AP Stylebook in Microsoft Word

Mini-rant:

Someone needs to explain to me why there’s not a plug-in grammar/spelling module for Microsoft Word that uses the information from the Associated Press Stylebook.

Leaving aside the madness that is “fund-raiser” and its related words, I have to look up the correct way to list gun calibers and such every single time. It’d be nice to have it either auto-correct me or have that green squiggly line and a right click to explain the correct AP style.

Microsoft, AP, get on this!

Tiger mauls boy at theme park

Here’s the AP’s take on it:

Father: Costumed ‘Tigger’ hit my son

ORLANDO, FL (AP) — “Tigger” may be in trouble. A Walt Disney World employee dressed as the cartoon character is accused of hitting a child while posing for a photo.

A spokeswoman says park officials have temporarily suspended the employee while they investigate the accusations. Authorities say Jerry Monaco of New Hampshire videotaped his son posing with Tigger at Disney-MGM Studios on Friday and recorded the confrontation.

A sheriff’s spokesman says the father claims the employee intentionally hit his son “on or about the head,” but that the tape “only shows a fraction of what happened.”

In 2004 a Walt Disney World employee dressed as Tigger was accused of touching the breast of a 13-year-old girl while she posed with him for a photo. A jury found the man not-guilty.

Is anyone really shocked that Tigger would be the bad boy of the Magic Kingdom?

Care and Feeding of Sprites

It’s tough to follow up a book like Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide with, well, anything. So it’s inevitable that this book comes up a bit short compared to that lush book, stuffed full of amazing art in multiple media and wildly imaginative text.

That said, the Care and Feeding of Sprites has a more modest goal — to be a fantasy version of a real world pet care guide — and succeeds at it wonderfully. Writer Holly Black shouldered a lot of the burden with the Spiderwick Chronicles previously, but in Sprites, the book really has to succeed or fail based on Tony DiTerlizzi’s art. (Black’s contributions are strong, but maintaining the mock-serious tone really makes her work a quiet pleasure.)

DiTerlizzi’s sprites run the gamut of shapes and sizes, and all feel as though they could spring from a fantasy world ecology. Plants, insects and even frogs all serve as sources of inspiration and the end results all feel very right.

Part of the book’s high price tag is the heavy glow-in-the-dark poster, which also serves as the book’s cover. Honestly, I would have rather this been a separate product — I’m not sure how well the posters will hold up to serving as a cover on the way to a child’s wall — but it’s gorgeous.

I would recommend this to someone who already owns the Spiderwick Chronicles or Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide, which are better books. But this is a fun companion piece for those looking for more insights into the fantastical world around them.

Tommy Guerrero

After hearing about it on the radio, I’ve been listening to Tommy Guerrero’s new album, “From the Soil to the Soul.” I can’t find any reviews of the album online, and it’s sort of hard to describe, but I’ve really been enjoying this mellow, mellow album.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend

Given the low cost and high power of computer generated special effects, superhero movies are all the rage in Hollywood, from the revival of the Batman and Superman franchises, the continuing success of the Spider-Man franchise, the spectacle of Tim Allen as a superhero, and so on. So it’s not a surprise that someone would take CGI firepower and use it in a comedy, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, and with Uma Thurman as the titular superhero ex-girlfriend, they have someone who could credibly pull it off.

But what certainly seems like a clever Saturday Night Live bit never really does more than could be done in about four minutes on a Saturday night. The movie is padded with meeting the characters, seeing the relationship blossom, giving a reason for them to break up, THEN finally getting the break-up before having a somewhat forced resolution, ending the best part of the movie for the sake of it being a conventional film.

The best stuff that you’ve certainly seen in the commercials — G-Girl twisting a butcher knife with her bare hands during the break-up, flying off and busting through her now ex-boyfriend’s roof, flinging a live killer shark through a window — that’s all from the sequence in the middle, when she’s in deranged ex-girlfriend mode. The other stuff that’s added on, including a tiresome Lex Luthor-like nemesis, is what drags this film down. (And with all the padding, we never get the only interesting backstory: What G-Girl means, other than a blink-and-you-miss-it suggestion in a deleted scene that it might be a g-spot joke, which doesn’t make sense for the characters at all.)

It’s not the fault of the supporting cast that they’re underfoot. Rainn Wilson is good, as is Anna Faris, although Wanda Sykes is criminally wasted in this film. Eddie Izzard doesn’t really get the chance to shine that he deserves: His archvillainous Professor Bedlam is, frankly, kind of a wuss and clearly no match for G-Girl in any sense.

This isn’t a bad way to spend an evening for a superhero fan: The good stuff is pretty good, the special effects are neat (G-Girl’s flight and high-speed motion has a nice visual), there’s a number of DC Comics references (G-Girl spinning like a top to suck the oxygen away from a fire, super-breath and fire-vision, a creepy tryst a half-mile above Manhattan set to dopey Superman I romantic music that terrifies Luke Wilson’s non-flying character) and the performers do a good job with very ordinary material.

But it’s a rental for all but the most obsessive Uma Thurman or Luke Wilson fans.