1001 Movies: Silence of the Lambs

From the Couch of Super Koala:

It has been quite some time since we posted, particularly since we posted regularly.  Things got a little hectic there at the end of the school year, what with Spazzmataz being a student and I being a teacher.  Here’s hoping we can get back on track!  Starting with the discussion of this:

With neither of us being overly fond of fear, I can confidently say that this list item was not met with great excitement.  Somehow, despite being a child of the early 90s, I missed viewing this film earlier in my life.

I tend to find many thriller movies boring.  The plot is predictable, the characters stereotypical, and the logic tends to be lacking.  I was both delighted and slightly horrified to say that was not the case for Silence of the Lambs.  Even just scrolling through pictures on the Internet gave me repulsed shivers, but the movie doesn’t rely on cheap conventions to “scare” the viewer.  Any suspense is genuinely created through legitimate story development and masterful filming.  Also, I love crime drama, and it was interesting to see what obviously spawned many of the tropes seen in crime television today.

Four stars overall.

From the Chair of Captain Spazzmataz (but is actually Super Koala’s Chair):

I too really despise everything that has to do with horror and suspense. I just get so anxious and wind up spending most of the movie hiding. However, with some coaxing of Mammabird and Sparhawk, I allowed the movie to be played in the night hours.

This film was surprisingly good. I was not expecting to find it so captivating. However, Thomas Harris must be a scary man to have thought up all of these horrible things. Seriously, how does anyone come up with these ideas! It can only be the work of someone extremely creative and imaginative and slightly twisted.

(THE HORROR!!!)

Moving on. All in all, I did enjoy the movie even though I hated every single second of the super suspenseful music. I give it four stars as well.

Long Overdue

Dearest Readers,

It is I, Super Koala.  It has been quite some time since the Spazz and I wrote a conventional post.  The past few weeks have been filled with lots of time together, and we’ve been busy actually doing things instead of writing about doing things.

That being said, we thought it’d be nice to reconvene and summarize what we’ve been up to lately.  For personal posterity.  I wasn’t sure how far back to start, and the Spazz is presently unreachable somewhere abouts Colorado.  So, this will likely be rather disjointed.

In late March, the Spazz spent a week at mah hizzouse and we had many lovely adventures.  This included dinners, fish fries, puppy expos, and trips to Silver Dollar City.

After Spazz went back to St. Louis, Sparhawk and I traveled to St. Louis for an extremely special occasion.  However, we began with a trip to the St. Louis Zoo.  If you’ve never been, I highly recommend it.  It’s pretty excellent, and it’s completely free.  I took a lot of pictures, particularly of monkeys and birds.  The highlights are posted below.

Somewhere in there, we had the below Starbucks “Happy Birthday” beverages.  THEY WERE DELICIOUS. They deserve a picture.

Onto the main event!  The reason we went to St. Louis was for a Bo Burnham show.  I shall perpetually measure time, we decided, as a pre- and post- Bo Burnham.  Kind of like B.C.E.  The show was most extraordinary.  We had front row center seats, and were promptly blinded by the very bright staging.  My favorite thing about a Bo Burnham show is that he makes me think.  Sure it’s comedy, sure it’s amusing, but above all, it’s intellectual.  I’m still ruminating on some of these sprung thoughts.  Life goal completed.  Spazz and I got shirts not pictured below.

The weekend after that, I traveled to St. Louis without Sparhawk and without puppies.  The occasion was for Easter, but as Spazz and I both have April birthdays, mine being the day after Easter, we did some pre-celebrating.  I was terribly excited to give Spazz her birthday present, which was a travel-sized record player along with Maroon 5’s new album.  This became extra perfect as the album is the same colors as the record player I picked out.  I had no idea.  The present went off very well, in my opinion.  Despite some incredibly vague hints I had dropped, Spazz had no idea, so the surprise was most successful.

After initial presenting, I discovered MamaBird had made me some most excellently awful Avengers cakes.  They tasted delicious, but weren’t incredibly pretty.  Nonetheless, chocolate cake is chocolate cake, and it’s the thought that counts.  I also received some delightful presents in the form of grey, polka-dot Vans from Spazzmataz and new Sperrys from my parents.  My feet are so well adorned.

While we were together, and before the Easter celebrations, we decided to accomplish a post card task.  As I had received multiple pairs of shoes, and was wearing my new Vans, this option seemed perfect.

