HillBuzz

Dear HillBuzz,

My name is Patricia Melton (but you can just call me Pattymelt, as that’s the handle I use on these Internets, but ironically enough a sandwich I think is gross.  Too gooey) and I am the president-for-life of the Mineral City Coffee Club, the foremost coffee club in all of central Ohio and most of Pennsylvania, come to think of it.  I am married to Earl, a man obsessed with model trains who spends most of his time in the basement hiding things of mine that he’s broken and unconvincingly tried to fix without me knowing (and half the time, getting more Krazy Glue on himself than he does on the ceramic cat mug or whatever he’s broken in the last hour).  I’m mother to a wonderful gay son named Robby who lives in Chicago, and who has a coffee club of his own (but instead they drink Pilsners in Boystown and write about it on the Internets) and protectress of a whole host of cat-babies, too adorable to count (because if I ever kept track of the number of them, my husband Earl would get jealous and want more rabbits of his own, and I don’t want any more rabbits in the house, in the barn, in the basement, or in Earl’s sock drawer, which he considers “like an embassy” in that it’s his territory so he thinks my rules don’t apply there (but they do anyway, don’t test me).  So, I tell him we’ve just got the three cats: a black one, a white one, and a tabby.  When he sees two or three of any color in the room at the same time, I just convince him he needs his eyeglasses checked again, or that the cats are moving really fast (Works like a charm!). I also have a daughter who lives in New York, but the less said about her the better.

My son Robby asked me to review the new movie 2012 for you, because he says I’m good at talking about things that are terrible (have I mentioned my daughter, Ann-Louise, the cautionary tale and constant source of disappointment?  Speaking of terrible things, what about my mortal nemesis, Ann Millar, who has been trying to usurp me as Coffee Club President for going on fifteen years now?  Get your own damn club, ANN, because if it meets in my kitchen and everyone sits on my chairs I GET TO BE PRESIDENT and there’s nothing you can do about it.).

This weekend, the Mineral City Coffee Club (myself, VP Grace, Secretary Helen, Anabelle, and Ann Millar, who ate all the popcorn even though she never chipped in for it) went down to the multiplex to see the movie 2012.

If you add all those numbers up, it comes out to 5 (2+0+1+2), which is about how good this movie is on a scale of 1-10.  It wasn’t eye cancer, and it could have been worse if they’d had Jim Carey or Halle Berry in it, or that awful Nicholas Cage.  I think Nicholas Cage should be a dishwasher somewhere.  He looks so greasy and crazy, they should keep him in the back where the soup cans are.  Halle Berry should just be ashamed of herself for how she treats her mother, and conveniently rewrites her life story often forgetting she has a white mother (much like the current president, of whom Berry said she would “stoop to pick up the litter in front of him to make his path clear”.  Instead of doing that, she should make better movies.  And stop being an ungrateful daughter.  While she’s at THAT, she should give my own daughter in New York a call).  I think Halle Berry’s just wrong, and that someone should have gone to prison for the movie Catwoman. That’s two hours of my life I will never get back, and I am someone who has an uncounted number of cat-babies living with me, so it’s a movie I should have loved beyond measure.  But, it stunk like yesterday’s litter box after Earl “forgot” to clean it out again (“It’s not my fault, Pattymelt. I just don’t understand how three cats can make SO MUCH mess.  That thing fills up faster than I can turn around, damn cat-babies are so quick”).

2012 was an extra stinky movie, too.

For starters, I’m bothered by the fact that in 2012, the sun shoots out all these invisible particles at the Earth, which microwave cooks the middle of the planet and then causes earthquakes and tsunamis when the continents then come loose and crash into one another.  The President of the United States, played as a dithering idiot by Danny Glover, decides to build just three giant boats to save only 400,000 or so people, most of them foreigners. Because, apparently, he hates America but loves foreign people.

Maybe they gave him a Nobel Prize or something.

That’s just ridiculous.

The President of the United States needs to save American lives first, whether he especially likes that or not.  He is not President of the World, no matter how much he wants to be (it would be like the manager of the Burger King here in Mineral City evacuating the neighboring Taco Bell first if there was a big grease fire, instead of taking care of his own workers and customers first;  that happened here recently and not only was that manager fired, but the whole town smelt like burnt Whoppers for a MONTH).

