Reviews and More

With the weather finally breaking just a little bit and with Opening Day of the Major League Baseball season only a couple weeks away, it’s probably safe to think about spring now. I can’t wait to get out of the house and start doing things again after being pent up all winter long.

One of the first things I’ll have to attend to is my yard. It’s not something I look forward to, but I can’t stand the mess that winter weather leaves behind. I’m going to clean up and start pulling out all the yard decorations that I usually have out there, including my patio furniture, barbecue grill, and my wind chimes.

Of course, I might just end up buying new products instead since I like to change things up quite often. I was looking at wind chimes a bit earlier tonight on a website called OnlineDiscountMart.com, and I came across this really cute one that features bluebirds. I think it would look great hanging out by my balcony, so I’ve bookmarked that site and will go back there when I’m ready to purchase.

Online Discount Mart has a bunch of other outdoor products as well and they’re all available at fantastic prices, so if you’re looking to spruce up your yard this spring, I recommend checking out the site!

I was over at a friend’s house the other day and saw that she had rented Man of the Year, a 2006 movie starring Robin Williams, Laura Linney, and Christopher Walken. I hadn’t seen the film yet, so I accepted my friend’s invitation to stay and watch it with her. All I knew about the movie was that it was billed as a comedy, so I prepared myself to laugh.

Man of the Year started out very well. Williams plays a political talk show host named Tom Dobbs who makes his living by complaining about the shoddy job that the current politicians are doing. Then one night during his opening routine, a woman in the audience stands up and says all the pols are so bad that Dobbs himself should run. He’d get her vote for sure. The rest of the audience is very receptive to the idea, but Dobbs just kind of laughs it off.

But the American people won’t let the notion drop. From emails to blog posts, the idea just keeps picking up steam and getting more and more momentum. Finally, after consulting with longtime advisor Jack Menken (played by Walken), Dobbs officially decides to throw his hat into the ring.

At the same time that this is going on, we meet a woman named Eleanor Green (Linney) who works at a company that recently secured a deal to supply electronic voting machines for the upcoming election. Eleanor discovers a potential glitch in the system and alerts her boss Hemmings (Rick Roberts) to the problem. Hemmings doesn’t want to do anything to jeopardize the upswing in the company’s stock price, so he tells Eleanor that there’s no problem at all.

It turns out that Dobbs’s grassroot support and unorthodox approach to politics strikes a chord with the voting public, and he wins the election. Or does he? Eleanor is convinced that the glitch in the voting machine software led to Dobbs’s improbable victory. She tests out her theory and is indeed correct.

From this point forward, Man of the Year became pretty unwatchable for me. It devolved into a predictable “thriller” in which the Hemmings and his evil henchmen try to silence Eleanor (who of course is forced into hiding) before she can get to Dobbs and explain the truth.

My Reaction: I think director Barry Levinson made a major miscalculation with this project. Man of the Year might have worked as a comedy or as a thriller, but to try to combine the genres was a huge mistake. The result was a movie that suffered from an identity crisis and sent mixed messages to viewers.

Don’t bother trying to apply logic to the script or you will end up getting even more frustrated with how much time you wasted on the film. For example, you won’t want to ask yourself how Eleanor was able to walk right up to the President-elect at a private party by impersonating an FBI agent, or why Dobbs would even bother talking to this potentially crazy person. And don’t ask yourself why Eleanor had to go to Dobbs himself to explain the problem with the voting machines when it would have been far easier to contact a major media outlet.

Overall, I give Man of the Year 4 stars out of 10 and advise you to stay away from this one!

When I was younger, I used to spend money just as fast as it came in and racked up some seriously high balances on my credit cards. I finally realized that I simply couldn’t continue living that way, so I decided to work on getting myself out of that financial black hole.

First, I went to a professional consultant for free debt advice. The consultant was able to help me formulate a workable plan that would help me pay off my credit cards and slowly get back on solid ground. Part of the plan included applying for debt consolidation loans, which I was fortunately approved for. Those loans helped me lower my total monthly payments and avoid the high interest rates that my credit card companies were charging. Eventually, I was able to pay off everything, and I’m very happy to say that I am debt-free (except for my house) right now.

