As beautiful as Trash is, she's never had movie-star teeth. The bottom row's a bit crooked, which is something she's never been self-conscious about. It's part of her charm, like Jewel before she got her choppers fixed and got so damn irritating.

And even if Trash were self-conscious about it, that still wouldn't be enough motivation for her to subject herself to long sessions in the orthodontist's chair. She has a longstanding terror of dentists, installed by an incompetent practitioner who mangled her mouth. In fact, her file at the office has a note instructing the hygienist to confiscate her purse and keys when she arrives so she can't just get out of the chair and leave. Again.

For a while now, the dentist she goes to -- who deals with special-needs patients like small children, the developmentally disabled, and my wife -- had been trying to convince Trash to get braces anyway. Trash resisted, calmly but firmly. Until she broke one of her front teeth on…some water. Not ice, not the glass, just water. She made it into the dentist for an emergency appointment the day before she had to leave town for the week, and the dentist explained that her bottom teeth are shifting, and if they don't get straightened, they're going to start knocking out both her front top teeth, a bit at a time. Even Trash is vain enough to want to avoid that.

She also wanted to avoid those uncomfortable metal braces that I and half the people I knew had in junior high school. So she decided to go with the clear plastic trays instead. You can't eat with those things in, but they pop out for meals, and then you brush your teeth, and then you pop them back in. Sucks for people who graze and snack throughout the day, but since Trash isn't one of those people, this would be easy-peasy-lemon-squeezie, as M. Edium likes to say.

The first hitch came when she was at the appointment getting her first set of trays installed -- this in February, mind you, after a whole series of other appointments involving molds and casts and all manner of horrifying experiences for a committed dentophobe. The orthodontist showed her how to pop them in and out, and then reminded her, "Now remember, just water when you're wearing them."

"Right, water and coffee," Trash nodded.

"No coffee," he insisted. "Just water."

Trash looked into his eyes. Then she looked at the half-full Starbucks cup in her hand. Then she considered forcibly introducing the two items.

Because the thing is, Trash needs her coffee. As regular readers know, we both work at home, and part of our daily routine involves keeping her mug full and warm. She drinks coffee instead of snacking. Coffee is her snack. It's not that she drinks a lot, it's that she drinks a little over a long time. Trash tried to convey a bit of this to the orthodontist as best she could, given that she was suddenly shaking all over.

"Just drink your coffee when you have your braces out," he advised, obliviously.

Now, the thing about this system is that you're allowed to have them out for a total of ninety minutes per day. In that hour and a half, you have to fit in all your meals, snacks, and non-water drinks. Not to mention the fact that any time you consume anything other than water, you have to then give your teeth a thorough brushing, and brush your trays while you're at it. The time adds up fast, to the point where I've had to finally develop my previously nonexistent ability to have all of dinner ready at once on the nights I cook (yes, it's been hard on me, too). So Trash testily asked the orthodontist, "How do you drink coffee?" It does take Trash a while to get through a cup, but I don't know anyone who will habitually shotgun a whole mug and then slam the empty cup down on the table like a gunslinger at a saloon. Or at least I didn't used to.

But it seems that there are three different reasons why different things aren't allowed when the braces are in. Some things get trapped in the angstrom of space between the trays and the teeth and immediately start corroding the enamel like termites in a Tom & Jerry cartoon. Some things are hot enough to soften the plastic and cause them to warp, which is a non-starter for instruments that are fashioned with such precision. And still other things cause permanent stains to both the trays and one's teeth. Coffee, as it turns out, does all three. No wonder she loves it so much.

So Trash has spent the last three month trying to figure out a coffee delivery system she can get away with. Waiting for the coffee to cool only solves one of the problems. Straws don't work because the coffee can't be contained once it's in the mouth. And I just haven't had time to steal an IV from the hospital.

But she's making it work. She's drinking less coffee, but faster. Sometimes she'll allow herself a cup of hot water from the tea kettle, with a decadent lemon wedge in it. And there's always the fact that this isn't permanent. She changes the trays every two weeks, and next week she starts on her 7th set. Which means she's almost twelve weeks in. Only sixty-some to go!

It's going to be a long year and a half.

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M. Ovie Reviews: The Avengers

As many comic-book movies as I've seen in the past few years, and as many as you've seen me review, it's a little surprising that I'm not actually a comic book fan. I think I'm becoming a comic-book movie fan, though. Particularly a fan of The Avengers.

I've been a willing mark in Marvel's long con to which this is the culmination (see above) and we all knew that when this sequel to, like, six other movies showed up, I'd be there -- not least of all because I'd already invested in four of them. And pretty much liked most of them, so what the heck? But even with that and all the positive reviews, I knew better than to let my expectations get too high. But they did anyway, and then the movie exceeded them.

