“Tosses her head and flips her hair.
She got a whole bunch of nothing in there!”

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been slowly convalescing from my most recent “procedure,” a procedure I was told would have a quick and relatively easy recovery. And that turned out to be true, too—the doctor had a quick and easy recovery.

Mine, not so much.

Actually, it was anything but, and it left me, at times, questioning the purpose of life.
Like, “What’s it all about, Alfie?”

I’m a lot better now, a bit weak and cheesed off, but I’m still standing (figuratively speaking), well enough (at least I thought I was well enough) to attempt the “Barbie” movie on HBO the other night. It’s a good thing I didn’t watch it during the heat of my distress, or I’m afraid it would have unquestionably killed my will to go on.

I’m trying hard to be fair because I’m obviously not the target demographic for the film, the target audience being those of the electronically lobotomized era—let’s call Generation Artificial Unintelligence. Still, I’m an educated man, reasonably smart who’s been around the block a few times, but I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it.

The movie’s confusing. Is it about women’s rights, about how different men and women are and never the twain shall meet, about how Will Ferrell remains the king of sophomoric, generally unfunny humor, is it another vehicle for Ryan Gosling to continue his quest of making amends for “The Notebook,” or maybe it’s simply about how life is better without genitalia?

Not a clue!

You know it’s a real clunker when the best line in it is delivered by Helen Mirren, who’s not even in the film!

But wait, it gets worse.

There’s a rather androgynous character named Allan who is about as confusing as a Salvador Dali painting. Sometimes he’s insipidly overwhelmed by the smallest, most insignificant social convention, and at others, he’s wiping the pavement with an entire road construction crew. And if that doesn’t get you scratching the old noggin, the song they use every time the women attempt to break loose from Sans-genitaliaville is “Closer to Fine” by the Indigo Girls. A great song but a