Good Bye, Lenin!

Last night, Ann and I watched Good Bye, Lenin!. It was an absolutely great movie. The perfect combination of humor and sentiment, along with a setting in probably one of the most interesting times in recent history.

For those of you who haven't seen it, the basic outline of the plot is that a woman in East Germany falls into a coma. She was a devoted patriot/communist, very involved in educating East German children in the ways of socialism. While she is in a coma, the Berlin wall comes down. When she wakes up, her doctor warns her son that any physical of psychological shocks could have dire health consequences. So the son decides to maintain the charade that East German communism is a strong as ever. This provides a great window into what life was like for East Germans during that first rush of capitalism, good and bad.

I vividly remember watching the Berlin wall come down, and the people partying on top of it, but I never really got a sense that this event was affecting individual people. I had a rudimentary understanding of the geopolitical implications (i.e. communism bad; freedom good), but the fact that a whole new world opened up for East Germans (particularly East Berliners) virtually overnight never occurred to me. Good Bye, Lenin! gets my highest recommendation.

Strange Dream

I had a really strange dream last night. I was at my house and I realized that Sadie was gone. But I knew where she was. So I got in my car and raced over to Dan & Whit's. I saw a shadowy figure duck into the Christmas trees (I'm not even sure if they sell Christmas trees, but they were there in my dream). Thinking I needed protection, I grabbed the air hose for filling up cars.

I snuck in between the trees like a cop on a TV show, swinging the air hose around corners. Then I saw who had Sadie - it was Dick Cheney! I blasted him with the air hose and grabbed Sadie. I put down the air hose and we walked out of the trees. Cheney followed us, and I saw that he had a snub-nosed revolver pointed at me. "You fucking prick," I said to him. "I know you could kill us if you wanted but we are leaving now." I put Sadie in her car seat and drove off.

And then I woke up to the dulcet tones of some NPR personality on my clock radio. There's a chance it had been on for a bit and they were talking about Cheney, but I don't know. I'll take dream interpretations in the comments.

Spam of the day...

"Obtain degrees from Prestigious non-accredited Universities"

Hey, at least they are honest.

The Flickr Song

The Flickr Song. Funny stuff.

Cheap Toy Roundup

Every year I read The Onion's Cheap Toy Roundup, and every year it cracks me up. This year is no exception.