Ocean's Tanzanian Life Aquatic
Today I went to see Ocean's 12 and then The Life Aquatic with my Mom and her crazy grad-student friends. Ocean's 12 was fun, although really it only had one good reveal. The Life Aquatic was a bit stilted; the characterization was great, but the plot didn't quite seem to match the rest of the movie.
We had Christmas dinner at the house of one of my Mom's professors. His wife is Tanzanian, and she made really good chicken, beef, and lamb dishes, as well as African bread (and served Kenyan beer — she says the beer in Tanzania is so bad everyone drinks the Kenyan stuff instead). It was kind of cool listening to them sling Swahili back and forth. Christmas dinner at a table of anthropologists was interesting, but more than a little bit weird (someone says: we just got back from Pine Ridge where we stayed in tents, it was intense — get it, haha?). Two people mentioned that growing up they didn't understand why Santa only came when they weren't living on the reservation — one's parents told him that by the time Santa got to Pine Ridge he didn't have much left in his bag. And there were arguments about the meaning of immaculate, the meaning of festive, and about what Plato and Nietzsche would have thought of smores (not big on Pine Ridge, apparently).
Anyway, it was a good Christmas, although it's depressing without family around.
Tomorrow I'm heading down to see my dad's side of the family — all sorts of aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. are descending on Littleton (of all places). It will be stressful and perhaps awful, but also good.