Being, myself, made up of 75 percent pure, glorious Viking stock*, I can totally relate to DreamWorks' new animated Viking saga How to Train Your Dragon 3D. I remember growing up in the Viking village: pillaging rapaciously, raping pillagiously, riding a dragon, braiding dried lizards into my father's beard, playin' runestone Yahtzee atop the mounds of my ancestors, drinking pony urine out of a human skull. It was a simpler time.

Viking child Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) lives in just such a village—called Berk, it teeters atop a silly pile of rocks above the unforgiving gray sea and gets burned to the ground a couple times a month by marauding flocks of hungry dragons. It's really a stupid place to live. But the Vikings—led by Hiccup's dad, Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler)—love to fight dragons. A lot. Like, to a pathological degree. They love it way more than they love stable infrastructure and sustainable agriculture and not-having-their-faces-eaten-by-indestructible-hell-wyrms. So they continue to live there, like those people in Florida who spend 11 and a half months a year rebuilding their knocked-down houses and the other half a month getting their houses re-knocked-down by a hurricane. Again. Dumbasses. Florida is dumb. I'm getting off track here.

Anyway. Hiccup is not at all like the other Vikings! First of all, while everyone else in the village is all Scottish and shaped like if John Goodman ate Grimace ate Dale Chihuly ate the Liberty Bell, Hiccup is super-duper American and shaped like if a little twig never ate anything and then died (clearly he could use more pork rind in his genetic makeup). All he wants is to fit in and be a warrior, but his dad is all, "Ach, nohhh, me laddie! Ye nooo can feight, for ye're weak like eh baby woman!" and he's like, "Yo, dad! This shit is wack! I'm going to the mall!" and his dad's like, "Figgy pudding! Loch Ness Monster! Sean Connery!" and Hiccup is like, "Fuhgeddaboudit!" and then... what the FUCK was I talking about? Right. Dragons!

So Hiccup, using his brains, manages to snare a HELLA CUTE dragon (remember Stitch from Lilo & Stitch? It's like that only part panther and part bat and part Marmaduke) and becomes best friends with it and learns how to dragon-whisper and discovers that dragons are not evil maneaters—in fact, they just want to snuggle!!! Not so coincidentally, this is almost word for word the plot of my autobiography: There's No "Can't" in Pork Rind: A Hella Cute Viking Life, by Lindy West. DreamWorks, you will be hearing from my attorneys. Oh, and this movie is totally charming and fun. Recommended. recommended

* Seriously, I got my stock tested at Planned Parenthood (all they need is a few clumps of hair!)—the rest is 10 percent Austrian, 7 percent Canadian, 5 percent pork rind, and 3 percent gin.