Food: We tried tamarind for the first time today. Initially, I bought the tamarind pods to draw, but since tomatillos are perishable, I have to finish drawing them first, and my gaze kept sliding over to those weird, lumpy brown pods. The more I looked at them, the more curious I became, so I selected the plainest of the bunch (I meant to draw the others) and broke it in half. When I pulled the two halves apart, the interior, which was slimy, lumpy, brown and very reminiscent of waste rather than food. I was a little hesitant to put that in my mouth, but am so glad I did! It has a wonderfully sour, sweet, flavor, bettter than the sour candy. I talked the kids into trying it (they were also quite reluctant) and before long, only a couple of the pods were left...oops! I guess I'll have to buy more. There are large seeds embedded in the brown pulp, so we planted several pots of those, to see if we can get it to grow as a houseplant. The next food we'll be trying: mochi.

Movie Review: Twilight

I generally don't watch wildly popular movies, but my son and I have been devouring the book series by Stephanie Meyers (more on that later, after we finish the fourth book). I liked the first book well enough that watching the movie seemed worthwhile.
Predictably enough, I didn't like the movie half as well as the book.

The girl, Bella, is portrayed as intelligent and hardworking in the book series. In the movie, she seems pretty dippy. Her vocabulary is limited, and where she could have been bright and shy, she comes across as shy and dumb. Even though she's madly in love with Edward in the book, she comes across as merely needy in the movie; there was no fire, no passion. Edward was definitely creepy, but his hair, UGH!! I mean, does it have to stand up on end like that? His eyebrows were drawn in too heavily, making him look artificial. If his hair had been styled in a less alarming, attention grabbing (hardly what a closet vampire would want) style and his eyebrows had a more nearly natural thickness, he would have looked so much more convincing.

I'm not sure that these are faults of the actors, either. Many aspects of the movie were quite convincing- Bella's convulsions, for instance, and Edward's overly formal manner. James, Alice, and Jacob were all much as I had imagined, as were Carlisle, Esme, and Billy.

For all the hype and attention this movie got, I think a little more TLC on the presentation of the main characters would have made such a difference. As it was, it came across as less interesting and more sappy than the book was. Oh, one last comment- the music was absolutely perfect. I just think they needed to fire the makeup artist and whoever told Bella to act so dumb.