The theatres are dirty, smelly, sticky floored and filled with idiots who talk during the film. Most movies are crap and not worth the price. Most of the good movies don't need a big screen and booming surround sound. In our city all of the theatres have moved to the burbs; we live in the city. It takes a lot to induce me out to the mall, then circling around for parking, waiting in line for tix and bad food and then getting crappy seats with the jerks kicking your seat or the big guy that sits right in front of you when there's 100 other spots open. If we want to make a night of it, all of the good restaurants are in the city so we have to go to one place for dinner and then drive out to the movie.

The last movie we saw in the theatre was "Once" and only because it was playing in the local art house theatre. Even there though, it smelled bad and the seats were old and uncomfortable. Luckily we were surrounded by well behaved adults and everyone was nice and quiet...or maybe that was because the movie was so lovely(people applauded at the end). We will go see Harry Potter this weekend, but at a later showing after (hopefully) all of the kids have gone home to bed by then. I'm looking forward to seeing the movie, but not the movie experience.

It is much more convenient to watch movies at home on our medium sized tv and surround sound. Compared to the theatre, our couch is much more comfortable, the food is a lot better, our living room doesn't stink of popcorn grease and dirty feet, we can stop for bathroom breaks and if the cat interrupts the movie we can just toss her in the basement.

I kind of wanted to tell Stephanie Losee to aim for a better paying job instead of complaining about how child care costs are eating up her salary. And then her husband could be more involved with the kids care rather than providing the majority of financial support. I certainly don't envy him having to commute back and forth between their vacation getaway place and their home so he can go to work. And I still don't see how her taking 3 weeks vacation to another location saves money. Why doesn't she and her husband take slightly overlapping vacation time and stay home for the non-overlap time. During the non-overlap time one parent works and the other takes care of the kids. Then go on vacation together during the overlap time?

However, that doesn't mean that school schedules should be overhauled. They need to be. The three month brain drain is awful. With a longer school year teachers could teach beyond the standardized tests. Recess and gym could be added back into the school day. Good luck on getting an expanded school year past the teacher's union and tax payers though.

Joss' blog about the honor killing of the Yezidi girl was written in May. The stoning in Iran didn't happen until June.

Honor killings may not be inherently misogynistic, instead they are used as a method of control on not just women, but men in a lower status and to reinforce tribal ties and to assert the authority of those in charge. Yes, honor killing and harsh punishment for sexual "misconduct" is more likely to be meted out towards women, but men are also stoned, sentenced to lashing and hanged (especially true for homosexual males in Muslim countries).

However, I don't see any reason not to try to work to stop such atrocities from happening regardless of the sex of the person being punished. If Joss' book can stop some girl from being beaten to death, or ritually raped by another tribe, or stop a man from being stoned to death for having consensual sex relations...how is that a bad thing?

Re Hollywood and sexual violence: My anecdotal experience is that there are a lot more male killers and victims in movies than women. However the deaths are very different. In your normal "shoot em up and kill em" movie men fight other men, our hero bests the bad guys and wins, often the bad guys are lauded for their brave fight. Or you have a bad guys gun down a bunch of nameless cops or soldiers (typically depicted as men, although there might be a few female cops thrown in). The guys that are killed aren't normally stripped naked and raped first, which is a fairly typical outcome for a female movie victim. Or if our hero is female, she will be sexually attacked by a male or subjected to some sort of sexualized violence. A very short list of sexual violence against women in films: Kiss the Girls, Silence of the Lambs, Psycho, 28 Days Later, Eyes Wide Shut, Seven (wasn't a hooker raped to death in this one?), etc. In Munich you had the revenge scene where the female assasin is killed and her robe is left open to expose her breasts as a way of humiliating her. Even in The Matrix when Trinity is about to have the plug pulled by Cypher he salivates all over her prone body, although this is very mild compared to some of the others.

As far as sexual violence against men goes...Pulp Fiction(maybe 300?), Oz (I know not a movie), ???. Then you have Mel Gibson who likes to make his male heros suffer horrible violence but films it as some heroic (and possibly erotic) experience.