course, Jean Claude Van Damme’s entire collection. Clan of the Cave Bear “where they inexplicably decided to make the dialogue of the entire movie grunts and snorts because it’s about neanderthals.”
  • BR: Marked for Death and Borat. “We actually paid money to see Steven Segal in ‘Marked for Death’ in the theater… it was dreadful. Worse than dreadful. I would also count that stupid ‘Borat’ movie in my top few.”
  • JE: Shazaam and any of the Twlight movies.
  • JD: The latest installment of Die Hard.
  • PG: Howard the Duck.

And mooooooore! Really, DEEP HURTING seems to be the theme here.

  • PG: Parenthood (1989). “All the funny stuff you saw in the trailer was all the funny stuff there was. After the first 5 minutes, it descended into this hell of family life.”
  • AM: Pearl Harbor. “I think maybe there should be a second canvassing for Worst Ever Mega Blockbusters. #1: Pearl Harbor.”
  • RM: Plan Nine from Outer Space, Manos: The Hands of Fate, Birdemic, The Room, The Happening, Dreamscape, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, Uwe Boll’s entire body of work.

Worst Movies Ever?

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I watched the infamous “Birdemic” over the weekend. Yes, I did this on purpose. No, I’m not a glutton for punishment.

The movie was probably one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, even though I’ve seen “Gor” and “Battlefield Earth.” So let’s take a look at some bad movies.

Birdemic

“Birdemic” is pretty much Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” but with all the interesting parts, good writing, excellent acting, suspense and characterization removed.

Instead, the movie features animated clip art birds flapping mechanically in a sad attempt to be menacing, and some dialogue from actors approaching the woodenness of Kristen Stewart in “Snow White & the Huntsman.” It’s not quite as wooden, I admit, but it’s very close. Fortunately, none of the actors attempt to express emotion through twitching like Stewart does. They don’t attempt to express emotion at all.

And like most truly horrible movies, “Birdemic” contains both a cringeworthy dance scene and a heavy-handed moral slammed over the audience’s head at every possible opportunity.

Then there are all the driving scenes. Driving, driving, driving. Not car chases, just ordinary driving. Seriously, Days of Thunder had fewer driving scenes.

Gor and Outlaw of Gor

There were things to like about “Gor” and its equally dreadful sequel, “Outlaw of Gor.”

There weren’t a lot of them, I admit, but there were some: one, Jack Palance was clearly hammered out of his mind when he agreed to do this movie, and also while he was filming this movie. Two, rather than putting on a serious face, the movie amps up its owncampiness. Three, while it is hideously exploitative of women, and features more butt-or-boob shots than any movie I’ve ever seen before, the men Yet Another Butt from Gorwear equally stupid outfits and there are nearly as many butt shots of them. They are cringeworthy, but at least the Gor flicks made an effort, right? There are no women in chainmail bikinis and men in full suits of armor. Everybody gets loincloths and armor diapers, no exceptions!

And there are black people in Gor–some slaves, some slavers, some just wandering around wondering how the heck they got into this wretched movie, just like everybody else.

I could also mention the hilariously plastic, fake-looking props as a plus, because they are funny, and if you made a drinking game and took a shot every time you saw a silly hat while watching these films you would probably die of alcohol poisoning in five minutes.

Battlefield Purple Filter, I Mean Earth

Battlefield Dutch Angle, I Mean Earth

Battlefield Dutch Angle, Er, Earth

I think Battlefield Earth has a worse reputation than it deserves, possibly due to its connection with Scientology.

Mind you, it is a terrible movie. I just don’t think it’s much worse than most other crummy scifi flicks intended to be action blockbusters.

The writing is mediocre. The acting is so-so (which is ten steps above Birdemic). The plot is ludicrous and requires so much suspension of disbelief that your belief will probably need a vacation afterward, possibly somewhere that offers massages and mud baths.

But the movie suffers the most from directorial and filming choices, I think. One: there are weird color palettes used throughout the flick, so much so that the friend I was watching it with got queasy. It didn’t bother me, but only because I was preoccupied with… Two: Dutch angles! All Dutch angles, all the time! Has there been some terrible catastrophe causing Earth to tilt at a weird angle? No, it’s just bad directing.

