(This is a really long post!  Go to the bathroom and get something to drink before attempting to read this mess!  I don't know what's wrong with me lately.  I can't seem to edit!  I'm also using lots of !, which I never use to do!)

Thanks to katina choovanski and a couple of other comments left on my Mom movie posts, I realized that I needed to intersect Mom and Louise and change up how we were going to proceed with their movie reviews. As much as I knew that Mom had visions of herself wearing a fedora with a press card jammed in it, pecking away at her manual typewriter, the last thing I wanted to do was stress them out about keeping notes or trying to write out something for the reviews.  I want the ladies to have fun.  I told both of them that I would just visit with them for a bit and they could tell me how they liked the movie.  Louise took right to this.  She convinced Mom that it would be more like a show that way.  We plan to meet in the activity room before lunch every other week.  Louise said she'd provide a proper tea.  That made me feel a bit guilty, I didn't want to make her work for these meetings.  Once I realized a "proper tea" to her was a bag of Hydrox, three tea bags, three mugs, and hot water from the tap, I didn't feel so guilty anymore.   As I waited for my tea to steep in the luke warm lead filled water, and watched Louise serve me my two Oreo wannabes in a coffee filter (the activity room was out of paper plates), I asked the ladies how they liked The Crying Game.

Louise:  "We didn't watch The Crying Game.  No one has been in the mood to be depressed lately."

Me:  "Oh.  Well that movie is more of a thriller kind of thing.  Did you guys watch a movie this week?"

Mom:  "Of course we did!  We watched a movie from the list you made.  That one that I thought sounded like a lot of fun, Priscilla Queens of the Jungle."

Louise:  "Betty, I think that movie was called Prissy Queens of the Desert."

Me:  "Actually I think the full name of that movie is The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert or something like that."

Mom:  "Surely that can't be the name.  That wouldn't fit on a movie marquis."

Louise:  "No wonder no one has heard of it!  Jungle Queens would have been a better name."

Me:  "Did someone in the group have the movie already?"

Louise:  "No, dear, my great-nephew Troy read your list and said that he had a few of those movies.  He brought us a video tape copy of Jungle Queens.  He said he's going to read the reviews.  This is all very exciting!"

Me:  "So did you two like the movie?"

Mom:  "We wrote down our ratings.  We haven't shown them to each other yet."

Me:  "Why?"

Mom:  "I bet Siskel and Ebert didn't discuss their ratings before hand.  We want to be unbiased and fair."

Me:  "Okay, what are your ratings?"

[Mom unfolding paper]

Mom:  "I give it one and a half cats."

[Lousie unfolding paper]

Louise:  "I gave it one and a half cats too!  That's great Betty!  We both liked it the same."

Me:  "Uh.... what?"

Louise:  "We both liked the movie dear."

Me:  "Cats?"

Mom:  "Yes, it's a three cat movie then."

Me:  "Out of a possible how many cats?"

Louise: "Well.. I guess you could have as many cats as you wanted."

Me:  "I'm really confused.  Explain this rating system to me."

Mom:  "It's easy.  We didn't want to do the thumb thing.  That's been done to death and didn't really give a good opinion.  'One thumb way up' sounds silly to me."

Louise:  "So we worked out a system."

Mom:  "Yes, we call it Cats and Crows."

Me:  "I think I'm getting a headache."

Louise:  "Drink your tea dear, that will make it better."

Me:  "Crows?"

Mom:  "Yes, cats beat crows.  Unless there's two crows to one cat, then two crows would beat one cat."

Me: "..."

Louise:  "You looked stress dear.  When was the last time you had a movement?"

Me:  "My movements are just fine, Miss Louise.  I'm just trying to figure out the cat and crow thing and I still don't think I understand."

Mom:  "She has trouble with math Louise, always has."

Louise:  "Well cats are good.  So you give a cat to a movie if you liked it.  Crows are bad.  So you give a crow to a movie if you don't like it."

Mom:  "So the trick is if you like a movie you need to figure out how many cats to bet to make sure that you beat the possible crow that the other person can give."

Me:  "So one person's opinion wins then?  Like a contest?"

Louise:  "Well not a contest, but more like a game.  You want your opinion to be the right one."

Me:  "So if you really like a movie, what's to stop you from betting five hundred cats?"

Mom:  "That would be cheating.  What would be the point in that?"

Me:  "Mom, this is sort of confusing, I'm not sure if everyone is going to understand the rating system."

Mom:  "Ho ho ho... it's just you that doesn't understand.  The other people will get it.  Everyone here does."

Me:  "Okay, I'll take it on faith then."

(Cat photo courtesy of Pasta, who agreed to be the "cat" in Cats and Crows if I would tell of her plight of being trapped in a tiny house in England with no cat condo and tearing wall paper.  Crow photo courtesy of Barry, who I know doesn't have a bbd condo, though I don't know about the state of his wallpaper.)

Me:  "So you both liked the movie."

Louise:  "Oh yes, what wonderful costumes!"

Mom:  "I liked the wigs.  Men can wear wigs so much better than women.  It's not fair."

Me:  "So there wasn't any controversy among the ladies about the movie?"

Lousie:  "Hee heee heee.  There's always controversy about the movies dear.  That's part of the fun.  You tell her Betty."

Me:  "...well the subject..."

Mom:  "Mave had a big wall eyed fit."

Me:  "...I can understand that some seniors might..."

Mom:  "She insisted that the old queen was Brett Somers."

Me:  "...be somewhat upset with.. ah, what?"

Mom:  "Mave said that old queen, what was her name in the movie?"

Louise:  "Bernadette.  She was just lovely.  I just loved her.  The young ones not so much.  The movie should have just been about her.  If it had been, I would have gave it another two cats."

Mom:  "Yes, Bernadette.  Mave said that she was Brett Somers.  We all told her it couldn't be.  Brett was married to Quincy at the time, he wouldn't have let her go to Australia to go make a movie."

Louise:  "Yes, Quincy wouldn't have let her go off like that.  And Bernadette was a man and Australian."

Mom:  "That didn't matter to Mave.  Mave said that Brett Somers could be a woman pretending to be a man being that woman with an accent.  Then Ruth told her that was Julie Andrews."

Louise:  "Then Mave stormed out of the movie.  Didn't talk to us at the mailbox later."

Me:  "I'm so sorry!"

Mom:  "Sorry?  Sorry for what?  Someone always storms out of the movie.  We take turns."

Me:  "Oh.  I had no idea."

Louise:  "That's part of why we like the movies.  Gives us something different to fuss about."

Me:  "Anything else about the movie you'd like to note?"

Mom:  "You shouldn't ride around on top of a bus with a long scarf in a giant shoe.  That's just dangerous.  That scarf could wrap around a wheel and snap your head off like Jayne Mansfield."

Louise:  "They should probably home school that little boy.  He'd get beat up in a public school.  And tone down the day wigs a little."

(photo mash up made possible from pics from flickr commons)

[note:  Troy emailed me.  Thank God he "gets" it.]