Look Closely and You'll See Hugh Jackman in the Picture

For all of you waiting for today's daily Hugh Jackman Decoy Photo, this is kind of just a place-keeper: a photo that might not be a full size photo of Hugh Jackman but one that contains a small-ish photo of Hugh Jackman which, let's be frank, is what Laura's brant is now all about.

But more about that later.

Laura took this picture with her phone a week or two ago. She and Ben were in the local supermarket -- Shaw's, or Star (it's confusing since they keep changing their name from Star to Shaw's to Star again, not that it matters) -- in the cereal aisle, and they were negotiating the trip's cereal purchase. Ben had asked for a box of Cap'n Crunch -- it's one of the few sweet things he likes -- he doesn't drink juice, doesn't like chocolate, does eat any candy -- what a freak! -- so Laura's willing on occasion to drop $5 on a box of crud. But before they could grab a box of whatever they were going to grab, Ben's eyes got huge and he pointed to the Raisin Bran Crunch. Thinking he was going to try to sell her on a box of that high-fiber-low-fructose-or-glucose shit -- you know, because she's old and needs "healthy cereal" -- she shook her head no.

Ignoring her, he walked to the shelf, picked up a box and turned to her: "Mom," he said in a stage whisper. "It's your movie!!!"

And so it was. Standing there, on a Sunday, in the middle of a cereal aisle in a suburban supermarket, Laura was confronted with the fact that not only had the movie based on her first novel kind of tanked at the box office and gone almost straight to DVD -- not that she's complaining! people have worse problems then feeling like the movies based on their books weren't that great! -- but that DVD was now on the back of cereal box as part of some "free" movie offer. As she often does when it comes to matters of her career, she had mixed feelings: on the one hand, as Walter Winchell once said, or inspired people to say, there's no such thing as bad publicity, and so she felt she should be grateful for the "plug" -- no matter where that "plug" appeared and how lame that plug was. On the other hand, she couldn't help feeling like she was on Candid Camera: Was she being tested? Was she being "punked"? Or "pranked"? Should she get "tanked"? She had no idea. All she knew was that the DVD ad totally made her day: it was hilarious and she knew, if nothing else, it would make for an entertaining brant post...

You know, a brant post that she's posting before she posts the real brant with the next full-size photo of Hugh Jackman...