Another major problem with the movie is that none of the human characters are the least bit interesting or sympathetic. They act like apes a lot of the time, maybe because you were supposed to be seeing things from the evil aliens’ point of view. Protip: We don’t need to see things from the evil aliens’ point of view.

The only part of the movie that was in the least bit watchable was John Travolta’s evil alien character. This is despite the fact that the character totally fails to be menacing in any way whatsoever. He is not the stuff of Darth Vader. He’s more like Darth Vader’s secretary’s receptionist who wants to be Darth Vader but isn’t smart or competent enough to pull it off.

Instead of having a real villain to hate and fear, the audience is treated to the antics of an Less Evil, More Corrupt Cubicle-Antincompetent, controlling, abusive middle-manager fixated on profits and his own pathetic ambitions. The fact that he’s wearing dreadlocks and platform shoes doesn’t really signify–everyone has met people like this and many people have had the misfortune to have a boss like this. But the movie presents Travolta’s character as doomed to failure, so it’s kind of fun to watch him dig his own grave, hoist himself up on his own petard and spit into the wind, so to speak.

If you have less than an iron stomach this movie is not for you. The constant color filters and the apparently-randomly-tilting camera will probably make you sick, if the “plot” and the dialogue don’t. And I haven’t even mentioned the excessive use of slow-motion yet, or the blanket assumption in the movie that all females exist only to serve or in relation to males, alien or human. Yikes.

In Short

In terms of watchability, Gor and Outlaw of Gor provide the most fun bad-movie experience. Battlefield Earth is probably second to the Gor flicks, followed by Birdemic, which has far too many sections in which nothing happens at all. It’s hard to make fun of nothing, and that makes a bad movie merely bad, rather than entertainingly bad.

Bad Love (Songs)

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What are the worst love songs of all time?

Well, this list on Yahoo! is a good start, but it barely scratches the surface of love songs that leave something to be desired, such as “love,” or in some cases, “song.”

Along with Billy Joel’s “She’s Always a Woman,” noted here for describing the sociopathic, needlessly cruel behavior of the woman in question, there should be a couple more. Let’s start with the Beatles’ “Girl,” another chronicle of an abusive woman, and “When a Man Loves a Woman.”

This Worst Wedding Songs list has the ever-creepy “Run For Your Life” from the Beatles, along with Sting’s stalkery “Every Breath You Take.” Both of these songs are stalker anthems.

How about “Close to You”? “Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?” Isn’t that an Alfred Hitchcock movie?

Then again, I have to admit I do like Elton John’s “Your Song,” even though it’s apparently written from the point of view of a guy with ADHD who’s trying to write a song but keeps interrupting himself, leading to a totally incoherent tune that’s somehow sincere and sweet anyway.

Other Things That Are Not Romantic, many of which I’ve noted before:

  • “Phantom of the Opera.” It seems very romantic when you’re 15 years old (I know I thought so). It’s only later that you think it through and realize the play is about a man who literally kidnaps a woman and drags her into a basement, where he wants her to stay. Forever. That’s not romantic, that’s criminal.
  • Flowers. I love you, therefore I’m giving you the severed reproductive organs of plants. Better toe the line or you’re next.
  • “Twilight.” Elderly man creeps into a high school girl’s room and watches her while she sleeps. Yikes!
  • “Titanic.” I have to admit, I had to stifle a giggle when they were on the raft at the end of the movie, she says “I’ll never let go” and then almost immediately shoves her love’s corpse off the raft. It’s all about timing, am I right?

Real Klingons Wear Pink in Star Trek: The Animated Series

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Star Trek: The Animated Series

Star Trek: The Animated Series

Giant pink tribbles. Spock casting magic spells. The crew turning into babies, growing gills, or shrinking. Is there no weirdness that failed to occur on Star Trek: The Animated Series?

No. No, there isn’t. And that’s why the show, which ran from 1973-74, is pure, unadulterated awesome.

Though it occupies a dubious position in Trekkie canon, The Animated Series is a must-see for fans, who will be treated to a succession of wacky events involving the almost the entire cast of The Original Series.

Inexplicably, Chekov is gone. Equally inexplicably, every single alien being sounds suspiciPink Tribbles?ously like Scotty, Nurse Chapel or Uhura. Actually, the explanation was saving money by not hiring extra voice actors or Chekov’s actor, Walter Koenig.