If there’s any time or room left after that, then some of the nicer countries out there get their turn too (and Taco Bell, too).  Start with Mineral City itself for any evacuation, then Chicago where my son is, then the rest of the country where I know people and like those who live there, then save Australia because I have a friend there, and Iceland too because I like to go there, and then other places I like can be next.  That’s what the President should have done in this movie, and I am upset that he didn’t do that.

I also don’t particulary care for what a dithering, indecisive, apologist the president was.  The one in the movie, not the current POTUS.  I know it’s hard to keep that straight with how the actual, current president behaves, but I’m talking about Danny Glover for the duration of this movie review.  I will probably mention Lethal Weapon a lot, which will also be a clue.

Scientists tell Glover that “the sun is attacking us with space rays!” and he just stands there, like he’s wondering what kind of sandwich he can have later.  Well, he’s the president, so he can have whatever sandwich he wants. There’s an excellent chef at the White House named Cristetata Comerfeld who has a telephone on her at all times in case the president wants an obscure sandwich, that even at a fine hotel like the Drake or the Waldorf=Astoria a regular person wouldn’t be able to get (unless you called really far in advance and tipped a lot). But, if the President of the United States wants a zebra sandwich with ostrich eggs and Bavarian ham on it, Cristeta can zip on down to the kitchen to make it for him lickety-split (I know this, because there’s a movie with Dennis Quaid as a President who orders different, odd sandwiches in the white house (shark, Munster, Addams Family) and Emma Thompson as a Senator who becomes Vice President, even though Gary Oldman tries to kill her (I think he’s a vampire in this one).  The movie is called, “The Sandwich”, and it was delicious if I remember correctly, which I always do when it comes to movies because I take copious notes while watching them).

I imagine Cristeta has a pole in her room like firemen used to have, or like Adam West had on the old Batman TV show, only instead of putting her in a Batsuit on the way down to the kitchen, somehow Cristeta would be dressed in a sandwich-making outfit on the ride, to expedite the whole sandwich-making process.

Sandwhiches are, apparently, very important and mesmerizing in the White House.

All of this is tax dollars well spent, in my opinion, because the President of the United States should be thinking about ways to save his people, not about the availability of Gruyere at whatever time of day or night it is. Let Cristeta take care of that, and keep your eyes on the road, Danny Glover.

It really seemed like the movie president in 2012 was trying to come up with a liberal, diplomatic solution to the problem of the sun killing us with explosive space rays instead of putting the nation into ass-kicking mode, where we most often belong.

“But, if we only reason with the sun, maybe we can tell it to stop sending those space rays to kill us all.  We need to understand the peaceful nature of space death rays. I grew up in a nation far away where there was the sun overhead, so I am uniquely qualified because of my personal narrative and life story to apologize to the sun for America’s exceptionalism and ask the sun nicely to please, oh please, I bow and beg of you, stop killing us,” is what Danny Glover seemed to be thinking.

I said it before when he made that awful serial killer movie Switchback in the 90s and am saying it again now, Danny Glover is an idiot.  How he got to be president is beyond me. Hope! Change! Getting too old for this!

There’s no reason the United States could not have built thousands of large ships given three years of prep time and advance warning the world was going to end. Instead they built three, and evidently put GM and Chrysler in charge of the job.

During WWII, President Roosevelt told everyone they needed to get their butts off their couches and mobilize for a common cause, and that’s just what they did.  Just imagine if we were all ever activated like that again. But instead of fighting the Third Reich or Empire of Japan we fought THE SUN.

One of the things I regret George W. Bush never did was to call Americans to action like this in the aftermath of 9/11.  That speech he gave in the ruins of the twin towers, after they were toppled by Muslims eight years ago, was indeed masterful (and I love the man for that, no matter what I think of some of his policies, I love and am grateful for him for how he handled himself that day when we needed him most) — but that Ground Zero speech contained no call to mobilize the nation for the common goal of defeating Islam and terrorism.

