August 23: A Night Out

The blog has been lame again this week.  It's been a long week.  Daniel is running sound for another show, which means he is gone most nights.  The girls and I have just been spending a lot of time at home, just hanging out. 

Tonight, Daniel had the night off, so I got to go out for a while with my friend Heather.  We had dinner at Panera.  Then we went shopping at Michaels, Barnes and Noble, and Carters.  Then we went to see a movie.

We saw The Campaign.  I can't really recommend the movie, as it was extremely vulgar and raunchy.  And at times it was just dumb and stupid.  I read a somewhat misleading review that said this was a smart, witty comedy (despite the fact that it starred Will Ferrell and Zach Galifinakis, I should have known better!).  I wish they would have been smarter with this one and left out a lot of the dumb, unnecessary humor because there was potential for this movie to be better than it was. 

There were times though when the movie was genuinely funny.  I think it was so funny because it was not all that far from the truth.  Their ridiculous portrayal of a political campaign was obviously exaggerated, but there was still an undercurrent of truth running through all of it.  I strongly dislike politics, especially during political campaigns.  The movie hit on several points that resonated with me, like this opening dialogue:

Campaign Manager:  "Repeat after me:  America.  Jesus.  Freedom."
Candidate:  "America.  Jesus.  Freedom."
Campaign Manager:  "Now what does that mean?"
Candidate:  "I have no idea.  But when I say it, people like it."

That basically summarizes my feelings on political campaigns.  How are you supposed to ever know what a candidate really thinks or believes when all they say is what people want to hear (or what their campaign managers tell them to say?).

Stepping down off my soapbox now.

Tonight, Heather and I also browsed through a fall movie preview guide and saw some good previews for upcoming movies before our movie.  We are starting to make our list of movies to watch in preparation for the 2013 Oscars (and no, The Campaign is not on that list!).  Better start saving my money and lining up the babysitters now!