Before we headed out for an evening of musical delight, we fastened our badges to our clothes.  Spazzmataz adjusted hers to reflect her birthday gift.  If you can’t read it, it says “Ask me about my record player.”  We each had three people ask us about our respective badges; fortunately, none of them were strangers.  I almost always hate talking to strangers.  And, we got to see our friend’s band play.  Their name is Koa, and they were really good.  Check ’em out.

That’s all for now!  Hopefully the Captain of Spazz will assemble some sort of Colorado post upon her return.

Aaaaand, terribly cute Annabelle picture below!  I missed my girl.

Valentine’s Weekend Fun

This weekend the Super Koala and I were once again united. Friday we both had the day off, so I made my first drive to Springfield. After three hours, we were finally together. We spent the day eating tasty food and hanging out with Pleasant Hopeians. For lunch we went to Bread Co. and I had my first ever bowl of broccoli cheddar soup. It was delicious, and I can see many more in my future. Then we went to Elle’s for tasty desserts.

Later that evening we went to the great town of Pleasant Hope to watch a basketball game. It was very intense and stressful, and sadly they lost. Afterwards there was a sort of hang out at the high school that Super Koala had to chaperone. They had movies, video games, board games, basketball, and ping-pong. We played trivial pursuit and, of course, Super Koala was the winner.

Yesterday was a beautiful morning, so we took the puppy girls to Rutledge-Wilson Farm for a nice long walk. They have a cute little pond where Nyx was able to be an adventure dog.

When we got home, it was too nice outside to continue to stay indoors, so we took the girls out to the dog park. It was the second best dog park day ever. Nyxie was was so nice to the other dogs, and she played, and she didn’t growl at anyone, and it was the best. There were even a couple of dogs bigger than her, and she didn’t get upset once. It was so cute because she didn’t want to leave when it was time to go home. Then we sat at home for a little until we traveled to Lebanon for dinner with Mamabird and our Nonna. We had Chinese food at Bamboo Gardens. It was pretty good, and I tried crab Rangoon for the first time.

When we got home, we decided to watch one of the movies off of our list, but sadly we fell asleep so we will re-watch the parts we missed tonight.

I am supposed to stay with the Koalas until Monday because we both have the day off again, but it is supposed to snow really hard, so I have to leave today. So, we made the most of our last day and got lots of things accomplished. We planned on going out for breakfast one day, so of course we had to go to Waffle House. Then we went to the mall, and I got a new pair of sweatpants, and we each got a sister related piece of jewelry.

Before we went to the mall, we had to make a pit stop at Barnes and Noble until the mall opened. We saw adorable kitten puzzles and lots of books that we stared at longingly.

They also had a pile of vinyls and one was of the new Maroon 5 album. Super Koala and I are very curious as to weather it is supposed to be the letter V or the roman numeral 5.

(Or maybe a less than sign)

Then we went to Hurts Donuts for a tasty snack. I also got a half-dozen to take home with me.

They were super busy, but luckily there were lots of donuts, so there were plenty for us to chose form. We had a great weekend even though it was cut short, and we will see each other soon enough. Also, tomorrow we will have a Skype reading date, so there will be another A Million Little Pieces post.

Finally, Finally Wrecking!

Dearest Captain Spazzmataz,

At last!  I will finally be posting.  I have all my technology ducks in a row.  Be prepared for postage!

As you, and our readers may have, noticed, I failed to post last week.  Like has happened before, I got sidetracked with all of the excitement of having Spazz and MamaBird visiting.  And then I was engrossed in my busy and tumultuous work week.  But I am finally ready with two wreckages and two post cards.

My initial wrecking was done at the speech tournament on Saturday.  I documented time passing in their cafeteria.  But their cafeteria has this interesting quirk to where it is also a FEMA shelter.  And all of the signs in the school are for the FEMA shelter, not the Cafeteria.  It was a tumultuous experience in which I remembered why I often hate high shcoolers, but it ended up alright.

For my second post, I took some inspiration from your wrecking.  But instead of filling in song lyrics, I looked up the opening paragraphs of my favorite books.  I don’t think it looks as nice as yours, but my pens were not as pretty.  All things considered, I’m pretty pleased with it.

My post cards are pretty great.  For the first one I also took inspiration from you.  I’ve avoided this card for forever as well, but I decided it was time to finally conquer it.

My machine works by inserting pieces of trash or recycling.  When you have inserted a piece, you then get 10 free minutes of Netflix on a really gigantic screen.  Enter another piece of trash, get another 10 minutes.  Below ground, there are some compactable machines that take care of the trash.  Think of little Wall-Es fixing the issue.

