Not that I always do, but know how to eat right. I’ve been interested in nutrition since I was a teenager, but I owe most of my knowledge on this subject to one source. A long time ago I bought this little book at the grocery check out line in Walmart.

Speaking of Walmart… I’ve found that you either love it or hate it. I’m one of those that hate it.

It’s fine if you want to spend an afternoon there, but I don’t. I want to get into the grocery store and get out. It aggravates me to no end that the produce and eggs and bread are on one side of the store but you have to walk across Texas to get to the dog food.

I don’t want to buy electronics at the grocery store. I don’t want to buy clothes there either.

My husband–on the other hand–loves Walmart. He’s mesmerized by a good deal. Consequently, we go there maybe twice a year. He’s the kind of shopper that likes to go down every isle…

Anyway, that’s why I remember buying this little pocket book so vividly. It’s something I really like, from a source that I really hate. The book is called The First Food Evaluator and it’s written by Peter H. Dukan M.D. He’s French.

Well, The First Food Evaluator is in demand. But try buying one. You can’t. There’s one copy available on Amazon and you can have it for  a 150.00. Seriously. What happened to the other copies?

I don’t know. But one of them belongs to me.

So what’s the big deal?

The First Food Evaluator evaluates food healthy or unhealthy–on a spectrum from medicinal to poison– by how it heals, neutralizes or aides and abets disease. It’s fascinating. And when I’m using it, along with other healthy eating mainstays like the Dash Diet, I feel so much better. I really do.

The problem is…I get bored. Or I get bummed. Or I get in a celebratory mood and a salmon pinwheel with southwest corn relish just doesn’t get it. Sometimes I want to eat junk food.

Same thing with movies. Most of the time I’m a very irritating movie snob immersed in Truffant, Godard and Felleni but sometimes I have to break free and indulge in something that teeters on the edge of camp and bad. It’s an itch that feels so good when I scratch it.

Hence the movie Crawl.

Crawl is an old fashioned creature feature, but make no mistake–it’s a horror film in the same way Jaws is a horror film. People get eaten in Crawl. They get torn apart. It’s graphic. It’s gory.

And like in Jurassic Park there are–I don’t know exactly how many, at least two–multiple monsters. In this case the monsters are giant alligators who are terrorizing an estranged father and daughter in the enormous crawl space of their four bedroom two bath bungalow style home during a category 5 hurricane.

Yeah, the architecture of the bungalow is sketchy, the crawl space is somehow larger than the entire house. There are a lot of these inconsistencies in Crawl, stuff that just doesn’t pass the smell test and if that bothers you don’t go there.

Really. Please don’t go there and ruin it for whoever is sitting on the couch next to you. Remember, you are watching a movie about gigantic, prehistoric-like alligators that are swimming in a goldfish bowl crawlspace because they want to. They can enter and exit the crawlspace anytime they want. So, it’s not supposed to be realistic. Pointing out all the “mistakes” and “disharmony” is besides the point.

Now I know I mentioned Jaws and Jurassic Park, but don’t think I’m equating them with Crawl. I’m not.

Jaws is a classic. It’s nearly a perfect movie, so perfect that there were people who had heart attacks in the theater watching it. Same thing happened with the Exorcist and Psycho.

Trust me, nobody’s going to have a heart attack watching Crawl.

And Jurassic Park was a feat in spectacle. The special effects were mesmerizing.

Crawl is not going to be nominated for best special effects at this year’s Oscars. It’s not happening. But that’s not to say that Crawl’s special effects aren’t good. They’re awesome, considering the 13.5 million dollar budget. That’s where seventy five cents of every dollar goes in this movie–and it shows.

Accordingly, the dialogue sucks. In fact it’s so bad that it almost sinks the whole movie, but the enormous, bone snapping alligators snatch it from the jaws of defeat and then rip it to shreds–in a good way.

That doesn’t happen everyday.