But I know a lot of people out there are still in debt, and I’m here to say that it’s not the end of the world. You can recover, but it won’t happen overnight and it won’t be easy. Besides getting advice from a financial consultant, there are a couple of other things you can do. For example, I would check into remortgages to see if you can get a better rate than the one you currently have. I would also try looking for cheaper auto and home insurance to save even more money every month. And finally, I would check into current accounts or savings accounts that offer favorable terms and high interest rates.

I know that being in debt can be a scary proposition, so I recommend taking these steps as soon as possible so that you can pay everything off and start enjoying life again.

This started out as a hot rumor a couple weeks ago, but now it looks as though the news has been confirmed: there will indeed be a Grey’s Anatomy spinoff featuring Kate Walsh’s character, neonatal surgeon Dr. Addison Montgomery. Details are still scarce at this point, but it appears as though Walsh will be joined by Taye Diggs and Paul Adelstein (Kellerman on Prison Break).

I love Kate Walsh (she’s one of the main reasons that I tune into GA each week), but I’m not too sure I like this whole spinoff idea. I like the way Addison interacts with the other characters no the show, so I don’t know how it will be watching her with brand new people. Plus, as great an actress as Walsh is, is the character developed enough to carry an hour-long drama week after week?

From what I’ve read, the pilot will basically be a Grey’s episode that will serve as a crossover. It will air in May.

It’s that time of year again: March Madness is upon us! The Big Dance starts tomorrow, so if you haven’t filled out your brackets yet you better get your picks in soon.

For free downloadable and printable March Madness brackets, I suggest visiting docsports.com. At Doc’s Sports, the brackets are updated after every single round, giving you the final scores, seeds, and latest odds for all the matchups. Plus, Doc’s offers free expert picks, which is great if you’re having trouble deciding how to complete your brackets.

I took a look at the Doc’s Sports brackets and I like the way it’s set up. It’s clean and uncluttered (unlike some of the other brackets I’ve seen), plus the printout contains all the relevant information you need, such as the dates of each round as well as the locations of the matchups.

So if you’re into college hoops, head on over to Doc’s Sports right now to get your NCAA Tournament brackets and keep checking back for updates!

And you’re picking Kansas to go all the way, right?

Back when I was an Audible.com member, one of the first titles I selected for downloading was Undaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose. This book is part of the historical fiction genre, a category that I’d never really delved into as a casual reader. But I’d heard such fantastic praise for the book from ordinary people that I couldn’t wait to give it a try.

Well, it’s a good thing I had the audiobook otherwise I might not have made it through the first section! Ambrose clearly wanted to set the stage for the adventure and give as much background information as possible in the beginning there so he went into all the minute details of how then-President Thomas Jefferson and Meriwether Lewis first met, the way their relationship developed, and early setbacks that delayed Jefferson’s plan of sending a team out to explore the land west of the Mississippi. Once the expedition was finally approved by the government, Ambrose detailed the way Lewis went about choosing men for his team and the way he shopped for supplies. I can see how this would be interesting to some people, but I was completely bored. Again, if I hadn’t been listening to the book, I would have put it aside.

But with an audiobook it was easy to press on, and I’m glad I did! Ambrose’s account of the Lewis & Clark expedition with the Corps of Discovery was nothing short of spectacular. It was an amazing adventure story that was made all the more compelling because it’s based on fact. Ambrose took used a lot of original documents (including extensive journal excerpts from Lewis and Clark) to tell the story, plus added his own analysis and evaluation of the men’s actions. The result is remarkable, and makes Undaunted Courage a must-read (or listen).

Ambrose’s work covers the period before, during, and a bit after the journey, which of course took place in the early 1800s. In this book, you’ll learn how the men dealt with Native Americans (Sacagawea, now featured on the dollar coin, plays a prominent role), privation, hardship, the long, cold winters, as well as desertion and death. The story is very exciting at times, and I often had a hard time finding a good place to stop because I always wanted to find out what would happen next.

The book was read by Cotter Smith, who had a great voice to listen to. He varied his pitch at the appropriate times, read with excitement when it was called for, and just made the whole experience that much better.

Overall, I thought Undaunted Courage was a true masterpiece — and that’s not a word that I throw around lightly. I give the book 10 stars out of 10, and recommend that you read it even if you think you don’t like nonfiction or historical works.