Just imagine what we could have accomplished if Bush had asked every able bodied man and woman to head down to the local recruiting station to sign up for the military on September 12th, 2001.  Just imagine what he could have accomplished if he’d asked all of us too old to enlist to work on some projects here on the homefront. My husband Earl has enough time in the basement to make model train replicas of all sorts of nonsense…that could time could have been spent making something to fight terrorism instead (which would have, at last, given me by basement back after 40 years).

Americans are good people.  We, by and large, work hard.  If asked to put our backs into it, we get the job done.

Every year, here in Mineral City, we have a Wooly Bear Festival, as you all well know (and are perpetually jealous of).  People come from all over the world, as far away as Canada and Indianapolis, to see children dressed up as wooly bear caterpillars, to look at City Hall with orange and brown paper on the windows, because those are the colors of wooly bears, to eat various foods that have been colored orange and brown, or were orange and brown to begin with like oranges and brownies (which, of course, just lend themselves so well to the Wooly Bear Festival). If you ask people in Mineral City to bring something to a potluck for the Wooly Bear Festival, most of them will do it, even if some of them, like that awful Ann Millar, claim they baked a cheesecake but I know they just defrosted a Sara Lee.  I don’t care what she says, no one re-uses those aluminum Sara Lee pie tins.  If a pie tin has Sara Lee written on it, that was a Sara Lee cheesecake in there, not a homemade cheesecake that was made in a recycled Sara Lee tin because someone was too damn lazy and cheap to go out and buy a new tin.  YOU AREN’T FOOLING ANYONE ANN!  I got your number, and it’s $4.25, which is what you spent on that cheesecake at Giant Eagle.You think bagboys keep secrets, but they’ll sure spill plenty of beans for a ten-spot, let me assure you.

But, Ann DOES bring something when asked, even if she lies about it being homemade. Every year, the mayor here asks people to contribute to the Wooly Bear Festival, and every year people do just that, even the talentless people who try to sing and dance but only embarrass themselves, dressed up like giant caterpillars or whatever. My husband Earl is one of those people, but at least he tries — and those rehearsals for these big dance numbers keep him out of the house one day a week for months, so I think that’s wonderful. Sing and dance your hearts out and breaks things at someone else’s house!

In that movie 2012, Danny Glover ineffectively tried to use the federal government to solve everyone’s problems, but he bungled it.  Not only did he and the global community just manage to build three shoddy giant boats in China, but they were only able to save 400,000 or so people.  Everyone else drowned or were burned to a crisp by volcanoes, or possibly eaten by Oprah when earthquakes took out all the Chicago pizza shops and the Beast Who Must Be Fed grew hungry, as my son Robby in Chicago tells me happens far too often.

Just imagine if Texans, alone, had three years to plan for the giant tidal waves and other calamities the 2012 diasters would bring.  Texans kick butt and take names on an average Tuesday…just imagine what they would do at the end of the world. All normal business across America would have to be suspended to work on this giant effort…just like most businesses converted to war production when Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito needed their butts kicked in WW2.  Those Americans in 2012 had three years in which they could have built one of the largest fleets this planet has ever seen.  They could have sailed those ships to strategic spots all around the planet, so when those big waves came, a good number of them could have survived.  Hell, people in the private sector are smart enough, resourceful enough, INGENIOUS enough to have designed ships that could withstand even the worst waves.

Americans built this great nation up from nothing, from wilderness.  Some parts of it like Detroit and Gary, Indiana are still terrible, but most of it is pretty good.  If Danny Glover had just given people the chance, they would have not only come up with ways to save themselves and those around them, but they would have planned to resettle the land that was left when the flood waters receded.

Instead, Danny Glover seemed to think he was Noah…that he was a Lightbringer sent from above to hold everyone’s destiny in his hands (and then drop the ball).  What was needed was 300 million American Noahs, who would have found the best solutions possible for the problem by way of the private market.  But, Danny Glover knew best.  Danny Glover thought the government should keep the whole thing a big secret because the people couldn’t handle the truth.

Well, Danny Glover embarrassed himself more than he does on his sortees to Cuba or Venezuela to pal around with dictators and apologize for America to them.

