Why are the Cheaper by the Dozen films awful?

I come from a large family, and when I was growing up, Cheaper by the Dozen and its sequel, Belles on Their Toes, were a great comfort. They taught that there had been other unusually large families with varying degrees of eccentricity, and that this was not an insurmountable difficulty, and that Irish cooks were excellent targets for caricature.

Being autobiographical, these books treated the various joys and trials of being from an enormous family with maturity and taste. The parents are not comically inept, the children are not a total zoo, and there are no saccharine and inexplicably stupid story lines--Mrs. Gilbreth doesn't go on a book tour for her book about the difficulties of raising a large family and then order extra pillows in her hotel room to represent her children because she misses them so much (What? I know.), because she is busy raising a large family. And is not the worst mother ever.

The books are magical. The trip to Nantucket, the time all the children get sick, when Anne gives herself a bob (!), when Lill gets the roller-skates under her pillow--it's all earnest, sweet gold. If you're going to make an asinine film about Steve Martin and how he has more annoying children than he can handle because he's a moron, please don't sully the Gilbreths' name by calling it Cheaper by the Dozen.

Why are people completely insane about Sappho?

Facts we know about Sappho:

1. She was a woman.
2. She wrote poetry.
3. She may have liked other women.

Unfortunately, much of her poetry is lost. Apparently this gives people license just to make stuff up about it. So they do this.

Largely people are excited about Sappho because she was a woman, and she wrote a really long time ago, and therefore she is really our first female author, preceding most others by about two thousand years. Which is pretty neat. Until you decide that she says everything you would like to say about this circumstance.

Her work is fragmentary. However, we're pretty sure it was originally whole. And, while it is dangerous to make up the difference and then analyze from there, it is totally bats to decide that she is prophetically deconstructionist or postmodern, just because you associate these things with feminism.

Also: her voice comes to us only highly mediated by the ravages of time. Some of these are accidental, some of them, presumably, are not. In what way does this possibly make her poetic voice any more or less authentic than any other author who survives incomplete?

Look, she's special. There's not a whole lot of lyric out there, and even less of it by women. This does not mean that she is a category unto herself that must be treated with total madness. I thought that was the point about feminism--that she's allowed to say what she's trying to say. Not, in fact, what you want her to say.

Why are there so many ugly people in British films (part II)?

Yet again, I complain about an Austen adaptation. But not, this time, about the women. The women in the new Sense and Sensibility (2007) are fine. Not great, but they'll definitely do.

Willoughby, on the other hand.

Yes, yes, Greg Wise was offensively handsome. He was also, importantly, a plausible rake. A likely subject for Marianne's asinine affections. Slightly Byronic. Desperately needing a kick in the pants.

The chap in this one looks more or less like a potato. Well, he's a bit pale for a potato. So, a nerdy potato.

I respectfully disagree.

Why are there commercials without product?

You've seen these Blackberry ads. They have Asian women designing scary clothing, or a band with drummer who looks a lot like a Jonas Brother (right?), or a couple breaking up but then reconciling, or break dancers, or a number of other things, all with a bad, up-dated cover of "All You Need Is Love" piped in.

In fact, sometimes it seems as though the only thing these commercials don't have is--a Blackberry.

Clearly this campaign is aimed toward people who think that their Blackberrys are soulless machines inflicted on them by their employers just to make them miserable. They must be told that Blackberrys are fun! And hip!

I think they might be helped by any one of these supposedly fun and/or hip people in the commercials even coming within smelling distance of the supposedly fun and/or hip merchandise.

Why are decorative cabbages suddenly everywhere?

Maybe it's not so sudden. Big deal.

They're awful. And you know why? Because they're cabbages. Everyone in his right mind associates them with vile concoctions invented by childhood-destroying Germans.

And even if you like sauerkraut, that doesn't mean you think a cabbage is attractive. Mostly they make me think, "Hmm, Chambers Street is kind of an odd place for a kitchen garden." But maybe the green space crisis in New York really is that bad.

Still. Heinous.

Why does Pandora sometimes go totally monkey-poo?

Look, if I only go thumbs-up on Broadway and Disney songs on a station that may or may not have started with "Drink With Me" from Les Misérables, I do not want random indie/folk/Jack Johnson crap. I may have a secret shame, but it's not that bad.

Also, stop trying to make me like it. There's a reason every one of those songs has gotten a thumbs-down, and it's partly because I don't want to hear it right now, but mostly because it sucks. So don't put on another song exactly like it. Your mission is to give me music I like. And if you're wrong, suck it up.

And I have discovered new things. Before Pandora, I didn't know any songs from Oliver!

Why can't people close doors?

The point of a door, generally speaking, is to keep the outside from being the inside. This can be for any number of reasons, usually something along the lines of "cold," "raining," or "blisteringly painful."