But this enabled them to do something the Original Series could never do, by crewing the Enterprise with more aliens. Foremost among them are the six-limbed Arex, who occupies Chekov’s seat most of the time, and M’Ress, a cat-woman communications officer.

At the time of the Original Series, I don’t think it would have been possible to have shown a guy with an extra arm and leg, like Arex had, and M’Ress would have had a somewhat wooden expression if she’d been a real person with a face covered with fur.

And then there’s the fact that one of the people working on the show was colorblind.

As a result, Klingons wear pink and purple, and Klingons in Orchid?the Kzinti, who are supposed to be terrifying telepathic cat-wolverine-people, do too.

Plus there are pink tribbles. Giant pink tribbles. If there were a way to market these to 12-year-old girls Earth would be drowned in tribbles in a matter of hours. Talk about weapons of mass destruction!

Then there’s the elevator-music theme song, which definitely is worse than the theme song from Star Trek: Enterprise, no matter what anybody says, although the animated Enterprise is so darn cute it’s easy to forgive the tune.

If you have Netflix and loved Original Series Star Trek, or just want to kill a few hours watching pure, undiluted insanity in the form of the loopiest plots ever seen in any flavor of Star Trek, check out Star Trek: The Animated Series.

For more information, check out Memory Alpha, the go-to place for online information on Star Trek, and also the source of every picture above.

Some Cheer for a Difficult Day

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Tragedies and difficult times are occurring today.

There’s not a way for me to help in any meaningful way, but looking back at my grandfather’s funeral, I mostly recall that a cousin’s inadvertent joke made us all laugh–and knowing that my grandfather would have laughed harder than anyone. That made us all feel better, and it was a fitting memorial for a guy with a loopy sense of humor.

In that spirit, I offer you a few links that may at least give you a bit of a smile.

  • Gangnam Style is funny, but this educational parody from NASA is even better. It’s so nice to see women doing science and not just being used as eye candy.
  • Here’s a list from Poynter of the best media errors and corrections of the year. Some of them are flinchworthy, but others are just hilarious. I have to offer kudos to the kids who sent a correction notice in regarding the day the Titanic struck an iceberg.
  • And from the Atlantic Wire, another list of the Best (Worst?) Typos, Mistakes, and Correrctions of 2012. Because one good Correrction list deserves another, am I right? This one has more childish errors, such as an incidence of the infamous leaving-the-L-out-of-public. These are the typos that keep the press awake at night praying we remembered the Ls and didn’t switch the w in “wrap” for a c.

 

Seven Benefits of Roleplaying Games

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A student at the University of Minnesota Duluth has written a column for the Duluth News Tribune implying that video games, or perhaps roleplaying games, or perhaps first-person shooters, or perhaps tabletop games, or people who dress up in costumes to portray characters, are bad.

I’m honestly not sure which of these elements Jo Cooley objects to, because she (or he) seems to conflate them all together.

Overall, I believe the point of her column is that Duluth does not need a gaming convention. She cites one study purporting to link video games and violence, but seems to believe that video games are the focus of Indiana’s Gen Con. They are not. Gen Con focuses on other types of games–tabletop games such as Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering and maybe even Risk and Settlers of Cataan.

Gaming (and I don’t mean gambling) is a huge umbrella term that covers a wide, wide variety of hobbies, from the strategy-wargaming to the roleplaying dice games to LARPing to the many types of videogaming.

Each gaming community is different. It’s just like football fans, who have their own communities dedicated to glorifying the Packers or the Vikings. Just like baseball fans, people get involved at different levels, some just watching a game now and then and others memorizing reams of stats and participating in a fantasy league (which is a form of roleplaying, by the way).

Videogames cover a wide range of topics and the larger, ongoing games have their own individualized communities. Star Wars: Knights of the Republic attracts a different type of gamer than EVE Online does.

Painting every gamer with the same brush is just like making a comment about “the media.” Almost nothing can be said about “the media,” which includes the head honchos of Disney and the small-town reporter who covers high school football games, as well as people who make TV shows, movies and books. The term is so wide it’s useless.

The same is true of “gamers.” I’m a gamer. I do not often play first-person shooters. I do not like strategy games or games with extreme gore. I don’t even usually play more than one video game at a time–I dedicate myself to just one, until I leave that behind for another one.

