Post-exam boredom

There's nothing to do but sit around and wait now. Really, all I've been doing is job searching, jogging around West Seattle, trying to cook different foods, and meeting up with friends and family.

Oh, and vegging out. As usual.

When I first saw previews for Nacho Libre a long time ago, I was not interested in watching it. Then Mi Hermana called to say that her hubby the Latino Studies Ph.d candidate was watching a bunch of old Mexican films starring a well-known wrestler, and that they were going to watch Nacho Libre because it parodied many of the old movies.

So of course I put it in my Netflix queue.

Clearly, I did not get the parodic references. But it was a little obvious that the whole movie was, in fact, a parody of something -- most of the scenes were way too random. (Mi Hermana told me later which scenes she remembered from the original films.) (Also, how sad is it that I recognized the little weird kid from Hannah Montana?)

At any rate, Jack Black plays a Mexican priest who masquerades as a wrestler. He's the cook at the parish orphanage, and has a crush on a nun. His wild-man sidekick makes fun of him for being fat, and he makes fun of his sidekick for believing in science. Suffice to say, I laughed my ass off -- something I was not expecting to do at all!

Book Three in the Artemis Fowl children's series didn't take that long to read. A former colleague gave me the first book as a going-away present, and I'm now hooked. Not in a Harry Potter way, but still vested in the series in ways that are possibly unhealthy for an adult.

The Eternity Code follows our teenage criminal mastermind as he attempts one last scheme: to blackmail a multimillionaire using fairy technology. Naturally, the dwarves and trolls and gnomes and fairies and centaurs don't like this, and send a retrieval team to the human world.

I like this book the best so far, perhaps because the two underlying themes are that people can change and that aging and growing up are not necessarily bad, scary things. Artemis has been slowly growing a conscience along with friends as the series progresses, and in this installment his long-lost father renounces the family business of evildoing and pledges to do nothing but good. Meanwhile, the Fowl bodyguard deals with having to retire early and pass the torch on to a hot-headed successor.

Ah, summer! Time to come up with a more extensive reading list...