Tag: film review

• I watched Ricki Lake poop out a baby tonight…

  …didn’t see that one coming, did you guys? To be fair, neither did I.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me first tell you all about how I got into the position to see Ricki Lake poop out the baby to begin with.

  Today began like any other Saturday. Of course my husband was off work, so we milled around – bullshitting each other and pretending to enjoy each other’s company; until that got old, and I decided to get in the shower. I was also pretty suspicious because he kept complimenting me. It was like three times in under an hour, which is highly dubious; in fact, I’m still wondering what he did.

  After my shower, my husband’s shower, and all the arguing about everyone needing to stop playing Barbies for five minutes and put their fucking toothbrushes into their fucking mouths, we were ready for the day. Which we weren’t entirely sure what to do with, still.

  So we headed over to my father’s house to do the housecleaning for his open house tomorrow. I’m not talking about a fancy party kind of open house, where he serves those little cucumber sandwiches to high class kind of friends. I’m talking about the kind of open house you have for the sale of a home. You know: where tons of strangers traipse through your home, fuck everything up, break shit, leave doors open, and then try to low ball you with offers more insulting than “I’ll give you three crayons and this carton of milk.”

  Anyway, so we did the housecleaning, then we were at a total loss of what to do with the day. So we went home – stopping at the grocery store (of course) to pick up stuff for me to make dinner with. Once home, we did what we always do when we don’t know what to do: watched movies.

  We watched Dallas Buyer’s Club. That was phenomenal. Then we watched The Hunger Games – finally, after all this time postponing for me to read the book, only for me to never get around to reading the book because I don’t like reading that Young Adult shit anyway.

  Then The Hunger Games came to a finish and it was still early. Too early to go to bed; too late to go anywhere or do anything. So we scrolled through our Netflix Que for something relatively quick. Which is when we happened upon it: Ricki Lake’s documentary The Business of Birth.

  Let me start by saying that I did enjoy the film. I thought it was very informative, and while a little too graphic and outdated for my tastes, it was – by and large – something that, at the very least, made me think. I like to think, so that’s good.

  But I took issue with two things in particular.

  Towards the end…

  …the conclusion was made by an OB/Gyn, as well as the filmmakers and Ricki Lake, that if a woman does not experience the raw pain, intense emotion, natural induction of hormones, and vaginal-vaginal-out-the-vagina birth that she does not experience the bonding of motherhood, nor the love of being a mom.

  To be clear: women who had to induce? Haven’t experienced the bonding and love of motherhood. Women who had caesarians? Haven’t experienced the bonding and love of motherhood.

  If you are angry, you are with me.

  And you should then be asking yourself: are you fucking kidding me? What kind of a horse’s ass opinion is that? The belief that a woman unable to birth naturally, or who chooses medical intervention (for whatever her reasons may be) DOES NOT EXPERIENCE THE LOVE OF MOTHERHOOD AND BONDING WITH HER BABY is the most horrendous, destructive, narrow-minded, and ignorant view of motherhood and, well, reality I may have ever heard.

  Truly. Truly this infuriated me, which was unfortunate because (at least to me) it greatly discredited a lot of the other things said and discussed in the film. If they are that wrong about something so great as this, couldn’t they be wrong about a lot of the other things?

  Documentaries always do this to me. They always fucking let me down like this.

  …and documentaries always let me down in another way, which had to do with Ricki Lake’s vagina…

  They show me more of something in particular than I really want to see. In this case, that thing in particular was Ricki Lake’s vagina.

  Now I know what you are all thinking. If I watch a documentary about childbirth, I should expect to see at least something of women squeezing babies out of their v-holes. I get that, OK? It didn’t make me scream any less, or be any more horrified by all the nuances of childbirth I would like to keep in the deepest, darkest caverns of my brain – never to surface for fear of fainting. I just can’t take some of it, the majority of the time. (I can’t be the only mother that feels this way, right?)

  Sorry if that bothers you. Maybe I too cannot experience the love and bonding of motherhood.

  But what I really wasn’t expecting was to see Ricki Lake poop out her second baby in a bathtub with a bottle of Suave sitting on the shelf behind her. Nope, I really was not expecting that. Not one bit.

  I feel so cold now. So very, very cold.

  

  The premise of the movie was essentially that home birth is better. I tend to disagree with this, mostly because of the fact that I’m a big, ol’ scaredy cat. I suppose if everything were in the woman’s favor, home birth is a perfectly safe and healthy option – with, of course, the help of an experienced midwife. Though at the very end of the film, the filmmaker went into labor (not Ricki Lake, thank God I’d had enough of that bullshit) and she had to rush to the hospital after all because her baby was breech. Long story short: the baby would have died had she naturally delivered at home. This raises some serious concerns that women face when deciding their birth plan, which I really don’t feel the film did even the slightest bit to address.

  

  I don’t know what all of your thoughts are on the topic, but I’ll just say when you’ve seen Ricki Lake squat a baby out of her vagina, with her bare boobs flopping all over the place, you just really start to see things a lot more skewed. Really, I don’t even know what to believe about anything after that.

  March 8, 2014

  babies, birth, Business of Being Born, childbirth, comedy, dark satire, delivery, doula, film review, films, home birth, humor, life, lifestyle, medicine, midwifery, moms, morality, motherhood, mothers, movies, obstetrics, parenting, pregnancy, Ricki Lake, satire, social commentary

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• Things I Would Rather Do Than See Another Buddies Movie #SuperBuddies #SuperBuddiesParty #KillMeNow

  Last night I was just sitting on the couch, minding my own goddamned business. I seriously wasn’t doing anything but sitting. I don’t often do this, but we just moved and we have a lot of stressful things going on in life right now; so I thought a moment to just sit and relax would do me well.

