Monopoly, Twenty-One, Checkers and Chess

Here in New Jersey, it's pouring and weather services promise pouring rain for another two days. Sunday night, Pete and I were watching Family Guy on Adult Swim, where a bumper series made us sit up straight. I'm paraphrasing.

Things that make us nervous.

1. Atlanta's water supply has 80 days left.

One? That's bullet point one? Pete and I said, "What? What What?" because what intelligent response can there be to the bland statement that another huge population center in the US was neck deep in the shit. It's been almost four days since then. Were I a civil engineer looking at the current weather map, I might be having the teensiest of nervous breakdowns. I'm sorry I'm soggy. Obviously, I can't complain about sopping up the river with my sneakers and the ends of my cargo pants because, um, I'd love to wring them out and help. This would be a lot funnier if, when situations beyond our control arise, we weren't each of us small, and covered with fur.

Speaking of fur, Johnny reviews a ghastly werewolf film and I can't contain my glee.

You don’t watch a movie like Dog Soldiers looking for common sense. And you won't find it.

A Scottish Army unit is dropped up in the highlands on a routine training exercise. They soon find themselves being stalked by werewolves. So far, so good. But ninety minutes into this piece of shite, the characters are still arguing about whether werewolves exist. The animals attacking them are nine feet tall and walk on their hind fucking legs. But there are holdouts who insist these are just exceptionally robust and limber wolves. What little credibility a werewolf movie has goes right out the window. Also, two of the lads get savaged by the werewolves but are rescued by their comrades. Their wounds heal overnight and their eyes start to get all gleamy and green. No one seems to see what’s coming or think to put a slug behind their increasingly pointy ears before it’s too late. Also, no one suspects that the pretty girl who appears out of nowhere and rescues them, who lives in the midst of these rapacious killers armed with nothing but a tight t-shirt, might be more trouble than she looks like. I expected so little of this movie that I wasn’t disappointed when she said, as her eyes bugged and her teeth stuck out "You thought all women were bitches. Now you’re met the real thing," although, with those teeth, it sounded more "the weew fing." Out of pure mulish determination, I got through to the end. Just so you don’t ever have to see it, the hero and the cute dog survive. You’re welcome.

I'm impressed by the fact that a Scottish Army group had an argument Johnny understood. As your world-traveling pals will tell you: to the newcomer, listening to Scots speak English can be an awful lot like having the booze go straight to your ears, and I say this as a person living in a place where consonants disappear from ordinary words at approximately the same rate as trees fall and condos dot the landscape. I'm ready at the drop of a hat to suspend my disbelief!

I'd dance around in circles at the notion of fighting werewolves with a tight t-shirt but everyone knows a gal's not fully loaded for bear without booty-choking disco shorts, preferably in baby pink for heroines and dried-blood burgundy for femmes most fatale. I mean, you're a high school graduate. You know there's no such thing as a car wash without aspiring Hooters girls, and that a glamorous hot mama like myself would never withhold the truth, my yummy gumdrops: ThermaCare Heat Wraps are made of awesomeness.