I also finally created my own currency, something else I’ve been avoiding.  It turned out pretty fantastic if I do say so myself.  I provided a before picture since neither of us have done this before.

Pretty creepy wonderful, eh?

The tricky part of this was trading it for something.  I had to make my currency legal tender.  And I did.  I traded my one Super Koala dollar for one excellent DumDum sucker.  Proof!

She said she’s keeping my currency forever.  She taped it to her computer.

I don’t know that anything else particularly exciting has gone on this week.  As you mentioned, we’ve talked on the phone a lot, so you know most of the excitement.  On Saturday, the kiddos broke to semi-finals, which is the farthest they’ve ever gotten in a tournament.  It was pretty good.  Sunday, BBKF and I tried to use our MoviePasses, but we did it wrong.  Luckily, delicious Bread Co sufficed.

Anyway, I’m going to go grade some rough drafts.  Sorry for the terrible delay!

Love you!  Look forward to your new, exciting double posts!

– Super Koala

Tragically Absent Wreckage

Dearest Captain Spazzmataz,

(And anyone else who regularly reads our posts) I’m so terribly sorry that I completely forgot about my post.  It was a hectic time, what with Sparhawk’s graduation, your visit with MamaBird, and the ever stressful finals week.  I’ve had bunches of work to do.  I suppose I didn’t realize how much preparation I needed to put into this week, and I failed to do so this weekend.  Now I much play catch up.

However, it has been a good week so far.  On Monday, I encountered my arch nemesis.  (He who shall not be named, but you know who.)  He said you are surprisingly skilled at Trivia Crack.  I said absolutely of course you were, as you are a very smart girl.  Then the best thing ever happened.  I got a new computer at work.  It’s a laptop, and it’s beautiful.  For a windows computer that is.  However, this is wonderful because I can now take all of my files and computer needs home, where I much prefer to work.  The only downside is that I have no way to charge the laptop at home because I am windows free.  I’ll find a way to work around it.  Sparhawk stayed late at school yesterday evening, so I ordered Papa Johns.  Plus dessert.  I am weak.

Today has also ended up being fairly pleasant.  All of my English III classes were taking a test, so it was a quite day in my classroom.  Tragically, this slightly adds to my finals week stress because these tests are now my responsibility to grade, but c’est la teacher vie.  I don’t know the French word for teacher.  A great and terrible unrest had befallen our quaint little fur filled home, as Sparhawk had misplaced his wallet for the past three days.  The worry of this culminated into a full house search these evening, as he had a considerable amount of cash in there meant for Christmas shopping.  Fortunately, he just found it a friends house, so now we can rest easy and the search can come to an end.

As I type this post, Nixen keeps trying to steal one of my gloves to chew on.  She’s tricksy.  ALSO!  I finished my 75th book today!  I am officially finished with my 2014 book challenge, and can now receive my presents.  And by now, I mean when I next see you.  Which isn’t very far away.  I ordered the mystery box from Julep today, per your recommendation, and had it shipped to the house.  But you cannot open it until I am there, in the event that its arrival predates mine.  I really enjoyed your post from last week (and its timeliness), though I’m semi-confident that I find the drunk polly pockets to be very scandalous.

Anyway!  I am now going to leave you to resume my grading madness.  Eventually, some day the pile will start to shrink.  I am just trying to avoid having to take all of this to St. Louis with me.  That would be less fun.

I’m sorry I have no wreckage to accompany my post.  I promise to double up this weekend.  Good luck on your finals, and I’ll see you in just six days!

Love,

Super Koala

Sixth Day of Silence

Mon Capitan,

Le sigh.  This evening was oddly stressful.  I wish I could call you to talk about it because it was so weird, and I need to tell someone.  I will try my best to convey the series of unfortunate events through text.

It all started when I decided to take the girls on a long walk.  I was deep in the fancy streets, when two geriatric puffball dogs start lumbering toward us.  (Why does no one leash their dogs in this neighborhood?!)  When they caught up with us, they did a lot of growling and butt sniffing, which the girls did NOT appreciate.  They weren’t so much a problem, but they were making the walk take forever.  When we got closer to their house though, the mammoth of all male boxers pulled out of his collar and charged toward our group.  This caused instant chaos.  He kept trying to pick on Nyx, who got ferocious.  Annabelle, never one to be left out, also had to be ferocious and pulls out of her collar.  Darn beefy neck.  Earlier in the walk she had barked at one of the little girls on the street for no apparent reason, so I was worried by this.  Annabelle and the boxer start scrabbling, I pick Nyx up, and eventually the lady who owns all three of the dogs comes over to help.  Annabelle gets her leash back on, and the puffballs are herded to the backyard.  To get the boxer into the backyard, Annabelle, Nyx, and I went back there ourselves to entice him as a favor to the lady.  I’m not sure why we needed to do her a favor.  Boxer is smart.  He knows going into the backyard means the loss of his eternal freedom; he is not interested.  It takes ten minutes to get him back there.  Finally, we escape.

