Taco Bell Crispy Chicken Wings | Food Review

I didn’t realize that Taco Bell starting selling chicken wings. Probably because they are only available at stores that are not connected to a KFC, for obvious reasons, and they aren’t listed on their menu online. They are onlt listed on the menu on the app, which I don’t use. But my husband found out about them and picked up a few boxes for us to try.

© Taco Bell

Surprisingly, the wings were quite tasty. As noted in the name, they are crispy. Very crispy. I eat a lot of chicken wings and I am not used to wings THAT crispy. But I think it made them more delicious. The weird thing is that they are covered in some sort of dust. It tasted a bit like the dust on the nacho cheese flavored Doritos. Supposedly it’s a zesty queso seasoning but I don’t believe it. They totally crushed up some Nacho Cheese Doritos Loco taco shells and used that to fry them. You can’t convince me otherwise.

While the wings are tasty, they are a limited edition item. From what I hear, they are only around until January 12. If you can get your hands on some before they disappear, do it!

Beanie Mania | Movie Review

Since I work from home, I tend to turn on documentaries as background noise. Sometimes they are true crime documentaries but usually I pick something where I’m already familiar with the subject. That way I can easily pick the thread back up if I can’t listen too closely. Unfortunately, I am all too familiar with the Beanie Baby craze.

Beanie Mania is the story of Beanie Babies as told by collectors and former Ty employees. The bean-filled animals went from another plushie in the store to an absolute frenzy where adults would travel to neighboring states just to get a particular doll. Yes, it was as crazy as it sounds.

Like most people in the 1990s, I owned Beanie Babies. I wouldn’t say I was an avid collector but I did have most of the cats before they went out of fashion. Then, toward the end of the craze, I worked at a store that sold them. I never had to deal with adults calling every day looking for certain dolls or people getting too out of hand in the store. So I was definitely interested in seeing what the documentary had to say about how everything went down.

Sadly for me, the movie didn’t reveal any new information. Since the documentarians were unable to get an interview with Ty Warner himself, they had to rely on stories from the more widely known collectors. The people who started websites or wrote books about the dolls. If you lived through that time and were lucky enough to have access to the internet (the internet was still pretty young at the time), you probably knew these people or read all of this material already. That means the target audience must be young adults, right?

Well, my 19-year old daughter watched part of Beanie Mania with me. I think she got bored of it because she left about 2/3 of the way through the movie. She didn’t even stay long enough to see the only person she would know (Colleen Ballinger, also known as Miranda Sings on YouTube). To be honest, my daughter liked the McMillions documentary about the big McDonald Monopoly game scandal. Beanie Mania just didn’t have an oomph to it.

If you are thinking about watching it, do it for the nostalgia factor. Especially if you are already familiar with Beanie Babies. However, if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you might find it interesting. Just be prepared to turn it off halfway through if get bored. I really wish the documentarians were able to find more interesting people to talk to. Or at least find some more dirt to talk about. The scandals are what makes people stay til the end.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye | Movie Review

I was about 10 years old when Jim Bakker and his wife, Tammy Faye, has their televangelist empire fall apart. That’s not old enough to know or understand all of the gritty details but I vividly remember the couple on TV outside the courthouse and doing interviews. So I was very interested when I saw there would be a biographical drama that I could stream on HBO Max.

Tammy Faye LaValley meets Jim Bakker at North Central Bible College. The two get married and travel around the United States preaching. After a few years, they moved their preaching to a television network, where they became very popular. Popular enough that they created their own gospel network. However, in 1987, their empire collapsed due to allegations of fraud and rape.

This version of The Eyes of Tammy Faye is based on a 2000 documentary, also titled The Eyes of Tammy Faye. I haven’t watched the original documentary so I’m not sure how close this movie follows it. But this movie is very pro-Bakker. It paints Tammy Faye as a woman who was treated poorly as a child and, as a result, craves attention and admiration from other people. There is also this weird duality where she is portrayed as both the mastermind that got the couple all of the opportunities that led them to be as popular as they were and also a naive woman who was mistreated and ignored by her husband. I’m not sure that the real Tammy Faye was either of those. I think that both Jim and Tammy Faye manipulated their way into the hearts of Christians and that they were terrible to each other. They were both the same level of horribleness.

To be honest, I don’t think this movie was particularly worth watching. There were some interesting visuals but I feel like it misses out on how awful the Bakkers were to their followers. They conned people into donating more money than they were able to afford. While you can tell that the Bakkers are rich, we never really see whether the money was really theirs or if they were spending church money on their luxuries. It would have been better if we got to see more of the results of their “charitable begging.” Maybe, if you have never heard of Jim or Tammy Faye Bakker, this might be an OK introduction to who they are but you would probably do better with something closer to the truth.

