Remember last year when Crash won the best picture Oscar and everyone who thought it would be Brokeback Mountain was in an uproar? At that time, I’d seen neither and figured the controversy was overblown. Last night I watched Crash, and even without having seen Brokeback yet, I can begin to understand why this was all a big deal. Crash, while technically very well-made and the performances are great and all that, is basically a sermon, not a movie. I didn’t care about the storylines or characters in and of themselves. It’s hard to care when they merely exist to deliver a message—over and over and over and over again. There were some moving moments and I really do think the performances were all-around superior, but overall…meh. Not a Best Picture.

In other news, I got to hang with Stella for awhile while Mom was getting a checkup. At one point she saw me taking a Kleenex out of the box to wipe her nose, then grabbed my fingers and moved them toward the box so that I’d do it again. I did, and then she figured it out, and you can guess what happened next. Or watch the video.

(It’s funny – after posting this to YouTube, I discovered that there’s like an entire genus of YouTube videos involving babies about Stella’s age pulling tissue out of boxes. G. said, “Why doesn’t anyone stop them?” Well, I know why. It’s very entertaining and the babies are very focused and don’t seem to lose interest at all. You keep bringing them tissue boxes, they’ll keep pulling them out. It must be something developmentally that makes it so interesting to them at this age.)