I confess to being a longtime admirer of Joss Whedon, but also a cautious skeptic, given the whole Dollhouse and Firefly thing. I remain curious as to how he actually got this gig. As a comic-book geek himself, he was the perfect guy for the job, which should have disqualified him right out of the gate. Good thing somebody screwed up somewhere along the line. The Avengers turns out to be a perfect balance of...well, lots of things.

For instance, there's the perennial question of comic geeks: "Who would win in a fight between Hero A and Hero B?" Before all the supers start getting along, thanks to a catalyzing event I won't spoil, there are plenty of permutations of Hero A vs. Hero B. (and sometimes hero C.) to take in, both superpowerish and verbal (both of which are enjoyable). Every hero has his or Black Widow's own personal tragedy to deal with, and they do, but without being whiny and mopey about it. And I think it's been pretty well established that a superhero movie's quality is often inversely proportional to its protagonist's level of self-pity. I.e., In this context, Iron Man > Captain America > Thor > Iron Man 2 > either Hulk movie, from what I hear.

The other thing that makes this project Whedonesque is the whole gang-of-misfits-with-powers theme. The Avengers are like the Scooby gang (the real one, from Buffy) in that they all have their own special skills and abilities that fit together perfectly when it counts, but they're also outsized personalities who bicker like teenagers. There's a scene where everybody yells at Nick Fury (and if you're going to yell at SLJ -- who between this series and The Incredibles has been in most of my favorite superhero movies -- you definitely want five other superheroes to have your back) that reminded me of nothing so much as everyone turning on Giles in the library, in a Buffy scene that may or may not have actually happened.

There's also the balance of each individual Avenger, which is somehow pulled off brilliantly. Nobody steals the movie (although RDJ comes close) and nobody gets shortchanged (with the possible exception of Hawkeye, and who cares about him since M*A*S*H went off the air?). Character development is balanced with action, humor is balanced with tragedy, and it all just holds together.

As a director, I'm glad to say that Whedon avoids most of the usual Whedonisms. There's very little directorial intrusion, and almost none of those pointlessly interminable tracking shots he used to do all the time just to show off. I'm not saying he doesn't do them, but here he makes them count. Rather than trying to show up the series' previous directors Favreau, Branagh, or Johnston (I can't speak to Lee or Leterrier), he respects the visions they laid out in their prequels and integrates them into a whole. And unlike most overblown action movies, he lets his actors act. Every one of these invincible personages has moments of vulnerability and even fear, including Thor and Loki.

To put it bluntly, Joss Whedon shows a lot of balls with this project. And somehow he keeps them all up in the air.

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M. Ovie Revews: Cabin in the Woods

I don't know if there's any point in reviewing Cabin in the Woods in my usual spoiler-free style, since by now you've either a) already seen it, b) been spoiled by someone else, or c) have already decided to never see it anyway. I'll just say that if you fall into the c) group, you should seriously reconsider.

But we've been spoiler-free since '03, so maybe I should talk about another movie I saw about this time last year, called Tucker and Dale vs. Evil. But I don't want to spoil that movie, either. I'll just say that if you're interested in a hilarious deconstruction of backwoods-set slasher films where a group of pretty young morons walk one by one into grisly deaths due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation they're actually in, you can't go wrong with either one of these movies. In one of them, one horror-film trope after another is taken out, played with, turned on its ear, and stuck into your face by a half-familiar cast that includes Alan Tudyk. And the other one was co-written by Joss Whedon.

This is prime Whedon, too. Mid-era Buffy quality writing, not Firefly or Firefly or Dollhouse (although cast members from the latter two shows show up). It's smart and funny and unexpected and fun. Plus it's thematically tight while doling out clues at an impeccable, completely non-exposition-y pace. Best feature-length advertisement for Whedon's upcoming The Avengers I can imagine. I don't even need him to come back to TV if he keeps making movies as good as this instead.

So yeah, short review, because there's mot much else I can say without diminishing your enjoyment of it, which will be considerable. See CitW. Make it a double feature with T&DvsE if you like. You won't be sorry either way.

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I saw it opening weekend, not really knowing what to expect except Joss. A friend and I do weekly Superhero Movie Night and we were so excited for the Avengers we went to Cabin in the Woods on the justification that it was Joss and had Thor, so it counted. And I'm so, so glad we did. I don't usually like horror, but this one was so fun and crazy and I didn't expect the middle of the end.

By  Anonymous, at May 1, 2012 at 5:48 PM  

I whole-heartedly agree, great movie! It didn't really seem like a horror movie to me, though. Maybe because I wasn't scared like I normally am?

Heidi

By  Anonymous, at June 28, 2012 at 10:49 AM  

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