Several streets down, we run into a pack of tiny dachshunds.  Legitimately, there were three of them, and they looked so small and funny, I originally thought they we kittens.  The dachshunds are not amused at our present, they begin barking and advancing toward us.  The girls are not afraid, and Annabelle probably feels like a giant at this point.  The girls attempt to bark back.  I bark the loudest, and switch directions, which involves some pulling.  On the new street, a toddler runs out into the street he’s so happy to see us.  Instant terror in the hearts of my wee pups.  The baby tries to follow us; I am wondering where his responsible adults are.  Finally, a mother figure appears and swoops him away.  We’re almost to the house when from no where, a final off leash dog appears with intent to tussle with Annabelle.  She’s not in the mood.  I yell a little bit because I’m tired of this nonsense.  Annabelle shows her teeth.  The dog backs up, growls a lot, but does not try to follow us.  Thank goodness.

At this point in the very long story, all I want is to check my precious mail.  This is not possible.  As I approach the male box, I notice a tiny smidgen of spider web at the lip.  I investigate only to discover there is a disgusting wooly spider living under the handle to the mailbox, right where I was about to put my finger.  Thank everything in the universe I noticed the web, otherwise I’d probably still be sobbing.  Sparhawk will have to take care of that problem once he is home from work.

Sorry for the rant.  Onto better things.

I am so incredibly excited for you and your phone!  Is it beautiful, do you love it?  It’s super cute that Moms and Pops surprised you like that.  Do you have the FitBit app now?  I can’t believe MamaBird stormed out of the AT&T store.  Why was she so upset?  I don’t think that’s ever happened before.  At least not to my knowledge.

It is also very cute that Shannon bought everyone ice cream.  I’m glad you’re first week is going well.  I haven’t decided on a competition yet, though I think I’d rather go to something later in the season, so I can see everything when it’s really good.  Maybe Farmington, unless it works out that I should go to Mizzou again.  Obviously, Oklahoma is probably out.

On September 6th there are three runs in my area.  They are the Caveman 5k, Getting Dirty to Stay Clean 5k, and Little Heroes 5k.  I think the second one is the one on the trail at Rutledge-Wilson farms.  You should try to look them up, and tell me if you like any of them.

I think that is it for today.  I hope you’re having a lovely weekend, and I look forward to your post tomorrow!

– Super Koala

P.S. My fitbit is about to die.  No charger yet.  But I’d like to note that I’m currently beating you by almost double the steps.  Victory!

 

 

20. Vintage Veranda

 

Today, Captain Spazzmataz and I celebrated a most momentous occasion.  Our MamaBird came to Springfield (tragically to take the Captain away from me.)  Regardless, it is exciting to have her visit.  Not only was this her first time seeing my new house, but it was also her birthday!  To celebrate, we went to a delicious and adorable lunch at the Tea Room at Vintage Veranda, a cute little gem I found not too far from my hizzouse.

After an in depth round of pictures, the enjoyment of the exceptional surroundings, and the perusing of a daily menu, we placed our order.  The food that arrived was absolutely delicious.  Seriously, everyone should go.  The broccoli cheddar soup I had was easily the best broccoli cheddar soup of my life.  Food is served on unique plates, decorated and prepared in a most wonderful fashion.

The folks at the Tea Room are also undeniably evil geniuses.  They have your waiter bring out a dessert tray, clearly displaying the many scrumptious items crying out for consumption.  We were weak in the face of terrific tastiness.  C.S. got herself a macaroon, something she’s become very fond of since our trip to Elle’s, and MamaBird and I split a slice of Butter Finger cake.  Marvelous.

– The Sisters Ravens

P.S. We sadly won’t have a post for Fantastic Caverns or Archery.  We were not able to complete these during Captain’s visit, partially due to happenstance and partially due to MamaBird’s more important birthday festivities.  However, the summer is not over yet, and we hold out hope!  The bucket list shall continue at a later date.