Currently I’m playing Guild Wars 2, and by the way, the plotline involves saving the world from evil, not being evil. In fact, most videogames I’ve played have been like that. There are a few out there in which you’re the bad guy, and a few more in which you’re allowed to make moral choices yourself, yes, but generally people seem to prefer being the good guy.

This brings me to the benefits of roleplaying–pretending to be a character in a story, either in a video game or in a tabletop game–and yes, I do believe there are some.

  • Roleplayers learn about how story works in an interactive way. I’ve learned arguably more about storytelling from participating in Dungeons & Dragons and games like it than I ever learned in school. You learn the nuts and bolts of character and plot, but you also learn about pacing and theme. All of it’s hands-on, where you’re helping make it, so you get a much better grasp than you would by simply reading the definition of “plot.”
  • Roleplaying gives you a safe place to explore moral decision-making without hurting anyone. Characters I play tend to be theologically-inclined and concerned about ethics, but like people in the real world sometimes they have to make difficult choices. Do you allow a princess to be sacrificed to save her kingdom? Do you allow her to sacrifice herself to do it? Do you save her regardless of consequences, or do you offer to change places with her? In a good game you will be faced with difficult situations and difficult choices over and over again, and it will prepare you to think about ethical choices in the real world, where there will be real consequences.
  • Roleplaying gives you a chance to be in somebody else’s shoes for a little while. If done well, this should lead you to think about what other people’s lives are truly like, and should lead you to empathize with other people’s problems. You can try roleplaying as the opposite gender, or as someone from a totally different race or economic class from your own. What are the consequences of living in a different type of society? What would it mean to live in a society of machines, or people who do not die for hundreds of years?
  • Roleplaying often spurs learning. I once roleplayed as a pirate character, and while our pirates were much nicer people than the real thing (real pirates were generally horrible), I did a lot of research on the Age of Sail and pre-anaesthesia medical practices. Roleplaying has also led to research on early stringed instruments and folk music, the law, folklore, floriography and religion. I have learned all sorts of things from roleplaying.
  • Roleplaying forces you to work together as a group. In most cases, your character will not last long if he or she goes around stabbing random passersby. He or she certainly won’t do well if he or she stabs other party members. It’s like being a member of a rock band–you have to get along with these people, and that’s both in-character and out-of-character. It’s a social hobby, and you can’t do it alone, so you better leave at least part of your ego at the door.
  • Roleplaying can be about forming good values. I’ve been involved in a lot of games over the years, and the most prominent themes have been good conquering evil, family, love, justice and what it means to be human.
  • Roleplaying spurs your imagination. In a movie, you know what the protagonist looks like and sounds like and acts like and wears. When you’re playing a tabletop game, you’re not going to know any of that and you’re just going to have to imagine that red dragon bearing down on you, too. Even if you’re roleplaying through a videogame, most games don’t allow a lot of nuance in body shape or voices, so you’re still going to need to adjust the picture in your head according to what’s said.

10 Rules for Naming a Baby

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Selecting a name for your baby isn’t easy, with so many names to choose from.

At the risk of putting my foot in it, because I’m not a parent and have never had to make this kind of life-altering decision for someone else, I would like to help.

Because while I like my own first name, Kari, quite a bit, I have to admit it’s caused me no small amount of aggravation throughout my life, because people both spell and mispronounce it incorrectly, sometimes literally seconds after I’ve introduced myself. It’s not their fault, though. I just have a weird name.

So here’s a few things to think about while you’re choosing your own baby’s name.

1. Avoid “creative” spellings and “creative” pronunciations.

If a name has an i in it, you do not need to replace it with a y so that your child will be unique (unyque?). It’s not necessary. Your child will already be unique. And given the popularity of the letter y, there’s a good chance that there will already be an Ylyce or a Kylyyy in her class anyway.

Having a name that you have to spell out over the phone every time you say it, and having a name which is constantly mispronounced isn’t unique. It’s annoying.

Think about it. Every teacher you ever have will say it wrong the first time. Every client you introduce yourself to will say your name incorrectly even if you’ve just said it. Every letter you get will be addressed to someone who isn’t you. When you go to a conference for work, your pre-printed name tag will probably be wrong. And you will never, never find anything engraved with your name–not one single mug, keychain or snowglobe. Ever.

2. Avoid “trendy” names.

How many Isabellas and Jacobs will there be in your child’s class? How many Anastasias and Christians?