Once you get past the basic "door" concept, you might find the excitement of double doors. These add new spice to the experience, in that you can have either one open, by itself, or you can open both.

Now, sometimes, one of the double doors will have a plate near the lock that protrudes past the edge of its own door, and corrals the other door. It's possible that these were invented out of sheer perversity, but odds are they serve some purpose, like keeping the door closed.

This plate adds a massive wrinkle to the whole thing, because it means that you need to pay attention to which door opens first, and, more importantly, to which door closes first. This is because, if you allow the door with the plate to close before the door without, the door without cannot close entirely. This, as we reviewed early, defeats the climate- and moisture-control purpose of the whole process.

It's a door. It is not difficult. I'm going to start getting mug shots and petitioning the dean not to confer degrees on people who can't figure it out.

Why is Dora Spenlow?

I swear, if you shake your curls one more time, you useless ditz, I will tear them out.

Why do snowboarders have pow-wows in the middle of the trail?

You've seen this. One snowboarder falls, or gets tired, or runs out of wind because he hot-boxed the gondola on the way up. He, therefore, is sitting somewhere on the slope. And then, somehow, about six thousand of his friends show up, and make themselves comfortable while joining him for a confab, effectively blocking the entire trail.

What makes this okay? What makes even Cro Magnon men strapped to planks think that this is in any way acceptable? It's rude, it's selfish, and it's dangerous.

There are rules about this sort of thing, and even if there weren't rules, common sense might tell you not to be a jackass.

Why are six-year-olds so much better at skiing than I?

Smug little brats.

Why are film velociraptors over-sized?

Actual velociraptors were about half the size of the ones in Jurassic Park. They would still have been sufficiently scary.

Is it somehow embarrassing to be done in by a medium-sized dinosaur that hunts co-operatively and then disembowels you with its giant claws? Is it less painful to be eaten semi-alive if the dinosaur is larger?

I'm going to go with "doubtful."

Why does Gus the Groundhog appear on my television?

I, naturally, disapprove of the state lottery. I don't live in a banana republic, and I dislike the trappings of one. The lottery is particularly repugnant, being a tax largely on the ignorant and unhappy poor.

But I could just ignore the lottery itself and be puritanical about something else, if the horrible mangy excrescence that is Gus the Groundhog did not appear in television commercials. First, there are no groundhogs who are not Punxsutawney Phil. Second, even if there are, they don't hawk lottery tickets to tasteless and apparently deaf morons.

Is it supposed to be cute? It's not. Is it supposed to be clever? It's not. Is it supposed to be appealing in any way, shape, or form? Because it most certainly is not. It's a flea-ridden, turpitude-peddling, ear- and eye-assaulting skunk. Only without a skunk's good points.

Why are there Elves at Helm's Deep?

Dude, there was already a last alliance of Elves and Men, and Haldir's weave is terrible.

Spare us.

Why is Fanny Price so annoying and morbidly religious?

There is an appealing middle ground between "kind of a skank" like Mary Crawford and "sickly and irritating" like Fanny. Clergymen's wives do not have to be sanctimonious killjoys. Even in Regency England.

There's no explanation of Fanny's poor health. Perhaps her impecunious upbringing may be blamed, but she arrived at Mansfield at an early enough age not to be permanently afflicted with a vague malaise.

She also doesn't do anything. At all. On the plus side, she's not interfering in the way Emma is, but, on the minus side, she's unremittingly boring. Kind, and dutiful, and self-effacing, but dull as ditchwater.

Virtue she has, in plenty, but verve might be nice. You know, once. Maybe. Please.

Why are diamond advertisements so insulting?

The message of every jewelry commercial is, essentially, "give a woman something shiny, and she will do pretty much anything, including gaze drippily at your fatuous gob."

Now, evidently, this works, because if it didn't jewelers would hire new marketing people. It doesn't have to work on women. As a rule, they don't buy jewelry for themselves, since they don't lack gift-giving imagination and usually don't do cosmically bone-headed things for which they must atone...at least, to themselves.

Many or most women do appreciate nice things, and you'd be hard-pressed to find one who will turn down diamonds. This does not mean, however, that you get to call them tarts.

Why does the kid in King Arthur have a girl's name?

Yes, this is another installment in the list of things about really terrible movies that probably shouldn't bother me but do.

The Roman boy that Clive Owen and his trusty band of hairy and oddly-accoutered friends must save is named "Alecto." Alecto, or Allecto, is one of the Furies. Who are, if unfairly, personified as women.

So it's not just that he has a girl's name. It's also one of the worst possible girl's names ever. Who thinks, when he has had a son, "Aha! I will give him the most ill-omened name I can think of, and in case that isn't bad enough, I will also make him gender-confused?" No one, that's who.

Don't get fancy. Just name the kid Marcus or something. Or some doofy early Christian name. Steer clear of the Eumenides.