helpful do’s and don’ts i learned this weekend

~ Don’t go to a movie just to avoid an HOA meeting with your half-dozen clinically insane neighbors who call each other “faggot” during these courteous, constructive gatherings.

~ Don’t let the movie be 10, 000 B.C.

~ Well, too late. You’re there now.

~ Do marvel at the perfect accents of the pre-verbal troglodytes with the shiny white teeth.

~ Do wonder why a movie about said troglodytes seems to be narrated by Sigmund Freud.

~ Do, please, sit goggling at how a giant plastic rainforest rises suddenly out of High Sierra sagebrush.

~ Do ask yourself if Clint Eastwood will turn up somewhere in there, wearing a bitchin’ poncho. Cross your fingers and pray for this to happen.

~ Don’t be too shocked when it doesn’t, okay, hon?

~ Do marvel at how the noble and time-travelling woolly mammoth was forced to help build the ancient pyramids.

~ Don’t blame your third grade teacher for not teaching you this.

~ Do laugh at how the mammoths’ stubby tusks — neatly trimmed to keep them from kebabbing their captors — look like cigarettes dangling from both sides of their mouths.

~ Do continue, whenever you see the woolly mammoths, to make frantic two-handed smoking gestures at each other in the dark.

~ Do try to shush yourselves because Silence is Golden, wieners.

~ Do be sure to notice the desert village full of huts that look like this:

and then wonder if that’s where Hummel figurines come from.

~ Do keep that to yourself.

~ Until now.

~ Oops.

~ Do try to care about any of the characters.

~ Don’t be disappointed when that doesn’t happen, okay, hon?

~ Do try again. Squinch your face up real hard now.

~ All right. Do feel free to give up.

~ Do keep waiting to see bits of roasted leg ‘o’ mammoth stuck between any character’s teeth at any time while trying to see — in the dark — if your tongue is black from Good ‘n’ Plenty.

~ Do wish the giant sabre-toothed tiger was a cool cigarette-toothed tiger instead.

~ Don’t wonder what’s wrong with you, hon; you’re fine. You hear me? You’re fine.

~ Don’t question your maturity level, either. You’re a veritable sage, Betty.

~ And don’t be thinkin’ you’ve got ADD.

~ What?

~ Out of sheer boredom, do work up into a righteous froth when the “god” of this vaguely Egyptian locale is killed and he turns out to be a shriveled old whitey.

~ Do begin to ponder the state of race relations in the 21st century whilst continuing to consume large handfuls of Good ‘n’ Plenty.

~ Do decide that dead shriveled whitey must have been some kind of awesome dentist and that’s why he was their almighty god.

~ Don’t feel guilty about that wave of relief you feel when it’s over. This is all perfectly normal.

~ Do wonder, as you’re leaving, though, if the HOA meeting would have been less boring or more mammoth-free than the movie or if possibly Clint Eastwood showed up at the meeting wearing a bitchin’ poncho.

~ You’ll never know now, will you?