Theo, the Fatheaded Dog
I woke up happy this morning. Sunshine was streaming through the curtains, birdies sang on the telephone wire and a gentle breeze wafted through the window. In walks my little puppy to greet me, as is his custom, when I noticed that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Half of his face was swollen to twice its normal size. This is not something I want to see before my first cup of coffee, and I didn’t handle it well. The little guy looked like he had a giant plug of tobacco in his tiny jaw, and some of it had gotten stuck in his nose as well. Really, he was all…lumpy. And weird looking. Being an impressionable sort, and having just seen the new Batman movie, all I could think of was that overnight, Theo had morphed into the canine version of Two Face.
After trying unsuccessfully to figure out the cause, I searched online for information about weirdly swollen puppy faces. By this time, Theo had pink hives on his belly, and I was swigging coffee and freaking out. Thankfully, this seems to be a common malady in dogs, and the remedy is Benadryl. I went and picked some up, gave him half a tab, and I’m waiting for his head to deflate. No luck yet, but he seems to be in great spirits, so I’m not going to worry too much. I will love my furry son, even if it does turn out that he’s hideously disfigured for the rest of his life. I’ll make him a little Phantom of the Opera mask and we’ll just move on with our lives.
Or maybe I’ll just take him to the vet.
Update: Theodore is completely back to his normal-headed self. He thanks you all for your concern and good wishes. He still wants one of those masks though.
Um… About “The Dark Knight”
If you haven’t seen The Dark Knight, don’t read this.
I’m going to type this again, louder, just to be on the safe side:
IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE DARK KNIGHT, DON’T READ THIS!!
I’m not giving anything away about the plot, I just don’t want to risk diminishing your enjoyment of the movie at all. Come back and read this after you’ve seen it, and I’ll diminish your enjoyment then.
Okay, ahem. I watched it last night, and it was really great. Seriously, though, they could have cut out all of the parts except for Heath Ledger’s and I would have enjoyed it even more. He was amazing, fantastic, evil, gorgeously hideous, and his voice and mannerisms were just perfect. I wish Heath were still here, because among other reasons, if I’m ever hospitalized, I’d want him to be my nurse. He had such a great bedside manner, and he looks wonderful in a dress. Throughout the entire movie, he was completely riveting. The best bad guy since, well, ever. Even Angel Eyes in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly has nothing on the Joker. Neither does Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. In fact, I’d love to be holed up in a theater watching those three go toe to toe to toe for about two and a half hours.
Oooh…now my brain’s all over the place, thinking of other great screen psychopaths. Come back little brain, come back. Mmmmm… Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner…
Okay, I’m back. So really, it was a great film. Entertaining, lots of crash boom bang, interesting plot twists and some nicely painted characters…BUT– BIG BUT:
I like big butts and I can not lie,
You other brothers can’t deny…
Come back little brain, come back!
Okay. Here’s the big but. What is it with Batman’s voice? Oh my God. He seriously sounded like Grover from Sesame Street making obscene phone calls. I couldn’t believe it.
If I were Batman (and I really could be, you know), I would never stoop so low as to use a voice like that. 
It was laughable. The guy’s a kazillionaire. He has the most state of the art car in the universe, his suit does everything except stir fry, and this secret division of his company is devoted solely to inventing gadgets and googaws to make him groovier with every movie. So why in God’s name can’t they invent some little widget that he can talk into, to make him sound like Darth Vader on steroids? Even Stephen Hawking has one, for pete’s sake.
Okay, I had to get that out of my system. I also want to say that the people of Gotham are extremely gullible if they believed for one moment that Harvey Dent was the Batman. C’mon, look at those guys’ chins. You could climb into the dimple in Harvey’s, Bruce Wayne doesn’t even have one. I do realize that this all takes place in Comic Book Land, so I guess if you’re watching a guy jump around wearing tiny bat ears and diving off of skyscrapers, you can suspend disbelief as far as chins go.
But that voice…
In my opinion, any weaknesses in the film were more than made up for by the bad guys, who were all excellent. It was great to see so many psychos and meanies in one film.
I hope it doesn’t sound like I think it’s a bad movie. It’s not. It was fun, I’m glad I went to see it, and could list a million things that I loved about it. Well, 405 things anyway. And thing number one is definitely Heath Ledger. What a fantastic final ride he took us on.* Don’t let anyone tell you that he’s only being considered for an Oscar nomination because he’s gone. If you’ve seen the film (and I know you have, since you’re still reading), you know he really deserves it.
*There’s another HL film coming out in 2009, but he didn’t complete the project.