  Just to breath.

  Then my husband came home and was all hyper and crazy, like he usually is. He can’t sit still without acting mopey – he always wants to “get stuff done,” which I have come to the conclusion is a rouse to avoid me. So he came home and was all antsy, and he was on the verge of killing my relaxation buzz when suddenly a huge vortex opened in the middle of his face and spewed forth the beginning of the destruction of all mankind:

  “Hey, did you hear there’s a new Buddies movie coming out? Super Buddies, or something like that.”

  

  Is that franchise ever going to stop? Did they not learn their lesson with the flop that was Treasure Buddies? Have they not stretched the limits enough with the outlandish and completely unrealistic story lines? Did they not kill history in that space episode, when the dogs decide to take a fucking detour to the moon and then moonwalk and then make that comment about ‘a giant leap for dogkind’? HAVE THEY NOT PERVERTED SOCIETY ENOUGH BY FOREVER TARNISHING OUR IMAGE OF DOCTOR EMMETT BROWN?

  You can all see I feel quite passionate about this issue. Well if you had seen all of the direct-to-video Buddies movies so many times that you have nightmares in which the script of each movie plays out word-for-word because it is so deeply imbedded in your subconscious – you would feel passionate about it too.

  

  #1

  Have An Affair With A Vegan Hipster

  There is nothing more unattractive than a vegan hipster. A vegan hipster male that is so unshaven that he has a full coat of hair on his shoulders and back. A vegan hipster that believes in using all natural soaps and deodorants, so much so that he smells like a cross between baking soda, patchouli, your grandmother’s crotch rot, and cut-renching body odor. A vegan hipster that does nothing but talk ad nauseum about his veganism and what that means for his bowel movements. A vegan hipster that works at the local Urban Outfitters, where he sells fashionable muscle shirts, spends his day grooming his foo manchu mustache, listening to Pitchfork, and pretending like living in his parent’s basement is a personal choice.

  I would rather have an affair with that man than see another Buddies movie.

  #2

  Immerse Myself In Hillbilly Society

  You all know my feelings about hillbillies, but really there isn’t much wrong with them when they are kept at a distance. Being in their element is another thing.

  I would rather immerse myself in hillbilly society than see another Buddies movie.

  I would rather BBQ on a grill made out of an old toilet. I would rather marry my cousin and wear overalls and flannel shirts and have nineteen children. My children’s names would be Bobby Jo, Billy Jean, Tommy Steve, Jack, Randy, Ron, Phyllis, Baby Sue, Lura, Tracy, Tracy Mae (because we forgot we already had a kid named Tracy), Nancine, Tammy Rae, Sally Bo, Cletis, Kimmy Dean, Donald Dick, Baby, and Maximillian T Stone. Because we wanted to give our youngest a classy-like name.

  #3

  I Would Rather Lick My Husband’s Rotting Feet

  Sorry if this offends anyone. Especially Poor Nick.

  But I would rather lick my husband’s rotting feet than see another Buddies movie.

  My husband’s feet are so gross. He always gets offended when I say that, which is crazy because I don’t mean it as an insult. I just mean to be honest. The problem is that he has an emotional attachment to literally everything that he owns, including his rotting, old socks and his rotten, stinking shoes. He has these flip flops that are over 10 years old and falling apart. He comes home from work and there are pieces of sweaty, black rubber all over this feet.

  This all leads to foot fungus, which makes the smell. The smell that seems to permeate everywhere. Sometimes it smells like vinegar, other times it smells like a sweaty locker room. A sweaty locker room that hasn’t been cleaned in over a decade.

  I would rather lick those.

  #4

  I Would Rather Go Hunting With Dick Cheney

  Do you guys remember when our evil leader and overlord “accidentally” shot another human being while on a hunting trip? Yeah. I would rather go hunting with him and risk it than see another Buddies movie.

  #5

  I Would Rather Do A Video Blog Nude

  I would rather that video blog go viral, unlike any of the other video blogs I have ever done.

  #6

  I Would Rather All Of My Remaining Meals On This Earth Consist Of Only The Following:

  Filet O Fish. McFish. Fish sticks. And Long John Silver’s Cajun Classic.

  By the way, I hate fish and am allergic to 75% of them.

  At some point, I have to ask just what the fuck is the deal with the talking dog movies? I get it that kids learn and thrive from the maximum amount of imagination. I understand that they identify with these fantastical experiences and expectations, that movies with talking animals help facilitate. But in all seriousness: at some point it’s gone too far. When The Dog That Saved Christmas has very little to do with dogs, or Cinnamon is really just a Lifetime movie about a divorcee and widow falling in love, told through the eyes of a dog, I think we’re starting to maybe go too far. And the Buddies going into fucking outer space, or obtaining super powers and interacting with aliens. Well, that’s just absurd.

  Now before we all activate our emergency cyanide tablets before being forced to view another one of the terribly boring, horrifically unrealistic Buddies franchise films, click on this fabulous photo of the Super Buddies-induced Armageddon to watch a hilarious synopsis of the film.

  

  September 10, 2013

  #superbuddiesparty, buddies, comedy, Disney, disney movies, dog, dog movies, dogs, film review, films, franchise films, hillbillies, hipster jokes, hipsters, humor, kid movies, kids, life, lifestyle, movie blogs, puppies, random comedy, random post, rednecks, satire, super buddies, talking dogs, talking puppies, vegan hipsters, veganism, vegans

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