Hamsters Are The New Penguins

As is tradition in the Adelson household, at around 3 o'clock in the afternoon, Thanksgiving Thursday, my mother kicked everyone out of our house except the one other adult who could turn on an oven (I bounced). This became standard back in 1995 when my siblings were still routinely sent to the principal for their unreliable exuberance and for using their very hard heads as weapons, and later, when my young cousins developed a knack for annual stitches and/or throw up: we tried to avoid these mishaps by going to the movies. This year's pick? Bolt.

Perhaps I was delirious from the horrible two weeks we all have ahead of us, or maybe I was hungry; it could just as easily be that I'm a closeted six-year-old, but I laughed as hard at Bolt as I did at Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which I viewed in theaters twice, once drunk, then again sober to see if it was in fact as funny as I remembered it (it is, so see it if you haven't).

One thing remains clear though, as evidenced by "Rhino," the primary source of comic relief in the film, all of the previews featuring "Bugsy" for Adam Sandler's new Bedtime Stories, and our new favorite viral video: Hamsters are in.

As has been the trend for the last few years, penguins infiltrated documentaries, and pretty much every animated childrens' movie under the sun. Truly, who doesn't love a well-dressed, elusively stoic little nugget to waddle in and steal scenes? Not the case anymore: sure, we still love little pengies, but overbites and squeaking have replaced tuxedos and tap-dancing, I'm afraid. Finally, my days of caring for my cannibalistic hamster Frizbee (literally, ate her babies after I'd had her for four days) are justified. If only my fourth grade class knew how cool I was NOW.