A Different Breed of Superhero

Started the morning with Brunch With the Beatles and Lemon-Rosemary Pancakes. Their annual early December salute to John Lennon was mixed with the solo holiday music and that strange "Fab Four" tribute Christmas album. (For some reason, I've heard cuts from these CDs on the Acme's intercom, too.) John's genius was represented by "No Reply," "Power to the People," "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," "Come Together," "Revolution," "Just Like Starting Over," "Woman," and "Nowhere Man," among others.

I tried to call Mom this morning, but I got her answering machine. Oh well. I'd call her later. I spent an hour mucking around online before grabbing a bag of trail mix and an apple for lunch and heading out to work.

Work was a madhouse until a half-hour before I left. We had lines going around corners and not nearly enough help. It's the beginning of a month that most people will spend shopping for just about everything else but food. People want to buy their huge orders before they start buying Christmas presents. It wasn't even football. The Eagles played (badly, from what I've heard) on Thursday night.

When I got home, I put on The Green Hornet as I made steamed Brussels sprouts, spinach salad, Cranberry Flummery, and a leftover chicken leg for dinner. For all the comedy, it's actually pretty close to the original radio show premise. Britt Reid (Seth Rogan) is a wild-living playboy who inherits the newspaper The Daily Sentinel on his father's death. Goofy Britt has always admired superheroes, so when he discovers that his dad's houseboy Kato (martial arts star Jay Chou) has added many gadgets to his dad's car to insure his safety, he comes up with the idea of the two of them becoming superheroes who claim to be bad guys while doing good. Britt and Kato end up compete for Britt's lovely secretary Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz) while flushing a group of big-time LA gangsters who have been paying off a district attorney.

I thought this was the cutest superhero movie I'd seen in a while, and not just because the teddy bear-esque Rogan isn't your average superhero material. A lot of people have been really harsh on it, either because the tone is totally different from the 60s TV show, or they were just expecting more of the material. I really think they need to lighten up a bit. Do not come to this one expecting to take it seriously, as in Captain America, Thor, or the Batman or Superman series. Chou and Rogan are surprisingly funny together. Diaz doesn't have enough to do (but Lenore Case didn't on the TV show, either).

I did finally get a hold of Mom while the movie was on. She was fine. Gave me some suggestions for what to get for Dad and Keefe for Christmas. She was happily watching football alone - both her son and her husband were at work. (Much to Mom's delight, the Packers' just barely beat the Giants, and the Cardinals barely pushed past the Cowboys in overtime.)