Incidentally, do you want to explain to your child that he or she was named after a sparkly vampire or a racy romance novel? Do you want your eight-year-old reading “Fifty Shades of Grey” to find out about her namesake? No? Then don’t do that.

And I say this with a heavy heart, because I like all those names myself.

3. Always google the name and watch out for unpleasant associations.

I think the name “Jersey” is cute. Unfortunately, it is also the name of a breed of cow. Eventually, some kid in your kid’s class will google your child’s name. It may even be your child. You can’t really prevent every possible association (Mercedes used to be a perfectly pretty name for a girl), but at least give it a shot.

Someday the boy you chose not to name Enron will thank you.

4. Consider family names.

Even if they’re terrible, your child will know that someone else had it first, and that there is a reason for it. Also, there is someone to blame apart from the parents, which can be nice.

I’m named after two great-grandmothers. I actually like that; it gives me an excuse and when I’m ceaselessly spelling out my name to people over the phone, or repeating how to pronounce it correctly, I usually say “It’s Norwegian.” Generally people accept that as a valid excuse, and in the Midwest it can be a handy conversation-opener, too.

5. Consider names that allow for nicknames.

I’ve always envied Elizabeths. At the drop of a hat, they can magically change from a Liz to Lizzie, Eliza, Liza, Beth, Lisbeth, Lisbet, Bette, Betty and probably more. The name is the functional equivalent of a transformer, and you have all degrees of familiarity and style at your fingertips.

As a Kari I’m pretty much limited to my actual name. That’s okay with me, but you can never go wrong with more options.

Caveat: To parents who want to name your child something that will absolutely make any nicknames completely impossible: Dwight Eisenhower’s mom felt this way too, and that is how she ended up with a son named Ike. If the kid wants a nickname enough, he or she will probably get one, whether you like it or not.

6. Your child is a child, not an animal. Avoid being cutesy.

The names Hekyll and Jekyll work great for a pair of cartoon magpies. A set of human twins deserves better than that, and as they age, they will not always want to be seen as a single entity. It’s best not to name them as if they were, and give them a bit of space in which to work out their own individual identities.

If you really want to have some sort of theme, do it in a way that isn’t going to be obvious to everyone your child will meet. For example, in my family we have a set of five children whose names begin with vowels: A, E, I, O, U. I think that’s clever. If you met any two of those children, you wouldn’t know the pattern, and plus, each name stands quite well on its own. I don’t really know how they feel about it, but if you want a theme, I’d say that’s the way to do it.

7. Consider the initials.

I don’t mind KEL, but I might have felt differently about LOL or worse, FML.

… now that I think of it, it’s probably best to google the initials too.

(If you do, note that the abbreviation FML stands for something you probably would not say in front of your sweet old granny.)

8. Names should be versatile.

Your child may end up being a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or your child may end up being a firefighter, a house painter or a ballerina. Whatever name you choose should fit equally well in each of those settings.

Will the name look professional on a business card? Will your child have difficulty establishing him or herself as a serious, reliable person? Are you naming your child something so cute he or she will sound like a bubblehead?

9. Consider cultural factors.

There are only so many syllables out there, so no matter what name you choose, it likely means something hilarious in some language, somewhere. Just ask Boutros Boutros-Ghali, whose perfectly sensible Egyptian name sounds strange to an American.

The best you can do is try to make sure that somewhere is not where you plan to be living in the long term, so that your child can at least avoid some hysterical giggles.

10. Make your own decision.

At the end of the day, it’s your kid! You get to make the decision yourself.

If you want to name your child Jersey Ysybella Boutros-Boutros Cherry Pie Willetina III, you absolutely can! These aren’t rules, for Nevaeh’s sake.

And it’s probably best to take all naming advice with a very large grain of salt. Everybody’s got their own opinions on the subject.

Bad Guy, Bad Hair

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Bad guys have bad hair.

I never really thought about this until BoingBoing linked this great article from The Awl, which features a ton of pictures from various movies, all of whom have bad guys with bad hair. There’s even a neat characterization guide to which bad guys wear which kind of bad hair.

I thought, immediately, of this:

That’s the oily sidekick in the terrible Snow White and the Huntsman movie, the brother of the Evil Queen who’s the real villain.

He hits the Eerily Unnatural Dye Job and the Dorky Lackey.

Of course, in real life it’s not always so easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys, or the good hair from the bad hair.