[The Unofficial Lakeside Retirement Home Movie Club was formed to serve the needs of serious senior citizen film buffs. Since none showed up, Mom and her friends took over, seizing control of both my blog and Netflix queue.  This is one in their growing list of...ah...reviews.]

Louise:  I'm not getting out the table cloth just for our snacks.  Just put them on the Bridge table.

Mom:  I got that new whippy Jello pudding.  I hope everyone brought their spoons. 

Me:  Is there some reason we can't buy some paper plates for the activity room?

Louise:  We would dear, but people would just use them.  The coffee filters are just fine for snack.

Tansy:  I brought some of these new taco Doritos.

Thelma:  Here's some damn pretzels.  Eat them or not, I don't care.

Me:  Okay, I got everyone one of those butterfly cookies from the Norwegian bakery that you like so much.

Louise:  I'm surprised they sell to you.  You don't look a bit Norwegian.

Me:  I told them I was adopted by a Norwegian family.

Louise:  Good thinking.  Betty, where's Bob?

Mom:  Bob said that he couldn't watch this movie because of his acid reflux.

Me:  Well he must have loved your ranch bacon butter pot roast then.

Mom:  He did!

Thelma:  Betty, he didn't pick up his mail for two days after that dinner.

Mom:  I'm sure the pot roast didn't have a thing to do with it.  Besides it was Deven that made the pot roast.

Me:  Mom!

Mom:  Well it was.  I was just watching.  It was all that flour dusting.  Made the roast greasy.

Me:  Yes, the three tablespoons of flour, not the stick of butter or the pound of bacon.

Mom:  Flour will do that.

***

Tansy:  I can speak French.

Thelma:  I'm afraid to ask...

Tansy:  Voodoo voey poey shay she swabbed.  Vooey pooey wha be boop.

Thelma:  What's that mean?

Tansy:  I have no idea.  My great-grand baby wandered around singing that over and over.

Me:  I think that's from "Lady Marmalade,"  though a bit mangled.

Thelma:  I don't eat orange marmalade.

Louise:  Well it wouldn't take long to figure out which apartment is most like ours.  I might give up living in a big ol' house to live above a pizza place though.

Mom:  She's at lunch with all those ladies.  This better not turn out to be like "Sexy City."

Tansy:  I liked "Sexy City"!  All those lovely clothes and people wearing feathers in their hair.

Thelma:  Damn fool horse faced girl marrying that stupid man.  If this is another "Sexy City" I'm out of here.

Mom:  Oh, no.  This is good.  She doesn't like them.

Tansy:  What's a blog?

Me:  It's the diary thing Miss Tansy.

Tansy:  Why do they call it a blog?  That sounds like something you have to have burned off your neck.

Me:  It's short for web log.

Louise:  How does that make sense?  Why don't they call it a w'log?

Me:  I don't know.  Maybe because that word would look weird.

Mom:  I like webl.

Louise:  You and Deven should work your way through a cookbook for the diary.

Mom:  Yes!  That's a wonderful idea.  Deven, we'll cook through "The Little House on the Prairie Cookbook" for our webl.

Me:  What's this "we" business?  And I refuse to call it a webl.

Mom:  You could cook the recipes and bring them here and we could all eat them and tell you what we think.

Me:  Yeah, that ain't gonna happen.

Tansy:  We should make hats.

Louise:  We've been grounded for six weeks from doing crafts in the activity room after the papier mache incident.  Maybe after the ban we can look into it.

Mom:  See Deven?  I told you butter is good for everything.

Thelma:  Snack break.  Betty's daughter, hit pause.

***

Louise:  I don't know why you brought that bag of pretzels Thelma.  No one is going to eat them.

Thelma:  That's why I keep bringing them.  And I'm going to keep bringing them until they get eaten.

Tansy:  How do they make the Doritos taste like tacos?

Mom:  It's food dust.  They should sprinkle food dust on more things.

Tansy:  I don't like bananas.  I wonder if I sprinkled taco food dust on a banana if it would taste like a mushy taco?

Thelma:  I'd rather eat these pretzels.

***
Louise:  Her momma's from Texas Betty.

Betty:  That's not a Texas accent.  I hate when they get Texas and Southern accents wrong.  I remember there was some movie set in New Orleans with bad accents.  What was that movie Deven?  I remember Rosanne's husband was in it.

Me:  "The Big Easy."  I don't remember much about that movie except the bad accents.

Louise:  Put that on the list Deven.  It will be fun to see Thelma fume over the funny talking.

Thelma:  I just won't come then.

Tansy:  Hehehehee, yes you will.  You can't resist a reason to grump.

Betty:  I used to poach eggs. 

Me:  You use to scramble eggs in water.