Thursday's Theme Song | "She" Green Day

In order to change things up a bit, I’ve decided that, every Thursday, I am going to post a song that I vibe with. It might be a newer song, it might be an old song. I am going to begin this new weekly feature with my favorite song from Green Day, “She.”

The Struggles of Daily Blogging and Why I Do It

I’m not going to lie. Blogging every single day is difficult. And there are a variety of reasons why it’s difficult. Sometimes it’s a time thing, sometimes it’s a topic thing. Let me tell you about the struggles I have and why I continue to do it.

My biggest struggle with daily blogging is going to get filed under “Laziness,” even though it isn’t really laziness. See, in addition to writing this blog, I work a full time job. Sometimes I don’t want to run over to my computer to write a review or blog post after logging off of work. Sometimes I want to sit on my couch and play games on my cell phone or watch a movie with my family. It usually takes me around an hour to write one blog post. That doesn’t include the time it takes for me to find or create a graphic to use on the post. As a result, the blog gets put on the back burner. I try my best to combat this feeling by writing a stack of posts at once that I can schedule throughout the week. Of course, that means getting the gumption to write a number of posts at once. It really is a vicious circle.

Once I get over the “Lazy” problem, the next struggle is finding something I want to write about. Sure, I can write a review every single day. I watch a lot of movies and a lot of television shows. I could easily talk about any of those. However, I’m not sure I want the blog to only be reviews. Would that be interesting to people? Would someone keep coming back to read what I think about various movies or whatnot? Despite the fact that a majority of my professional writing has been reviews, it feels like a cop out to only write reviews. But maybe I’m being too hard on myself. If I write it, they will come, right?

So, if blogging is such a chore, why do I do it? Well, I really do love writing. If I didn’t have to work an outside job full time (ugh, money), I would gladly write all day every day. While I did pooh-pooh a bit on reviews earlier, I love watching a show or listening to an album and telling people my opinions. Yes, it feels like a chore sometimes but once I sit down and let the words start to flow, I feel….well, I feel like myself. Like this is something I should be doing with my life. Like this is what I was meant to do. It’s a shame that I let “real life” get in the way of the things I thoroughly enjoy. That sounds like a New Year’s Resolution….

I turn to you, my audience, for some feedback. Do you like my reviews? Would you like to see me review more things? Not just movies but television series or music albums or maybe alternate reality games (ARGs)? Leave me a comment telling me if I am heading the right direction or am I just yelling into a void. I need to hear more than just my own voice echoing back at me. I appreciate it!

Don't Look Up | Movie Review

Released just in time to give 2021 the send-off it deserved, Netflix gave us Don’t Look Up. A movie that was written before the Covid pandemic about the reaction of the United States to climate change but feels very relevant to the current Covid-ridden world.

Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) is an astronomy Ph.D. candidate who discovered a large comet hurtling through space toward Earth. Her professor, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), calculates that it will hit Earth in about six months, causing a planet-wide extinction event. They, along with Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan) from NASA, take the information to the president of the United States. President Jeanie Orlean (Meryl Streep) ignores the warning, choosing to focus on the scandal involving her current Supreme Court nominee instead. Kate, Dr. Mindy, and Dr. Oglethorpe try to warn the country of the impending doom themselves, only to be met with the same apathy they received from government officials. People don’t take the threat seriously until it is too late.

Don’t Look Up hit a little too close to home for me. While I don’t have any Covid-deniers or anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers in my family, there are a few of those in my workplace. And while this movie wasn’t addressing the response to the pandemic itself, it is a fitting metaphor. To be honest, it fits any situation where something awful is happening and the seemingly-majority (who are usually a vocal minority) scream about how it’s not true. (cough gun control conversations after mass shootings in the United States cough) Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure the message of “Take action now before it’s too late and we all die” isn’t going to get through the to necessary people. They will all claim it as some sort of liberal agenda and write it off altogether.

Maybe it’s because I am on the side of “maybe we should save the world?” but I found the movie sadly entertaining. Jonah Hill as President Orlean’s son and Chief of Staff, Jason, was hysterical but also scary. He wrote in a post on his Instagram, “creating this guy was the grossest blast I’ve ever had. I thought, what if Fyre Festival was a person and that person had power in the White House.” I would say that sums his character up well. As terrible as he was as a person, I think he may have been my favorite character in the movie.

While I would love for everyone to watch Don’t Look Up. the people that need to watch it aren’t going to. Nevertheless, everyone else should watch it. Maybe we can figure out how to save our world through the inevitable destruction of theirs. Or maybe, at the very least, we can figure out why a Lieutenant General would charge someone for free snacks.

Encanto | Movie Review

My family put off watching Encanto for way too long. We finally watched it on Disney+ over the New Year’s weekend and I’m a little sad we waited so long.

Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz) is a young girl living in Columbia with her family. All of the people born into the Madrigal family have powers, except for Mirabel. When the candle that supplies their magic begins to lose its flame, Mirabel decides to find out why the candle is dying and how she can save her family.

Ever since Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen, Disney Animation Studio has moved away from the romantic-based princesses stories. Yes, there is a romance plot in Frozen and that plot is brought more to the forefront in Frozen 2, but I would argue that they are not integral to the story. The story is about family and sisterhood more than it is about Anna and Kristoff. The same is true for Encanto.

Our main character, Mirabel, is a black sheep of the family. She is the only one without some sort of powers. Even the house has powers! However, she is still a part of the family and does what she can to help them flourish. Much like Frozen, there isn’t a villain character. Sure, Hans is a terrible person but you can’t say he’s really the villain of the story. The same holds true for Abuela Alma in Encanto. Like the Latina grandmothers in most pop culture entertainment, she is overbearing and demanding but that doesn’t make her a villain. And while both Hans and Abuela move the plot forward, they could both be removed from the movie with little change to story. Don’t get me wrong, both characters do fit into their stories well and have good reason for being there but they are also kinda unnecessary.

Before anyone comes at me saying that Abuela was the heart of the family and, as a result, was needed, I would argue that Mirabel was the heart. Even toward the end when Mirabel was finding out the true feelings of her sisters, the conflict could have been resolved there. Abuela’s outburst and resulting destruction of the family home wasn’t entirely necessary. It was more of a metaphor of breaking the family apart only to put it back together. Except that there wasn’t a reason to break them apart. Mirabel was getting them to recognize their true selves and what they really wanted from life. If Abuela had listened instead of screaming, the house would have never been destroyed.

I truly loved Encanto and I will most likely watch it again. (And again and again.) The music is catchy, the characters are interesting, and the story is something I think everyone can relate to. Even on the first watch, you will most likely walk away singing at least one of the songs. And don’t forget - we don’t talk about Bruno.

Worst Christmas Movies of 2021

It is almost always easy to write the best list of Christmas movies in a given year. The best movies are few and far between. It’s the list of worst Christmas movies that is difficult to figure out. Are the movies actually bad or just so boring that it drives me insane? Well, here is my list of the worst Christmas movies of 2021.

10. Sister Swap: Christmas In The City
9. An Ice Wine Christmas
8. Match Made In Mistletoe
7. Welcome To The Christmas Family Reunion
6. Secretly Santa
5. Christmas By Chance
4. Baking Spirits Bright
3. Christmas CEO
2. Christmas…Again?!
1. Father Christmas Is Back

Notable mentions: Five More Minutes, Dancing Through The Snow, Blending Christmas

Best Christmas Movies of 2021

This holiday movie season feels like it was never going to end. I ended up watching 78 movies this season. While I wish I could have jammed in the 13 movies I missed, it was probably better for my mental health that I didn’t. With that said, here are my top 10 best Christmas movies of 2021.

10. Christmas Sail
9. Sister Swap: A Hometown Holiday
8. A Mrs. Miracle Christmas
7. Single All The Way
6. A Christmas Dance Reunion
5. One December Night
4. A Boy Called Christmas
3. The Christmas House 2: Deck Those Halls
2. The Claus Family
1. 8-Bit Christmas

Honorable mentions: David and the Elves, A Kiss Before Christmas, Robin Robin, My Christmas Family Tree

That's All, Folks!

As you might have noticed, I haven’t posted any Christmas movie reviews since Saturday. I was hoping to get the other fourteen movies on my list reviewed by the end of 2021 but, alas, it is not going to happen. That doesn’t mean these movies will never get reviewed though. Let me unveil my lofty plans for 2022!

While posting daily movie reviews is very exhausting, it does keep me on my toes posting-wise. And I really would like to post more than two or three months every year. So I am going to attempt to post something every single day in 2022. Now, I won’t be posting movie reviews every day. I may not even be posting reviews every day. However, I will be posting something. This also gives you a chance to help out with the blog!

If you have a topic that you would like me to talk about, you can leave a comment on any of my posts or send me an email through my contact page. And, seriously, it can be anything. Do you have a favorite movie that you would like me to review? Let me know. Is there an album that you adore that you would love to let other people know about? Send it on over. Is there a topic that you would like to know more about or a craft that you aren’t sure how to complete? I will try my best to give you all of the knowledge I have.

I will be taking the rest of this week off and I will begin the new year with my traditional Best and Worst Christmas movie lists. The movies that I have not watched this season will be sprinkled throughout the year until we reach the 2022 Christmas season. I hope to make my blog as entertaining and informative as it has been these past three months. (Moreso, I hope that I can find 365 interesting things to talk about!)

Well, wish me luck!