Historical Movie Review: Night at the Museum II

I've been MIA for a bit, simultaneously attempting to finish the thesis and recover from mono. I think the thesis is winning. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

In any case, a few weeks back Kristina and Kate were going to the movies and I tagged along. We went to see Night at the Museum II, a welcome respite from our usual Nights at the Library: Eternity. We left the theater both amused and slightly disturbed. Below, excerpts from our email chain, preceded by my summary.

The main gist: Ben Stiller is called back to the museum mothership from his lame but lucrative job when his sometimes-fake, sometimes-real buddies are shipped off the Smithsonian. Having stolen the magical tablet from the American Museum of Natural History and consequently losing it to an Egyptian pharaoh who lisps a British accent, aforementioned buddies rely on Stiller and a resurrected, very flighty Amelia Earhardt (no pun intended) to save the day. Oh, and Teddy Roosevelt is still seeing Sacajawea.

Kristina opened with a generally positive description: "delightfully achronological mix of characters that also spans continents and disciplines, probably the only film that can {almost) meaningfully combine Egyptian pharoahs, slapping monkeys, a bouncing balloon dog, and Albert Einstein -- in bobble-head form, no less"

Kate was pretty PO'ed and not about to let the film off the hook for its assault on archives:
Speaking of the vault and the 'wholly-accurate preservation methods,'... good grief. Um, clothing, like say, space suits and uniforms, go in drawers. So do skeletons, come to think of it. Was that supposed to be a real specimen of a giant octapus or a rubbery and conveniently-life-like model? And please, that place cannot be effectively climate-controlled. Or cataloged. Which, take it from me, is a curator's worse nightmare. But, I think we now have another possible location for the Ark of the Covenant. Maybe we should tell Harrison Ford."

I wonder if historical and "historical" films will be ruined for me. Frankly, reading Last of the Mohicans makes me slightly ill, but watching The Patriot still makes me laugh instead of inspiring a tirade about familial loyalty and the chance of people falling into wells. What do people think? Can medical students watch Scrubs? Do law students even bother with the many Law and Orders? Can anthropology and sociology students watch anything?

My Gift To You

Well, I am off to a rare weekend-of-no-work in honor of a good friend's wedding 14 hours away. Celebrating friends' good fortune is certainly one of the top ways to spend one's time. If one does not have such an occasion to celebrate this weekend, one can instead celebrate that they are not a part of this:

Awkward Pose of the Day: The Pile On

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Look at these photos. Now imagine that these are the templates for annual department pictures for the website. Feel your mind start to bend. Cable-knit sweaters, pasted-on smiles, and climbing up risers never sounded so good.

Culture Camp

Bored? Unlikely, but in case you feel the past year encased you in an academic vacuum devoid of any form of expression other than a book review or lab report, check out Time's Summer Arts Preview.

I'll be creating my own recommendation list in the coming weeks. Note that my rendition is more likely to include Family Guy, Robot Chicken, and the like. Additional suggestions are always welcome. Stay tuned.

Would You Like Bullets with That?

Some fellow snarky writers provided me with the perfect opportunity to mix moderately good advice with a truly absurd and horrifying back story.

Don't throw waffles, kids. Or you might get shot.



HELLO. More of these great write-ups can be found at Dumb As A Blog, A Daily Digest of the Dumbest Stuff People Do. And people must do a ton of dumb stuff, because those writers are busy. Check early and often for your daily fix of dumb.

Status Update: You're Busted

There has been a lot of discussion about Facebook's advantages and horrifying pitfalls. A great way to keep track of friends' addresses, birthdays, and life events: yes. A potential reputation abyss: also yes! With bosses now screening the Facebook profiles of potential employees and police using Facebook statuses, groups, and photos to arrest people, there are plenty of reasons to keep your profile clean.

The problem, then, is not what you do to your profile, but what others do to it.

So you friended that fellow fraternity pledge back in freshman year and promptly forgot about it. Now you're a fancy TA, and while you're trying to talk about econometrics, your students are all on Facebook looking at that Beer Pong Championship photo he tagged you in. Suddenly your victory is not so awesome anymore!

It takes some real profile wrangling to undo this kind of damage. Luckily, Will has alerted me to an article that may help a bit:

Do This Now

After poking around the site and playing with all of the privacy settings, the two best things to do (in my opinion) are to disable photo search functions, and manage your networks and settings. Students shouldn't be able to see your profile, at all -- make it friends-only. And unless you've got some seriously questionable taste in movies, the biggest single issue on the profile is your name tagged on photos you did not upload yourself. Facebook's answer to these issues isn't perfect, but at least you get some control over what other people can see and search for.

They're Making a Fool of Us

Sometimes graduate students, surrounded by books, eyes transfixed on JSTOR articles, ears attuned to the clock ticking down to the deadline, ask themselves, "Could this get any worse?".

In order to find the answer, three more questions must be asked.

#1) Has death-defying swine bulldozed your grandma?



#2) Has Thanksgiving dinner broken into your house, and gotten sweet sweet revenge on all your stuff?



#3) Is a brain-damaged sea lion out for your blood?



Suddenly writing 40 pages in my non-pig-stampeded room with my non-turkey-broken lamp and my non-sea-lion-chomped hand sounds pretty great.

Also, if any of those things had happened, it would probably make the Animals Turned Criminal photo slideshow a lot less amusing.

Everything Fail

As exams approach, the panic sets in. Can we write 60 pages in 20 days? Only time will tell, but to assuage fears of total failure, check this out:


see more pwn and owned pictures


FailBlog provides many amusing examples of really dumb things. If everything is relative, this should make us feel better!