I got up early this morning to go get blood drawn, since my doctor kind of strong-armed me into scheduling a physical when I was in a couple of weeks ago about my pneumonia. I’m hoping that it, and the subsequent second chest x-ray I’ll need to schedule, will confirm that said pneumonia has made a full and lasting retreat.
The bloodwork didn’t take long, so after that I went and got some breakfast — it was fasting bloodwork — and then a much needed haircut. (I’m not sure, but it could be than my last haircut was over three months ago.)
I mowed the lawn, worked a little on Kaleidotrope‘s next issue (theoretically out next month), delivered some food to the church pantry with my father (and the dog, who stayed in the car), and went out for a really lovely dinner with my parents. (I had a very nice beet salad to start and a delicious duck breast for my entree.) Then this evening, after what was really a ridiculous amount of deliberating and looking through options, I decided to watch The Muppets.
I liked it, and I liked some of it quite a lot, but I think ultimately it made me nostalgic for earlier Muppet movies more than anything else. Because of the frame story that Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller decided to use, the Muppets, while always the focus, at times feel like secondary characters, or at least not the driving force of the movie. And because so much of the original voice and puppetry talent sadly either couldn’t or didn’t participate in the movie, some of the characters feel just slightly off at times. (I really wish, for instance, that Frank Oz had reconsidered. Did he see a script, or just that brief fart shoes scene in the trailer?) That said, there’s a lot of goofy sweetness to really like about it, and if not brilliant or even in my top three Muppet films, it’s genuinely entertaining.