Betty:  An egg is an egg.  People should get over it.

Louise:  What do you think it means when you don't like your friends?

Louise, Betty, Tansy:  ::looking at Thelma::

Thelma:  WHAT?!

***
 
Mom:  Do we get comments on our webl?

Me:  We get comments, and I'm not calling it a webl.

Mom:  Are these all friends of yours commenting, or do we have some real people that comment too?

Me:  My friends aren't real people?

Mom:  Not those that I met.

Me:  Yes, we have real and not real people leave comments.

Louise:  I ruined a ceiling once trying to flip hashbrowns.  I shouldn't have tried to flip when I was having a fight with my husband.

Tansy:  They're so in love.  It's so sweet.

Mom:  Yes it's not that stupid love like "Sexy City."  Two ugly people in love are more in love than two pretty people.

Thelma:  That horse face woman was ugly enough.

Mom:  Have any of the webl people sent us food you haven't shared Deven?

Me: No.  And it's not a webl.

Mom:  If we cooked our way through "The Little House on the Prairie Cookbook"  people would send us...

Me:  NO.

Mom:  Well I guess if you don't want free food and to be famous...

Me:  NO.

***

Mom:  My mother wouldn't have had any trouble with those lobsters.  She use to pick up chickens two at a time by the neck and swing them around until their heads popped off.

Thelma:  She needs Julia Childs to help her through her thirtieth birthday?  Wait until she turns sixty, she'll have to be wearing pearls from Jesus to get her through that.

Louise:  I never wanted a man in my kitchen.  They just get in the way and keep asking when things will be ready.

Mom:  I want to be Julia's sister.

Tansy:  I was so sad when I couldn't have babies either.

Louise:  You had three kids.

Tansy:  I mean before I had three kids.

Louise:  You had your first baby at twenty.

Tansy:  Yes, I was sad before that.

Thelma:  Kids don't have a clue what onion skin is now.  I can just see asking my nephew for some and him coming in with a big pile of onion peel.

Mom:  No one has given you any money to make the webl into a book, have they?

Me:  It's not a webl, and no.

Thelma:  Who isn't a bitch?

Mom, Louise, Tansy:  ::looking at Thelma::

Mom:  I was a telephone operator for years.  I use to talk to the night shift girl over at the Davis exchange.  We were friends for years and never met in person.  I wouldn't go to her funeral because I didn't want the first time for me to meet her to be when one of us was dead.  I'll just wait and meet her in Heaven.

Thelma:  What makes you think you're going to Heaven?

Me:  She's getting check marks off for church attendance.

Tansy:  I have conversations in my head with Judy Garland.

Thelma:  Do they all end with Judy drunk and crying in the corner?

Tansy:  No!  She's always telling me to fly over the rainbow.

Mom:  Deven, make us a pastry duck.

Me:  I doubt if I could manage that.

Mom:  Maybe there's a recipe in "The Little House on the Prairie Cookbook."

Me:  I doubt if Laura Ingalls was whipping up pastry duck on the prairie.

Mom:  No one's calling you about our webl?

Me:  It's not a webl.  And no.

Mom:  You need to write better.

Tansy:  That's sad that Julia was mean to Julie.

Louise:  I guess it's easy to be mean to webl people.

Me:  It's not a webl.

Thelma:  That's it?  It just ends there?  I'm taking my bag of pretzels and getting out of here.

Me:  Well I guess it's based on real life, and there's not more to the story.

Louise:  It's like it was chopped off at the end.  Like they thought "I guess we've got to end this now."

Mom:  Hmmm... you know if we were to cook our way through "The Little House on the Prairie Cookbook" for our webl, I bet that sweet girl would come and eat..."

Me:  NO.  And it's not a webl.

Mom:  We'll never be famous.

Yes, she does own this book.  Like the ladies would want to eat "frontier food"

Dear Julie,

We at the Unofficial Lakeside Retirement Home Movie Club would like you to know that we all enjoyed your movie very much.  We felt bad that Julia Childs didn't take the time to read your webl.  We think that it was a lovely and respectful tribute to Mrs. Childs.  Sometimes older people assume that younger people are being disrespectful because they usually are.  We think this because as older people, we're in general quietly disrespectful to younger people. They deserve it. 

We're sure that Julia Childs now realizes that you were doing something lovely.  When you're dead you get to know things like that.  You'll work it out with her when you're both dead.

In closing, thank you again for a lovely movie.  If you get a chance, please send Deven a mail letting her know what she's doing wrong, like refusing to cook us things from "The Little House on the Prairie Cookbook."

Sincerely,
The Ladies (and Bob, though he didn't see this movie) of the Unofficial Lakeside Retirement Home Movie Club