On the morning before his twelfth birthday, Alexander wakes up to find gum in his hair, and cuts it out with a pair of scissors. Then, he gets an email about Phillip Parker’s expensive birthday being on the same day as his. He tells his family that he couldn’t compete, but they don’t listen. On his way to school, a boy is seen photo-shopping Alexander’s face onto the bodies of women in photos, and then posting them online.
By the time he got to school, not only is he humiliated, but he learns that his best friend Paul is going to Phillip’s party. He tries to ask his school crush Becky Gibson, but she refuses as well. Afterwards, Alexander accidentally burns down the periodic table with her notebook and gets blamed for it. While waiting for a long time outside of school, Alexander is put in charge of Melvin, the class guinea pig.
Later that night, Alexander tries to talk to Anthony about his bad luck. While Alexander thinks that Anthony loved him as a brother, Anthony is actually talking to Celia on the phone. While Anthony is talking to Alexander, Celia, thinking that Anthony is trash-talking to her, then abruptly hangs up, and Alexander hears Anthony calling him an “idiot brother.”
At midnight, Alexander makes himself a birthday sundae and tells Melvin he wishes that his family would see what it was like to have a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”
The next day, Alexander is the first one to wake up. While heading down the hallway, he sees Emily having a cold, and then wakes up his parents, who were oversleeping. As Alexander leaves the bathroom, Anthony comes in, and reacts in horror when he looks in the mirror and sees a zit on his forehead.
At school, Alexander hears from Paul that Phillip’s birthday party is cancelled, as Phillip has caught the chicken pox (which is shown in a picture that Paul got in a text from Phillip, which he shows Alexander on his phone). This implies that Alexander’s party was back on. (As Paul puts it: “His pox is your gain.”) Becky even mentions showing up. Alexander even hears that Becky’s brother Elliot Gibson, the boy who made the mean photoshops about him, had gotten suspended.
Throughout the day, while attempting to convince his family that their bad luck was his fault, Alexander learns that Trevor got green ink all over his face. Alexander and his family later see Anthony accidentally trashing their van, which resulted in failing his driving test. Emily gets drunk because of drinking too much cough medicine, and ruins the Peter Pan play as a result.
By the time the Coopers picked Celia up for the prom, Alexander and most of his family play music by using their fists and their mouths. At a Japanese restaurant, he sees his father catching food into his mouth eight times in a row, and then accidentally set his sleeves on fire (which he put out using water from a lobster tank). While Ben walked out, feeling disappointed (and trying to hide it), Alexander follows, along with the rest of the family. After realizing that they got to spend the worst day together, they begin kicking trash cans around.
After going home, they discover a vicious lizard in the living room. In the backyard, Alexander sees his parents had rented an Australian petting zoo for his birthday party. During the party, he learns that Paul and Becky have shown up.
During the credits, they are seen pretending to surf.
You hear all those stories of cliques and the popular people. There’s a group of them in almost every school. And then of course, there’s everyone else. Everyone else would usually fit into two basic categories: the ones who completely hate them, and the ones who would do absolutely anything to be a part of them. Luckily, that doesn’t happen all the time. When you are everyone else, there’s no median or go-between within the groups. When you happen to be a hater, you are disliked as well.
It’s simple, and the whole “You don’t like me? I don’t like you” makes for good drama. And when you’re a worshiper — well, you are hated, too. There is something about the stalking and strange obsessions that turn the “in-crowd” to hatred.
Almost every teenager has been the victim and the predator — the one who taunts and the one who is humiliated. It can’t be helped. But as for those who are different, they must somehow have to be punished, because that is the society of high school. And those who befriend the different, and are different themselves, are lower than the low in the eyes of judgmental teenagers.
And the social ladder is a frustrating thing. The popular students control the student body — or at least they try to, because some of the students have had it with being mean to others. Instead, they try being both popular and nice at the same time.
However, it’s not always like that. The ones below the popularity circle listen — listen and nothing else.
What are your thoughts on popularity and being popular?
Rooting against Uncle Vernon Dursley in the “Harry Potter” movies was one thing, but few had anything but kind words to say about the actor who played him, Richard Griffiths, who died Thursday, March 28, 2013, at the age of 65.
I will miss him. He was a fantastic actor and a great loss. He did an awesome job bringing Vernon Dursley to life the way he did.
Sometimes his true warmth peeked through, as in that odd scene in the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone film where he is talking about Sundays being a ‘fine day’ and asks why that is. When Daniel’s Harry asks him “Because there’s no post on Sundays?”, Richard momentarily dropped the Vernon persona and beamed warmly at him, replying, “Right you are, Harry”. He then went on in a far jollier fashion than his character Vernon usually portrayed — that is, until the hundreds of Hogwarts letters addressed to Harry began to pour into the house.
I bet that deep down, unlike Vernon, Richard liked imagination and magic. And if Vernon came to life, Richard would’ve given Vernon a lecture on how an uncle should treat a nephew, especially if the nephew was a wizard like Harry, too. :)
Rest in peace, Richard. As you go on, be sure to take our love with you into, in the words of Albus Dumbledore, ‘the next great adventure’. :’)