And then, get this, when the apologists hit the fan, and the world does end, President Danny Glover dithers and stumbles and stands around on the White House lawn covered in filth instead of leading his people and taking charge of that flotilla of arks.

Embarrassing.

He just gives up and lets America end, feeling a weird sense of pride that he would be “the last President of the United States”.

Well, let me tell you something, and all the coffee club ladies agree with me, Earl too, if the world was ending we wouldn’t be standing around wishing we were still in Lethal Weapon movies or wondering what kind of sandwich we wanted.  We would not go quietly into the night.  Even if we had just three days available, we’d all come together on my aquaculture farm here in Mineral City and we’d tear the barn apart and make a big boat and we’d be paddling as the flood waters reached Ohio.  We’d make the best go of it that we could, and we’d keep swimming against the current with every bit of energy we’d have.  Maybe we’d drown. Maybe we’d get eaten by sharks. Maybe we’d crash into a mountain.  But we would never give up, we’d never surrender, we’d never relent as long as America, in the form of her citizens, needed saving.

As much as I hate Ann Millar, I’d bring her with us on that Mineral City Ark, too.  It takes a village people, as Hillary Clinton has repeatedly said through the years.  I consider my personal village to be the state of Ohio.  I am making you this promise:  if the world is ever ending and giant tidal waves are coming, and you live in Ohio, if you get your butt down to Mineral City we’ll be turning our barn into a big boat so you can help us sail away, because goodness knows we’re not going to sit around doing nothing thinking about sandwiches or waiting for the government to come save us…or apologizing for America being the kind of place where people don’t quit, don’t give up, don’t let the sun push us round with its space rays without one Hell of a fight.

Take that, sun!

And I told my son Robby he’s responsible for Chicago, since he lives there now.  If those fools up in Mayor Daley’s kingdom want to just give up and shuffle around all meek and apologetic like Danny Glover, they’ve got another thing coming, because my son Robby is going to yank them off their couches any way he can.  I called him on the phone and told him this.

“Yes, Mommamelt, I promise I will personally save Chicago and somehow build a giant boat if ever there is a flood and our current president decides he doesn’t want to bother to save America.  Yes, I know that if I don’t, you will kick my butt from here to Cincinnati.  And I will make sure all of my friends get on board the boat, but I won’t let Bill Richardson or Claire McCaskill or John Edwards on if they happen to be in Illinois at the time,” my son Robby said, because that is what I wanted to hear and I would have kicked his butt from Chicago to Cincinnati if he thought or said otherwise.

I just hate Richardson and McCaskill and Edwards.  Hate the Kennedys too, every last one of them.  Can’t stand Jimmy Carter, either, but have nothing against Rosalynn, so she can come on the boat with us.  The rest of those people can just drown, because while I’d save my nemesis Ann because she’s my neighbor and even though I don’t like her, I still know her, I think people who actually live near the Richardsons and Kennedys and McCaskills should take care of them, because I can’t do everything. They are somebody else’s problem.  In Richardson’s case, that’s a problem that smells like Arby’s. 

I already do too much for the Wooly Bear Festival, where I bake MY OWN CHEESECAKES, thank you very much, and never use Sara Lee and pretend they are homemade, like someone I know (named Ann Millar). And running the Coffee Club takes almost all of my effort that’s not devoted to keeping my cat-babies healthy and happy and making sure my husband Earl doesn’t burn down the house with all those model trains of his in the basement (there are so many cords and plugs everywhere, it looks like all the dozens of maids hard at work at Caroline Kennedy’s house with the buffing machines revved up on her weekly “Diamond Polishing Day”).

I think 2012 is a movie you should wait to see when it comes on TV and you are too tired to change the channel.  It’s silly to drop $8 to watch a dithering Danny Glover drop the ball on what’s best for America, when you can just turn on your TV and see President Obama do that for free any time you want.

I hope this review was helpful.  Wishing you the best from Mineral City and central Ohio in general (but Mineral City in particular).

Patricia “Pattymelt” Melton

President for Life of the Mineral City Coffee Club

Mineral City, Ohio