I bet you all thought you’d never hear from me again. I bet most of you probably forgot who I was. In case you need a brief reminder, my name is Lacey, I’m the teen writer for this website, the one who’s supposed to be reporting school news but doesn’t do a very good of it. Yeah, you remember now?

I sense a few heads shaking… Oh well. I have years to achieve international fame…

Anyway… I apologize for my complete absence from here. Is it just me, or have I gone through an apology like this before? Ah well… I blame MySpace. No kidding.

So as far as school news goes… um… school is kind of out (except for summer school, but I’m not attending that, so I don’t have much to say about it), for those of you who haven’t noticed, and the summer break is NICE! We’re getting great weather for summer vacation, perfect for chilling in the morning, tanning in the afternoon, and taking long, inspiring walks on bike paths thinking about fixing poverty and gas prices and global warming in the evening.

However, in the absence of school time (and its partner – school news reporting), I will just be blogging about, well, whatever’s on my mind. Oh, don’t worry, I’ll try to make my blogs have a point and have something to do with this fair city we live in (or pseudo-live in, in my case). For instance, today, I will be blogging about Quarry Hill and giving some summer movie reviews (because I can). Read on and enjoy!

I’m volunteering at over at Quarry Hill this summer, and just so you all know, it’s NOT TOO LATE to sign up for summer nature camps, as the sign outside the nature center states. Yes, please, we beg of you, dump your children on us, we will take good care of them, make them exercise their young muscles by taking them on hikes and even FEED them as well as provide them with a small dosage of nature knowledge for two and a half hours each morning or afternoon; the three keys to healthy kids – diet, exercise and KNOWLEDGE! I can tell you firsthand that the activities for the kids are a lot of fun and include games, fishing and photography depending on your age group. Also, the kid reviews are almost all positive.

Just as a side note, I’ve never worked with kids in anything really before, so helping out at their camps is a new experience for me. It’s hilarious, things these kids do. Have you ever noticed that little kids are the only people who can be totally rude and get away with it? I heard a kid ask another kid today, “Ricky*, do you like me?” to which Ricky answered “No,” and walked away. Geez, whatever happened to “white lies”…?

All right, now for movie reviews. I’ve seen two movies this week: The Lake House on Sunday and Superman Returns on Wednesday. We’ll start with The Lake House.

I, for one, thought the movie was wonderful. My friend I went with, however, was a little bit confused. I don’t blame her. The plot goes a little something like this: Chick from year 2006 has nice house by a lake. She moves, tells new resident to forward her mail to her new address and apologizes for paw prints on the bridge by the house. In 2004, however, there are no paw prints until about 2 minutes after the new resident gets the letter. Freaked out, the new resident keeps correspondence with the future chick and eventually falls in love with her. He gets a chance to actually meet her past self at a bus station and a party, but then he dies and can’t be with the girl in the future. Chick attempts to move on after being “stood up” for a future date, but then she learns the truth about her letter-lover and then stuff happens and the ending is way cheesy.

It’s a great romantic chick flick, and Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock still have excellent chemistry, twelve years after Speed. Yes, it is confusing with the whole time-warp-ish thing and the trick mailbox. It’s kind of one of those movies that either you get it, or you don’t. If you’re a logical thinker and easily annoyed or confused by sci-fi like plots, don’t go. Also, don’t go if you’re not into chick flicks. Seriously, ladies, don’t bring your boyfriends, they will be bored and complain a lot. Four point five stars out of five!

Superman Returns, however, was not quite as wonderful, in my opinion. It was still really good, albeit being a little on the long side, stretching about two and a half hours with a few blank spaces of time where your attention kind of wanders… It’s still a great Superhero movie, though; the special effects and the action sequences are AWESOME! A friend that I went with though complained that “there were no fight scenes”, which there weren’t really, no great, climactic battles with laser beams and machine guns – and that was actually okay, believe it or not! Superman’s strength and nobility makes up for it. Not to mention the fact that Brandon Routh is waaaaaaay good-looking.

But of course, great superhero movies do not come without flaws, unlike the character that they promote. Lex Luthor, our main supervillian, is a bit on the lame side. Don’t get me wrong, Kevin Spacey’s a great guy and I believe he was a good choice for Lex, but it’s just the character he plays was lame. His scheme to “take over the world”… I mean, honestly, creating a new continent out of crystals? I don’t know about that… Not very diabolical, except for the fact that billions of people in North and South America will die as a result of it… Hmm… I mean, wouldn’t he rather destroy the entire world by using reality television as brain-sucking device, thus casting Earth into a dusty habitat full of dunderheads who will eventually annihilate each other and all die in the end?

Oh, wait a minute. That plan’s already been taken by Fox networks… My bad.

Superman Returns – Three and a half stars out of five. Why don’t we add an extra ¼ of a star too, just because Brandon Routh is one sexy beast?

That’s all for tonight’s blog, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. And just so everybody knows… I got nothing against Fox network. They supply me with American Idol every year, so they’re good. No hard feelings. We all know the global domination plot really belongs to the Disney Channel…

~Lacey

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent, tactless children.