The boys had played all day while I did some work around the house. The boys wanted to go to the pizza buffet and I was more than willing to pass on cooking and cleaning dinner.

I told them that they had to clean up all their toys — strewn from their bedroom to the den and back — and then we’d go to get pizza. It took the better part of an hour to get everything cleaned up. Then we hopped in the van and went to dinner.

The boys both ate nearly their weight in pizza. When they said they were all full and done, I let them go to the little game room to look at the racing games in there. (We don’t play the games, they just like to look at them.) Before we got up from the table to go to the game room, I made sure with both of them that they were, indeed, completely full. “We’re not having a snack or anything else before bed. This is dinner, and we’re not eating again until breakfast.”

We have to lay this rule down every night or else Calfgrit4 pulls the little “I’m hungry” stunt as an excuse to stay up from bed just a little bit longer. He used to wouldn’t eat his dinner because he knew he could get a snack before bed. We’ve mostly broke him of this gimmick.

After the game room, we left the restaurant and got into the van. As I put the vehicle in reverse to back out of the parking spot, Calfgrit4 laments, “I should have eaten more pizza. I’m hungry.” He had eaten six or seven slices of pizza and a cinnamon roll for dessert! He ate more than I did!

Then when we got home (a nice and neat home), I got Calfgrit8 into the tub for a bath first. Calfgrit4 was left to play for a little while, and I got on my computer to check my messages.

Ten minutes later, I come out of my office and find Calfgrit4 has toys ALL OVER THE PLACE! Their room and the den were more of a mess than when we started cleaning it up before going out to dinner. IN TEN MINUTES!

It was like a toy bomb hit, and poor casualties were laying about everywhere. “What in the world!” I almost shouted.

“I wanted to play before bath,” Calfgrit4 said.

“I know, but, but, but,” I just stood there waving my hands at the scattered mess.

Bullgrit

Viewed: Theater

How can movie makers start out with such a fantastic character and potential for story, and end up with a movie that makes me say “blah”? I didn’t leave the theater hating this movie, but I did consider it a waste of ten bucks and two hours. Sadly, though, the more time I’ve had to think about this movie, and talk about it with friends, the “meh” is turning to “grrr.” (Perhaps apropos for the subject.)

Pretty early in this movie, I turned off my logic centers and just sort of sat there watching without thinking. The story didn’t make a lot of sense, and the writer and director seemed to understand this — they kept changing the plot to go in a different direction in an attempt to make something of the story. But all they did was confuse the story.

Although I’m a comic book fan — Wolverine used to be in my top three favorite super heroes of all time — I must admit that I don’t know much about Wolverine’s Weapon-X days. So my problems with this movie story has nothing to do with whether the writers and director follow the comic book canon or not. I don’t know the early background canon for this character.

But the movie plot just didn’t make sense. There’s like cross and double-cross and triple-cross and what the hell? But the re-crossings didn’t make sense. And some of the super powers exhibited by the various characters didn’t make sense.

After thinking about this movie, I’ve come to realize why some nonsense items in a movie get a pass from me but others bother me enough to shake me out of the movie.

When a nonsense item is just something that passes without repercussions, I can ignore it. For instance, in X-Men 2, when the cop shoots Wolverine in the head and Wolverine falls down unconscious until his healing factor can kick in and he recovers — my first thought at that situation was “He’s got an adamantium skull, the bullet shouldn’t have knocked him out. And the bullet definitely shouldn’t have penetrated his head and then been pushed back out.”

But when the nonsense item is integral to the whole plot of the movie, it drives me crazy and makes me hate the movie. For instance, when the doctors say that only an adamantium bullet can kill Wolverine, and then later it’s said that the bullet won’t kill him, and then they say that it will erase his memory, I’m left sitting there thinking, “Make up your mind on which stupid plot direction you’re going to take. Don’t make me accept three contradictory stupid things.”

So much of this movie was just action for action’s sake. The plot was so poorly thought out that it changed several times during the course of the events. All in all, this was a train wreck of a movie.

This prequel to the X-Men movies is like the prequels to the Star Wars movies: seemingly unrelated except by some names — they should have just named it “Wolverine” and left out the words in the title and the cameos by some characters that was a failed attempt to give it a lead to the X-Men series.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the hate is rising. Now, not only am I disappointed at wasting ten bucks and two hours, I’m getting mad at having supported the box office numbers for this thing.

Bullgrit